Local
Anti-gay graffiti spray painted on home of Rehoboth couple
State Police fail to list incident as hate crime
CAMP Rehoboth’s Steve Elkins described the graffiti as containing ‘vile homophobic slurs.’ (Washington Blade file photo by Damien Salas)
An LGBT rights advocate in Rehoboth Beach, Del., has expressed concern that Delaware State Police chose not to designate as a hate crime a Sept. 23 incident in which anti-gay messages were spray painted on the house of a gay couple.
Steve Elkins, executive director of CAMP Rehoboth, an LGBT community center, told the Washington Blade that he saw photos of the graffiti spray painted in several places on the couple’s rented house. He said the messages were definitely “crude and homophobic.”
Master Corp. Gary Fournier of the State Police told the Blade in an email that an unidentified suspect or suspects spray painted “obscene gestures and words” on the house and a vehicle parked in the driveway on the 19000 block of John J. Williams Highway, which is near Delaware Coastal Highway 1 outside the Rehoboth Beach City limits.
Fournier said State Police have designated the incident as a case of criminal mischief and trespass.
“The investigation into this incident is on-going and is not being investigated as a hate crime,” he said.
He declined to disclose what the spray painted messages said or what the “obscene gestures” depicted. He also declined to say why police don’t believe the incident is a hate crime.
Gene Harris, one of the two men who live in the house, told WRDE TV News that he and his partner woke up about 8 a.m. on Sept. 24 and discovered what he called hate fueled messages scrawled on their home.
The Cape Gazette, a Rehoboth-area newspaper, published two photos showing graffiti painted in several places on the exterior walls, the roof, and the garage door of the house. The photos were not taken close enough to show what the graffiti depicted.
“It took us back 20 or 30 years to a feeling of shame and humiliation and somehow embarrassment – yes embarrassment,” Harris told the TV news station.
Elkins, who also spoke to the TV news station, told the reporter in an on-camera interview that he viewed the incident as a hate crime.
“It’s pretty scary to see what was painted not only on the front of the home but all around the house,” he said. “And even on…a car that belonged to a friend of theirs was sprayed with some vile homophobic slurs,” Elkins said in the TV interview.
“It made me sick to my stomach to see it,” he said.
Elkins told the Blade that among the words sprayed on the house was “cock sucker.”
Jason Miller, a spokesperson for the Delaware Attorney General’s Office, said the office was aware of the incident and was monitoring the police investigation. He said that if an arrest is made the Attorney General’s office would make an independent decision on what charge should be filed against the person or persons arrested.
“Through our own review of the case, we can upgrade the charges,” he said, adding that his office would list the incident as a hate crime if it determines such a charge is warranted.
The Delaware News Journal reported that the house in which the two gay men live is owned by Sussex County Council member Joan Deaver, who lives in a nearby house.
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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