National
GOP senator Portman backs same-sex marriage
Ohio Republican grew to support marriage equality after learning son is gay


Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) has become to first Republican U.S. senator to support marriage equality (Photo public domain)
In a surprising and historical development, U.S. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) on Thursday became the first sitting Republican senator to come out in favor of same-sex marriage.
Several media outlets reported this news late Thursday night. The Ohio Republican said he grew to support marriage equality after his son Will, a student at Yale University, came out as gay to his family two years ago and said he’d been that way as long as he can remember.
Explaining his “change of heart” in an exclusive interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Portman said his previous position, which was rooted in faith, changed after that “very personal experience.”
“That launched an interesting process, for me, which was kind of rethinking my position, talking to my pastor and other religious leaders, and going through a process of — at the end — changing my position on the issue,” Portman said.
Portman expressed a similar sentiment to reporters in his office, according to another report in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
“It allowed me to think of this issue from a new perspective, and that’s of a dad who loves his son a lot and wants him to have the same opportunities that his brother and sister would have — to have a relationship like Jane and I have had for over 26 years,” Portman was quoted as saying.
Media outlets reported Portman said he later came to support marriage equality after he consulted former Vice President Dick Cheney, a marriage equality supporter whose daughter Mary Cheney is a lesbian.
Moreover, Portman reportedly said he believes part of the Defense of Marriage Act, which is currently under review by the U.S. Supreme Court, should be repealed. Section 3 of that law prohibits federal benefits from flowing to married same-sex couples.
Still, Portman reportedly emphasized he doesn’t want to force his views on others and religious institutions shouldn’t be forced to perform weddings or recognize marriages against their tenets. The Ohio Republican said he doesn’t know what the political fallout of his new position will be.
Portman’s new position marks a significant turnaround from his voting record as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2005. During his tenure in the lower chamber of Congress, Portman voted for DOMA and a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage in 2004.
While no other Republican members of the U.S. Senate support marriage equality, two sitting GOP House Republicans do: Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.). They both were among 131 prominent Republicans who signed a legal brief urging the Supreme Court to overturn California’s Proposition 8.
Portman isn’t the first Republican U.S. senator to back marriage equality, although he’s the only current member of the Republican Senate caucus to hold that position. Lincoln Chafee is considered the first because he supported legalizing same-sex marriage as a Republican U.S. senator before becoming an Independent and being elected governor of Rhode Island.
One question is where Portman now stands on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Asked about the issue last year by ThinkProgress, Portman expressed caution over the legislation and withheld immediate support.
“What I’m concerned about in Paycheck Fairness and other legislation like that is the fact that it will spawn a lot of litigation the way the legislation is written,” Portman said at the time. “So you don’t want it to be a boon to lawyers, you want it to actually help people. But no one should discriminate.”
But in June, Shari Hutchinson, a lesbian Cleveland, Ohio, resident, and member of the LGBT group Freedom to Work’s Speakers Bureau, told the Washington Blade she met privately with Portman’s staff and left feeling optimistic the Ohio Republican would support ENDA.
“I am an Ohio voter and I met with Sen. Portman’s staff last month to tell them how I faced anti-lesbian slurs at work in Cleveland and how I was repeatedly denied promotions even when the heterosexual candidate they selected instead of me had failed the qualifying exam for that promotion,” Hutchinson said. “Mr. Portman’s staff was very attentive, respectful and concerned to hear that anti-LGBT workplace harassment and discrimination still goes on in Ohio. I urged them to support ENDA and I am hopeful Mr. Portman might do the right thing.”
Portman was on the short list of possible vice-presidential contenders for 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Among LGBT advocates, he was seen as a lackluster candidate at the time because of his support for the Federal Marriage Amendment and reluctance to support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.
Gregory Angelo, executive director of the National Log Cabin Republicans, said in a statement Portman’s new position demonstrates the growing support for marriage equality among the GOP.
“If there was any doubt that the conservative logjam on the issue of civil marriage for committed gay and lesbian couples has broken, Sen. Portman’s support for the freedom to marry has erased it,” Angelo said. “Sen. Portman’s evolution on this issue highlights how personal it is for Americans — whether they’re the junior senator from Ohio or your next-door neighbor, all Americans have a gay friend, colleague or family member, and understand them to be as deserving as their straight counterparts of the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that are the promise of the United States.”
Angelo added Portman’s support for same-sex marriage demonstrates a person can support same-sex marriage while holding religious views.
“We also applaud and respect the Senator’s decision as a person of faith who recognizes that there is a Christian case as well as a conservative case for marriage equality,” Angelo said. “Log Cabin Republicans welcomes Senator Portman’s support, and encourages his GOP colleagues in the Senate to join him on the right side of history.”
CORRECTION: An initial version of this article incorrectly reported that Portman is the first GOP U.S. senator to back marriage equality. It also mischaracterized a quote from Gregory Angelo. The Blade regrets the errors.
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.