Local
Norton vows to fight efforts to kill LGBT bill
Measure seeks to protect students at religious schools
D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (Washington Blade file photo by Jeff Surprenant)
D.C. Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) told representatives of LGBT groups on Monday that she will vigorously fight attempts by members of Congress to kill a city-approved bill aimed at protecting LGBT students from discrimination at D.C.-based religious schools.
She also told representatives of reproductive rights groups that she and her allies on Capitol Hill would strongly oppose attempts by Congress to kill a separate D.C. bill that would prohibit city employers from discriminating against employees based on reproductive rights choices, including a decision to have an abortion.
The LGBT-related bill, the Human Rights Amendment Act of 2014, repeals a 1989 law passed by Congress known as the Armstrong Amendment. The amendment exempts religious educational institutions in the city from having to comply with the D.C. Human Rights Act’s provision banning discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Language in the Armstrong Amendment, which is part of the D.C. Human Rights Act, allows religious schools such as Catholic University to deny meeting space or privileges offered to other student clubs for any organization that engages in “promoting, encouraging, or condoning any homosexual act, lifestyle orientation, or belief.”
The D.C. Council approved the repeal legislation in the form of the Human Rights Amendment Act in December. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser signed it earlier this month.
An official with the City Council’s Office of the Secretary said on Tuesday that due to a backlog of bills passed by the Council in December, the Council wasn’t expected to send the bill to Congress to begin the required 30 legislative day review of the measure for at least another two weeks.
The official, who spoke on condition of not being identified, said the holdup was strictly administrative in nature and unrelated to the bill’s content.
Last week, a religious-oriented conservative group called Heritage Action released a statement calling on its members and supporters to urge their congressional representatives to support a disapproval resolution to kill the Human Rights Amendment Act. Under the city’s Home Rule Charter, a majority vote of both the House and Senate and the signature of the president of a “disapproval” resolution can kill any D.C.-passed bill. Most lawmakers expect President Obama would refuse to sign such a resolution.
For that reason, opponents of D.C. bills have resorted to blocking such bills through riders attached to the city’s annual budget bill, which Congress must pass.
“We have been preparing for anti-Democrats to use the Republican Congress to try to interfere with the local laws of the District of Columbia,” Norton said in a statement last week. “Just as my colleagues insist that the laws of their constituents be respected by Washington, you better bet that we will insist on that same American principle and will target members who dare to disrespect the people of the District of Columbia by trying to overturn our local laws.”
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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