National
Christine Quinn seeks to be mayor of ‘all 8.4 million’ New Yorkers
Democrat criticizes Anthony Weiner for “grandpa” comment at AARP forum


Openly gay New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is leading the Democratic Primary for mayor of America’s largest city. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn on Wednesday said she is running for mayor because she wants to ensure New Yorkers have the same opportunities her grandparents had when they immigrated from Ireland a century ago.
“This is the greatest city in the world,” she told the Washington Blade. “I want to be mayor because I want to make sure the power and the possibility that existed for them exists in greater amounts for New Yorkers in our city and all the immigrants who are coming here every day.”
Quinn, 47, remains the frontrunner among her Democratic challengers going into the September 10 primary.
A Quinnipiac University poll released on July 29 shows Quinn leading New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio by a 27-21 percent margin among likely Democratic primary voters. Former New York City Comptroller William Thompson, Jr., came in third with 20 percent, while former Congressman Anthony Weiner garnered 16 percent.
Quinn would become the city’s first female and first openly LGBT mayor if voters elect her to succeed Mayor Michael Bloomberg in Gracie Mansion in November.
“We’re running to be the mayor of all 8.4 million people of all genders and all sexual orientations,” Quinn told the Blade, referring to a person whom she said whispered in her ear while on the campaign trail that her decision to run for mayor helped them come out. She said a man whom she hugged during June’s Brooklyn Pride had tears in his eyes. “It isn’t lost on me, the historic nature of this.”
Quinn also referenced her wife, Kim Catullo, whom she married in May 2012, as she discussed her campaign and the fact New York is a global financial capital.
“The top CEOs from all across the world, the leading international figures meet with the mayor of the city of New York,” Quinn said. “Their briefing will always talk about Christine Quinn and the wife.”
Quinn receives gay backing, criticism
The Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund; the Stonewall Democratic Club of New York City; Empire State Pride Agenda and Edith Windsor, the Manhattan widow who successfully challenged the Defense of Marriage Act before the U.S. Supreme Court, are among those who have endorsed Quinn. She is also scheduled to attend two campaign fundraisers on Fire Island later this month.
In spite of this support, Quinn continues to face criticism from some LGBT New Yorkers.
She faced widespread criticism from LGBT Democrats and others in 2008 when she supported the extension of term-limits that allowed Bloomberg and other city officials, including herself, to run for a third-term. Quinn earlier in the same year also acknowledged a City Council slush fund appropriated more than $17 million to community organizations that did not exist since 2001.
Brooklyn attorney Garfield Heslop in June filed a complaint with the New York City Campaign Finance Board that asked it to investigate Quinn over more than $20,000 in contributions her campaign received from donors in Houston, San Diego and Chicago after she attended Victory Fund events in the three cities in 2011 and 2012.
Quinn’s spokesperson Mike Morey defended the campaign’s actions in a statement he sent to the Blade after news of Heslop’s complaint broke.
“The question I think really is about what I have done with my time in office,” Quinn said in response to the Blade’s request for comment on criticisms she continues to receive from Allen Roskoff, co-founder of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club and others. She pointed out she has balanced eight budgets on time as speaker of the City Council and stopped Bloomberg from laying off 4,100 teachers. “Everyone who is running for mayor was opposed to it. They may have even gone to press conferences. They may have attended a rally. I’m the one who stopped those layoffs. I’m the one who kept every firehouse and every library open during the recession. That’s a record of results during my time as speaker.”
Quinn also criticized Weiner for referring to Republican mayoral candidate George McDonald as “grandpa” during an American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) forum in Manhattan on Tuesday.
“There’s no reason for name calling, ever,” she said. “When people in public life are speaking of senior citizens, they should do it with respect and gratitude and not in a derogatory way.”
Quinn categorized the former congressman’s campaign as a “circus” in a statement she released last month after revelations that Weiner had sent lewd text messages to women after he resigned from Congress in 2011. She stopped short of saying he should drop out of the race.
“Anthony Weiner has clearly decided to run,” Quinn told the Blade. “Now it’s a question for the voters.”
Quinn weighs in on hate crimes, Russia
Quinn, who was executive director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project from 1996 to 1999, told the Blade that as mayor she would set a goal of the five boroughs “becoming a hate crime-free city” through working with the New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force, expanding the city’s anti-bullying curriculum and partnering with faith-based organizations. Her comments come less than three months after Elliott Morales allegedly shot Mark Carson, a gay man from Brooklyn, to death in Greenwich Village during what the NYPD has classified as a hate crime.
“That’s the work we have to keep doing until we get to the place where we get to zero as the statistics of hate crimes against any community,” Quinn said, speaking to the Blade shortly after she and other officials expressed outrage over racist graffiti that defaced a statue of Jackie Robinson in Brooklyn.
Quinn stopped short of calling for a boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, over the country’s LGBT rights record. She praised President Obama’s decision to cancel a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin that had been scheduled to take place in Moscow ahead of next month’s G-20 summit in St. Petersburg.
“We all need to focus immediately on doing everything we can as Americans and as part of a larger international community to change what is going on in Russia,” Quinn told the Blade. “We’ve all got to keep pushing to make change. It’s really a life and death issue.”
U.S. Federal Courts
Judge temporarily blocks executive orders targeting LGBTQ, HIV groups
Lambda Legal filed the lawsuit in federal court

A federal judge on Monday blocked the enforcement of three of President Donald Trump’s executive orders that would have threatened to defund nonprofit organizations providing health care and services for LGBTQ people and those living with HIV.
The preliminary injunction was awarded by Judge Jon Tigar of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in a case, San Francisco AIDS Foundation v. Trump, filed by Lambda Legal and eight other organizations.
Implementation of the executive orders — two aimed at diversity, equity, and inclusion along with one targeting the transgender community — will be halted pending the outcome of the litigation challenging them.
“This is a critical win — not only for the nine organizations we represent, but for LGBTQ communities and people living with HIV across the country,” said Jose Abrigo, Lambda Legal’s HIV Project director and senior counsel on the case.
“The court blocked anti-equity and anti-LGBTQ executive orders that seek to erase transgender people from public life, dismantle DEI efforts, and silence nonprofits delivering life-saving services,” Abrigo said. “Today’s ruling acknowledges the immense harm these policies inflict on these organizations and the people they serve and stops Trump’s orders in their tracks.”
Tigar wrote, in his 52-page decision, “While the Executive requires some degree of freedom to implement its political agenda, it is still bound by the constitution.”
“And even in the context of federal subsidies, it cannot weaponize Congressionally appropriated funds to single out protected communities for disfavored treatment or suppress ideas that it does not like or has deemed dangerous,” he said.
Without the preliminary injunction, the judge wrote, “Plaintiffs face the imminent loss of federal funding critical to their ability to provide lifesaving healthcare and support services to marginalized LGBTQ populations,” a loss that “not only threatens the survival of critical programs but also forces plaintiffs to choose between their constitutional rights and their continued existence.”
The organizations in the lawsuit are located in California (San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Los Angeles LGBT Center, GLBT Historical Society, and San Francisco Community Health Center), Arizona (Prisma Community Care), New York (The NYC LGBT Community Center), Pennsylvania (Bradbury-Sullivan Community Center), Maryland (Baltimore Safe Haven), and Wisconsin (FORGE).
U.S. Supreme Court
Activists rally for Andry Hernández Romero in front of Supreme Court
Gay asylum seeker ‘forcibly deported’ to El Salvador, described as political prisoner

More than 200 people gathered in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday and demanded the Trump-Vance administration return to the U.S. a gay Venezuelan asylum seeker who it “forcibly disappeared” to El Salvador.
Lindsay Toczylowski, president of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, a Los Angeles-based organization that represents Andry Hernández Romero, is among those who spoke alongside U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) and Human Rights Campaign Campaigns and Communications Vice President Jonathan Lovitz. Sarah Longwell of the Bulwark, Pod Save America’s Jon Lovett, and Tim Miller are among those who also participated in the rally.
“Andry is a son, a brother. He’s an actor, a makeup artist,” said Toczylowski. “He is a gay man who fled Venezuela because it was not safe for him to live there as his authentic self.”
(Video by Michael K. Lavers)
The White House on Feb. 20 designated Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, as an “international terrorist organization.”
President Donald Trump on March 15 invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which the Associated Press notes allows the U.S. to deport “noncitizens without any legal recourse.” The Trump-Vance administration subsequently “forcibly removed” Hernández and hundreds of other Venezuelans to El Salvador.
Toczylowski said she believes Hernández remains at El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security prison known by the Spanish acronym CECOT. Toczylowski also disputed claims that Hernández is a Tren de Aragua member.
“Andry fled persecution in Venezuela and came to the U.S. to seek protection. He has no criminal history. He is not a member of the Tren de Aragua gang. Yet because of his crown tattoos, we believe at this moment that he sits in a torture prison, a gulag, in El Salvador,” said Toczylowski. “I say we believe because we have not had any proof of life for him since the day he was put on a U.S. government-funded plane and forcibly disappeared to El Salvador.”
“Andry is not alone,” she added.
Takano noted the federal government sent his parents, grandparents, and other Japanese Americans to internment camps during World War II under the Alien Enemies Act. The gay California Democrat also described Hernández as “a political prisoner, denied basic rights under a law that should have stayed in the past.”
“He is not a case number,” said Takano. “He is a person.”
Hernández had been pursuing his asylum case while at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego.
A hearing had been scheduled to take place on May 30, but an immigration judge the day before dismissed his case. Immigrant Defenders Law Center has said it will appeal the decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which the Justice Department oversees.
“We will not stop fighting for Andry, and I know neither will you,” said Toczylowski.
Friday’s rally took place hours after Attorney General Pam Bondi said Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who the Trump-Vance administration wrongfully deported to El Salvador, had returned to the U.S. Abrego will face federal human trafficking charges in Tennessee.
National
A husband’s story: Michael Carroll reflects on life with Edmund White
Iconic author died this week; ‘no sunnier human in the world’

Unlike most gay men of my generation, I’ve only been to Fire Island twice. Even so, the memory of my first visit has never left me. The scenery was lovely, and the boys were sublime — but what stood out wasn’t the beach or the parties. It was a quiet afternoon spent sipping gin and tonics in a mid-century modern cottage tucked away from the sand and sun.
Despite Fire Island’s reputation for hedonism, our meeting was more accident than escapade. Michael Carroll — a Facebook friend I’d chatted with but never met — mentioned that he and his husband, Ed, would be there that weekend, too. We agreed to meet for a drink. On a whim, I checked his profile and froze. Ed was author Edmund White.
I packed a signed copy of Carroll’s “Little Reef” and a dog-eared hardback of “A Boy’s Own Story,” its spine nearly broken from rereads. I was excited to meet both men and talk about writing, even briefly.
Yesterday, I woke to the news that Ed had passed away. Ironically, my first thought was of Michael.
This week, tributes to Edmund White are everywhere — rightly celebrating his towering legacy as a novelist, essayist, and cultural icon. I’ve read all of his books, and I could never do justice to the scope of a career that defined and chronicled queer life for more than half a century. I’ll leave that to better-prepared journalists.
But in those many memorials, I’ve noticed something missing. When Michael Carroll is mentioned, it’s usually just a passing reference: “White’s partner of thirty years, twenty-five years his junior.” And yet, in the brief time I spent with this couple on Fire Island, it was clear to me that Michael was more than a footnote — he was Ed’s anchor, editor, companion, and champion. He was the one who knew his husband best.
They met in 1995 after Michael wrote Ed a fan letter to tell him he was coming to Paris. “He’d lost the great love of his life a year before,” Michael told me. “In one way, I filled a space. Understand, I worshiped this man and still do.”
When I asked whether there was a version of Ed only he knew, Michael answered without hesitation: “No sunnier human in the world, obvious to us and to people who’ve only just or never met him. No dark side. Psychology had helped erase that, I think, or buffed it smooth.”
Despite the age difference and divergent career arcs, their relationship was intellectually and emotionally symbiotic. “He made me want to be elegant and brainy; I didn’t quite reach that, so it led me to a slightly pastel minimalism,” Michael said. “He made me question my received ideas. He set me free to have sex with whoever I wanted. He vouchsafed my moods when they didn’t wobble off axis. Ultimately, I encouraged him to write more minimalistically, keep up the emotional complexity, and sleep with anyone he wanted to — partly because I wanted to do that too.”
Fully open, it was a committed relationship that defied conventional categories. Ed once described it as “probably like an 18th-century marriage in France.” Michael elaborated: “It means marriage with strong emotion — or at least a tolerance for one another — but no sex; sex with others. I think.”
That freedom, though, was always anchored in deep devotion and care — and a mutual understanding that went far beyond art, philosophy, or sex. “He believed in freedom and desire,” Michael said, “and the two’s relationship.”
When I asked what all the essays and articles hadn’t yet captured, Michael paused. “Maybe that his writing was tightly knotted, but that his true personality was vulnerable, and that he had the defense mechanisms of cheer and optimism to conceal that vulnerability. But it was in his eyes.”
The moment that captured who Ed was to him came at the end. “When he was dying, his second-to-last sentence (garbled then repeated) was, ‘Don’t forget to pay Merci,’ the cleaning lady coming the next day. We had had a rough day, and I was popping off like a coach or dad about getting angry at his weakness and pushing through it. He took it almost like a pack mule.”
Edmund White’s work shaped generations — it gave us language for desire, shame, wit, and liberation. But what lingers just as powerfully is the extraordinary life Ed lived with a man who saw him not only as a literary giant but as a real person: sunny, complex, vulnerable, generous.
In the end, Ed’s final words to his husband weren’t about his books or his legacy. They were about care, decency, and love. “You’re good,” he told Michael—a benediction, a farewell, maybe even a thank-you.
And now, as the world celebrates the prolific writer and cultural icon Edmund White, it feels just as important to remember the man and the person who knew him best. Not just the story but the characters who stayed to see it through to the end.
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