Local
Gray performs City Hall wedding for gay couple
Ceremony is first under new law allowing mayor, Council to perform marriages
D.C. residents Rob Robertson and Carlos Taylor were married Tuesday by Mayor Vincent Gray. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Under the glare of TV news cameras, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray on Tuesday performed a wedding ceremony for a gay male couple in a reception room outside his office at the John Wilson City Hall Building.
Gray told D.C. residents Rob Robertson and Carlos Taylor and close to 50 friends and relatives who turned out to see them tie the matrimonial knot that he was pleased that the couple approached him to perform his very first wedding ceremony under a newly passed D.C. law.
The Marriage Officiant Act of 2013, which the D.C. Council passed and Gray signed earlier this year, among other things, gives the mayor and the 13 City Council members the authority to perform marriages. The bill became law on Nov. 5 after clearing its required review by Congress.
“One of the reasons that this particular ceremony is such a great honor for me is that it represents the cause for which I have been a long-time advocate,” Gray told the gathering. “To me, marriage equality and equal rights are matters of basic fairness and justice,” he said.
Robertson and Taylor each were born and raised in Virginia and moved to D.C. in 1996 and 1997 respectively. The two said they met in 1997 through a mutual friend, began dating in the summer of 1999, and have been a couple since that time. Both also work as Information Technology professionals and live in Adams Morgan.
They said their friend, gay activist Peter Rosenstein, suggested they consider letting Mayor Gray perform their wedding at a time when Rosenstein told them the Marriage Officiant Act was about to become law.
“We wanted to get married and we were having a drink with Peter and he said I know the mayor and I can introduce you, and maybe he’ll be willing to marry you,” Robertson told the Blade. “We thought it was a fantastic idea.”
“Peter reached out to the mayor and the mayor responded by saying it would be awesome,” said Taylor as he and Robertson mingled with well-wishers after the ceremony. “And that’s how we got here, and he’s been very welcoming.”
Gray told reporters he was happy to accept Robertson and Taylor’s request for the wedding ceremony and was “very pleased” that a gay couple became the first couple he was able to marry.
“If people ask me I’ll be happy to do it,” he said when asked if he plans on performing marriage ceremonies on a regular basis. “It could be a heterosexual couple. It could be a same-sex couple. That would be fine with me.”
The mayor accompanied Robertson and Taylor and their guests in an adjoining room after the ceremony for a Champagne toast in honor of the two grooms and to share in consuming a large wedding cake donated by local pastry chef Padua Player of the D.C.-based Suga Chef Desserts.
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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