Local
G-town student, 20, earns distinction in local race
Cassey just might be nation’s youngest out gay official
Georgetown University sophomore Craig Cassey says tension between students and residents inspired him to run. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
A Georgetown University sophomore was on track this week to become what he claims will be the youngest openly gay elected official in the country, running for a special ANC Commission post for Ward 2E, a campus-specific seat.
Craig Cassey, 20, ran as a write-in candidate. The Board of Elections didn’t have numbers available as of Blade press time this week, but Cassey says he was running unopposed. He knows of no one else conducting a write-in campaign for the seat. If he wins, he’ll be sworn in in January and serve with seven other members of his commission.
The Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund confirmed that a Cassey victory would be unprecedented for an LGBT elected official.
“We’ve checked and can find no out elected official as young as him anywhere in the country,” Denis Dison, a spokesperson for the Victory Fund, wrote in an e-mail. A representative from the D.C. Board of Elections said this week that their office should have estimates of the number of write-ins in the race this week, but that official numbers and the names of the candidates could take weeks to confirm.
Cassey hopes to inspire young people if he wins.
“In the same way, I think being the youngest openly gay elected official will motivate others and will allow younger gay and lesbian teens to see that you can be elected as a gay person. Politics is something … you don’t have to shy away from for fear of persecution,” he said.
Cassey said he went the write-in route because the lack of students on campus during summer, when petition signatures to get on the ballot must be gathered, made it difficult to secure enough to get on the ballot. He tried but came up two short of the 25 needed. Students switching dorms made it hard to find enough during summer who knew where they’d be for fall, he said. The matter was further complicated by a redistricting process that occurred last year affecting the makeup of the district for which he’s running.
Cassey, a psychology and philosophy major, hopes to earn a master’s degree in applied positive psychology and use it to help gay teens realize their potential and role in the world.
In reference to his sexual orientation and age, Cassey has not experienced any criticism in his bid for office. Looking back on the anti-gay assaults against Georgetown students in recent years, Cassey expressed relief at the changing culture.
“In today’s campus climate, we can have an openly gay candidate run, and it’s really not a big issue.”
Cassey recently won the Victory Fund’s Onward to Victory contest, which earned him an all-expenses-paid trip to the Fund’s Candidate & Campaign Training in Long Beach, Calif., at the end of November.
“Craig is what this country needs,” said Jack Jacobson, openly gay ANC Ward 2B commissioner. “He’s young and gay, which are two underrepresented demographics. He’s standing up and giving them a seat at the table. It will make a positive impact for the entire community.”
Jacobson ran unopposed for the Ward 2 seat of the D.C. State Board of Education.
Early on in Cassey’s time at Georgetown, he noticed tension between the student body and the surrounding community. He decided to run for a seat on the ANC because he saw the potential to build a stronger sense of community between the two populations.
He hopes to promote more student involvement in the Georgetown community and encourage students to volunteer in the area. He would also like to see Georgetown University hold more events to engage young, local families.
District of Columbia
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
‘This is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS’
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on March 20 signed a bill approved by the D.C. Council that requires health insurance companies to cover the costs of HIV prevention or PrEP drugs for D.C. residents at risk for HIV infection.
Like all legislation approved by the Council and signed by the mayor, the bill, called the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act, was sent to Capitol Hill for a required 30-day congressional review period before it takes effect as D.C. law.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) last year introduced the bill.
Insurance coverage for PrEP drugs has been provided through coverage standards included in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But AIDS advocacy organizations have called on states and D.C. to pass their own legislation requiring insurance coverage of PrEP as a safeguard in case federal policies are weakened or removed by the Trump administration, which has already reduced federal funding for HIV/AIDS-related programs.
Like legislation passed by other states, the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act requires insurers to cover all PrEP drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Studies have shown that PrEP drugs, which can be taken as pills or by injection just twice a year, are highly effective in preventing HIV infection.
“I think this is a win for our community,” Parker said after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the bill on its first vote on the measure in February. “And this is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
District of Columbia
Blade editor to be inducted into D.C. Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame
Kevin Naff marks 24 years with publication this year
Longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff will be inducted into D.C.’s Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame in June, the group announced this week.
Hall of Fame honorees are chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter. Naff and two other inductees — Seth Borenstein, a Washington-based national science writer for the AP and Cheryl W. Thompson, an award-winning correspondent for National Public Radio — will be celebrated at the chapter’s Dateline Awards dinner on Tuesday, June 9, at the National Press Club. The dinner’s emcee will be Kojo Nnamdi, host of WAMU radio’s weekly “Politics Hour.”
“I am tremendously honored by this recognition,” Naff said. “I have spent a lifetime in the D.C. area learning from so many talented journalists and am humbled to be considered in their company. Thank you to SPJ and to all the LGBTQ pioneers who came before me who made this possible.”
Naff joined the Blade in 2002 after years in print and digital journalism. He worked as a financial reporter for Reuters in New York before moving to Baltimore in 1996 to launch the Baltimore Sun’s website. He spent four years at the Sun before leaving for an internet startup and later joining the mobile data group at Verizon Wireless working on the first generation of mobile apps.
He then moved to the Blade and has served as the publication’s longest-tenured editor. In 2023, Naff published his first book, “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality — And How Our Enemies Could Take It All Away.”
Previous Hall of Fame inductees include luminaries in journalism like Wolf Blitzer, Benjamin Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, and Edgar Allen Poe. The Blade’s senior news reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. was inducted in 2015.
Maryland
Supreme Court ruling against conversion therapy bans could affect Md. law
Then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed statute in 2018
By PAMELA WOOD, JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV, and MADELEINE O’NEILL | The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ kids in Colorado, a ruling that also could apply to Maryland’s ban on the discredited practice.
An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide whether it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s majority, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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