Opinions
Right to wed is changing the gay ‘community’
Winning equality may be harder for us to handle than anyone else
Winning equality may be harder for us to handle than anyone else.
Hold on to your veils and get ready to bid farewell to what will increasingly seem outdated notions of a bygone era.
If the Supreme Court rules this summer to establish a nationwide constitutional right to marriage equality, as is widely anticipated, gay and lesbian life in America will be forever altered. Following the celebrations and soon after the cultural dust settles, however, victory will likely be harder for us to handle than the rest of the country.
As certain as the extension of the right to marry is inevitable, whenever fully codified, some among us aren’t prepared for the internal collective evolution such a fundamental breakthrough in civil standing will bring. The signs are plentiful for those not fearful to look or hesitant to see.
The right to wed, not yet a particularly popular personal preference among gays and lesbians, is nonetheless the equivalent of winning the lottery of law. Nothing else is so simultaneously humble and huge – and incongruently traditional and conservative – than legal recognition of our relationships. As those who seemingly long ago understood, and argued to skeptics who thought them foolhardy, winning on weddings would prove the lynchpin of legitimacy that conveys all other civil rights.
Will the totality of civil equality happen overnight? Absolutely not. Will it take another generation to accommodate the full ramifications? Almost certainly. Will there be skirmishes along the way with recalcitrant remnants of opposition. You betcha.
Yet those of us old enough to be in the second half of our lives didn’t grow up expecting to live to see this day. Our variable struggles of personal acceptance amid societal alienation led to coalescing around our outcast status and concentrating our visibility, largely in high-profile urban enclaves where we sought a connection with others.
Even the sense of “community” that developed in those early days, and later in response to the devastation wrought by HIV and AIDS, is now largely a legacy contrivance of shorthand terminology used to collectively describe us. What once symbolized something real, if nascent and often illusory, has become in large measure a hollow reference of editorial convenience.
Hence the plethora of recent commentaries that are either plaintive appraisals of concern or urgent pleas for explanation, or a combination. Why are “gayborhoods” gone or disappearing? What happened to “gay” bars and businesses? What’s with all the diversity of “queer” political persuasion? What became of the sense of a shared culture and “community”?
Then, too, has come the pushback from LGBT political activists facing an uncertain future struggling to herd the flock and attempting to impose a strict order of uniform political beliefs on non-gay issues. To an increasingly cynical audience, they reveal a desperate reaction to divergence of thought and panicked alarm at differences of opinion. We’ve been all but commanded to get in line, to accept acquiescence on political perspectives, preferred policy prescriptions, and electoral candidate allegiance.
Worse, we’re essentially told it is a tribal betrayal to reflect the natural assimilation in society our communal success has allowed.
It’s a shaming among the remnants of what was once considered a rebellion. Only this time we’re pointing fingers at one another.
Here’s the simple lesson for LGBT organization leaders and political activists engaging in this behavior: Such screeching is doomed to failure. We never were, and certainly aren’t now, an assemblage of those with a monolithic point of view. And we don’t much take to being bullied.
We are as individual and confounding as the rest of the country. Above all else, we are a fragmented and unruly lot without a common set of beliefs or shared political perspectives.
We reflect the same complex tapestry of attitudes and beliefs as found in other demographic population subsets. Our commonality is our sexual orientation. Everything else is as individual as each of us.
That’s what the marriage of freedom and equality begets.
Mark Lee is a long-time entrepreneur and community business advocate. Follow on Twitter: @MarkLeeDC. Reach him at [email protected].
Letter-to-the-Editor
Candidates should pledge to nominate LGBTQ judge to Supreme Court
Presidential, Senate hopefuls need to go on the record
As soon as the final votes are cast and counted and verified after the November 2026 elections are over, the 2028 presidential cycle will begin in earnest. Polls, financial aid requests, and volunteer opportunities ad infinitum will flood the public and personal media. There will be more issues than candidates in both parties. The rending of garments and mudslinging will be both interesting and maybe even amusing as citizens will watch how candidates react to each and every issue of the day.
There is one particular item that I am hoping each candidate will be asked whether in private or in public. If a Supreme Court vacancy occurs in your potential administration, will you nominate an open and qualified LGBTQ to join the remaining eight?
Other interest groups on both sides have made similar demands over the years and have had them honored. Is it not time that our voices are raised as well? There are several already sitting judges on both state and federal benches that have either been elected statewide or approved by the U.S. Senate.
Our communities are being utilized and abused on judicial menus. Enough already! Challenge each and every candidate, regardless of their party with our honest question and see if honest answers are given. By the way … no harm in asking the one-third of the U.S. Senate candidates too who will be on ballots. Looking forward to any candidate tap dancing!
Opinions
2026 elections will bring major changes to D.C. government
Mayor’s office, multiple Council seats up for grabs
Next year will be a banner year for elections in D.C. The mayor announced she will not run. Two Council members, Anita Bonds, At-large, and Brianne Nadeau, Ward 1, have announced they will not run. Waiting for Del. Norton to do the same, but even if she doesn’t, there will be a real race for that office.
So far, Robert White, Council member at-large, and Brooke Pinto, Council member Ward 2, are among a host of others, who have announced. If one of these Council members should win, there would be a special election for their seat. If Kenyon McDuffie, Council member at-large, announces for mayor as a Democrat, which he is expected to do, he will have to resign his seat on the Council as he fills one of the non-Democratic seats there. Janeese George, Ward 4 Council member, announced she is running for mayor. Should she win, there would be a special election for her seat. Another special election could happen if Trayon White, Ward 8, is convicted of his alleged crimes, when he is brought to trial in January. Both the Council chair, and attorney general, have announced they are seeking reelection, along with a host of other offices that will be on the ballot.
Many of the races could look like the one in Ward 1 where at least six people have already announced. They include three members of the LGBTQ community. It seems the current leader in that race is Jackie Reyes Yanes, a Latina activist, not a member of the LGBTQ community, who worked for Mayor Fenty as head of the Latino Affairs Office, and for Mayor Bowser as head of the Office of Community Affairs. About eight, including the two Council members, have already announced they are running for the delegate seat.
I am often asked by candidates for an endorsement. The reason being my years as a community, LGBTQ, and Democratic, activist; and my ability to endorse in my column in the Washington Blade. The only candidate I endorsed so far is Phil Mendelson, for Council chair. While he and I don’t always agree on everything, he’s a staunch supporter of the LGBTQ community, a rational person, and we need someone with a steady hand if there really are six new Council members, out of the 13.
When candidates call, they realize I am a policy wonk. My unsolicited advice to all candidates is: Do more than talk in generalities, be specific and honest as to what you think you can do, if elected. Candidates running for a legislative office, should talk about what bills they will support, and then what new ones they will introduce. What are the first three things you will focus on for your constituents, if elected. If you are running against an incumbent, what do you think you can do differently than the person you hope to replace? For any new policies and programs you propose, if there is a cost, let constituents know how you intend to pay for them. Take the time to learn the city budget, and how money is currently being spent. The more information you have at your fingertips, the smarter you sound, and voters respect that, at least many do. If you are running for mayor, you need to develop a full platform, covering all the issues the city will face, something I have helped a number of previous mayors do. The next mayor will continue to have to deal with the felon in the White House. He/she/they will have to ensure he doesn’t try to eliminate home rule. The next mayor will have to understand how to walk a similar tightrope Mayor Bowser has balanced so effectively.
Currently, the District provides lots of public money to candidates. If you decide to take it, know the details. The city makes it too easy to get. But while it is available, take advantage of it. One new variable in this election is the implementation of rank-choice voting. It will impact how you campaign. If you attack another candidate, you may not be the second, or even third, choice, of their strongest supporters.
Each candidate needs a website. Aside from asking for donations and volunteers, it should have a robust issues section, biography, endorsements, and news. One example I share with candidates is my friend Zach Wahls’s website. He is running for United States Senate from Iowa. It is a comprehensive site, easy to navigate, with concise language, and great pictures. One thing to remember is that D.C. is overwhelmingly Democratic. Chances are the winner of the Democratic primary will win the general election.
Potential candidates should read the DCBOE calendar. Petitions will be available at the Board of Elections on Jan. 23, with the primary on June 16th, and general election on Nov. 3. So, ready, set, go!
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.
Opinions
Lighting candles in a time of exhaustion
Gunmen killed 15 people at Sydney Hanukkah celebration
In the wake of the shooting at Bondi Beach that targeted Jews, many of us are sitting with a familiar feeling: exhaustion. Not shock or surprise, but the deep weariness that comes from knowing this violence continues. It is yet another reminder that antisemitism remains persistent.
Bondi Beach is far from Washington, D.C., but antisemitism does not respect geography. When Jews are attacked anywhere, Jews everywhere feel it. We check on family and friends, absorb the headlines, and brace ourselves for the quiet, numbing normalization that has followed acts of mass violence.
Many of us live at an intersection where threats can come from multiple directions. As a community, we have embraced the concept of intersectional identity, and yet in queer spaces, many LGBTQ+ Jews are being implicitly or explicitly asked to play down our Jewishness. Jews hesitate before wearing a Magen David or a kippah. Some of us have learned to compartmentalize our identities, deciding which part of ourselves feels safest to lead with. Are we welcome as queer people only if we mute our Jewishness? Are those around us able to acknowledge that our fear is not abstract, but rooted in a lived reality, one in which our friends and family are directly affected by the rise in antisemitic violence, globally and here at home?
As a result of these experiences, many LGBTQ+ Jews feel a growing fatigue. We are told, implicitly or explicitly, that our fear is inconvenient; that Jewish trauma must be contextualized, minimized, or deferred in favor of other injustices. Certainly, the world is full of horror. And yet, we long for a world in which all lives are cherished and safe, where solidarity is not conditional on political purity or on which parts of ourselves are deemed acceptable to love.
We are now in the season of Chanuka. The story of this holiday is not one of darkness vanishing overnight. It is the story of a fragile light that should not have lasted. Chanuka teaches us that hope does not require certainty; it requires persistence and the courage to kindle a flame even when the darkness feels overwhelming.
For LGBTQ+ Jews, this lesson resonates deeply. We have survived by refusing to disappear across multiple dimensions of our identities. We have built communities, created rituals, and embraced chosen families that affirm the fullness of who we are.
To our LGBTQ+ siblings who are not Jewish: this is a moment to listen, to stand with us, and to make space for our grief. Solidarity means showing up not only when it is easy or popular, but especially when it is uncomfortable.
To our fellow Jews: your exhaustion is valid. Your fear is understandable, and so is your hope. Every candle lit this Chanuka is an act of resilience. Every refusal to hide, every moment of joy, is a declaration that hatred will not have the final word.
Light does not deny darkness. It confronts it.
As we light our candles this Chanuka season, may we protect one another and bring light to one another, even as the world too often responds to difference with violence and hate.
Joshua Maxey is the executive director of Bet Mishpachah, D.C.’s LGBTQ synagogue.
Empty seats, canceled shows plague Kennedy Center ahead of Trump renaming
New queer bar Rush beset by troubles; liquor license suspended
Malaysian police raids spark renewed concern among LGBTQ activists
HHS to restrict gender-affirming care for minors
Candidates should pledge to nominate LGBTQ judge to Supreme Court
PHOTOS: The Holiday Show
LGBTQ Democrats say they’re ready to fight to win in 2026
Far-right José Antonio Kast elected Chile’s next president
Brian Footer suspends campaign for Ward 1 D.C. Council seat
