News
LGBT issues discussed at first-of-its-kind U.N. meeting
Funders of global gay initiatives met in NYC, Kerry signs onto declaration
USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah is among those who attended a meeting of global LGBT funders on September 24 during the U.N. General Assembly in New York. (Photo courtesy of USAID.)
USAID, the Swedish International Development Corporation Agency (SIDA,) the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice and the Ford Foundation on Tuesday hosted a meeting of funders of global LGBT advocacy efforts.
USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, SIDA Director General Charlotte Petri Gornitzka and former Planet Out CEO Megan Smith, who is now vice president of Google[x], attended the gathering alongside high level officials from Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Swedish, the United Kingdom, the U.N. Development Program, the State Department and the World Bank.
Representatives from the American Jewish World Service, the Arcus Foundation, the Fund for Global Rights, the Gay & Lesbian Victory Institute, the Dutch foundation Mama Cash, the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, the Open Society Foundation and the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights are among the other groups that took part in the meeting. Organizers said it drew 85 percent of groups around that contribute to global LGBT efforts.
“It was a seminal moment in history because it is the first global meeting where public and private donors for LGBT equality came together to discuss priorities, programs and potential collaboration for ways forward,” senior USAID advisor Claire Lucas told the Washington Blade on Friday.
USAID in April announced the LGBT Global Development Partnership with the Gay & Lesbian Victory Institute, (SIDA) and other groups will contribute $11 million over the next four years to advocacy groups in Honduras and other developing countries. The initiative’s first two trainings took place in the Colombian cities of Cartagena and Bogotá late last month and in the spring respectively.
Denis Dison of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Institute added his organization remains “proud” to “partner in this work” with USAID and Astraea as he discussed Tuesday’s meeting with the Blade.
“This meeting was an important step in recognizing the truly global effort to advance LGBT human rights, and the leadership role now being played by the U.S. is a remarkable turnaround from just a few years ago,” he said.
Funders of global LGBT initiatives met in New York two days before Secretary of State John Kerry and representatives from 10 countries issued a declaration that calls for an end to anti-LGBT violence and discrimination.
Members of the LGBT Core Group at U.N. that includes the European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton and ministers from Argentina, Brazil, Croatia, El Salvador, France, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Norway declared their “strong and determined commitment to eliminating violence and discrimination against individuals based on their sexual orientation and gender identity.”
“We reaffirm our conviction that human rights are the birthright of every human being,” the statement reads. “Those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) must enjoy the same human rights as everyone else.”
Acting Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of International Affairs Dean Pittman told the Blade during an interview from New York on Friday the meeting and the declaration underscores the U.N. and the U.S. are committed to “pursuing and advancing LGBT rights around the world.”
“Everybody’s reinforced the idea that everyone deserves human rights,” Pittman said. “It shouldn’t be a decision of who you are, who you love, what your gender is.”
Pittman further categorized the statement as “really strong, powerful.”
“This really has a ripple effect that sort of goes out through LGBT communities around the world who see this as sort of a vote of confidence,” he told the Blade. “[It] sort of gives them the ability to go into their own communities with the backing of a global organization like the U.N. to pursue some of these human rights issues in their own countries.”
The meeting took place two months after the U.N. officially launched a public campaign that seeks to increase support for LGBT rights around the world. It’s been endorsed by singer Ricky Martin and others.
More than 70 countries around the world continue to criminalize consensual same-sex sexual acts in spite of a 2011 resolution in support of LGBT rights the U.N. Human Rights Council passed. Gambian President Yahya Jammeh on Friday said in his speech during the U.N. General Assembly that homosexuality is among the three “biggest threats to human existence” as the Associated Press reported.
85 countries have also backed a U.N. General Assembly declaration in support of LGBT rights.
President Obama earlier this month met with two Russian LGBT rights advocates during the G-20 summit. Both he and Kerry have also criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin over his country’s LGBT rights record, which includes a law that bans gay propaganda to minors.
Pittman declined to say whether Kerry discussed Russia’s LGBT rights record during his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday during the U.N. General Assembly. He said Jessica Stern, executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, briefed Kerry and other ministers on the country’s gay propaganda law before they issued their declaration.
“This is an issue we’ve raised with the Russians at many levels and repeatedly,” Pittman told the Blade. “It’s obviously unacceptable.
Council for Global Equality Chair Mark Bromley welcomed the meeting and the resolution.
“One would expect Syria and Iran to be on the agenda, but not necessarily human rights for LGBT people,” he told the Blade, referring to the U.N. General Assembly. “For a group of committed foreign ministers to come together during this time, including Sec. Kerry, to pledge collective action to respond to human rights abuses directed at LGBT communities worldwide is unprecedented.”
Chris Johnson contributed to this article.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry participates in an LGBT ministerial event in New York on Thursday during the U.N. General Assembly. (Photo courtesy of the State Department.)
Poland
Polish court rules country must recognize same-sex marriages from EU states
Poland ‘must comply with European Union law’
Poland’s Supreme Administrative Court on March 20 ruled the country must recognize same-sex marriages legally performed in other European Union states.
The EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg last November ruled in favor of a same-sex couple who challenged Poland’s refusal to recognize their German marriage.
The couple, who lives in Poland, brought their case to Polish courts in 2019. The Supreme Administrative Court referred it to the EU Court of Justice.
“Today’s ruling by the Supreme Administrative Court clearly demonstrates that Poland, as a member state of the European Union, must comply with European Union law,” said Przemek Walas, advocacy manager for the Campaign Against Homophobia, a Polish LGBTQ advocacy group, in a statement. “The Supreme Administrative Court rightly upheld the interpretation of the Court in Luxembourg and indicated that the only way to implement this ruling is to allow the transcription of a foreign marriage certificate.”
“This ruling is a significant step towards marital equality, but certainly not sufficient,” added Walas.
Ireland, Portugal, Spain, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Austria, Slovenia, Malta, Greece, Sweden, Finland, and Estonia are the EU countries that have extended full marriage rights to same-sex couples. Poland — along with Romania, Bulgaria, and Slovakia — are the four EU countries with no legal recognition of same-sex couples.
District of Columbia
Capital Stonewall Democrats 50th anniversary gala draws ‘sold out’ crowd
D.C. elected officials, mayoral candidates praise LGBTQ Democratic group
A sold-out crowd of 186 people, including D.C. elected officials and candidates running for D.C. mayor, turned out Friday, March 20, for the Capital Stonewall Democrats 50th anniversary celebration.
Among those attending the event, held at the Pepco Edison Place Gallery building next to the city’s Chinatown neighborhood, were seven D.C. Council members and four Democratic candidates running for mayor.
But at the request of Capital Stonewall Democrats leaders, the Council members, most of whom are running for re-election, and mayoral contenders did not give campaign speeches. Instead, they mingled with the crowd and focused on the accomplishments of the LGBTQ Democratic group over the past 50 years, with some presenting the group’s special “honor” awards to about a dozen prominent LGBTQ Democratic activists.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who was initially expected to attend the event, did not attend.
The mayoral candidates attending included D.C. Council member Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4) and former At-Large Council member Kenyan McDuffie, an independent turned Democrat, who are considered the leading mayoral contenders in the city’s June 16 Democratic Primary. Both have strong, longtime records of support for LGBTQ rights issues.
The other two mayoral candidates attending the event were Gary Goodweather, a real estate manager, and Rini Sampath, a cybersecurity consultant. Sampath told the Washington Blade she self-identifies as queer. Both have expressed strong support on LGBTQ-related issues.
The D.C. Council members attending the event included Lewis George; Council Chair Phil Mendelson (D-At-Large); Anita Bonds (D-At-Large); Robert White (D-At-Large); Matt Frumin (D-Ward 3); Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5), the Council’s only gay member; and Charles Allen (D-Ward 6).
“Tonight we celebrate not just 50 years of history but 50 years of showing up,” Howard Garrett, Capital Stonewall Democrats immediate past president, told the gathering in opening remarks. “Showing up when it was easy, showing up when it wasn’t popular,” he said, adding, “This work only continues if we continue to show up.”
He noted that the deadline for joining the organization in time to be eligible to vote on its endorsement of candidates running in D.C.’s 2026 election was midnight that night. He urged attendees who were not members to go to two tables at the event to join.
The group’s current president, Stevie McCarty, thanked the group’s longtime members who he said played a key role in what he called its historic work in building political support for the D.C. LGBTQ community. Among those he thanked was Paul Kuntzler, 84, one of the group’s founding members in January 1976, when it was initially named the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club.
Members voted to rename the group the Capital Stonewall Democrats in 2021.
Among the LGBTQ advocates who were honored at the event was Rayceen Pendarvis, the longtime host of a D.C. LGBTQ online interview show that included interviews of candidates for public office. Pendarvis also served as emcee for the Capital Stonewall Democrats 50th anniversary event.
“Thank you everyone in this room who has done the work to make this world a better place,” Pendarvis said in opening remarks. “To all our prestigious activists in the room, all of our amazing politicians in the room who are doing the work, we love you and we honor you.”
Among the honorees in addition to Pendarvis was Malcolm Kenyatta, the Democratic National Committee’s vice chair who became the first openly LGBTQ person of color to win election to the Pennsylvania General Assembly in 2018.
Other honorees included Parker; Earl Fowlkes, founder of the International Federation of Black Prides; Vita Rangel, a transgender woman who serves as deputy director of the D.C. Mayor’s Office of Talent and Appointments; Heidi Ellis, director of the D.C. LGBTQ Budget Coalition; and Philip Pannell, longtime LGBTQ Democratic activist, Ward 8 civic leader, and longtime Capital Stonewall Democrats member.
The 50th anniversary event included an open bar and refreshments and entertainment by three drag performers.
The Washington Blade on Wednesday spoke with Max Polonsky, a queer American who lives in Israel, about the Iran war and its impact on the country.
“It’s been tiring,” Polonsky told the Blade during a telephone interview from his home in Jaffa, an ancient port city with a large Arab population that is now part of Tel Aviv.
Polonsky grew up in Cherry Hill, N.J. He lived in D.C. for eight years before he moved to Israel in March 2022.
Israel and the U.S. on Feb. 28 launched airstrikes against Iran.
One of them killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran in response launched missiles and drones against Israel and other countries that include Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, and Cyprus.
An Iranian missile on March 1 killed nine people and injured 27 others in Beit Shemesh, an Israeli town that is roughly 20 miles west of Jerusalem. Shrapnel from an Iranian missile that struck a hair salon in Beit Awa, a Palestinian town in the West Bank, on Wednesday killed four women and injured more than a dozen others.
An Iranian drone that hit a command center in Kuwait on March 1 killed six U.S. soldiers: Sgt. Declan Coady, Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor, Capt. Cody Khork, Sgt. 1st Class Noah Tietjens, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan, and Maj. Jeffrey O’Brien. Another American servicemember, Sgt. Benjamin Pennington, died on March 8, a week after Iranian drones and missiles targeted the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
Iranian drones and missiles have damaged hotels, airports, oil refineries, and other civilian and energy infrastructure in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, and elsewhere. Israel on Wednesday attacked Iran’s South Pars natural gas field in the Persian Gulf.
The Associated Press notes roughly 20 percent of the world’s crude oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz that connects the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Gas prices in the U.S. and around the world continue to increase because the war has essentially closed the strategic waterway to ship traffic.
The war also left hundreds of thousands of people who were traveling in the Middle East stranded.
The Blade on March 6 spoke with Mario, who had stopped in his native Lebanon while traveling from the U.S. to India for work.
Mario was about to board a flight at Rafic Hariri International Airport in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, on Feb. 28 when the war began and authorities closed the country’s airspace. Mario is now back in the U.S.
Polonsky told the Blade there were “alarms all day … sometimes multiple alarms an hour, sometimes every hour, every two hours” on Feb. 28.
Israel’s Home Front Command typically issues warnings about 10 minutes ahead of an anticipated Iranian missile attack. Sirens then sound 90 seconds before an expected strike.
People in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and in other cities in central Israel have 90 seconds to seek shelter if a rocket or missile is fired from Lebanon or the Gaza Strip. (Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Shia militant group in Lebanon that Israel and the U.S. have designated a terrorist organization, launched rockets at the Jewish State after Khamenei’s death. Israel, in turn, continues to carry out airstrikes against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon. Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023, killed upwards of 1,200 people when they launched a surprise attack against Israel from the Gaza Strip.) People who live close to Lebanon and Gaza have 15 seconds to seek shelter.
Polonsky has a safe room — known as a “mamad” — in his apartment. Polonsky also uses it as his home office and a second bedroom.
He told the Blade the alerts in recent days have become less frequent.
“We’ll get maybe a handful of alarms during the day, maybe some at night,” said Polonsky.
Israel on June 12, 2025, launched airstrikes against Iran that targeted the country’s nuclear and military facilities. The subsequent war, which lasted 12 days, prompted the cancellation of Tel Aviv’s annual Pride parade. An Iranian missile destroyed Mash Central, the city’s last gay bar.
Iran on Oct. 1, 2024, launched upwards of 200 ballistic missiles at Israel. This reporter arrived in Israel three days later to cover the first anniversary of Oct. 7 and the impact the subsequent war in the Gaza Strip had on LGBTQ Israelis and Palestinians.
‘Iranian regime was bad’
Polonsky admitted he doesn’t “know what to think” about the latest war against Iran.
“I don’t know what I think about the war,” he said. “Ultimately what happens is just not in my personal control: whatever Donald Trump, [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, the ayatollah, whoever is running Iran are going to organize and launch attacks and reach any deals is not anything I personally have any control over, so I try to just kind of let that aspect of it go as I’m living my life.”
Polonsky told the Blade he understands “there are very serious questions about how” the war started, and Congress’s role in it.
“Those are serious and valid, important questions,” he said. “And at the same time, the Iranian regime was bad.”
Polonsky noted Iran has supported and funded Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthi rebels in Yemen, and other groups “who were attacking Israel.” Polonsky added the Iranian government has “terribly oppressed their people.”
Iran is among the handful of countries in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain punishable by death.
Reports indicate Iranian authorities killed upwards of 30,000 people during anti-government protests that began late last year. Sources with whom the Blade spoke said LGBTQ Iranians are among those who participated in the demonstrations.
“I’m not sad to see them pressured,” said Polonsky, referring to the Iranian regime.
He also described Khamenei as “a bad guy.”
“Him not being there is better,” said Polonsky.
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