National
Illinois marriage bill author defends non-vote
Harris rebuts critics, says delay puts measure in better position for fall
Gay state Rep. Greg Harris drafted the same-sex marriage bill. (Photo by Leah Jones via Wikimedia)
LGBT rights advocates expressed anger on Friday after the Illinois House adjourned its legislative session without voting on a same-sex marriage bill.
Some of the criticism fell on gay Rep. Greg Harris, the author of the bill, for failing to bring it to a vote. The Illinois House speaker, Michael Madigan, has extended a deadline for the bill, which will allow it to come to a vote in a November veto session.
In a conversation with the Washington Blade on Monday, Harris said that a last-minute media blitz by marriage equality opponents had rankled some of the bill’s likely supporters. Harris said the decision to table the bill would lead to a better result in the long term, as colleagues could avoid having to go on the record before they were prepared to.
“I think that at the very end they realized that back in their home districts for some folks that there were horrendous distortions of the truth,” Harris told the Blade. “They wanted to be sure that their constituents understand that — one — this bill treats all people equally and — two — that we also respect the rights and freedoms of religions.”
Though following the vote, some same-sex marriage advocates criticized the bill’s author for not getting his colleagues on record, Harris said he believes the bill will have a better chance of passing before the end of the year if he’s able to give his colleagues more time to lay the groundwork in their districts.
“I think it is very clear that at the end when some of my colleagues came to me and said should the bill be called that day, they would not be able to vote for it, until they had time to get back to their districts and undo some of the misconceptions and misinformation out there and truly explain what the bill meant,” Harris said. “If a bunch of people had voted no, then it becomes incredibly difficult then to change those votes to yes should it come back later.”
But some longtime Illinois activists remain angry over the decision to table the measure, and claim the process was bungled due to secrecy and a myriad of political miscalculations.
“I am extremely angry at him,” said longtime Illinois gay activist Rick Garcia, senior policy adviser at Illinois advocacy group The Civil Rights Agenda. “I think it’s justified anger. But there are few with [Rep. Harris’] history of advocating for the gay community, and people with HIV, and his successes are innumerable.”
Garcia, who called Friday’s aborted vote “a disaster,” mixed praise with scorn when discussing Harris’ handling of the bill with the Blade on Monday.
“But I don’t want to point fingers or cast blame, because I’m just as much to blame,” Garcia said.
“I’m really angry and pissed off,” Garcia told the Blade. “I’m very angry at myself for allowing this fiasco to happen. I’ve passed all sorts of gay rights legislation in Illinois, and for months and months and months have been urging a true coalition approach — there was none — I have been urging we do something as simple as a roll call, and the sponsor would not share his roll call with any of us. Without a roll call we might as well just have blinders on, because we don’t know where we’re going or who to talk to or what to do. I also urged that we have a campaign manager for this, and then a guy who was Mr. Madigan’s staffer was the one that was hired. Shaw Decremer.”
Garcia told the Blade that he’s working with other Illinois LGBT community leaders to assemble a new coalition to work toward passage in the veto session, and is actively seeking leaders of a multitude of community organizations and people of color, “not just straight white boys.”
“They can hire as many straight professional lobbyists as they desire but they’re not going to drive the bus anymore,” he said. “Our community is, our supporters are, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
Rep. Harris disputes the idea that community leaders were kept in the dark regarding the legislative process.
“I think there are layers and layers of involvement,” Harris said. “Each one is important and each one overlaps and interacts. There’s the public relations messaging. There’s the organizing of business leadership, there’s organizing of leadership in the Latino community, the African-American community, there’s on-the-ground, in-district organizing, there’s organizing of PFLAG families. There are many, many layers of organizing and I think people did wonderful, wonderful jobs.”
“Look at how fast we’ve moved on this issue,” Harris continued. “We didn’t get the result we wanted when we wanted, but we’re perfectly positioned to win.”
Harris said that opponents of same-sex marriage attempted to scuttle the legislation by turning historically marginalized communities against one another, and did so by using “robocalls” to pressure lawmakers and mobilizing religious leaders to lobby against the bill in a public, and — as Harris sees it — deceptive way.
“We’ve seen in state after state the same tactics from some of our opponents that have been used to try to drive a wedge between communities, and that is just not what this bill does,” Harris said. “If you read the press releases from some of the different religious groups that are affiliated with our opposition, they are crowing and taking credit,” he says.
Harris says that groups like the Urban League and the NAACP, as well as prominent African-American supporters of the bill worked very hard to try to combat what Harris called the “misinformation” that opponents of the bill were pushing in districts where support was tenuous, but that not enough work had been done to promote the religious liberties espoused in the bill, and that he believes his colleagues need more time to secure their positions with their constituents back home, or risk being threatened in the primaries.
Harris sounded resolute when asked about not backing down and calling a vote on the marriage bill in the November veto session.
“[My colleagues] made a commitment that when we come back they will be willing to call a vote, so I’m going to take them at their word.”
Harris did not comment on whether speaker Madigan had been as supportive and enthusiastic about this legislation as he had been during the successful 2010 push for civil unions, saying the speaker had publicly stated his support for the marriage bill.
Harris praised the members of the African-American legislative caucus and the Republican caucus — namely GOP co-sponsors Ron Sandak and Ed Sullivan — who backed the bill despite strong pressure from opponents. However, Harris said that an impending battle over the minority leader position in the House forced some GOP lawmakers to hold back from supporting the bill at this time, saying they could not vote in favor of the bill because of “intra-party politics.”
The longtime lawmaker — who authored the state’s comprehensive non-discrimination bill, and the state’s successful civil unions bill — confirmed that the leader of the African-American caucus, Rep. Ken Duncan — also a sponsor of the bill — had encouraged him to call the vote “earlier in the session.” However, Harris said the caucuses themselves took no position on the bill, so pressure to not call the bill to a vote did not come from the Black Caucus or the Republican caucus, but rather from individual lawmakers who Harris said expressed nervousness about coming primaries, and other issues specific to their home districts.
Harris encouraged same-sex marriage supporters not to get bogged down in looking for someone to blame, but to keep the pressure on lawmakers in anticipation of another chance at a vote in this fall’s session.
“We need to also remember our history and focus on the fact that our opponents will do whatever they need to stop full equality from coming, but the direction of this country is clear, and equality and fairness will win out,” Harris said.
“Also remember other history in the state of Illinois — back in 1975, the very first time that the Human Rights Act was put into place that protected people who are LGBT from being fired or denied housing or public accommodation because of their sexual orientation. And that took 30 years to pass, and there were ups and downs during that process. When I first introduced the marriage bill in 2007, I’m not sure that anyone thought that we would be as a nation in the position we are today where there’s been so much progress on this issue. But we have to remember that there is still hard work, that our opposition is fierce, that they have a strategy. We have to be sure that we are uniters and not dividers of communities, and we have to stand up for equality — not just for ourselves — but for all other people who suffer at the hands of repression.”
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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