Local
Gay couples: Delaware marriage law brings recognition, equality
Same-sex nuptials to begin on Monday
Rehoboth Beach residents Chris Beagle and Eric Engelhart, owners of event planning company Flair!, on the beach last September following their civil union. (Photo courtesy of the couple)
“It’s the end of a journey; it’s the culmination,” Beagle, who also co-owns a wedding planning company with Engelhart, told the Washington Blade. “It’s the end of a journey. It’s the culmination. It’s what we need to do to complete this process of legal recognition.”
Beagle and Engelhart are among the first gay and lesbian couples who will take advantage of Delaware’s same-sex marriage law that takes effect on Monday.
State Sen. Karen Peterson (D-Stanton,) who came out in May during the debate over the same-sex marriage bill that Gov. Jack Markell signed into law, and her partner, Vikki Bandy, will become the first legally married gay couple in Delaware when they convert their civil union into a marriage at the New Castle County Clerk of the Peace’s office in Wilmington.
“We have been together for almost 25 years, and I never thought we would live to see the day when we could be married in our home state,” Peterson told the Blade last week.
The Sussex County Clerk of the Peace in Georgetown will begin to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples at 8 a.m. on Monday, with doors opening at 7 a.m. The Kent County Clerk of the Peace in Dover will open at 8 a.m.
Sussex County Clerk of the Peace John Brady, who is gay, will officiate Beagle and Engelhart’s ceremony at CAMP Rehoboth at 10 a.m. Joseph Daigle, II, and Daniel Cole will become the first same-sex couple who had not previously entered into a civil union to tie the knot in Delaware when they exchange vows in Wilmington later on Monday.
No other same-sex weddings will take place in Delaware on Monday because the state did not waive the 24-hour waiting period for any other gay or lesbian couples.
Marriage to bring lesbian couple ‘credibility’
Sherry Berman and Deb Hamilton of Lewes, who have been together for 24 years, will exchange vows on the beach on Friday while their family is in the area for July 4.
“What it means is that there’s more credibility for us as a couple,” Berman told the Blade on Sunday afternoon, noting many retirees who live in their neighborhood told her that they had never known a gay couple before they met her and her soon-to-be-spouse. “We put our pants on the same way you do.”
Delaware on Monday will join 10 other states and D.C. in which same-sex couples can legally marry.
Gays and lesbians in Rhode Island and Minnesota will be able to legally tie the knot as of August 1.
Same-sex couples in California on June 28 began to once again exchange vows after the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals lifted its stay on gay nuptials in the state in response to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling two days earlier that struck down Proposition 8. The justices on June 26 also released their decision that found a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional.
“It really is magnifying the importance of tomorrow,” Beagle said.
Berman told the Blade her partner’s brother called them after the Supreme Court issued their DOMA and Prop 8 rulings and said he would attend their wedding. She also noted how she feels Delaware has changed since Hamilton grew-up in Sussex County in which Lewes and Rehoboth Beach are located.
“She knows how awful, how not accepting, non-diverse it’s been,” Berman said. “So for a state like Delaware to recognize [same-sex marriage] is really important in the scheme of the entire country.”
Rehoboth Beach resident Bob Hoffer, whose 2012 marriage to Max Dick in New York City will become legally recognized in Delaware on Monday, described the state’s gay nuptials law taking effect as “wonderful.”
“We’re first-class citizens now as everyone,” Hoffer told the Blade as he helped Beagle and Engelhart decorate for their wedding at CAMP Rehoboth. “We’re not hurting anyone and heterosexual marriage is still going to continue. It’s just giving everyone the same rights.”
Gay couples remain undaunted by opponents, protests
Even though an Equality Delaware poll earlier this year showed 54 percent of the state’s voters support marriage rights for same-sex couples, those opposed to the issue continue to speak out.
The Delaware Family Policy Council said in a statement after the Supreme Court issued its DOMA and Prop 8 rulings that it “will continue to advance the truth about marriage between a man and a woman and why it matters for children, civil society and limited government.”
Members of the Westboro Baptist Church are scheduled to protest outside various locations in Wilmington and Dover on Monday.
“Give it time,” Berman said, referring to same-sex marriage opponents. “Learn to like us; learn to know who we are. Listen to us. We’re not out to hurt you or to cause you any harm.”
Beagle said he respects both the Constitution and freedom of speech, but noted both the state of Delaware and he Supreme Court have spoken on the issue of marriage.
“What I would say to those people (who oppose same-sex marriage) is it’s now your turn to respect those decisions that have been made,” he said.
Deb Hamilton and Sherry Berman of Lewes, Del. (Photo courtesy Sherry Berman)
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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