National
Log Cabin chief to step down
Cooper planned departure months ago
R. Clarke Cooper will step down as Log Cabin chief at the month’s end (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
The head of National Log Cabin Republicans is set to step down from his position on Monday and will be temporarily replaced by an interim executive director until a more permanent replacement is found.
The organization’s board announced in a statement Friday that Gregory Angelo, who’s chair of Log Cabin Republicans of New York State, will serve as interim chief starting Wednesday after current executive director R. Clarke Cooper departs.
Speaking to the Washington Blade, Cooper said his decision to leave Log Cabin wasn’t a recent one, although it wasn’t publicly announced before Friday.
Cooper said he informed the board he would depart the organization at the year’s end during an Oct. 20 meeting at the California Republican Party headquarters in Burback. Cooper said his announcement kept in line with earlier stated plans to leave Log Cabin in that time frame.
“Back then, I said, verbatim, ‘Win, lose or draw, I want to leave at the end of the year,'” Cooper said. “A lot of that was just predicated on I promised to work two cycles. So, going back to when I came on in 2010, I said, ‘You get me for the mid-term, and you get me for the general.'”
Sources familiar with Log Cabin, who spoke on agreement on anonymity, affirmed that Cooper had indicated on the Oct. 20 meeting that he would leave Log Cabin at the end of the year and that it was consistent with earlier plans for him to leave the organization at that time.
Cooper, an Army Reserve officer and Iraq War veteran, took on the role as executive director of Log Cabin Republicans as the legislative effort to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was underway and a lawsuit from the group resulted in a federal court instituting a 10-day temporary stay in enforcing the military’s gay ban. Cooper said he worked full-time as Log Cabin chief as he occasionally took leave for training and other Army Reserve duties.
Under Cooper’s tenure, Log Cabin gave a “qualified endorsement” to Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and was credentialed to participate in the drafting process for the 2012 Republican Party platform, although the document ended up including anti-gay language that endorsed the Federal Marriage Amendment.
The Oct. 20 meeting at which Cooper indicated he would leave took place just three days before Log Cabin announced its board had voted to endorse Romney in the presidential election. Cooper said the decision to endorse Romney actually took place over a teleconference earlier in the month — not at the Burbank meeting — and his decision to leave was unrelated to the Romney endorsement.
Cooper wouldn’t publicly announce his plan for what he occupy himself with upon his departure from Log Cabin, although he said he has several potential courses of action. Cooper said he intends to maintain his role in the finance committee for the Republican National Committee and remain active in the D.C. Republican Party.
“As far as from that perspective, I have built in or allowed capacity to have time and freedom to do political engagement, but this is not going to be my work-work,” Cooper said.
Angelo, who’s already executive director of Log Cabin’s educational 501(c)(3) arm known as Liberty Education Forum, said in a statement he’s “humbled and thrilled” to follow Cooper as head of Log Cabin.
“It has never been more critical to advocate for equality to Republicans, as Republicans,” Angelo said. “As the Interim Executive Director of this esteemed organization, I will do everything I can to work for Republican victories that return the party to its roots of freedom, fairness, and liberty for all.”
Cooper said the recruitment process for selecting a new executive director could change from what happened previously, but his selection was done by a formal committee search. One of the anonymous sources familiar with Log Cabin said the issue will come up at the next board meeting in January.
Charles Moran, chair of the California Log Cabin Republicans, said new leadership at Log Cabin presents the opportunity for a more centralized approach to the operation that would harken back to years past.
“When Patrick Guerriero centralized it in the 2000s, he really ramped up a lot of field staff, a lot of money and the organization was very centralized in Washington D.C.,” Moran said. “They’ve been kind of parsing that out over the years and returning us to more of a confederation model, but the problem is how do you maintain brand identity … when you don’t have anyone who’s setting that messaging? It’s a challenge. I think the next six months are going to be pretty critical. Like with the GOP, I think Log Cabin is going to have to figure out where it is and where we fit into the greater conversation.”
Log Cabin runs full-page ad against Hagel
The announcement comes the day after Log Cabin published a full-page in opposition to former U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel, whom Obama is reportedly considering for the role as defense secretary. The ad states, “Chuck Hagel: Wrong on Gay Rights, Wrong on Iran, Wrong on Israel.”
The ad also includes an anti-gay quote attributed to Hagel from 1998 in which refers to James Hormel, who went on to become the first openly gay U.S. ambassador, as “openly aggressively gay.” In a statement last week, Hagel apologized for the statement and said he supports open service and LGBT military families. Afterwards, Hormel questioned the sincerity of the apology in interviews with the Washington Post and the Washington Blade, but seemed to retract his doubt in a Facebook posting hours afterward.
As with the Romney endorsement, Cooper said the ad was unrelated to the announcement on Friday that he would step down as the Log Cabin’s leader.
“That ad was teed up way before Christmas; we had that lined up for a while,” Cooper said. “It’s no different than us having [new Republican DOMA repeal co-sponsors] Richard Hanna and Charlie Bass teed up for Election Day.”
Questions persist about the ad — particularly how a small organization such as Log Cabin with a relatively limited budget could afford to run a full-page in the New York Times.
Cooper said he couldn’t immediately recall the cost of the ad, but said it was done over the holiday week at a special rate and was financed by Log Cabin donors who are also organization members.
During the week of the Republican National Convention, Log Cabin ran a similar full-page ad in the Tampa Tribune in favor of marriage equality. Cooper said the Hagel advertisement was financed in the same manner.
Notably, Log Cabin is running an ad against Hagel even though he changed his position on the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment and didn’t vote on the measure in 2006. Just months before, the organization endorsed Romney even though he campaigned on the Federal Marriage Amendment during the Republican presidential primary.
The ad is somewhat in opposition to a quote from Cooper in a Gay City News article published on Dec. 14 in which he has favorable words for Hagel. Cooper was quoted as recalling Hagel’s experience in the battlefield and saying, “Hagel voted with us most of the time and there was no question he was committed to advancing America’s interests abroad.”
Asked by the Blade to explain why the Gay City News comments were different from the content of the anti-Hagel ad, Cooper said at that time Log Cabin hadn’t yet reached a final decision on Hagel.
“What is consistent is where I’ve been on non-proliferation of nuclear capability in Iran, or Iran writ-large,” Cooper said. “When I talked with a reporter from Gay City News a while back, he said, ‘Where are you on this?’ I said, ‘We’re looking at a lot of things with our coalition partners, I worked with Chuck Hagel, but we’re going to be putting out something soon.'”
Cooper added he had an early version of the copy of what would appear in the New York Times at the time Gay City News interviewed him, but didn’t want to tip off the reporter.
“As you can appreciate, I’m not going to tell one of your peers about something that we’re ready to roll out,” Cooper said. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would I tell Gay City News that we’re about to do a roll-out in the New York Times? It doesn’t make sense.”
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.
The White House
Trump travels to Middle East countries with death penalty for homosexuality
President traveled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates
Homosexuality remains punishable by death in two of the three Middle East countries that President Donald Trump visited last week.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar are among the handful of countries in which anyone found guilty of engaging in consensual same-sex sexual relations could face the death penalty.
Trump was in Saudi Arabia from May 13-14. He traveled to Qatar on May 14.
“The law prohibited consensual same-sex sexual conduct between men but did not explicitly prohibit same-sex sexual relations between women,” notes the State Department’s 2023 human rights report, referring specifically to Qatar’s criminalization law. “The law was not systematically enforced. A man convicted of having consensual same-sex sexual relations could receive a sentence of seven years in prison. Under sharia, homosexuality was punishable by death; there were no reports of executions for this reason.”
Trump on May 15 arrived in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
The State Department’s 2023 human rights report notes the “penalty for individuals who engaged in ‘consensual sodomy with a man'” in the country “was a minimum prison sentence of six months if the individual’s partner or guardian filed a complaint.”
“There were no known reports of arrests or prosecutions for consensual same-sex sexual conduct. LGBTQI+ identity, real or perceived, could be deemed an act against ‘decency or public morality,’ but there were no reports during the year of persons prosecuted under these provisions,” reads the report.
The report notes Emirati law also criminalizes “men who dressed as women or entered a place designated for women while ‘disguised’ as a woman.” Anyone found guilty could face up to a year in prison and a fine of up to 10,000 dirhams ($2,722.60.)
Trump returned to the U.S. on May 16.
The White House notes Trump during the trip secured more than $2 trillion “in investment agreements with Middle Eastern nations ($200 billion with the United Arab Emirates, $600 billion with Saudi Arabia, and $1.2 trillion with Qatar) for a more safe and prosperous future.”
Former President Joe Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2022.
Saudi Arabia is scheduled to host the 2034 World Cup. The 2022 World Cup took place in Qatar.
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