Local
Norton: Something ‘important happened’ during 2012 election
D.C. congressional delegate spoke during post-election panel at U.S. Capitol Visitor Center
D.C. Congressional Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton speaks at the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center on Nov. 15. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
Congressional Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) on Thursday suggested the results of the 2012 elections could prove “a turning point” in American history.
“I’m not sure what we will call it when we look back at history, but it’s certainly clear that something important happened in the election of 2012,” she said during a panel at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center that featured faith leaders and LGBT rights advocates from across the country. “The numbers tell some of it. Now there are 10 states including the District of Columbia who permit marriage equality among all people. No longer can the opponents say marriage has never won when put to the American people because three states answered yes — Maine, Maryland and Washington.”
Norton noted 46 percent of black Marylanders voted for their state’s same-sex marriage law on Election Day. Question 6 passed by a 57-43 percent margin in predominantly black Baltimore City. It lost by slightly more than 4,300 votes in Prince George’s County.
“The fact that it was that close when some believed in Maryland it would be much further apart than 46 to 54 [percent] means African Americans are beginning to see the clear analogies between themselves and the LBGT community,” said Norton.
Norton, who on Nov. 6 easily won re-election after defeating Libertarian Bruce Majors and Natale Lino Stracuzzi of the D.C. Statehood/Green Party, further applauded Minnesota voters who struck down a proposed state constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as between a man and a woman. She also applauded the White House for no longer defending the Defense of Marriage Act, lifting the ban on people with HIV/AIDS from entering the country and supporting other LGBT-specific measures and policies.
Norton further praised both President Obama and Vice President Biden for publicly supporting nuptials for gays and lesbians.
“The president said he evolved; that needs to be respected.” said Norton. “He thought, he probably prayed and he reached his own conclusions. And when the president evolved, you can imagine that there will be a lot of other people thinking whether they should evolve too.”
Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings, whose parents were Pentecostal ministers, told the Washington Blade last month he identified with Obama’s evolution on marriage rights for same-sex couples. He said during a second interview outside a Baltimore polling place on Election Day that Biden’s comments on how he would not “subject other people to his feelings” on abortion during last month’s vice presidential debate against Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan factored into his decision to back Question 6 and marriage rights for same-sex couples.
As for the GOP, Norton said nuptials for gays and lesbians is “not an issue” for young Republicans.
“Some of the Republicans appear to be in a reflective — some may even call it a self-pitiful — mood when they saw the new majority of Americans turn from their party in the 2012 elections,” she said. “They will have to think how to reconcile the very good and much needed advocacy of family values.”
Norton further highlighted 70 percent of black children are born to single women.
“We got a marriage problem — not a gay marriage problem,” she said. “There is work to be done on marriage, but I sure don’t see… the gay community as the place to begin at this point. It should not be difficult in my judgment for Republicans to reconcile marriage equality with Republican philosophy.”
Reverends Nancy Wilson of the Metropolitan Community Churches and Yvette Flunder of the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries in San Leandro, Calif., Rev. Dennis Wiley of Covenant Baptist United Church of Christ in Southwest Washington and Sharon Lettman-Hicks, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, were among those who also sat on the panel.
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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