Local
Baltimore PFLAG to host discussion with author
‘In Our Midst’ is the story of two gay sons in a mid-Western community
(Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
The Baltimore County chapter of PFLAG will present author Martha Johnson on March 26. She has written the novel “In Our Midst,” a story of two gay sons of a mid-Western community. This book is in the second round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel award competition, which had 10,000 entries. Johnson, a former director of the General Services Administration, will discuss the novel.
It is 1990, and Stanton, Ind., is a typical town with church youth groups, a bustling diner, a summer Wood Carving Festival and a busy mayor who also runs the mortuary. But, this is not to be confused with a Norman Rockwell setting. The Gulf War is breaking out, Ryan White’s family lives nearby and AIDS is sweeping the nation.
Despite all that, Stanton does not appear to have any gay or lesbian people, or so it seems to Victor Beck, who worries about himself because he is attracted to boys. He distracts himself with his photography and tries to push aside his mother’s interest in his social life. As high school life unfolds, Victor gets acquainted with a new girl in town and begins to wonder if he has it wrong. Could he like Bridget in “that way”?
For her part, Bridget is learning her way around Stanton, having just moved from Chicago with her mom and sister. She is mourning her father who died of cancer and has strong ideas about loyalty and compassion for friends, which are soon to be tested.
Meanwhile, a second and earlier story unfolds of a Korean War soldier, Vaughn Evanston, who died the day he returned home to Stanton. His grieving parents learn that he had a gay lover and their decisions about how to respond to that knowledge fuel the cycles of secrecy, love, grief and memories that propel the story forward.
The stories of Victor and Vaughn become entwined and the good people of Stanton have to wrestle with their history, their prejudices and their commitment to the health and welfare of their children.
“In Our Midst” is general interest fiction that exposes homophobia in our society. The book involves an ensemble cast of sympathetic characters who are recognizable to us all.
According to Bloomberg Businessweek, “Johnson is not gay. Nor is she the parent of gay children. So where’d the idea come from? Years of serving in her Presbyterian church, watching it struggle with the issue of gay ordination in the 1990s, and realizing that sexuality just isn’t a big deal.”
The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. and takes place at the Towson Unitarian Universalist Church, 1710 Dulaney Valley Rd., Lutherville.
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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