Local
D.C. marriage officiant, surrogacy bills advance
Controversial provision would allow couples to marry each other
D.C. Council Member Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4) has expressed concern with a provision in the temporary officiant bill that would allow couples to act as their own officiant. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
LGBT activists watched with interest last week as the D.C. City Council took steps to advance one bill that would allow more people to perform marriage ceremonies and another that would repeal a little-known city law that prohibits surrogacy parenting.
On Tuesday, June 18, the Council’s Committee of the Whole, which includes all Council members, voted to schedule a first-reading vote on June 26 for the Marriage Officiant Amendment Act of 2013.
The bill, among other things, would authorize same-sex and opposite-sex couples applying for a marriage license to designate a friend, parent, sibling or any other adult as a one-time “temporary officiant” empowered to perform the marriage. The current law limits the selection of the person who can perform a marriage ceremony to licensed clergy members, judges and court employees designated as officiants.
Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) wrote the bill and co-introduced it with five colleagues, including gay Council members David Catania (I-At-Large) and Jim Graham (D-Ward 1).
In an unexpected development, Council member Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4), who is a candidate for mayor, exercised her authority to take the bill off the Council’s consent calendar, which would have enabled the Council to approve the bill on June 26 by unanimous consent without a roll call vote.
Bowser expressed concern about a provision in the bill that would allow couples that obtain a marriage license to act as their own officiant and to perform the marriage ceremony themselves. Bowser’s action prompted Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance President Rick Rosendall and National Capital Area ACLU Legal Director Arthur Spitzer to send email messages to each Council member expressing support for the “self-officiation” provision. The two urged the Council to retain the provision and to oppose a possible amendment introduced by Bowser to take the provision out of the bill.
Bowser told the Blade she supports the bill and expects to vote for it. But she said she took the bill off the consent agenda to enable her to ask some questions about the self-officiation provision.
“That one provision, as you know, was not in the introduced version of the bill,” she said. “And it is a departure from our witnessed and officiated ceremony for marriage in the District. And it’s a very new concept and I wanted to make sure it works…and that it gives due weight to entering into a marriage.”
Bowser said as of early this week she doesn’t plan to introduce an amendment on the Council floor to delete the provision. “Personally I favor that,” she said, referring to marriages performed by a third party officiant. “But I’m willing to listen to what people want.”
Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8), who supports the bill, has suggested adding members of the City Council to the list of people authorized to perform a marriage ceremony. Rosendall and Spitzer said they have no objections to Barry’s suggestion.
In a separate action, the Council’s Judiciary and Public Safety Committee held a public hearing on June 20 on a revised version of the Surrogacy Parenting Agreement Act of 2013, which was introduced earlier this year by Catania. All 12 of Catania’s fellow Council members signed on as co-sponsors of the original bill.
The measure, renamed the Collaborative Reproduction Act of 2013, would make it legal for same-sex or opposite-sex couples — or a single intended parent — to arrange for a woman to carry a fertilized egg to term on behalf of the couple or single person. The revised bill includes language that would make the intended couple or single person the legal parents of the child. Current D.C. law prohibits surrogacy arrangements.
The 15-page draft bill discussed at the hearing includes detailed legal provisions that would help potential surrogates and couples seeking a child work out a complex arrangement to compensate the surrogate for direct and indirect costs associated with a pregnancy and the delivery of a baby in a hospital.
Gay rights attorney Nancy Polikoff, an American University law professor, called on the committee to change the bill to include in all its provisions regulations for both a “gestational” and “traditional” surrogacy. Polikoff noted that the revised bill is mostly limited to addressing gestational surrogacy.
Gestational surrogacy allows the prospective parent or parents to provide a fertilized egg to be implanted in the surrogate. The process for doing this, Polikoff said, involves a medical procedure that could cost more than $100,000, making it difficult or impossible for many prospective parents to afford.
Traditional surrogacy involves the insemination of semen from one of the members of the couple or single person into the surrogate, in which case the surrogate becomes the biological mother of the child.
Polikoff said the draft bill would legalize traditional surrogacy but it lacks the detailed procedural language in the form of a regulation that it includes for gestational surrogacy, which she said is needed to help the “traditional” surrogate and prospective parents work out a legal agreement.
“With no such regulation in place, every time a gay male couple wants to conceive and raise a child, and that couple cannot afford gestational surrogacy, they are on their own, as is the woman who agrees to help them become parents,” Polikoff said in her testimony. “I don’t think the City Council should leave to their own devices that portion of this city’s population.”
Polikoff also called for a new provision in the bill to give a surrogate a short period of time after giving birth to back out of the deal and become the legal parent of and gain custody of the child.
Phillip L. Husband, general counsel for the D.C. Department of Health, who testified on behalf of the administration of Mayor Vincent Gray, said the administration supports the legislation but offered more than two-dozen suggested changes in the bill’s wording that he said would strengthen the measure and improve the city’s ability to implement it.
The Judiciary and Public Safety Committee must next draft a final version of the bill before the measure goes to the full Council for a vote.
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Congratulations to R. Warren Gill III, M.Div., M.A. on being appointed as the development manager at HIPS. Upon his appointment, Gill said, “For as long as I’ve lived in Washington, D.C., I’ve followed and admired the life-saving work HIPS does in our communities. I’m proud to join the staff and help strengthen the financial support that sustains this work.”
Gill will lead fundraising strategy, donor engagement, and institutional partnerships. HIPS promotes the health, rights, and dignity of individuals and communities impacted by sexual exchange and/or drug use due to choice, coercion, or circumstance. HIPS provides compassionate harm reduction services, advocacy, and community engagement that is respectful, non-judgmental, and affirms and honors individual power and agency.
Gill has built a career at the intersection of progressive politics, advocacy, and nonprofit leadership. Previously he served as director of communications at AIDS United, supporting national efforts to end the HIV epidemic. Prior to that he had roles including; being press secretary for Sen. Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential primary, and working with the General Board of Church and Society, the United Methodist Church, the denomination’s social justice and advocacy arm.
Gill earned his bachelor’s degree in philosophy and religious studies, Jewish Studies, Stockton University; his master’s degree in political communication from American University, where his graduate research focused on values-based messaging and cognitive linguistics; and his master of Divinity degree from the Pacific School of Religion.
District of Columbia
Judge denies D.C. request to dismiss gay police captain’s anti-bias lawsuit
MPD accused of illegally demoting officer for taking family leave to care for newborn child
A U.S. District Court judge on Jan. 21 denied a request by attorneys representing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a gay captain accusing police officials of illegally demoting him for taking parental leave to join his husband in caring for their newborn son.
The lawsuit filed by Capt. Paul Hrebenak charges that police officials violated the U.S. Family and Medical Leave Act, a similar D.C. family leave law, and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause by refusing to allow him to return to his position as director of the department’s School Safety Division upon his return from parental leave.
It says police officials transferred Hrebenak to another police division against his wishes, which was a far less desirable job and was the equivalent of a demotion, even though it had the same pay grade as his earlier job.
In response to a motion filed by attorneys with the Office of the D.C. Attorney General, which represents and defends D.C. government agencies against lawsuits, Judge Randolph D. Moss agreed to dismiss seven of the lawsuit’s 14 counts or claims but left in place six counts.
Scott Lempert, the attorney representing Hrebenak, said he and Hrebenak agreed to drop one of the 14 counts prior to the Jan. 21 court hearing.
“He did not dismiss the essential claims in this case,” Lempert told the Washington Blade. “So, we won is the short answer. We defeated the motion to dismiss the case.”
Gabriel Shoglow, a spokesperson for the Office of the D.C. Attorney General, said the office has a policy of not commenting on pending litigation and it would not comment on the judge’s ruling upholding six of the lawsuit’s initial 14 counts.
In issuing his ruling from the bench, Moss gave Lempert the option of filing an amended complaint by March 6 to seek the reinstatement of the counts he dismissed. He gave attorneys for the D.C. attorney general’s office a deadline of March 20 to file a response to an amended complaint.
Lempert told the Blade he and Hrebenak have yet to decide whether to file an amended complaint or whether to ask the judge to move the case ahead to a jury trial, which they initially requested.
In its 26-page motion calling for dismissal of the case, filed on May 30, 2025, D.C. Office of the Attorney General attorneys argue that the police department has legal authority to transfer its officers, including captains, to a different job. It says that Hrebenak’s transfer to a position of watch commander at the department’s First District was fully equivalent in status to his job as director of the School Safety Division.
“The Watch Commander position is not alleged to have changed plaintiff’s rank of captain or his benefits or pay, and thus plaintiff has not plausibly alleged that he was put in a non-equivalent position,” the motion to dismiss states.
“Thus, his reassignment is not a demotion,” it says. “And the fact that his shift changed does not mean that the position is not equivalent to his prior position. The law does not require that every single aspect of the positions be the same.”
Hrebenak’s lawsuit states that “straight” police officers have routinely taken similar family and parental leave to care for a newborn child and have not been transferred to a different job. According to the lawsuit, the School Safety Division assignment allowed him to work a day shift, a needed shift for his recognized disability of Crohn’s Disease, which the lawsuit says is exacerbated by working late hours at night.
The lawsuit points out that Hrebenak disclosed he had Crohn’s Disease at the time he applied for his police job, and it was determined he could carry out his duties as an officer despite this ailment, which was listed as a disability.
Among other things, the lawsuit notes that Hrebenak had a designated reserved parking space for his earlier job and lost the parking space for the job to which he was transferred.
“Plaintiff’s removal as director at MPD’s School Safety Division was a targeted, premeditated punishment for his taking statutorily protected leave as a gay man,” the lawsuit states. “There was no operational need by MPD to remove plaintiff as director of MPD’s School Safety Division, a position in which plaintiff very successfully served for years,” it says.
In another action to strengthen Hrebenak’s opposition to the city’s motion to dismiss the case, Lempert filed with the court on Jan. 15 a “Notice of Supplemental Authority” that included two controversial reports that Lempert said showed that former D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith put in place a policy of involuntary police transfers “to effectively demote and end careers of personnel who had displeased Chief Smith and or others in MPD leadership.”
One of the reports was prepared by the Republican members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the other was prepared by the office of Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for D.C. appointed by President Donald Trump.
Both reports allege that Smith, who resigned from her position as chief effective Dec. 31, pressured police officials to change crime reporting data to make it appear that the number of violent crimes was significantly lower than it actually was by threatening to transfer them to undesirable positions in the department. Smith has denied those claims.
“These findings support plaintiff’s arguments that it was the policy or custom of MPD to inflect involuntary transfers on MPD personnel as retaliation for doing or saying something in which leadership disapproved,” Lempert says in his court filing submitting the two reports.
“As shown, many officers suffered under this pervasive custom, including Capt. Hrebenak,” he stated. “Accordingly, by definition, transferred positions were not equivalent to officers’ previous positions,” he added.
Virginia
LGBTQ rights at forefront of 2026 legislative session in Va.
Repeal of state’s marriage amendment a top priority
With 2026 ramping up, LGBTQ rights are at the forefront of Virginia politics.
The repeal of Virginia’s constitutional amendment that defines marriage as between a man and a woman is a top legislative priority for activists and advocacy groups.
The Virginia Senate on Jan. 17 by a 26-13 vote margin approved outgoing state Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria)’s resolution that would repeal the Marshall-Newman Amendment. The Virginia House of Delegates earlier this month passed it.
Two successive legislatures must approve the resolution before it can go to the ballot.
The resolution passed in 2025. Voters are expected to consider repealing the amendment on Nov. 3.
The Virginia General Assembly opened with an introduction of a two-year budget — Virginia’s budget runs biannually.
In 2024 some funding was allocated to LGBTQ causes, and others were passed over. This year’s proposed budget leaves room for funding for a host of LGBTQ opportunities. One specific priority that Equality Virginia is promoting would ensure the state budget expands healthcare for LGBTQ individuals and extending gender affirming care.
Equality Virginia Communications Director Reed Williams told the Washington Blade the organization is also focused on passing three main budget amendments, and ensuring “LGBTQ+ students and their teachers have resources to navigate and address mental health challenges in K-12 schools.”
Along with ensuring school training, the organization wants funding in hopes of “establishing enhanced competency training for Virginia’s 988 Lifeline counselors and support staff to provide affirming care for LGBTQ+ youth.” This comes after the Trump-Vance administration shut down the specific hotline for LGBTQ young people that callers could previously reach if they called 988.
On a federal level, protections and health care access for LGBTQ people has taken a hit, as the Trump-Vance administration has continued to issue executive orders affecting the health care system. LGBTQ people no longer have federal legal health care protections, so local and state politics has become even more important for LGBTQ rights groups.
Equality Virginia has urged its supporters to call their local senators and stress the importance of voting to expand health care protections for LGBTQ people. The organization also plans to hold information sessions and a lobby day on Feb. 2.
Equality Virginia is tracking bills on its website.
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