News
Will Obama speak out again on marriage lawsuits?
Many advocates would welcome continued participation
From left, lawyer David Boies , plaintiffs Jeff Zarillo, Paul Katami, Kris Perry, Sandy Stier and lawyer Ted Olson at the HRC National Dinner. Olson and Boies say they’d welcome President Obama’s participation in their lawsuit (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key).
Amid a frenzy of new marriage equality lawsuits making their way to the Supreme Court, some LGBT advocates say continued participation from the Obama administration in litigation would boost their chances for success.
One advocate eager for the administration to continue its participation in litigation seeking marriage equality is Evan Wolfson, president of Freedom to Marry.
“There are 20-some freedom to marry cases underway around the country now, including the two in Virginia, and President Obama’s and the Justice Department’s support for the freedom to marry and constitutional guarantees should absolutely be part of all of them,” Wolfson said.
Because the Obama administration isn’t a party to any of the lawsuits pending, under ordinary circumstances the administration would participate by filing a friend-of-the-court brief before the courts.
But at this stage, some legal experts who spoke to the Washington Blade are taking a more passive stance on whether the Obama administration should take part, saying they’d “welcome” help from the administration’s lawyers without issuing an overt call for action.
Ted Olson and David Boies, the legal duo that brought marriage equality to California by challenging Proposition 8, articulated this view during a conference call with reporters last week when asked by the Washington Blade if they want the administration’s support in Bostic v. Rainey, the lawsuit in Virginia they joined last week.
Boies, the Democratic half of the legal team representing the American Foundation for Equal Rights, said the administration’s participation would be welcome because “the views of the administration are important.”
“Exactly when they will get involved and how they will get involved and what stage they will get involved is something that is obviously up to the administration,” Boies said. “Whether they will decide to wait until we get to the Supreme Court or express views earlier is up to them. But whenever they come in, their support would be welcome.”
Boies’ comments during the conference call follow an endorsement of participation from the Obama administration in his lawsuit during a National Press Club event earlier in the day.
Echoing that sense was Olson, the Republican half of the legal duo that presented the case against Prop 8 during oral arguments before the Supreme Court.
“To have the president’s imprimatur on this issue is so very, very important to the court,” Olson said. “There are institutional reasons for why the Justice Department with the president gets in cases at particular times and we’ll wait till what they decide the right time is, but we very much welcome their support in this case.”
The administration has taken part in previous marriage lawsuits. When the case against Prop 8 came before the Supreme Court, the Justice Department filed a friend-of-the-court brief in favor of plaintiffs and sent U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli to take part in oral arguments before the Supreme Court.
Although the administration didn’t argue the U.S. Constitution guarantees marriage rights for gay couples nationwide, it did contend Prop 8 was unconstitutional and suggested states that offer domestic partnerships should have to afford full marriage rights to gay couples.
The administration’s participation in cases against the Defense of Marriage Act has been more extensive. After announcing it would no longer defend the law in court, the administration filed briefs against the anti-gay law and sent Justice Department lawyers to argue against it in district courts, appellate courts and the Supreme Court.
The Bostic case is but one pending marriage equality lawsuit. According to a tally provided by Lambda Legal, there are 35 marriage lawsuits before 19 states. Just last week, Lambda filed an additional federal lawsuit seeking marriage equality in West Virginia.
Suzanne Goldberg, a lesbian and co-director of Columbia University’s Center for Gender & Sexuality Law, said the involvement from the administration in the marriage lawsuits would reinforce that “the lives of all Americans are deeply affected when states discriminate actively against some of their constituents.”
“The Justice Department’s participation puts additional moral force behind the claims for equality and fairness that gay and lesbian couples make in these cases,” Goldberg continued. “In that sense, the federal government’s participation in state law challenges can be important and helpful, but even if it does not participate, it is also important and helpful that the administration is on record decrying the injustice of unequal marriage rules.”
But the sense that the Obama administration should file additional friend-of-the-court briefs in the marriage lawsuits isn’t universal.
Roberta Kaplan, a lesbian attorney at Paul & Weiss who argued against DOMA before the Supreme Court, said she’s unsure additional friend-of-the-court briefs are necessary.
Courts already know the Justice Department’s position in the aftermath of the Perry case, Kaplan said, and filing additional briefs in every marriage lawsuit out there would be “frankly, a logistical pain in the butt for them.”
“What they said in Perry pretty much answers the question,” Kaplan said. “Frankly, a court knows what their position is because they’ve said it. It’s the same issue…There should be no mystery to anyone what their position is.”
Kaplan said if the administration would participate, chances are it would happen at the appellate or Supreme Court level.
“I’m sure at the Supreme Court, when and if one of these cases gets up there, they will be asked to participate and they will,” Kaplan said. “At the appellate courts, I think it pretty much depends on which case and whether they’re going to have a policy of putting in the same brief in 20 different cases that all say the same thing when they’ve already done it once.”
The Justice Department hasn’t responded to repeated requests for comment. The answering machine at the public affairs line says it will respond to calls in the aftermath of the government shutdown.
The administration may not be able to participate in a marriage equality case as long as the government remains closed. According to the shutdown plan on the Justice Department website, civil litigation, the category of litigation for marriage lawsuits, will be “curtailed or postponed.”
“Litigators will need to approach the courts and request that active cases, except for those in which postponement would compromise to a significant degree the safety of human life or the protection of property, be postponed until funding is available,” the website states. “If a court denies such a request and orders a case to continue, the government will comply with the court’s order, which would constitute express legal authorization for the activity to continue.”
But if the Obama administration were to file a brief in a marriage case before an appellate court, the one for which the opportunity is coming soon is in the case challenging the same-sex marriage ban in Nevada known as Sevcik v. Sandoval. The case, filed by Lambda, is pending before the U.S. Ninth Circuit of Appeals and is one of the cases that has thus far advanced the furthest. Friend-of-the-court briefs are due Oct. 25.
Lisa Hardaway, a Lambda spokesperson, said the attorney working on the case would welcome support from the administration.
“Tara Borelli, our lead attorney on the Sevcik matter, says that we would welcome a brief from the Obama administration,” Hardaway said.
Considering Lambda in the Sevcik case is arguing the ban on same-sex marriage in Nevada is unconstitutional because the state is relegating gay couples to second-class domestic partnerships, the case seems like a natural fit for an administration that has previously said all civil union states should offer marriage to gay couples.
But Kaplan said the more interesting question is whether the administration will articulate a response in the marriage lawsuits that are contending a state must recognize a same-sex marriage from another jurisdiction. Among these cases is Whitewood v. Corbett, the marriage lawsuit pending in Pennsylvania.
“I think the more interesting issues are, frankly, like when the issues come up about recognition…of marriages in states that don’t permit,” Kaplan said. “That at least presents a different question than something they’ve already put out.”
Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said “it goes without saying” that he shares Olson and Boies’ views and predicted the Obama administration would come on board based on its previous actions and stated commitment to LGBT rights.
“The administration not only stopped defending the Defense of Marriage Act, as you know, but weighed in as we all hoped they would, and encouraged them to, in the Prop 8 case, going the distance there in that case before the Supreme Court,” Griffin said. “And again, we’re just announcing this case today and it still has a distance to go, but I’m optimistic that at the right time, the administration will be there in support of this.”
The White House
White House counterterrorism strategy targets ‘anti-American, radically pro-transgender’ groups
Administration released document last week
The White House released the “United States Counterterrorism Strategy” last week, introducing enforcement priorities that include references to people with “extreme transgender ideologies.”
The document is the first executive branch counterterrorism strategy released since former President Joe Biden’s 2021 “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” which largely focused on threats tied to domestic extremism and the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. The Trump-Vance administration’s new strategy instead centers heavily on cartels, Islamist organizations, and what it describes as “violent left-wing extremists.”
The report identifies three primary categories of terror threats facing the U.S.: “Narcoterrorists and Transnational Gangs,” “Legacy Islamist Terrorists,” and “Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists.” The strategy repeatedly frames those groups as existential threats to the U.S. and outlines a more aggressive, militarized counterterrorism posture.
The introduction to the report closes with a warning from President Donald Trump referencing counterterrorism operations carried out during his second administration: “We will find you and we will kill you.”
In the section outlining the administration’s counterterrorism priorities, the document argues that federal intelligence, and law enforcement agencies under prior administrations focused on the wrong threats while overlooking violence committed by left-wing extremists. The strategy specifically references transgender ideology while discussing political violence.
“As real threats were ignored or underplayed, Americans have witnessed the politically motivated killings of Christians and conservatives committed by violent left-wing extremists, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk by a radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies.”
Claims tying a trans person to Kirk’s killing have been disputed, however, and multiple news outlets later retracted or corrected early reports that identified the shooter as trans.
The report later expands on that argument, saying the administration will prioritize targeting “violent secular political groups” it describes as anti-American and “radically pro-transgender.”
“In addition to cartels and Islamist terror groups, our national CT activities will also prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”
The rhetoric mirrors claims frequently made by Trump allies and conservative commentators linking trans people and left-wing activism to political violence. However, data compiled by researchers and organizations tracking mass shootings does not support the idea that trans people are responsible for a significant share of such attacks.
Factcheck.org says rhetoric from Trump and several far-right political pundits contradicts available data, noting that the percentage of mass shootings committed by trans people is “exceedingly small.”
Despite the lack of evidence supporting generalized claims about trans people, the president’s son Donald Trump, Jr., told Fox News in September 2025 that he could not “name a mass shooting in the last year or two in America that wasn’t committed by, you know, a transgender lunatic.”
Factcheck.org also found that even if cases involving shooters with unclear gender identities were included in statistics about trans mass shooters, the number would still account for only a fraction of a percent.
Mark Bryant, founding executive director of the Gun Violence Archive, said the number of trans mass shooters could be as high as eight, but would still account for less than 0.1 percent of mass shootings over the last 12 years, according to GVA data. He added that the figure would remain below 0.2 percent even when examining incidents from 2018 to the present.
Beyond domestic extremism, the strategy frames the administration’s broader counterterrorism agenda through the lens of “America First” foreign policy and renewed U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere. The report repeatedly references the Monroe Doctrine, the nearly 200-year-old policy warning European powers against interference in the Americas.
“After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland” Trump said in the report.
The document also breaks down counterterrorism priorities by region, including the Middle East, where it argues the U.S. is “no longer as dependent” on the region because of increased domestic energy production.
“Our growing domestic energy production means the Middle East is no longer as central to America’s stability, yet threats from this region remain, and our counterterrorism goals continue to be specific and rooted in realistic threat analysis.”
The statement comes amid rising gas prices tied in part to instability surrounding the war involving Iran, with fuel costs reaching some of their highest levels since 2022. According to AAA, the national average price for gasoline climbed to $4.52 per gallon as the national average rose “$.25 for a second straight week.“
District of Columbia
Anti-LGBTQ violence prevention efforts highlighted at D.C. community fair
Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs organized May 8 event
Detailed advice on how LGBTQ people can avoid, defend themselves against, and prevent themselves and loved ones from becoming victims of violence, with a focus on domestic and intimate partner violence, was presented at a May 8 LGBTQIA+ Safety in Numbers Community Fair.
The event, organized by the D.C. Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs, included five workshop sessions and information tables set up by 14 LGBTQ-supportive organizations and D.C. government agencies or agency divisions, including the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department’s LGBT Liaison Unit and the D.C. LGBTQ+ Community Center.
Also playing a lead role in organizing the event was the D.C. LGBTQIA+ Violence Prevention and Response Team, or VPART, a coalition of D.C. officials and leaders of community-based organizations that work with the Office of LGBTQ Affairs.
The event was held in meeting space in the building where the Office of LGBTQ Affairs is located at 899 N. Capitol St., N.E.
The workshop topics included de-escalation training on healthy relationships, bystander intervention, self-defense training, violence prevention grants, and suicide prevention.
“This will be a public safety and violence prevention event where community partners will educate attendees on various methods of violence intervention and trauma-informed practices,” according to a statement released by the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs prior to the start of the event.
The statement adds, “We will have live demos, interactive games, and workshops focused on strategies for self-defense, protecting vulnerable communities, increasing access to mental health resources, providing tools for recognizing domestic violence/intimate partner violence signs in intimate relationships, and assistance for substance abuse.”
Sonya Joseph, associate director of engagement for the Office of LGBTQ Affairs, told the Washington Blade that studies have shown rates of domestic or intimate partner violence are higher in the LGBTQ community than in the community at large.
“Domestic violence and intimate partner violence are two very big prevalent issues in the LGBTQ community,” she said, adding that some of the workshops at the event would be providing “training on healthy relationships and how to recognize and prevent intimate partner violence and the signs of it.”
About 35 to 40 people attended the workshop sessions.
Experts specializing in violence impacting the LGBTQ community have said domestic violence refers to violence among people in domestic relationships that can include spouses but also siblings, parents, cousins, and other relatives. Intimate partner violence, according to the experts, refers to violence perpetuated by a partner in a romantic or dating relationship.
These D.C. based organizations or agencies that participated in the LGBTQIA+ Safety in Numbers event, and which can be contacted for assistance, include:
• Defend Yourself
• DC LGBTQ+ Community Center
• American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
• Joseph’s House
• Us Helping Us, People into Living, Inc.
• MCSR (formerly known as Men Can Stop Rape)
• MPD LGBT Liaison Unit
• Volunteer Legal Advocates
• DC SAFE
• Destination Tomorrow
• D.C. Office of Victims Services and Justice Grants
• Life Enhancement Services
• ONYX Therapy Group
• U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C.
Rehoboth Beach
Celebrated performer Rose Levine plays Rehoboth on May 15
Freddie’s to host Fire Island legend
Rose Levine is a celebrated entertainer best known for her longstanding performances in Cherry Grove, Fire Island, since 1955 where she has become a beloved fixture of the community’s vibrant arts and nightlife scene. With a career spanning decades, Levine has captivated audiences with her cabaret singing shows full of charisma, classic numbers, humor, and unmistakable stage presence—proving that some stars don’t fade, they simply get better lighting.
Levine is also closely associated with the legendary Fire Island Invasion of the Pines, the annual Fourth of July spectacle in which performers and revelers make their grand (and gloriously over-the-top) entrance by boat from Cherry Grove to Fire Island Pines, now a 50-year tradition. Her role in launching and sustaining this tradition has helped make it one of the most iconic—and entertaining—events of the summer season.
A consummate storyteller, Levine brings audiences along for a glittering ride through entertainment history. Rose will sing her Broadway melodies by Jerry Herman, Irving Berlin, Cy Coleman, Cole Porter, and others. With music direction by Mark Hartman the one-night-only event will celebrate Levine’s legendary life in drag, featuring signature crowd-pleasers and celebrity stories. A friend of Broadway composer Jerry Herman, she shares delicious stories of legends like Ethel Merman and recalls a young Barbra Streisand before she became Barbra Streisand while both performing at the famed singing contests at Greenwich Village’s famed Lion nightclub before her big break at the Bon Soir. Her shows are a mix of music, mischief, and memories of old New York and Fire Island — back when Cherry Grove didn’t even have electricity, but somehow still had better nightlife than most cities today.
Her legendary Fire Island home, Roseland, has hosted its fair share of unforgettable gatherings (and likely a few stories that can’t be printed in a family newspaper), making it a cornerstone of the community’s social scene. Levine splits her time between Manhattan and her summer perch on Fire Island—though audiences across the country are grateful she travels.
In fact, she performs at The Green Room and 54 Below in Manhattan, Cherry Grove in Fire Island, Act 2 and The Palm in Puerto Vallarta, Red Dot Cabaret in Hudson, N.Y., and now Freddie’s in Rehoboth Beach—because retirement, frankly, sounds boring. Her place in the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest continuously performing drag queen in the world only adds to the legend and gives her bragging rights she fully intends to use.
And now, Rehoboth—consider yourself warned.
Don’t miss Rose Levine live on May 15 at Freddie’s Beach Bar. Dinner begins at 6:30 p.m., with the show at 7 p.m. Come for the cocktails, stay for the stories, and leave wondering how one person can have that many fabulous decades.
Levine’s legacy is defined not only by her remarkable career, but by her ability to connect with audiences across generations—usually while making them laugh, gasp, and occasionally blush. Don’t miss this show.
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