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Elated plaintiffs call court decisions victory for families

Gay couple in Prop 8 case invites Obama to upcoming wedding

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David Boies, Proposition 8, gay news, Washington Blade
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HRC President Chad Griffin joined plaintiffs in the Prop 8 case on the Supreme Court steps Wednesday. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

The lesbian and gay couples that served as the main plaintiffs in Wednesday’s historic Supreme Court decision overturning California’s Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage said the decision would have a profound positive impact on gay families in their home state and beyond.

California residents Kris Perry, after whom the case has been named, and her partner Sandy Stier told reporters and a crowd of onlookers outside the Supreme Court that the enormity of the legal ramifications of the case was for them overshadowed by its impact on their family, especially their four sons.

“Today is a great day for American children and families,” Perry told the gathering. “Sandy and I want to say how happy we are not only to be able to return to California and finally get married but to be able to say to the children in California, no matter where you live, no matter who your parents are, no matter what family you’re in, you are equal.”

Perry added, “And today we go back to California and say to our own children, all four of our boys – your family is just as good as everybody else’s family. We love you as much as anybody else’s parents love their kids. And now we’re going to be equal to every other family in California.”

Californians Jeff Zarrillo and his partner Paul Katami, the other couple that served as lead plaintiff’s in the Prop 8 case, told the gathering outside the Supreme Court that they, too, look forward to returning to their home state to get married.

“Prop 8 allowed us to turn our anger into action,” Katami told the gathering. “So although we celebrate today, we work to make sure that everyone like Jeff and I and Kris and Sandy can just get married because it’s the natural next step in our relationship,” he said.

“We want to join the institution of marriage not to take anything away but to strengthen it, to live up to its ideals.”

In a development that prompted both cheers and tears from onlookers, Katami turned to Zarrillo, his voice breaking, and said, “And today I finally get to look at the man I love and say, ‘Will you marry me?’”

With Zarrillo nodding in the affirmative, the two men kissed and embraced as news photographers TV camera crews recorded their action.

Following the two couples’ initial comments, which came at a news conference organized jointly by the Human Rights Campaign and the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), which initiated the legal challenge to Prop 8 five years ago, the couples walked along the sidewalk outside the Supreme Court building speaking to individual television news outlets whose camera crews lined the sidewalk.

During one of those interviews, HRC President Chad Griffin, who accompanied the couples, excitedly informed them that President Obama just called Griffin’s cell phone from Air Force One, which was taking the president on a state visit to Africa.

Reporters and onlookers watched with interest as Griffin handed his cell phone to the couples, who spoke briefly with Obama.

“It’s incredible,” Griffin told reporters minutes later. “The president just called from Air Force One and he was thanking our team and the plaintiffs for their courage. And he said because of their courage thousands upon thousands of people will be able to join in the celebration of marriage very soon,” Griffin said.

Katami and Zarrillo told people standing near them that they thanked the president for calling them and invited him to their wedding.

“They’re quick,” observed attorney Theodore Boutrous, the law firm partner of lead plaintiff attorney Ted Olsen in the Prop 8 case. Olsen, who was in court on Wednesday in an unrelated case in Philadelphia, wasn’t able to attend the Supreme Court session announcing the Prop 8 decision.

“They get the president on the phone and they invite him to their wedding,” said Boutrous. “So it’s exciting. Not too many cases end with such a joyous thing, that people who want to get married can get married. This is a good one,” he said.

Perry told the Blade she, too, was excited to hear from Obama.

“When the leader of the free world tells a couple like Sandy and I that he respects our relationship and he hopes we can get married soon and show our kids that we’re a family, it says everything,” she said. “We couldn’t be prouder to have him call and tell us that.”

Fred Sainz, HRC’s vice president for communications, said Edith Windsor, 85, the lead plaintiff in the DOMA case, which bears her name, would be celebrating the decision in New York City. Windsor is a New York State resident who challenged DOMA in court following the death of her wife, whom she married in Canada, and the refusal of the IRS to waive her estate tax in the same way that tax is waived for opposite-sex married couples.

With DOMA overturned Wednesday by the Supreme Court, Windsor’s attorneys are expected to call on the IRS to retroactively refund the estate tax she was forced to pay.

Windsor was also scheduled to serve as a grand marshal in New York City’s LGBT Pride Parade this weekend.

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State Department

Transgender, nonbinary people file lawsuit against passport executive order

State Department banned from issuing passports with ‘X’ gender markers

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(Bigstock photo)

Seven transgender and nonbinary people on Feb. 7 filed a federal lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s executive order that bans the State Department from issuing passports with “X” gender markers.

Ashton Orr, Zaya Perysian, Sawyer Soe, Chastain Anderson, Drew Hall, Bella Boe, and Reid Solomon-Lane are the plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Massachusetts, and the private law firm Covington & Burling LPP filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The lawsuit names Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as defendants.

Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken in June 2021 announced the State Department would begin to issue gender-neutral passports and documents for American citizens who were born overseas.

Dana Zzyym, an intersex U.S. Navy veteran who identifies as nonbinary, in 2015 filed a federal lawsuit against the State Department after it denied their application for a passport with an “X” gender marker. Zzyym in October 2021 received the first gender-neutral American passport.

The State Department policy took effect on April 11, 2022.

Trump signed the executive order that overturned it shortly after he took office on Jan. 20. Rubio later directed State Department personnel to “suspend any application requesting an ‘X’ sex marker and do not take any further action pending additional guidance from the department.”  

“This guidance applies to all applications currently in progress and any future applications,” reads Rubio’s memo. “Guidance on existing passports containing an ‘X’ sex marker will come via other channels.”

The lawsuit says Trump’s executive order is an “abrupt, discriminatory, and dangerous reversal of settled United States passport policy.” It also concludes the new policy is “unlawful and unconstitutional.”

“It discriminates against individuals based on their sex and, as to some, their transgender status,” reads the lawsuit. “It is motivated by impermissible animus. It cannot be justified under any level of judicial scrutiny, and it wrongly seeks to erase the reality that transgender, intersex, and nonbinary people exist today as they always have.”

Solomon-Lane, who lives in North Adams, Mass., with his spouse and their three children, in an ACLU press release says he has “lived virtually my entire adult life as a man” and “everyone in my personal and professional life knows me as a man, and any stranger on the street who encountered me would view me as a man.”

“I thought that 18 years after transitioning, I would be able to live my life in safety and ease,” he said. “Now, as a married father of three, Trump’s executive order and the ensuing passport policy have threatened that life of safety and ease.”

“If my passport were to reflect a sex designation that is inconsistent with who I am, I would be forcibly outed every time I used my passport for travel or identification, causing potential risk to my safety and my family’s safety,” added Solomon-Lane.

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Federal Government

Education Department moves to end support for trans students

Mental health services among programs that are in jeopardy

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The U.S. Department of Education headquarters in D.C. (Photo courtesy of the GSA/Education Department)

An email sent to employees at the U.S. Department of Education on Friday explains that “programs, contracts, policies, outward-facing media, regulations, and internal practices” will be reviewed and cut in cases where they “fail to affirm the reality of biological sex.”

The move, which is of a piece with President Donald Trump’s executive orders restricting transgender rights, jeopardizes the future of initiatives at the agency like mental health services and support for students experiencing homelessness.

Along with external-facing work at the agency, the directive targets employee programs such as those administered by LGBTQ resource groups, in keeping with the Trump-Vance administration’s rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion within the federal government.

In recent weeks, federal agencies had begun changing their documents, policies, and websites for purposes of compliance with the new administration’s first executive action targeting the trans community, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”

For instance, the Education Department had removed a webpage offering tips for schools to better support homeless LGBTQ youth, noted ProPublica, which broke the news of the “sweeping” changes announced in the email to DOE staff.

According to the news service, the directive further explains the administration’s position that “The deliberate subjugation of women and girls by means of gender ideology — whether in intimate spaces, weaponized language, or American classrooms — negated the civil rights of biological females and fostered distrust of our federal institutions.”

A U.S. Senate committee hearing will be held Thursday for Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee for education secretary, who has been criticized by LGBTQ advocacy groups. GLAAD, for instance, notes that she helped to launch and currently chairs the board of a conservative think tank that “has campaigned against policies that support transgender rights in education.”

NBC News reported on Tuesday that Trump planned to issue an executive order this week to abolish the Education Department altogether.

While the president and his conservative allies in and outside the administration have repeatedly expressed plans to disband the agency, doing so would require approval from Congress.

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State Department

Protesters demand US fully restore PEPFAR funding

Activists blocked intersection outside State Department on Thursday

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HIV/AIDS activists block an intersection outside the State Department on Feb. 6, 2025. They were demanding the Trump-Vance administration to fully restore PEPFAR funding. (Photo courtesy of Housing Works)

Dozens of HIV/AIDS activists on Thursday protested outside the State Department and demanded U.S. officials fully restore President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief funding.

The activists — members of Housing Works, Health GAP, and the Treatment Action Group — blocked an intersection for an hour. Health GAP Executive Director Asia Russell told the Washington Blade that police did not make any arrests.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Jan. 24 directed State Department personnel to stop nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending for 90 days in response to an executive order that President Donald Trump signed after his inauguration. Rubio later issued a waiver that allows PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the freeze.

The Blade on Wednesday reported PEPFAR-funded programs in Kenya and other African countries have been forced to suspend services and even shut down because of a lack of U.S. funding.

“PEPFAR is a program that has saved 26 million lives and changed the trajectory of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic,” said Housing Works CEO Charles King in a press release. “The recent freeze on its funding is not just a bureaucratic decision; it is a death sentence for millions who rely on these life-saving treatments. We cannot allow decades of progress to be undone. The U.S. must immediately reaffirm its commitment to global health and human dignity by restoring PEPFAR funding.” 

“We demand Secretary Rubio immediately reverse his deadly, illegal stop-work order, which has already disrupted life-saving HIV services worldwide,” added Russell. “Any waiver process is too little, too late.”

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