National
CPAC highlights GOP division on gay rights, marriage
‘A few in our movement just don’t like gay people’
Conservative pundits urged the GOP to evolve on the marriage issue at CPAC. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The message from Republicans on gay inclusion in the party was mixed as the Conservative Political Action Conference unfolded over the weekend. As one faction of the party was saying evolve or die, the other was saying there’s no need for change.
The push for Republicans to adopt a more inclusive tone was heard most distinctly during an unofficial event at CPAC titled, “A Rainbow on the Right: Growing the Coalition, Bringing Tolerance Out of the Closet.”
That panel concluded just hours before Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) announced he supports marriage equality. But at the same time, leaders of the Republican Party — most prominently House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) — continue to assert steadfast opposition to marriage equality.
Jimmy LaSalvia, executive director of the gay conservative group GOProud, was one of the lead speakers on the panel and advocated for a change in the conservative movement.
“In 2013, those who demonize gay people and oppose homosexuality are way out of the mainstream, because everyone has a gay person in their lives — and they know better,” LaSalvia said. “I believe that this issue contributes more to conservatives’ image problem than any other, because it’s an issue that cuts across all demographic groups. And it has to be addressed.”
LaSalvia, whose organization endorsed marriage equality in January, said the conservative movement has tolerated “anti-gay bigotry” for too long, but emphasized those who oppose same-sex marriage aren’t necessarily homophobes.
“Opposition to gay marriage isn’t, in and of itself, bigotry,” LaSalvia said. “There are, however, a few in our movement who just don’t like gay people, and in 2013 that’s just not OK in America anymore. Gay people are in every family, every circle of friends, and every community in the country now. Everybody knows a gay person.”
The panel, hosted by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, was an unofficial event that took place in the Gaylord National Hotel as CPAC was underway. GOProud, along with the John Birch Society, was barred in 2011 from sponsoring the annual conservative conference and hasn’t been allowed back since. While the American Conservative Union, which organizes CPAC, said the groups were barred because of “disrespectful behavior,” GOProud says they were barred from participating because it’s a gay organization.
On stage at CPAC, mention of marriage equality or other LGBT outreach was scant, although a few speakers brought up the issue. Most prominent was Sen. Marco Rubio, who said during his remarks on Thursday, “Just because I believe that states should have the right to define marriage in a traditional way does not make me a bigot.”
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on Thursday as the keynote speaker of a dinner honoring former President Reagan also warned against an anti-gay image for the Republican Party.
“Way too many people believe Republicans are anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-science, anti-gay, anti-worker, and the list goes on and on and on,” Bush said. “Many voters are simply unwilling to choose our candidate — even though they share our core beliefs — because those voters feel unloved, unwanted and unwelcome in our party.”
Off stage came another announcement: Portman announced that he’s had “a change of heart” and came to support marriage equality after his son Will, a student at Yale University, came out as gay two years ago.
“One way to look at it is that gay couples’ desire to marry doesn’t amount to a threat but rather a tribute to marriage, and a potential source of renewed strength for the institution,” Portman wrote in an op-ed for the Columbus Dispatch.
While the panel took place before Portman’s announcement, a number of prominent conservative commentators on the CEI panel, who spoke before a packed audience, advocated for a similar evolution in the Republican Party on marriage equality.
Jennifer Rubin, a conservative blogger for the Washington Post, said outreach to the LGBT community would be akin to the Republican Party’s effort to reach out to Latinos by working on immigration reform.
“I suggest that in another generation, or a half generation, this argument is going to be gone,” Rubin said. “Virtually every state in the union will have voted by popular vote; some may choose not to, and they’re going to experience whatever social and economic consequences flow from that. But in 10 years or so, no one is going to be talking about this.”
Earlier this month, polling analysis was unveiled by the LGBT advocacy Freedom to Marry showing opposition to marriage equality rests within three groups: white evangelical Christians, older people and non-college educated white people. Another notable statistic: 51 percent of Republicans under the age of 30 support marriage equality.
That last statistic was a point that Liz Mair, president of the Arlington, Va., consulting firm Mair Strategies, drew upon as she advocated for greater Republican outreach.
“The way that we’re going to talk about these issues and in some cases, the stands that we take on them, is going to prove to be a problem,” Mair said. “There’s something that needs to be addressed here, and that needs to be addressed now.”
Margaret Hoover, a conservative CNN contributor, also warned that continued opposition to marriage equality will harm the conservative movement as younger voters grow older.
“The millennial generation, the 30 and unders, are simply not hearing conservatism because they’re tuning us out based on a certain set of issues,” Hoover said. “Winning the argument and showing that we’re an inclusive movement is critical to not turning them off to a whole other rainbow of our other ideas.”
One question that sparked discussion concerned whether government should get out of the institution of marriage altogether — for both same-sex and opposite-sex couples — and simply allow individuals to form contracts with whomever they choose. That view was espoused last week by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who won the CPAC straw poll as the attendees’ preferred presidential candidate for 2016.
Mair explained that while many conservatives would like to see the government out of marriage, many aspects of government are involved in marriage, so support for marriage equality is the best option for libertarians.
“Unless you have a radical overhaul of the tax system, a radical overhaul of the entitlement system and, frankly, probably a radical overhaul of the immigration system, also, because that is going to affect certain same-sex couples, that’s not actually going to be a practical way of ensuring equality and rights,” Mair said.
Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large for the National Review, said he agrees the Republican Party needs to work on greater inclusiveness toward LGBT people, but noted that work needs to be done to hold onto social conservatives within the movement.
“You’re going to have to show me who you’re going to replace the 20 to 30 million social conservatives and evangelicals who may leave the party if you completely abandon some of those issues,” Goldberg said. “So the trick is to explain to people on our side why this is the right position because if you do that, you’ll have a great moral victory, but you’ll lose even more elections. It makes a lot more sense to try to persuade the people who agree with you on 80 percent of the issues to stick with you, than to say, ‘Go to hell over this one issue!'”
And remarks from other prominent Republicans over the weekend demonstrate the view that marriage is one man, one woman is still held by leaders within the party.
Most prominent is Boehner, who said in an interview on ABC “This Week” airing on Sunday that he couldn’t imagine his views on marriage changing, even if — like Portman — a child came out to him as gay.
“I believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman,” said Boehner said. “It’s what I grew up with. It’s what I believe. It’s what my church teaches me, and I can’t imagine that position would ever change.”
According to Roll Call, former Republican presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum under questioning at CPAC indicated he was unmoved when asked about Portman’s newfound support for marriage equality, saying, “Just because someone changes their mind doesn’t change things.”
Santorum reportedly added Republicans are confronting “very difficult facts” in their live, but if marriage were just about “two adults who love each other,” there’s no reason not to let “three or four people” marry. His remarks reportedly generated loud applause.
And on a CPAC panel on bullying faced by conservatives, titled “Stop THIS: Threats, Harassment, Intimidation, Slander & Bullying from the Obama administration,” Brian Brown, president of National Organization for Marriage, maintained opposition to marriage equality is a conservative principle.
“When you hear someone act as if standing up and believing for the truth about marriage is not a conservative principle is not the truth, refuse to back down, refuse to be cowed, do not accept the notion that this is an issue that somehow we can’t talk about or we can’t debate,” Brown said. “Don’t accept the idea that we need silence on this issue. What we need is people standing up more than ever for marriage is the union between a man and a woman. What we’ve seen in state-after-state is that when people do this, far from being a losing issue, it’s a winning issue.”
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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