National
Maine’s same-sex marriage law takes effect
Two Portland men became the first gay couple to marry in the state


Steven Bridges and Michael Snell exchanged vows inside Portland City Hall shortly after midnight on Dec. 29. (Photo by Kurt Graser/Knack Factory)
Michael Snell, 53, and Steven Bridges, 42, exchanged vows inside Portland City Hall shortly after midnight as Snell’s two daughters, Mayor Michael Brennan and several reporters watched. Hundreds of people who had gathered outside in sub-freezing temperatures cheered the men as they left the building — they even sang the Beetles song “All You Need Is Love” as Snell and Bridges and the more than dozen other same-sex couples who either exchanged vows or obtained marriage licenses walked down the stairs.
“It means equality,” Snell told documentarians with the Knack Factory moments after he and Bridges exchanged vows. “It means that our relationship, our marriage is equal to everybody else’s.”
The Portland City Clerk’s office remained open to any same-sex couple who wanted to apply for a marriage license or tie the knot until 3 a.m. The town clerk’s office in nearby Falmouth also opened at midnight for gays and lesbians who had already made appointments to get married.
The Portland-Press Herald reported South Portland City Clerk Susan Mooney issued marriage licenses to eight same-sex couples once her office — three of them tied the knot there — opened at 8 a.m. The Brunswick Town Clerk’s office also issued marriage licenses to gays and lesbians this morning.
Chris Kast and Byron Bartlett were among the same-sex couples who married at Portland City Hall after the law took effect.
They had a commitment ceremony two and a half years ago, but Kast told the Washington Blade earlier today their choice to get married after midnight was “a matter of fact decision on our part” to “go do it and be part of what was an amazing evening.”
“It felt incredible,” he said. “The energy was just all positive and joyful. It was amazing.”
Maine’s same-sex marriage law took effect after voters on Election Day approved it by a 52-48 percent margin. They repealed an identical statute in 2009 that then-Gov. John Baldacci signed earlier that year.
Same-sex marriage referenda in Maryland and Washington also passed on Nov. 6. Minnesotans on Election Day struck down a proposed state constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as between a man and a woman.
“All the politics is done; now it’s just about actual couples and the people who have been together wanting to make it official,” Matt McTighe, campaign manager of Mainers United for Marriage, the group that supported the same-sex marriage referendum, told the Blade. He was among those who gathered outside Portland City Hall to celebrate the state’s first legal gay nuptials. “The energy was amazing. It was just nothing but happiness — take the best parts of every wedding you’ve ever been too and multiply it by a hundred and that’s what it was like for these people.”
Sue Estler and Paula Johnson, who have been together for 24 years, married in their Orono home on Saturday. The couple plans to have a larger celebration next summer, but Estler told the Blade just before she and Johnson exchanged vows they decided to marry on the first day same-sex couples in Maine can legally do so because “we’ve waited so long.”
“It’s historic in Maine,” she said. “We’ve had so many ups and downs and so forth. Our commitment has been long-term, and this formalizes it.”
Donna Galluzzo, who married her partner of three years, Lisa Gorney, at Portland City Hall earlier on Saturday, echoed Estler.
“We had a feeling the vote was going to pass this year,” Galluzzo told the Blade. “After the vote happened and once it was all signed into law and knew what day City Hall was going to open, we looked at each other and said ‘let’s do it.’ It was a historic day and was important for us to be a part of history.”
Kast agreed, describing the scene outside Portland City Hall after he and Bartlett exchanged vows as “surreal.”
“It has taken us so long to get here, to get to a place where everybody’s the same,” Kast said. “It was such a struggle and how no one should have to do that, no one should have to fight, no one should have to give money or knock on doors just to have the legal right to marry the person with whom they choose to spend the rest of their life with. But that aside, it was flippin’ amazing. It really was.”
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.