Local
FreeState Legal seeks recognition of same-sex parents
Trans man denied visitation with child
The Court of Appeals is expected to decide whether to hear the case of Conover v. Conover in the next two months.
In a case that impacts thousands of children in Maryland born into families headed by same-sex couples, Baltimore-based FreeState Legal has asked Maryland’s Court of Appeals to review a decision by lower courts denying legal parentage to a person who raised a child from birth with their same-sex spouse. In the case of Conover v. Conover, FreeState Legal represents Michael Conover, a transgender man. Before Conover’s gender transition, he and his female partner had a child by artificial insemination of his partner. They married after marriage equality was legally recognized for same-sex couples, but the lower courts have refused to recognize Conover’s parentage of their child. As a result, Conover has been unable to see his child for more than two years.
“This heartbreaking case is about whether Maryland courts will give equal protection to the parent-child relationships of children born to same-sex couples, and whether marriages between same-sex couples are truly equal under Maryland law,” said FreeState Legal’s deputy director and managing attorney, Jer Welter, who represents Michael Conover, in a statement. “For marriage equality to have real meaning, the families formed by same-sex married couples must have the same legal protection as the families formed by opposite-sex couples.”
Before his gender transition, Michael Conover was in a committed same-sex relationship for nearly a decade with Brittany Eckel. In 2009, before marriage equality for same-sex couples was recognized in Maryland, Conover and Eckel decided to have a child together by artificial insemination. They chose an anonymous sperm donor on the basis of physical resemblance to Conover, and when Eckel gave birth to their son Jaxon, the child was given Conover’s last name. A few months later, Conover and Eckel married in nearby Washington D.C., where marriage between same-sex couples had become legally recognized.
They parented Jaxon together for the first two years of his life, but later broke up. In their divorce case, Conover asked the court for visitation with their son, but Eckel claimed that they had no children together. The trial court ruled that Conover is a legal stranger to Jaxon because he lacks a biological or adoptive relationship to the child. In August, Maryland’s intermediate appeals court, the Court of Special Appeals, upheld the trial court’s decision.
“Not being able to be with my son, to lead him, and watch him grow is a pain that I wish no one else would have to experience,” said Conover. “Little kids don’t understand genetics; they understand a parent’s nurturing love. My love for my child is never going to go away.”
“The effect of the lower courts’ ruling here is to deny a child a relationship with one of the only two parents he has ever known,” said Welter. “We hope that the court will hear this case and recognize that marriage equality has changed the landscape in Maryland, and will give the Conovers’ legal marriage the same effect as the marriage of any other opposite-sex couple.”
The Court of Appeals is expected to decide whether to hear the case in the next two months.
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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