News
Nelson Mandela dies at 95
LGBT activists mourn former South African president
Nelson Mandela (Photo by South Africa The Good News; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
“Our nation has lost its greatest son,” said South African President Jacob Zuma as he announced on South African television that Mandela had passed away at his Johannesburg home. “Nelson Mandela brought us together. And it is together that we will bid him farewell.”
Born in Cape Province on July 18, 1918, Mandela spent 27 years in jail for opposing South Africa’s apartheid-era government until his release in 1990. Mandela was the country’s president from 1994-1999.
South Africa in 1994 became the first country in the world to add a ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation into its constitution.
Mandela in 1994 nominated Edwin Cameron, a gay man with HIV, alongside four others to sit on South Africa’s highest court.
“I became the first openly gay judge in South Africa’s history and, at that time, one of the very few openly gay judges anywhere in the world,” wrote Cameron in an op-ed for the South African website Mambaonline in July that he provided to the Washington Blade. “Mr. Mandela was not only happy to appoint me — he did so with emphatic personal warmth, which he personally expressed to me and to others.”
South African LGBT rights advocate Phumzile Mtetwa also recalled Mandela’s LGBT legacy in an op-ed the South African newspaper Mail and Guardian published in July while the former South African president was in critical condition in a Pretoria hospital for what his doctors described as a recurring lung infection.
Mtetwa noted Mandela was president of the African National Congress in 1993 when it added the extension of rights to LGBT South Africans to its platform. The ANC in 1997 adopted a resolution opposing discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Mtetwa wrote Mandela “became an important icon of the movement” in contrast to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and other anti-LGBT African heads of state.
“As a queer activist I will remember uTatu Dalibhunga for the dreams of freedom he symbolized,” Mtetwa said.
Gavin Hayward, editor of Exit, a South African LGBT newspaper, told the Blade from Johannesburg on Friday that LGBT South Africans continue to acknowledge Mandela’s pro-gay legacy. He noted his own interracial relationship would have been banned under Apartheid.
“He was such a great man, with such compassion and selflessness to devote his life to a cause really for the benefit of others,” Hayward told the Blade. “That’s huge and of course I admire him immensely. God knows where the country would have been if we hadn’t had a great man like that around.”
Obama described Mandela as one of the “most influential, courageous and profoundly good human beings that any of us will share time with on this Earth.”
“Through his fierce dignity and unbending will to sacrifice his own freedom for the freedom of others, Madiba transformed South Africa — and moved all of us,” the president said. “His journey from a prisoner to a President embodied the promise that human beings — and countries — can change for the better.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray are among those who also mourned Mandela’s death.
“Nelson Mandela tore down oppression, united a rainbow nation and always walked arm-in-arm with his LGBT brothers and sisters — and with all people — toward freedom,” said Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin in a statement. “Though every man, woman and child who seeks justice around the world mourns this loss, his vision of an equal future lives on undimmed.”
Rev. Nancy Wilson, moderator of the Metropolitan Community Churches, described Mandela as “one of the greatest leaders in history.”
“Because of Nelson Mandela, South Africa became the first country in the world to include constitutional protection for same-gender loving persons,” she said. “As the head of a church with many gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer members in 40 countries, including South Africa, I honor the liberator, Mandela.”
Photos
PHOTOS: Helen Hayes Awards
Gay Men’s Chorus, local drag artists have featured performance at ceremony
The 41st Helen Hayes Awards were held at The Anthem on Monday, May 19. Felicia Curry and Mike Millan served as the hosts.
A performance featuring members of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington and local drag artists was held at the end of the first act of the program to celebrate WorldPride 2025.
The annual awards ceremony honors achievement in D.C.-area theater productions and is produced by Theatre Washington.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
District of Columbia
Laverne Cox, Reneé Rapp, Deacon Maccubbin named WorldPride grand marshals
Three LGBTQ icons to lead parade
WorldPride organizers announced Thursday that actress and trans activist Laverne Cox, powerhouse performer Reneé Rapp, and LGBTQ trailblazer Deacon Maccubbin will serve as grand marshals for this year’s WorldPride parade.
The Capital Pride Alliance, which is organizing WorldPride 2025 in Washington, D.C., revealed the honorees in a press release, noting that each has made a unique contribution to the fabric of the LGBTQ community.
Cox made history in 2014 as the first openly transgender person nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in an acting category for her role in Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black.” She went on to win a Daytime Emmy in 2015 for her documentary “Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word,” which followed seven young trans people as they navigated coming out.
Rapp, a singer and actress who identifies as a lesbian, rose to prominence as Regina George in the Broadway musical “Mean Girls.” She reprised the role in the 2024 film adaptation and also stars in Max’s “The Sex Lives of College Girls,” portraying a character coming to terms with her sexuality. Rapp has released an EP, “Everything to Everyone,” and an album, “Snow Angel.” She announced her sophomore album, “Bite Me,” on May 21 and is slated to perform at the WorldPride Music Festival at the RFK Festival Grounds.
Deacon Maccubbin, widely regarded as a cornerstone of Washington’s LGBTQ+ history, helped organize D.C.’s first Gay Pride Party in 1975. The event took place outside Lambda Rising, one of the first LGBTQ bookstores in the nation, which Maccubbin founded. For his decades of advocacy and activism, he is often referred to as “the patriarch of D.C. Pride.”
“I am so honored to serve as one of the grand marshals for WorldPride this year. This has been one of the most difficult times in recent history for queer and trans people globally,” Cox said. “But in the face of all the rhetorical, legislative and physical attacks, we continue to have the courage to embrace who we truly are, to celebrate our beauty, resilience and bravery as a community. We refuse to allow fear to keep us from ourselves and each other. We remain out loud and proud.”
“Pride is everything. It is protection, it is visibility, it is intersectional. But most importantly, it is a celebration of existence and protest,” Rapp said.
The three will march down 14th Street for the WorldPride Parade in Washington on June 7.
Congress
House passes reconciliation with gender-affirming care funding ban
‘Big Beautiful Bill’ now heads to the Senate
The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday voted 215-214 for passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” reconciliation package, which includes provisions that would prohibit the use of federal funds to support gender-affirming care.
But for an 11th hour revision of the bill late Wednesday night by conservative lawmakers, Medicaid and CHIP would have been restricted only from covering treatments and interventions administered to patients younger than 18.
The legislation would also drop requirements that some health insurers must cover gender-affirming care as an “essential health benefit” and force states that currently mandate such coverage to find it independently. Plans could still offer coverage for transgender care but without the EHB classification patients will likely pay higher out of pocket costs.
To offset the cost of extending tax cuts from 2017 that disproportionately benefited the wealthiest Americans, the reconciliation bill contains significant cuts to spending for federal programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
The Human Rights Campaign criticized House Republicans in a press release and statement by the group’s president, Kelley Robinson:
“People in this country want policies and solutions that make life better and expand access to the American Dream. Instead, anti-equality lawmakers voted to give handouts to billionaires built on the backs of hardworking people — with devastating consequences for the LGBTQ+ community.
“If the cuts to programs like Medicaid and SNAP or resources like Planned Parenthood clinics weren’t devastating enough, House Republicans added a last minute provision that expands its attacks on access to best practice health care to transgender adults.
“This cruel addition shows their priorities have never been about lowering costs or expanding health care access–but in targeting people simply for who they are. These lawmakers have abandoned their constituents, and as they head back to their districts, know this: they will hear from us.”
Senate Republicans are expected to pass the bill with the budget reconciliation process, which would allow them to bypass the filibuster and clear the spending package with a simple majority vote.
Changes are expected as the bill will be reviewed and amended by committees, particularly the Finance Committee, and then brought to the floor for debate — though modifications are expected to focus on Medicaid reductions and debate over state and local tax deductions.
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