Local
Mayor honors ‘Sheroes’ of LGBT movement
3 women commended for service to local community
From left, Kelley Robinson of Planned Parenthood, Cathy Chu of SMYAL and Amy Nelson of Whitman-Walker Health received their Sheroes of the Movement awards at a ceremony in the Fannie Mae Conference Center on Friday. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
On behalf of his Office of GLBT Affairs, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray on March 21 presented the city’s 2014 Sheroes of the Movement Award to three women chosen for outstanding contributions to the “LGBT movement and community” of the District of Columbia.
In a ceremony at the federal Fannie Mae Conference Center on Wisconsin Avenue, N.W., Gray handed the awards to Cathy Chu, Youth Leadership Manager for the local LGBT youth advocacy and services group SMYAL; Amy Nelson, Supervising Attorney at Whitman-Walker Health’s Legal Services Program; and Kelley Robinson, Assistant Director for Youth Engagement at Planned Parenthood.
“The purpose of these awards is to honor Sheroes of the District of Columbia GLBT community for their achievement and community service during Women’s History Month,” said Earl Fowlkes, chair of the Mayor’s GLBT Advisory Committee, which selected this year’s honorees.
“These unsung Sheroes have contributed so much to our community and are often not recognized for their work in helping to make the District one of the most vibrant GLBT communities to live and work in the United States,” Fowlkes in a statement in the ceremony’s program book.
A statement released by the mayor’s office says the Office of GLBT Affairs organized this year’s 3rd annual Sheroes of the Movement Award program with the Mayor’s Office on Women’s Policy and Initiatives and the Mayor’s Office of Community Affairs.
The statement describes the 2014 awardees as “three lesbian, bisexual or queer women who have made significant contributions to the LGBT movement and community in the District.”
Chu, among other things, develops programs and training initiatives “designed to empower young LGBTQ-identified individuals in the District, Maryland and Virginia,” according to biographical information released by the mayor’s office. She also serves on the Steering Committees for the National Association of Gay-Straight Alliance Networks and Asian Pacific Islander Queer Sisters.
As part of her work at SMYAL, she facilitates the Women’s Leadership Institute, which provides a weekly discussion group and overnight retreats for more than 100 “young LGB women and gender non-conforming youth” in the D.C. area, information released by the mayor’s office says.
Nelson, an attorney, among other things, oversees Whitman-Walker Health’s client intake, supervises staff attorneys and represents clients — about half of whom are LGBT — in the areas of health care access, public benefits, consumer rights and workplace rights cases.
She is credited with playing the lead role in launching the city’s first Name and Gender Change Clinic to assist transgender people in updating their legal identity documents and personal records. In partnership with the local group TransLAW, the Name and Gender Change Clinic has served more than 270 clients and has trained more than 150 volunteers to carry out its services.
Among other things, Nelson has served on the board of Miriam’s House, a residence for HIV-positive, homeless women.
Robinson operates Planned Parenthood’s national youth and campus engagement programs known as the Planned Parenthood Generation, which is a project of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, information released by the mayor’s office says.
“She is dedicated to cultivating, engaging, and supporting a broad, diverse network of young leaders, especially young people of color and LGBTQ youth,” a statement in the program book says. “Kelley has doubled Planned Parenthood’s campus presence over the last two years, for a total of 250 campus groups nationwide, nearly 100 teen advocacy programs and thousands of individual activists,” it says.
“It’s a real honor to be here,” Gray told the awards gathering. “I’ve said there’s a lot of people who have done a lot for the residents of the District of Columbia to bring about a level of understanding and acceptance that otherwise might not exist in the District of Columbia – maybe more so than any other city or state.”
Gray added, “We need to recognize people who work and do this kind of advocacy. I’m proud to be in a city that is a leader on the issues that are important to us…I want to again congratulate the honorees tonight.”
Kelley told the Blade after the ceremony that she was “so proud” to have been selected as an honoree.
“It is an incredible honor and I’m just honored and privileged to be able to do the work that I do every day working with young people, working with communities of color, working with queer folks,” she said.
Nelson said she, too, was “honored and humbled to be recognized along with” Chu and Robinson. “And I’m thrilled that the mayor and his office decided to honor us and create this event.”
Chu said after the ceremony that an important part of her work is to monitor the growing number of Gay-Straight Alliance groups or GSAs that students are forming in D.C.-area high schools as well as some middle schools.
“We definitely see growth. We know of 93 GSAs right now,” she said in both public and private schools in the D.C. metro area.
District of Columbia
Capital Stonewall Democrats set to celebrate 50th anniversary
Mayor Bowser expected to attend March 20 event
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, members of the D.C. Council, and local and national Democratic Party officials are expected to join more than 150 LGBTQ advocates and supporters on March 20 for the 50th anniversary celebration of the city’s Capital Stonewall Democrats.
A statement released by the organization says the event is scheduled to be held at the Pepco Edison Place Gallery building at 702 8th St., N.W. in D.C.
“The evening will honor the people who built Capital Stonewall Democrats across five decades – activists who fought for rights when the odds were against them, public servants who opened doors and refused to let them close, and a new generation of leaders ready to carry the work forward,” the statement says.
Founded in 1976 as the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the organization’s members voted in 2021 to change its name to the Capital Stonewall Democrats.
Among those planning to attend the anniversary event is longtime D.C. gay Democratic activist Paul Kuntzler, 84, who is one of the two co-founders of the then-Gertrude Stein Democratic Club. Kuntzler told the Washington Blade that he and co-founder Richard Maulsby were joined by about a dozen others in the living room of his Southwest D.C. home at the group’s founding meeting in January 1976.
He said that among the reasons for forming a local LGBTQ Democratic group at the time was to arrange for a then “gay” presence at the 1976 Democratic National Convention, at which Jimmy Carter won the Democratic nomination for U.S. president and later won election as president.
Maulsby, who served as the Stein Club president for its first three years and who now lives in Sarasota, Fla., said he would not be attending the March 20 anniversary event, but he fully supports the organization’s continuing work as an LGBTQ organization associated with the Democratic Party.
Steven McCarty, Capital Stonewall Democrats’ current president, said in the statement that the anniversary celebration will highlight the organization’s work since the time of its founding.
“Capital Stonewall Democrats has been fighting for LGBTQ+ political power in this city for 50 years, electing people, training organizers, holding this community together through some really hard moments,” he said. “And right now, with everything going on, that work has never mattered more. This gala is the first moment of our next chapter, and I want the community to be a part of it.”
The statement says among the special guests attending the event will be Democratic National Committee Vice Chair Malcolm Kenyatta, who became the first openly gay LGBTQ person of color to win election to the Pennsylvania General Assembly in 2018.
Other guests of honor, according to the statement, include Mayor Bowser; D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5, the Council’s only gay member; D.C. Council member Anita Bonds (D-At-Large); 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; Rayceen Pendarvis, longtime D.C. LGBTQ civic activist; and Phillip Pannell, longtime D.C. LGBTQ Democratic activist and Ward 8 civic activist.
Information about ticket availability for the Capital Stonewall Democrats anniversary gala can be accessed here: capitalstonewalldemocrats.com/50th
Maryland
Md. Legislative LGBTQ+ Caucus outlines 2026 priorities
Expanded PrEP access among objectives
Maryland’s Legislative LGBTQ+ Caucus outlined legislative priorities for the remainder of the General Assembly’s 2026 term during a press conference on March 5.
State Del. Kris Fair (D-Fredrick County) led the press conference. State Del. Ashanti Martinez (D-Prince George’s County) and other caucus members also spoke.
Caucus members are sponsoring 12 bills and supporting four others.
Martinez is sponsoring House Bill 1114, which would expand PrEP access in Maryland.
“PrEP is 99 percent effective in preventing HIV transmission,” he explained, noting PrEP’s cost often turns away potential users.
The bill aims to extend insurance coverage and expand pharmacists’ ability to prescribe PrEP along with other HIV treatments and testing. Martinez is working with state Sen. Clarence Lam (D-Anne Arundel and Howard Counties) and FreeState Justice on the bill.
The House Health Committee had a hearing last week that included HB1114.
“Ending the HIV epidemic is about expanding access and providing these life-saving tools to all persons in Maryland,” Martinez said.
Several other pieces of legislation were highlighted during the press conferences. They included measures focused on youth and education, birth certificate markers, so-called conversion therapy, and hormone medications.
State Sen. Cheryl Kagan (D-Montgomery County) is cosponsoring Senate Bill 950, which would update and strengthen conversion therapy laws. State Del. Bonnie Cullison (D-Montgomery County) has introduced an identical bill that would extend the statute of limitations on individuals who facilitate conversion therapy.
Kagan explained the bill would allow conversion therapy victims to come to terms with their experience undergoing the widely discredited practice that “creates shame and it silences survivors.”
When questioned, Fair explained the press conference happened late into the legislative session because “we [the caucus] are constantly having to respond in real time to what’s happening in Washington” while drafting and considering pieces of legislation.
The Frederick County Democrat described this session’s bills as the “most ambitious list of priorities to date.” Fair also described the caucus’s goals.
“It’s decency, it’s dignity, and its humanity,” he said.
District of Columbia
Owner of D.C. gay bar Green Lantern John Colameco dies at 79
Beloved businessman preferred to stay ‘behind the scenes’
John Colameco, owner of the popular D.C. gay bar Green Lantern, has died, according to a March 7 announcement posted on the bar’s website and Instagram account. The announcement didn’t provide a date of his passing or a cause of death.
Green Lantern manager Howard Hicks said Colameco was 79 at the time of his passing.
“It is with great sadness that Green Lantern announces the death of our beloved owner, John Colameco,” the announcement says. “Most of our patrons might have heard John’s name, but might not have known his face,” it says.
“He was a ‘behind-the-scenes’ kind of guy who avoided the limelight,” the announcement continues. “He preferred to stay in the back of the house with staff and team ensuring everything was running smoothly so that everyone out front was having a good time.”
The announcement adds, “As a veteran and businessman, John wasn’t a member of the LGBTQ + community, but he was one of the best damn allies our community has ever had.”
It says he “long provided spaces for the queer community to come together” since the 1990s when he owned and operated a popular restaurant on 17th Street, N.W. called Peppers.
According to the announcement, Colameco and his then business partner Greg Zehnacker opened the Green Lantern in 2001 in an alley off of 14th Street, N.W., between Thomas Circle and L Street, N.W.
The announcement points out that the Green Lantern first opened in the same location in the early 1990s before it later closed when the original owners decided to purchase and open other bars, one of which was the gay bar Fireplace near Dupont Circle. Colameco and Zehnacker were able to reopen the bar with the Green Lantern name.
“When Greg died unexpectedly in February 2014, John remained steadfastly committed to carrying on their vision and ensuring that Green Lantern remained part of the fabric of D.C.’s queer community,” the announcement says.
“Over the years, through Green Lantern, John has provided support to many community organizations, most notably Stonewall Sports, the Gay Men’s chorus of Washington, and ONYX Mid-Atlantic with Green Lantern serving as a gathering hub for their activities,” it states.
The announcement adds that Colameco’s family was planning a memorial for him in his hometown of Philadelphia.
“His Green Lantern family will celebrate his life by operating the bar as usual and we encourage you to stop by and join us,” it says. “Community coming together and having a good time – it’s exactly what John would want.”
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