Local
D.C. man sentenced to 8 years for anti-gay attack
Pleads guilty to brutal assault with metal pole
David Morris, 33, pled guilty on May 14 to a charge of assault with intent to kill with a hate crime designation.
A D.C. Superior Court judge on July 8 sentenced a Northeast Washington man to eight years in prison for attacking and severely beating a male co-worker who he believed was making a “sexual overture toward him,” according to a statement released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The statement says David Morris, 33, pled guilty on May 14 to a charge of assault with intent to kill with a hate crime designation.
“This criminal’s prejudices drove him to punch, stomp and use a metal pole to beat his co-worker,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Vincent H. Cohen. “He will spend the next eight years in prison as punishment for this brutal assault,” Cohen said in a statement. “The U.S. Attorney’s Office will continue to prioritize the prosecution of criminals who express their hate through violence.”
The U.S. Attorney’s statement says that had the case gone to trial, prosecutors would have presented evidence showing that Morris and the victim, 52, were friends and co-workers at the time of the incident. The statement says that on the evening of March 14, 2015, the two men were in Morris’s apartment in the 200 block of 61st St., N.E., drinking alcohol.
“Morris interpreted an action from the victim as a homosexual overture,” the statement says. “He became enraged and threw the victim out of his apartment and down the hallway stairs, toward the first floor of the building.”
Shortly after dragging him outside the building Morris, while wearing boots, “stomped on the victim’s head” and repeatedly punched him in the head and upper body while the victim remained on the ground. At one point Morris returned inside and came back out with a metal pole and struck the victim with it multiple times in the head and upper body, the statement says.
The victim was hospitalized for two weeks while being treated for severe head and facial injuries that required multiple stitches to treat. He will soon undergo facial surgery to attempt to reverse lingering damage and the loss of feeling in the right side of his face, the U.S. Attorney’s statement says.
Court records show that Morris was held without bond since the time of his arrest on March 19.
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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