National
NYC march against anti-gay attacks draws thousands
Police say two more assaults took place hours after protest
Thousands of people marched in New York City on Monday in response to Mark Carson’s murder. (Photo courtesy of Karlo)
Thousands of people marched through the streets of lower Manhattan on Monday in response to the murder of a gay Brooklyn, N.Y., man that police have categorized as a hate crime.
Elliott Morales allegedly shot Mark Carson to death on West 8th Street in Greenwich Village shortly after midnight on May 18. New York Police Department officials told the New York Times and other media outlets that Morales shouted anti-gay slurs at Carson as he and a friend were walking on nearby Sixth Avenue.
The NYPD also said Morales, whom prosecutors have charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon, stalked Carson before he allegedly shot him.
“I am horrified that a gay man was murdered in Greenwich Village after being assailed by homophobic slurs,” New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said. “I stand with all New Yorkers in condemning this attack.”
Carson’s family members and Edith Windsor, the plaintiff in the case challenging the Defense of Marriage Act on which the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in March, took part in the march that began at the LGBT Community Center and ended at the spot where Morales allegedly shot the Brooklyn man to death. Gay New York City Council members Daniel Dromm and Jimmy Van Bramer and former New York City Comptroller Bill Thompson, who is among those along with Quinn who are running for mayor, also participated.
“We mourn Mark’s tragic and senseless death, and send a message that this violence must come to an end,” said LGBT Community Center Executive Director Glennda Testone.
Both the National Organization for Marriage and the Family Research Council also issued statements on Tuesday that condemned Carson’s death.
“We denounce any and all acts of unprovoked violence,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “No American should be the target of violence — period.”
Anti-gay attacks rattle New Yorkers
Carson’s murder comes against the backdrop of a string of attacks against LGBT New Yorkers in recent weeks that have sparked concern and outrage among local advocates and politicians. The most recent of these took place in lower Manhattan hours after the Greenwich Village march.
NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters on Tuesday that Gornell Roman allegedly shouted anti-gay slurs at former Philadelphia party promoter Dan Contarino before he struck him several times in the head and the face around 10:45 p.m. on Monday after they visited two East Village bars and a pizza restaurant. Roman turned himself in at a Bronx police precinct late Tuesday.
Fabian Ortiz of Manhattan and Pedro Jimenez of Brooklyn allegedly shouted what Kelly described as “anti-gay derogatory statements” in Spanish and English at two men who were walking on Prince Street in Soho early Tuesday morning.
The Anti-Violence Project in a press release on Tuesday said it also continues to investigate reports of an assault against a transgender woman in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens on Monday night.
“These types of crimes are outrageous and we are going to do everything in our power to see to it that they certainly don’t occur,” Kelly said. “But if they do occur, we’re going to very aggressively investigate them and bring people to justice.”
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg described Carson’s murder during the press conference with Kelly as “a cold-blooded hate crime that cut short a life full of promise.” He reiterated his message that the city will do everything it can to combat bias-motivated crimes in the five boroughs.
“New York City has zero tolerance for intolerance,” Bloomberg said.
Kelly noted the number of hate crimes in the city is down almost 30 percent so far this year from the same period in 2012, but those motivated by anti-gay bias are up more than 70 percent over the same time. He also noted hate crimes often go underreported.
While Kelly noted these attacks are not related, Anti-Violence Project Executive Director Sharon Stapel told the Washington Blade on Tuesday “this kind of violence happens every day to LGBT people in New York City.” She said her organization tends to see a handful of high-profile incidents in the weeks leading up to gay Pride month each year that generate a significant amount of media attention.
“The difference between years past and this year is both the severity of the violence — including a fatality — and that there is such a great number of incidents in such a short period of time being reported by the media,” Stapel said.
The Anti-Violence Project on Friday will hold the first of its Community Safety Nights during which volunteers will canvass neighborhoods in which anti-LGBT violence has recently taken place and distribute information and other resources. This campaign will take place each Friday through June.
Quinn on Wednesday will also join Empire State Pride Agenda Executive Director Nathan Schaefer and other advocates and elected officials at a press conference on the steps of New York City Hall to urge the New York Senate to pass a bill — the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act — that would ban discrimination based on gender identity and expression before the current legislative session ends at the end of next month.
The New York Assembly earlier this month once again approved the bill.
“GENDA is part of a bigger conversation, which is the context in which this violence is happening is one in which LGBT people are not equal citizens in this country,” Stapel said.
Advocates seek ‘an end to this violence’
Yetta Kurland, who hopes to succeed Quinn on the New York City Council, told the Blade on Tuesday those who took part in the march in response to Carson’s murder were “sad and also while mourning really wanted to put an end to this violence.”
Karlo, a Manhattan make-up artist who also took part in the march, echoed Kurland.
“It doesn’t matter where oppression, homophobia, discrimination and hate crimes happen, it affects all of us,” he told the Blade. “That is why I had to be there.”
Bloomberg added all New Yorkers “can do our part to end hate crimes and spread tolerance.”
“No person regardless of what they look like or who they love should ever walk down the street in fear,” he said.
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.
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