Local
Advocates rally against Va. same-sex marriage ban
Clergy gathered outside Arlington County Courthouse to call for nuptials for gays and lesbians in the commonwealth
Jan Canterbury and Nadia Malley of Arlington apply for a marriage license outside Arlington County Courthouse on Feb. 14. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
Clergy from across Northern Virginia gathered outside the Arlington County Courthouse on Thursday to protest the commonwealth’s same-sex marriage ban.
“We are here this morning to say it is long past time to change the law,” Rev. David Ensign of the Clarendon Presbyterian Church said.
Rev. Amber Nueroth of Hope United Church of Christ in Alexandria led a litany in support of marriage rights for same-sex couples. Rev. Carlton Elliot Smith of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington noted the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision that found state bans on interracial marriages unconstitutional as he spoke to the dozens of people who gathered outside the courthouse.
“Do we want Virginia to be on the back of the bus again when it comes to marriage equality,” he asked. “So let’s see if we can Virginia to the front of the bus this time.”
Rabbi Lia Bass of Congregation Etz Hayim in Arlington read a prayer. She further noted that Rabbi Leila Gal Berner of Congregation Kol Ami in Annandale also supports marriage rights for same-sex couples.
“Let us pray that soon the state of Virginia will understand love is love and that the right to marry should be afforded to every child of God,” she said
The Arlington rally is one of five gatherings against Virginia’s constitutional same-sex marriage ban that voters approved in 2006 that took place across the commonwealth. The others occurred in Charlottesville, Hampton, Richmond and Winchester.
A Virginia House of Delegates subcommittee last month killed a bill sponsored by state Del. Scott Surovell (D-Fairfax) that would have repealed the Marshall-Newman Amendment.
Jan Canterbury and Nadia Malley of Arlington were among the three same-sex couples who unsuccessfully applied for marriage licenses outside the courthouse.
“We’re hoping that the culture will change, even here in Virginia,” Canterbury, who has been with Malley for 14 years, told the Washington Blade after Arlington County Clerk Paul Ferguson rejected their application. “We want to take a stand on behalf of our love and for our equal rights.”
Tom Nichols and Dan Chaddurn of Falls Church also sought a Virginia marriage license. The couple tied the knot later in the day in D.C. on what would have been Chaddurn’s parents’ 60th wedding anniversary.
“We would love to get married in Virginia,” Nichols said. “It feels so ridiculously insane that we can go five miles across the river in either direction to Maryland or D.C. right now and have the right to get married and still not in Virginia.”
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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