Local
Frumin, Bonds, Brown score highest GLAA ratings
Mara loses points for views on school vouchers
Interim D.C. Council member Anita Bonds (D-At-Large) (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
D.C. Council candidate Matthew Frumin, a Democrat, local attorney and Ward 3 Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner, received a +7 rating from the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance Tuesday night, coming in ahead of his six competitors in the GLAA ratings.
Council member Anita Bonds (D-At-Large), who was appointed interim Council member until the special election is held on April 23, came in second with a +6.5 rating. Bonds is chair of the D.C. Democratic State Committee, which elected her to the interim Council post.
Former Council member Michael Brown, who’s running as a Democrat, came in third with a +6 rating.
“They were the highest-rated candidates in this race, but Perry Redd, Elissa Silverman, and Patrick Mara had scores that followed closely behind,” GLAA said in a statement referring to four of the other five candidates.
GLAA is a non-partisan LGBT advocacy group that’s been rating candidates on LGBT issues since the 1970s. It rates candidates on a scale of -10, the worst possible rating, to +10, the highest possible score. The group bases its ratings on candidates’ responses to a detailed questionnaire covering a wide range of mostly LGBT issues and their record on LGBT-related matters.
Redd, a Statehood Green Party candidate and advocate for ex-offenders, received a +5.5; Silverman, a Democrat, former Washington Post and City Paper reporter and budget analyst for the Fiscal Policy Institute, also received a +5.5. Mara, a Republican who serves as the Ward 1 member of the D.C. school board, received a +5. Attorney and Democratic contender Paul Zuckerberg, who has led efforts to legalize marijuana, came in last in the GLAA ratings with a +2.
“No candidate received a negative rating,” GLAA said in its statement accompanying the ratings, a development the group has said shows that most candidates running for public office in the city have been supportive on LGBT issues.
All seven candidates, including Zuckerberg, stated in their questionnaire responses that they support LGBT equality across the board, including the city’s same-sex marriage law. Each said they also support LGBT-backed legislation pending before the Council.
GLAA said in its statement that Zuckerberg and Mara lost points for not providing substantive answers to the questions, even though the two agreed with GLAA on most of the issues. Under the group’s rating system, a “yes” answer agreeing with a GLAA position earns a candidate just two points out of a possible 10 points. Candidates can gain or lose an additional four points based on the substance of their answers, which shows their level of understanding of the issues, according to GLAA.
Mara, who’s considered one of two frontrunners in the race, along with Brown, lost points – as he has in the past – by not supporting GLAA’s position that private religious operated schools should not receive city or federally funded vouchers. GLAA says it holds this position because private religious schools are exempt from the city’s Human Rights Act and are free to discriminate against students based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. The group says government funds shouldn’t be going to such schools.
Mara also lost points for his response to a question that asks whether the candidates favor legislation to eliminate legal standing for small ad hoc groups of citizens as well as civic associations to file a protest, or legal challenge, to liquor license applications. The question asked whether legal standing on those matters should be left to Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, whose members are elected.
“I do not support limiting peaceful protests or the right of citizen associations to engage in the political process,” Mara said in his response. “However, giving legal standing to one group and not another is a dangerous precedent,” he said.
Mara’s response appears to go against the positions of local business groups and nightlife advocates, who have complained that unelected civic and ad-hoc groups of as few as five people have blocked approval of licenses for restaurants and bars, even when the majority of nearby residents support the businesses.
Frumin, Bonds, and Silverman answered “yes” to the question, saying they support leaving the ANCs with the legal standing to challenge licenses when concerns about them are raised. Brown and Redd didn’t use the word yes, but said they support giving the ANC’s authority to file challenges to liquor license applications. Zuckerberg’s response was non-committal, saying he respects the work and dedication of both ANCs and “citizens that have a strong interest in liquor licensing issues.”
Cameroon
Gay Cameroonian immigrant will be freed from ICE detention — for now
Ludovic Mbock’s homeland criminalizes homosexuality
By ANTONIO PLANAS | An immigration judge on Friday issued a $4,000 bond for a Cameroonian immigrant and regional gaming champion held in federal immigration detention for the past three weeks.
The ruling will allow Ludovic Mbock, of Oxon Hill, to return to Maryland from a Georgia facility this weekend, his family and attorney said.
“Realistically, by tomorrow. Hopefully, by today,” said Mbock’s attorney, Edward Neufville. “We are one step closer to getting Ludovic justice.”
The rest of this article can be found on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
District of Columbia
Bowser appoints first nonbinary person to Cabinet-level position
Peter Stephan named Office of Disability Rights interim director
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bower has named longtime disability rights advocate Peter L. Stephan, who identifies as nonbinary, as interim director of the D.C. Office of Disability Rights.
The local transgender and nonbinary advocacy group Our Trans Capital and the LGBTQ group Capital Stonewall Democrats issued a joint statement calling Stephan’s appointment an historic development as the first-ever appointment of a nonbinary person to a Cabinet-level D.C. government position.
“This milestone appointment recognizes Stephan’s extensive expertise in disability rights advocacy and marks a historic advancement for transgender and nonbinary representation in District government leadership,” the statement says.
The statement notes that Stephan, an attorney, held the position of general counsel at the Office of Disability Rights immediately prior to the mayor’s decision to name him interim director.
The mayor’s office didn’t immediately respond to a question from the Washington Blade asking if Bowser plans to name Stephan as the permanent director of the Office of Disability Rights. John Fanning, a spokesperson for D.C. Council member Anita Bonds (D-At-Large), said the office’s director position requires confirmation by the Council.
Stephan couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
“At a time when trans and nonbinary people ae under attack across the country, D.C. continues to lead by example,” said Stevie McCarty, president of Capital Stonewall Democrats. “This appointment reflects what we have always believed that our community is always strongest when every voice is represented in government,” he said.
“This is a historic step forward,” said Vida Rengel, founder of Our Trans Capital. “Interim Director Stephan’s career and accomplishments are a shining example of the positive impact that trans and nonbinary public servants can have on our communities,” according to Rangel.
District of Columbia
Capital Stonewall Democrats set to celebrate 50th anniversary
Mayor Bowser expected to attend March 20 event
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, members of the D.C. Council, and local and national Democratic Party officials are expected to join more than 150 LGBTQ advocates and supporters on March 20 for the 50th anniversary celebration of the city’s Capital Stonewall Democrats.
A statement released by the organization says the event is scheduled to be held at the Pepco Edison Place Gallery building at 702 8th St., N.W. in D.C.
“The evening will honor the people who built Capital Stonewall Democrats across five decades – activists who fought for rights when the odds were against them, public servants who opened doors and refused to let them close, and a new generation of leaders ready to carry the work forward,” the statement says.
Founded in 1976 as the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the organization’s members voted in 2021 to change its name to the Capital Stonewall Democrats.
Among those planning to attend the anniversary event is longtime D.C. gay Democratic activist Paul Kuntzler, 84, who is one of the two co-founders of the then-Gertrude Stein Democratic Club. Kuntzler told the Washington Blade that he and co-founder Richard Maulsby were joined by about a dozen others in the living room of his Southwest D.C. home at the group’s founding meeting in January 1976.
He said that among the reasons for forming a local LGBTQ Democratic group at the time was to arrange for a then “gay” presence at the 1976 Democratic National Convention, at which Jimmy Carter won the Democratic nomination for U.S. president and later won election as president.
Maulsby, who served as the Stein Club president for its first three years and who now lives in Sarasota, Fla., said he would not be attending the March 20 anniversary event, but he fully supports the organization’s continuing work as an LGBTQ organization associated with the Democratic Party.
Steven McCarty, Capital Stonewall Democrats’ current president, said in the statement that the anniversary celebration will highlight the organization’s work since the time of its founding.
“Capital Stonewall Democrats has been fighting for LGBTQ+ political power in this city for 50 years, electing people, training organizers, holding this community together through some really hard moments,” he said. “And right now, with everything going on, that work has never mattered more. This gala is the first moment of our next chapter, and I want the community to be a part of it.”
The statement says among the special guests attending the event will be Democratic National Committee Vice Chair Malcolm Kenyatta, who became the first openly gay LGBTQ person of color to win election to the Pennsylvania General Assembly in 2018.
Other guests of honor, according to the statement, include Mayor Bowser; D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5, the Council’s only gay member; D.C. Council member Anita Bonds (D-At-Large); Earl Fowlkes, founder of the International Federation of Black Prides; Vita Rangel, a transgender woman who serves as Deputy Director of the D.C. Mayor’s Office of Talent and Appointments; Heidi Ellis, director of the D.C. LGBTQ Budget Coalition; Rayceen Pendarvis, longtime D.C. LGBTQ civic activist; and Phillip Pannell, longtime D.C. LGBTQ Democratic activist and Ward 8 civic activist.
Information about ticket availability for the Capital Stonewall Democrats anniversary gala can be accessed here: capitalstonewalldemocrats.com/50th
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PHOTOS: ‘Defrosted’
