Local
D.C. paid McClurkin $5,000 for cancelled appearance
Gospel singer assailed for ‘ex-gay’ advocacy
Mayor Vincent Gray asked Donnie McClurkin to withdraw from appearing at an MLK-related concert. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
The D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities paid anti-gay gospel singer Donnie McClurkin $5,000 for his cancelled appearance at a city-sponsored concert held on Aug. 10 at the Martin Luther King Memorial, according to the commission’s executive director Lionell Thomas.
Thomas told the Blade this week that the Commission also had to pay for McClurkin’s airline ticket and for one of the two nights that he was booked to stay at a D.C. hotel due to the abrupt cancellation of McClurkin’s appearance. He said the city made these payments directly to an airline company and a hotel, not to McClurkin.
Mayor Vincent Gray directed the Commission to ask McClurkin to withdraw from appearing at the concert, saying McClurkin’s past public statements condemning homosexuality and his role as an “ex-gay” leader would be inappropriate for an event commemorating Martin Luther King’s call for equality for all people.
Thomas said the Commission was obligated to pay McClurkin his full $5,000 performance fee under a contract that a producer retained by the Commission had entered into with McClurkin. Thomas said both the Commission staff and the 17-member commission appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the D.C. Council did not play a direct role in selecting McClurkin for the concert, which was entitled, “Reflections on Peace: From Gandhi to King.”
“This was part of a much larger performance contract that we have with a producer to present approximately seven shows over a period of time, and this is one of the shows that we were presenting,” Thomas said.
“He was invited to be a part of the program by the producer,” Thomas said of McClurkin. “It typically doesn’t go through the Commission for that level of detail.”
But Thomas acknowledged the Commission was ultimately responsible for the selection. He said the Commission staff was not aware of McClurkin’s controversial statements about gays and homosexuality at the time the producer booked his appearance.
The mayor’s office said Gray had not been informed in advance of McClurkin’s booking to appear at the concert.
“No disrespect to Mr. McClurkin, but Mayor Gray thought it best that he withdraw from the concert in the name of not having his appearance be a distraction at an event about peace, love and justice for all,” mayoral spokesperson Doxie McCoy told the Blade.
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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