Local
Group attacks pro-LGBT candidates in Fairfax
Incumbents who backed trans policy targeted
(Photo by Mario Sanchez Prada; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
The anti-LGBT Traditional Values Coalition launched an email campaign earlier this month attacking all but two members of the Fairfax County School Board for “working against” students and parents by adopting what it says is a pro-gay and pro-transgender agenda.
The California-based group was referring to the board’s approval this year of a policy banning discrimination against transgender students and employees in the Fairfax public school system and a Family Life Education curriculum that calls for teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity in sex education classes in grades 7-10.
“The current school board’s recent actions demonstrate a deeply troubling pattern of a (1) lack of transparency, at times to the point of deceit and a (2) total lack of responsiveness to the point of hostility to the community of those sharing concerns about family values and respect of faith issues,” one of the group’s emails to voters says.
The board voted 10 to 2 in support of the two LGBT supportive measures during meetings where a majority of large audiences opposed the measures and booed and jeered while school board members spoke in support of the proposals.
Phil Hicks, an official with the Metro D.C. chapter of Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), has testified before the school board at various public hearings that he believes a majority of parents support the LGBT-supportive policies.
The Traditional Values Coalition has endorsed candidates challenging most of the incumbents. In an action expected by LGBT activists, the group has endorsed the two school board members who either abstained or voted against the two LGBT-supportive measures.
LGBT advocates and their allies have focused on one race in the Providence District in which incumbent Patty Reed, who opposed the LGBT-supportive measures, is being challenged by Dalia Palchik, a teacher who has expressed strong support for LGBT rights. The district includes the western section of Falls Church.
Palchik has been endorsed by LGBT Democrats of Virginia and the state’s two openly gay state legislators – State Sen. Adam Ebbin of Alexandria and State Del. Mark Sickles of Fairfax. Also endorsing Palchik is Mark Levine, an openly gay candidate for a delegate seat from Alexandria.
Palchik said she would have voted for the transgender non-discrimination measure and the LGBT-inclusive Family Life Education curriculum, saying the two measures were needed to protect the rights of students vulnerable to discrimination and bullying.
Reed has said she did not vote for the trans non-discrimination policy because she believes the board needed more information through a cost-benefit analysis before voting on the measure. She has said she voted for an earlier measure banning discrimination based on sexual orientation.
The election is scheduled to take place Nov. 3.
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.
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
JD Vance to travel to Hungary next week
Pam Bondi ousted as attorney general
VIDEO: Gay journalist detained for booing Trumps at ‘Chicago’ opening night
Idaho Gov. signs harshest anti-trans bathroom bill in the country
‘Out for McDuffie’ event held at D.C. gay bar
‘Jonah’ an undeniably compelling but unusual memory play
The Oscar-losing performance that’s too good to miss
Thousands attend ‘No Kings’ protests in D.C.
