National
Gay N.J. activist: Sandy left behind ‘massive destruction’
Superstorm brought widespread devastation to both New Jersey and New York


Bay water inundates the harbor in Fire Island Pines, N.Y., on Oct. 29 (Photo courtesy of Karen Boss)
The head of New Jersey’s statewide LGBT advocacy organization on Wednesday said Superstorm Sandy devastated his state.
“Hurricane Sandy has left massive destruction in her aftermath,” said Garden State Equality Chair Steven Goldstein in a YouTube video shot on a street in Teaneck in Bergen County with down trees and power lines in the background.
Goldstein urged his organization’s members and supporters to keep in regular contact with the elderly, young people and those with disabilities directly impacted by the storm who may need someone to pick up their prescriptions or buy them other basic supplies.
“On behalf of our entire Board of Directors, I extend to you our love, our prayers and most profound gratitude for being there for one another during this time of need.”
Sandy’s storm surge inundated large swaths of the New Jersey coastline, New York City, the South Shore of Long Island and Fire Island as it made landfall near Atlantic City, N.J., on Monday night. The storm killed at least 90 people in the United States and dozens of others in the Caribbean.
Villas, N.J., residents Vince Grimm and Will Kratz, whom the Washington Blade interviewed in August shortly after they celebrated their 51st anniversary, rode out Sandy in their bay front home north of Cape May. The couple lost power and water during the storm, but Grimm told friends in an e-mail he and Kratz have been able to run a generator and their gas-powered fireplace.
The storm did not damage the couple’s home and property.
“Our beach is a disaster and we lost our sand fences, but the dune is intact considering we got hit [during] a high tide with a full moon,” said Grimm. “Actually our street, 11 blocks long, has virtually no damage considering we are sitting on a sand dune along the bay.”
Sandy’s winds ‘unlike anything I’ve heard’
The storm killed at least 37 people in New York City, while a fast-moving fire destroyed more than 100 homes in the flooded Breezy Point neighborhood of Queens late on Monday.
A record storm surge that nearly topped 14 feet in lower Manhattan inundated large swaths of the five boroughs, subway tunnels under the East and Hudson Rivers and the Queens-Midtown and High L. Carey Tunnels that link Manhattan with Queens and Brooklyn respectively.
A limited number of subway and commuter train lines are once again running in portions of the city and metropolitan area, but bus service below 23rd Street in Manhattan remains suspended at night because the lack of electricity has created dangerous driving conditions. More than a quarter of a million customers in Manhattan remained in the dark as of 4:30 a.m. on Thursday.
“It’s been a crazy, crazy few days here,” gay New York City Council candidate Corey Johnson told the Blade on Wednesday. His apartment on West 15th Street in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood is close to the Eighth Avenue building that lost its facade during the height of the storm. “All I could hear was howling winds. It was unlike anything I’ve heard in my 12 years in New York.”
Cindi Creager, the former communications director of the LGBT Community Center in Greenwich Village, was inside her West Village apartment with her wife during the storm. The couple is currently staying with a friend who lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, but Creager told the Blade she feels fortunate she and her wife escaped the storm unscathed.
“The wind was howling and whipping [outside] the window. And it was scary,” she said. “We had power and we didn’t and it was total darkness outside the window. And that’s when it felt very scary. You just start to realize how fleeting life can be. We did very well considering.”
Cathy Renna of Renna Communications rode out Sandy in her centuries old farmhouse on Shelter Island between Long Island’s North and South Forks. She told the Blade local utility crews restored the electricity to her home roughly 24 hours after the worst of the storm had passed.
Sandy brought several large trees down across Shelter Island, but Renna stressed she feels she and her family “were really lucky.”
“I grew up on Long Island,” she said, noting her sister’s friend who lives in Lindenhurst along the Great South Bay in southwestern Suffolk County lost everything to the storm. “I have never, ever seen winds like that. It was terrifying, but it was only for a few hours.”
Storm devastates Fire Island, forces LGBT groups to close
Sandy caused widespread flooding and severe beach erosion throughout Fire Island. Dozens of oceanfront homes in Fire Island Pines sustained damage from the storm surge. The high tides also damaged bulkheads and bay front board walks in the hamlet and neighboring Cherry Grove.
The storm also forced the Empire State Pride Agenda, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and other LGBT advocacy groups to close their lower Manhattan offices because of the power outage and in some cases flooding.
“Our New York-based staff members are safe and working from home with limited resources,” said GLAAD spokesperson Seth Adam on the organization’s website on Tuesday. “Today, our thoughts are with all those families affected by Hurricane Sandy, as well as first responders working to keep us safe.”
Officials cancelled the city’s annual Halloween parade in Greenwich Village. The storm also derailed Splash Bar and other lower Manhattan gay bars and clubs’ holiday festivities because of the blackout. Restaurants and other businesses in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood west of Times Square that did not lose electricity during Sandy remain open.
“Day 3 of no power,” said Gym Sports Bar, which is on Eighth Avenue in Chelsea, in a message to patrons. “Our thoughts are with you out there. As soon as our lights are back on we will be back on the field. Stay safe out there Gym peeps.”
Restoring power and full subway service remain New York City officials’ top priorities.
“The subway lines are really the veins, arteries and lifeblood of the city,” said Johnson. “People are basically stuck unless they’re going to work or are able to get on a bus.”
Lesbian New York City Council candidate Yetta Kurland, who said her building has run out of the water because of the lack of electricity, said the closure of New York University Langone Medical Center and Bellevue Hospital because of flooding has left lower Manhattan residents more vulnerable. Kurland also pointed out people with disabilities and others who are unable to leave their apartments are unable to obtain food, water and ice at Union Square and other distribution points.
“There’s a large relief effort,” she said. “The city’s doing a great job at this point, but there are a lot of homebound people who cannot get to Union Square.”
Gay City Councilmember Daniel Dromm said the situation in his Queens district that includes the neighborhoods of Jackson Heights and Elmhurst “is pretty much okay” outside of downed trees. Overcrowded subway stations and gas shortages have become a problem, but Dromm said the gay bars and other businesses along bustling Roosevelt Avenue that were closed during the storm have since re-opened.
“Everything is back up and operational in Jackson Heights itself,” said Dromm. “We were very lucky.”
Gay New Yorkers persevere in spite of Sandy
Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, which is the country’s largest LGBT synagogue, will hold its weekly Shabbat service by candlelight at a Manhattan church later on Friday. Its group for older congregants will meet at a nearby diner beforehand for dinner.
Elmo, a restaurant on Seventh Avenue in Chelsea, on Wednesday served drinks in spite of the lack of electricity.
Even as New Yorkers try to return to some sense of normalcy, they continue to reflect upon the storm that devastated their city.
“You go from this thriving city uptown to just a ghost town downtown, which is really scary,” said Creager, who briefly returned to her apartment on Wednesday to pick up more clothes and other belongings. “There was a lot of traffic yesterday going up and down the West Side Highway because there’s no subway. There’s that feeling in the air, even on the Upper West Side like something major has happened.”
Dromm, who taught in the city’s public schools for 25 years until his 2009 election to the City Council, said he has “never seen anything like” Sandy “in my life in Queens.” He also applauded New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for raising the issue of climate change during the storm’s aftermath.
“It’s a very important question,” said Dromm. “It’s really scary when you think about lower Manhattan—areas of lower Manhattan being flooded out like that. Government wasn’t even able to really operate in this storm. It’s very, very scary.”
New York
Men convicted of murdering two men in NYC gay bar drugging scheme sentenced
One of the victims, John Umberger, was D.C. political consultant

A New York judge on Wednesday sentenced three men convicted of killing a D.C. political consultant and another man who they targeted at gay bars in Manhattan.
NBC New York notes a jury in February convicted Jayqwan Hamilton, Jacob Barroso, and Robert DeMaio of murder, robbery, and conspiracy in relation to druggings and robberies that targeted gay bars in Manhattan from March 2021 to June 2022.
John Umberger, a 33-year-old political consultant from D.C., and Julio Ramirez, a 25-year-old social worker, died. Prosecutors said Hamilton, Barroso, and DeMaio targeted three other men at gay bars.
The jury convicted Hamilton and DeMaio of murdering Umberger. State Supreme Court Judge Felicia Mennin sentenced Hamilton and DeMaio to 40 years to life in prison.
Barroso, who was convicted of killing Ramirez, received a 20 years to life sentence.
National
Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information
Crucial datasets included LGBTQ, HIV resources

Nine private medical and public health advocacy organizations, including two from D.C., filed a lawsuit on May 20 in federal court in Seattle challenging what it calls the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s illegal deletion of dozens or more of its webpages containing health related information, including HIV information.
The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, names as defendants Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS itself, and several agencies operating under HHS and its directors, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration.
“This action challenges the widespread deletion of public health resources from federal agencies,” the lawsuit states. “Dozens (if not more) of taxpayer-funded webpages, databases, and other crucial resources have vanished since January 20, 2025, leaving doctors, nurses, researchers, and the public scrambling for information,” it says.
“These actions have undermined the longstanding, congressionally mandated regime; irreparably harmed Plaintiffs and others who rely on these federal resources; and put the nation’s public health infrastructure in unnecessary jeopardy,” the lawsuit continues.
It adds, “The removal of public health resources was apparently prompted by two recent executive orders – one focused on ‘gender ideology’ and the other targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’) programs. Defendants implemented these executive orders in a haphazard manner that resulted in the deletion (inadvertent or otherwise) of health-related websites and databases, including information related to pregnancy risks, public health datasets, information about opioid-use disorder, and many other valuable resources.”
The lawsuit does not mention that it was President Donald Trump who issued the two executive orders in question.
A White House spokesperson couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit.
While not mentioning Trump by name, the lawsuit names as defendants in addition to HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., Matthew Buzzelli, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health; Martin Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; Thomas Engels, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration; and Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management.
The 44-page lawsuit complaint includes an addendum with a chart showing the titles or descriptions of 49 “affected resource” website pages that it says were deleted because of the executive orders. The chart shows that just four of the sites were restored after initially being deleted.
Of the 49 sites, 15 addressed LGBTQ-related health issues and six others addressed HIV issues, according to the chart.
“The unannounced and unprecedented deletion of these federal webpages and datasets came as a shock to the medical and scientific communities, which had come to rely on them to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, assist physicians and other clinicians in daily care, and inform the public about a wide range of healthcare issues,” the lawsuit states.
“Health professionals, nonprofit organizations, and state and local authorities used the websites and datasets daily in care for their patients, to provide resources to their communities, and promote public health,” it says.
Jose Zuniga, president and CEO of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC), one of the organizations that signed on as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement that the deleted information from the HHS websites “includes essential information about LGBTQ+ health, gender and reproductive rights, clinical trial data, Mpox and other vaccine guidance and HIV prevention resources.”
Zuniga added, “IAPAC champions evidence-based, data-informed HIV responses and we reject ideologically driven efforts that undermine public health and erase marginalized communities.”
Lisa Amore, a spokesperson for Whitman-Walker Health, D.C.’s largest LGBTQ supportive health services provider, also expressed concern about the potential impact of the HHS website deletions.
“As the region’s leader in HIV care and prevention, Whitman-Walker Health relies on scientific data to help us drive our resources and measure our successes,” Amore said in response to a request for comment from the Washington Blade.
“The District of Columbia has made great strides in the fight against HIV,” Amore said. “But the removal of public facing information from the HHS website makes our collective work much harder and will set HIV care and prevention backward,” she said.
The lawsuit calls on the court to issue a declaratory judgement that the “deletion of public health webpages and resources is unlawful and invalid” and to issue a preliminary or permanent injunction ordering government officials named as defendants in the lawsuit “to restore the public health webpages and resources that have been deleted and to maintain their web domains in accordance with their statutory duties.”
It also calls on the court to require defendant government officials to “file a status report with the Court within twenty-four hours of entry of a preliminary injunction, and at regular intervals, thereafter, confirming compliance with these orders.”
The health organizations that joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs include the Washington State Medical Association, Washington State Nurses Association, Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Academy Health, Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, Fast-Track Cities Institute, International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, National LGBT Cancer Network, and Vermont Medical Society.
The Fast-Track Cities Institute and International Association of Providers of AIDS Care are based in D.C.
U.S. Federal Courts
Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections
Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent

Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has struck down guidelines by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission designed to protect against workplace harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
The EEOC in April 2024 updated its guidelines to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which determined that discrimination against transgender people constituted sex-based discrimination as proscribed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
To ensure compliance with the law, the agency recommended that employers honor their employees’ preferred pronouns while granting them access to bathrooms and allowing them to wear dress code-compliant clothing that aligns with their gender identities.
While the the guidelines are not legally binding, Kacsmaryk ruled that their issuance created “mandatory standards” exceeding the EEOC’s statutory authority that were “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent.”
“Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind themselves to the biological differences between men and women,” he wrote in the opinion.
The case, which was brought by the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, presents the greatest setback for LGBTQ inclusive workplace protections since President Donald Trump’s issuance of an executive order on the first day of his second term directing U.S. federal agencies to recognize only two genders as determined by birth sex.
Last month, top Democrats from both chambers of Congress reintroduced the Equality Act, which would codify LGBTQ-inclusive protections against discrimination into federal law, covering employment as well as areas like housing and jury service.
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