News
Bi advocates seek visibility through White House roundtable
Closed-door meeting to take place Monday
The White House is set to hold a closed-door bisexual roundtable on Monday (Photo by Peter Salanki via Wikimedia Commons).
Bisexual advocates are hailing an upcoming roundtable at the White House as an opportunity for greater discussion about their issues — despite the closed-door nature of the panel.
For the first-time ever, the White House Office of Public Engagement is set on Monday to hold a meeting on bisexual issues at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. The roundtable, which is closed to the press, will take place on Celebrate Bisexuality Day on which bisexual visibility is observed.
Two groups responsible for putting together the roundtable are the Boston-based Bisexual Resource Center and BiNet USA, an umbrella organization for bisexual groups.
Faith Cheltenham, president of BiNet USA, said she’s “excited” the administration is taking time to talk to members of the bisexual community about their issues.
“Our community is definitely in desperate need,” Cheltenham said. “We’re hoping that this dialogue is just the start of a very long, fruitful relationship to help serve our community.”
An observer might reject the idea of the need for a separate discussion on bisexual issues when they’re closely to tied to gay and lesbian issues. After all, bills like the Employment Non-Discrimination Act provide protections based on sexual orientation, which is inclusive of bisexuality.
Cheltenham, who’s married to a straight man, rejected the notion that bisexuals automatically face the same challenges as gay or lesbian people, saying many bisexual people suffer additional discrimination.
“When we do come out, the things that happen to us are different than what happens to gays or lesbians,” Cheltenham said. “We won’t get promoted sometimes because we’re out and people think we’re flaky. That has nothing to do it. Bisexuality is sexual orientation; it’s an innate part of who we are.”
These advocates also say bisexual visibility is necessary because bisexuals face disparity not only in the general population, but within the LGBT community.
For example, as Cheltenham noted, a 2013 report from the Centers for Disease Control Control found 61 percent of bisexual women have faced intimate partner violence, sexual violence and stalking based on their sexual orientation. Comparatively, the numbers are 44 percent for lesbians, 35 percent for straight woman, 26 percent for gay men and 37 percent for bisexual men.
Cheltenham also said bisexual men face unique problems compared to gay men in terms of increased vulnerability to mental health issues and HIV/AIDS.
“Te HIV prevention models that have been working or do work for gay men and heterosexual men — there’s no specific bisexual one, and that’s a problem,” Cheltenham said. “So bisexual men aren’t being educated on HIV at the levels that we want them to be. We’re not seeing them reflected in HIV materials.”
Ellyn Ruthstrom, president of the Bisexual Resource Center, said the White House roundtable provides an important opportunity for bisexual advocates to come together to “share their perspectives” with LGBT advocates and administration officials.
“Our bisexual community is suffering to a larger degree on many of these different health disparities, mental health issues,” Ruthstrom said. “You just assume if we’re addressing just the LGBT community as a whole, then we must be taking care of bisexuals. And that is not the case.”
Although bisexuals may not be considered as publicly prominent as lesbian or gay people, a 2011 report from the Williams Institute estimated that they actually make up a majority of those who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual.
Among the 3.5 percent of the population identifying as LGB, bisexuals comprise a slight majority, or 1.8 percent, compared to the 1.7 percent who identify as lesbian or gay, the report says.
Cheltenham and Ruthstrom were reluctant to talk about how many people will attend the roundtable, or disclose any names of participating advocates or administration officials because the event is off the record.
Still, they confirmed they planned to attend along other bisexual advocates and researchers from across the country, including a large percentage of people of color. The Human Rights Campaign has previously said it would take part in some capacity.
Asked whether President Obama would attend, Cheltenham said she couldn’t speak to it, but hasn’t heard he’ll be in attendance.
Shin Inouye, a White House spokesperson, confirmed the roundtable would take place on Monday, but declined to provide additional information other than to affirm it’s closed to the press.
“As it routinely does with interested parties on any number of issues, the White House Office of Public Engagement will hold a briefing on Monday on issues of concern to the bisexual community,” Inouye said. “This event is closed press.”
It’s not unusual for the Office of Public Engagement to hold meetings that aren’t public. That’s generally the ground rules for the events that office holds — LGBT or otherwise.
Asked whether she wants the White House to open up the event, Cheltenham would only say generally she sees value in discussions on bisexual issues be open to the public.
“I’m totally in support of any public event that gives us a chance to dialogue about the disparities of our community — whatever they may be, whether that’s at the White House, or at HRC or at other places,” Cheltenham said.
While the meeting may be a first for the White House, bisexuals have been organizing independently of the LGBT community for some time. The Bisexual Resource Center, for example, was founded in 1985 following a regional conference.
Cheltenham said bisexual advocates have engaged with the White House for years and first brought up the idea for a panel with then-White House LGBT liaison Brian Bond in June 2010.
“From there, we started having discussions about what that would look like,” Cheltenham said. “We engaged the White House, and this is sort of where we came together.”
Robyn Ochs, a Boston-based bisexual activist and educator, told the Washington Blade via email she’s “delighted” the roundtable is taking place because the needs of bisexual people “are not exactly the same” as others in the LGBT community.
“Yet in research, in public policy and in health policy we are usually either lumped in with lesbians and gay men, or else completely ignored,” Ochs said. “For this reason, I am delighted that this meeting is taking place, as it is an opportunity to shine some light on issue facing this sizable population.”
National
HIV/AIDS group NMAC is ‘destabilized’ and in financial crisis: sources
Organization disputes allegations of mismanagement by new CEO
A statement sent to the Washington Blade by an anonymous source claiming to be a current staff member at NMAC, formerly known as the National Minority AIDS Council, alleges that the prominent HIV/AIDS advocacy organization is facing “a rapid and systemic collapse of leadership, governance, and ethical standards.”
The three-page detailed statement sent on April 4 by someone identifying himself only as “John Doe” includes multiple specific allegations that NMAC CEO Harold Phillips, who began his position in October 2025, “has destabilized the organization at every level,” including hiring nine new high-level appointees with salaries of $220,000 each who are performing “duplicative and unjustifiable roles.”
The Blade was able to corroborate some of the allegations by talking to two other knowledgable sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. Those sources said they had received the John Doe statement and believed many, if not most, of its allegations were accurate.
With a total staff of about 30 to 35 employees, the John Doe statement claims the high salaries of the nine new staff members have added to financial problems NMAC has been facing in recent years. It says that at least two NMAC staffers who raised concerns about Phillips’s actions were terminated on grounds of insubordination.
One of the two anonymous sources who spoke to the Blade said one of the dismissed staff members was considering filing a lawsuit against NMAC in response to the firing.
“An external firm was recently brought in to assess the organizational health,” the John Doe statement to the Blade says. “The findings were staggering — more than 50% of staff reported they are actively seeking employment elsewhere,” it says.
The Blade sent the John Doe statement to NMAC this week and asked for a response to the allegations.
NMAC spokesperson Jennifer Moore Phillips, who serves as chief strategy officer and who is not related to Harold Phillips, sent the Blade a short statement calling the John Doe allegations “false and purposefully misleading,” but which did not comment on each of the specific allegations.
“A recent anonymous letter containing unfounded allegations about NMAC makes claims that are simply false and purposefully misleading,” the NMAC statement says. “Evidenced by our new strategic plan and recent successful Biomedical HIV Prevention Summit in Chicago, NMAC’s new leadership is laser focused on delivering on our mission serving the HIV community with renewed energy and vision,” the statement concludes.
The Biomedical HIV Prevention Summit referred to in the statement, which took place in Chicago April 8-10 of this year, is one of the two largest HIV/AIDS related conferences that NMAC organizes each year. Jennifer Phillips said more than 1,400 people attended the event.
The largest NMAC event, the United States Conference on HIV/AIDS, the most recent of which was held in D.C. Sept. 4-7, drew more than 2,400 participants and was hailed by AIDS activists as a highly successful gathering of a diverse group of experts seeking to push for the end to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
One of the keynote speakers at that conference was Paul Kawata, who served as executive director and CEO of NMAC for 36 years and who delivered his farewell address at the conference following the announcement that he would retire on Oct. 7, 2025.
Many of the conference speakers praised Kawata, who became NMAC’s leader two years after its founding in 1987, as the leading force behind its growth and evolution into one of the nation’s leading HIV/AIDS advocacy organizations with a special outreach to people of color.
It was at that time that Harold Phillips, who served as director of the White House Office of AIDS Policy under then-President Joe Biden and who later joined NMAC as deputy director before the NMAC board named him Kawata’s successor as CEO, emerged as NMAC’s next leader.
“The Board has exuberantly elected Harold Phillips as our new CEO,” said Lance Toma, chair of the NMAC Board of Directors at the time Phillips’s appointment was announced. “In this unprecedented moment, there is no one more strategically positioned and experienced to lead our movement through what we know will be some of the most tumultuous and complicated times ahead,” the statement said.
The John Doe statement raising questions about Phillips’s actions and leadership says NMAC staff members formally appealed to the board of directors to intervene.
“The Board has remained silent, while Harold arrogantly told the staff that ‘the board has my back,’” the statement says.
The Blade has also attempted to reach out to Kawata by email for comment on how he feels NMAC is doing six months after his retirement. As of April 14, Kawata had not responded to the Blade’s inquiry.
According to the John Doe statement, NMAC officials have recently “sought external financial rescue,” including a visit by an NMAC official to California to request assistance from the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences. “Without such intervention, layoffs seem imminent,” the statement says.
“This is not a functioning nonprofit,” the John Doe statement concludes. “It is an organization in crisis – bleeding resources, hemorrhaging staff, and operating without transparency, accountability, or governance,” it says, adding, “The communities NMAC serves, the donors who fund its mission, and the public at large deserve to know what is happening behind closed doors.”
By contrast, the NMAC website describes the organization as a highly functioning nonprofit continuing to lead the fight against HIV/AIDS.
“Launched in 1987 during the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the United States, NMAC is a national HIV organization that offers capacity building, leadership development, policy education, and public engagement to end the HIV epidemic among communities most impacted in the United States,” a statement on the NMAC website says.
“In 2026, we mark 45 years of the HIV movement,” the statement adds. “NMAC continues to pivot to center the needs of people of color impacted by HIV by responding to political challenges that threaten federal funding and programs that have provided an essential survival safety net,” it says. “Simultaneously, as HIV treatment allows people to age with HIV, our whole-person approach extends to achieving optimal quality of life beyond attaining viral suppression.”
In its most recent action, NMAC issued a detailed press release on April 14 criticizing President Donald Trump’s proposed fiscal year 2027 budget provisions that call for cutting more than $1.5 billion in HIV prevention, substance use, housing and other programs. The release provides details on how the cuts would negatively impact important HIV prevention programs and urges Congress to reject the proposed cuts.
Senegal
Senegalese court issues first conviction under new anti-LGBTQ law
Man sentenced to six years in prison on April 10
A Senegalese court has issued the first conviction under a new law that further criminalizes consensual same-sex sexual relations.
The Associated Press notes the court in Pikine-Guédiawaye, a suburb of Dakar, the Senegalese capital, on April 10 convicted a 24-year-old man of committing “acts against nature and public indecency” and sentenced him to six years in prison.
Authorities arrested the man, who Senegalese media reports identified as Mbaye Diouf, earlier this month. The court also fined him 2 million CFA ($3,591.04).
Lawmakers in the African country on March 11 nearly unanimously passed the measure that increases the penalty for anyone convicted of engaging in consensual same-sex sexual relations from one to five years in prison to five to 10 years. The bill that Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko introduced also prohibits the “promotion” or “financing” of homosexuality in Senegal.
MassResistance, an anti-LGBTQ group based in the U.S., reportedly worked with Senegalese groups to advance the bill that President Bassirou Diomaye Faye signed on March 31.
“This prison sentence is unlawful under international law,” said Human Rights Watch on Wednesday. “Senegal is bound by treaty obligations that protect every person’s right to dignity, privacy, and equality.”
Maryland
Evan Glass is leaning on his record. Is that enough for Montgomery County’s top job?
Gay county executive candidate pushing for equitable pay, safer streets, and cleaner environment
By TALIA RICHMAN | During a meet-and-greet at Poolesville Memorial United Methodist Church, Evan Glass got his loudest applause of the night with a plan he acknowledged was decidedly unsexy.
“Day one, I’ll hire a director of permitting services,” the county executive candidate said.
Doing so, he added, is a step toward easing the regulatory burdens that can stifle small businesses in Montgomery County.
The only problem? At least one of his fiercest competitors is making a similar pledge.
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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