Local
Chris Abell, popular DJ, dies at 56
Accomplished pianist also worked in gay clubs
The funeral Mass for Chris Abell will be held on Tuesday, October 7, 2014, 10 a.m. at St. James Catholic Church in Mt. Rainier, MD.
Christopher George Abell, an accomplished church organist and pianist who later became a popular disc jockey at gay clubs in D.C. and up and down the East Coast, died Sept. 24 at George Washington University Hospital from a brain injury caused by a fall. He was 56.
George Strausbough, Abell’s partner of 15 years, said Abell was born in D.C. and raised in suburban Brentwood, Md., and was the second of six children of John and Bernadette Abell.
Strausbough said Abell attended the University of Maryland before transferring to Catholic University, where he studied music on a scholarship. In the late 1970s and early ‘80s Abell’s skills as an organist and pianist landed him in jobs playing at many D.C.-area churches, including the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Strausbough said.
Beginning in the early to middle 1980s through the late 1990s Abell worked as a guest DJ in a number of East Coast clubs. He also worked as a DJ in several D.C. gay bars, including the Lost & Found, Tracks, Badlands, Mr. P’s, and JR.’s. In addition, Strausbough said Abell worked as a bartender at Mr. P’s. He was widely known as “DJ Abell.”
During his DJ days, Abell became an officer with the Mid Atlantic Record Pool, an organization that worked with record companies to arrange for DJs to receive the latest record releases from popular recording artists, according to Strausbough.
After being diagnosed with HIV/AIDS nearly 25 years ago, Abell participated in clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health, the Whitman-Walker Clinic and George Washington University’s Medical Faculty Associates, Strausbough said.
He also helped to organize benefits for AIDS-related causes and groups, including Whitman-Walker, Food and Friends and Brother Help Thyself.
Amid his many activities and job duties, Strausbough said Abell was dedicated to his family, including Strausbough’s family members.
“He and I, between us, had 15 nieces and nephews that were the joy of his life, including mine and his and everybody’s,” said Strausbough. “His family was everything to him. And his family took me in as a son and my family took him in as a son.”
In addition to Strausbough, Abell is survived by his mother, Bernadette Abell; his brothers John Abell Jr. and his partner Nancy Kimball; Tim Abell and his partner Kathy; Lawrence Abell and his wife Cindy Abell; his sister Julia Jones and her husband Jay Jones; his sister Jennifer Addis and her husband Bryan; his beloved nieces and nephews and many longtime friends.
A funeral mass is scheduled for 10 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 7 at St. James Catholic Church, 3628 Rhode Island Ave., in Mt. Rainier, Md.
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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