Local
Comings & Goings
Honor for Corado; new post for Nosanchuk
The ‘Comings & Goings’ column chronicles important life changes of Blade readers.
The Comings and Goings column is about sharing the professional successes of our community. We want to recognize those landing new jobs, new clients for their business, joining boards of organizations and other achievements. Please share your successes with us at [email protected].
Dan Flave-Novak
Congratulations to Roosevelt University student Dan Flave-Novak, for winning a prestigious fellowship. “Dan’s groundbreaking PsyD dissertation looks at body image in the gay community. He will have the rare honor of becoming one of only nine U.S. Veterans Administration post-doctoral fellows to be trained beginning later this year in helping veterans with LGBTQ mental health issues,” according to a press release.
“I’m very excited to be a part of this new initiative which will allow me to make a difference in the lives of veterans who have recently begun to identify as LGBTQ in the VA system,” Flave-Novak said. “I believe it will be a great opportunity for me to have influence and an impact on how the VA system works with LGBTQ veterans now and in the future.” Dan will be spending his year as a post-doctoral fellow at the Milwaukee VA Medical Center.
Flave-Novak has been a doctoral student since 2011 in Roosevelt’s nationally recognized PsyD program. He trained in several psychology and counseling departments, including Chicago’s Howard Brown Center, one of the largest LGTBQ health organizations in the nation. He worked for many years for Ohio Rep. Sherrod Brown in Washington, assisting in the fight to repeal “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.”
Matt Nosanchuk
Congratulations also to Matt Nosanchuk who joined the State Department as Senior Advisor in the Office of Religion and Global Affairs in the Office of the Secretary. Nosanchuk has served President Obama in several positions prior to starting at the State Department. Most recently he was the President’s Liaison to the American Jewish community in the Office of Public Engagement and also served as Director for Outreach on the National Security Council. During the first three years of the administration, Nosanchuk was Senior Counselor in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, where he was the point person on LGBT issues and worked on challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act that led to the Supreme Court’s historic decision in United States v. Windsor.
Nosanchuk was born in Windsor, Canada, grew up in the Detroit area and went to college and law school at Stanford. Since moving to Washington, he has worked in the private, public, and non-profit sectors, including on Capitol Hill on the House Judiciary Committee Minority Staff, and as Counsel for Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida. In 2013, he received the American Bar Association’s inaugural Stonewall Award in recognition of his professional contributions to advancing LGBT civil rights and the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award for his work on the Defense of Marriage Act litigation.
Ruby Corado
(Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Congratulations also to Ruby Corado, who will be honored along with the LGBTQ women of the Obama administration at the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice 2016 Fueling the Frontlines dinner.
Born in El Salvador, Corado fled to the United States at age 16 when the Salvadoran Civil War erupted. She eventually moved to Washington, D.C. Self-identifying as a “D.C. Humanist-Transgender woman” Corado has spent more than 20 years advocating for the inclusion of transgender, genderqueer, and gender non-conforming gay, lesbian, and bisexual people in mainstream society.
In 2004, she founded Casa Ruby in D.C. Last year, Corado told NPR, “Most of the people who come to Casa Ruby don’t have a family that accepts them, or that loves them for the most part. So we have a family here, and it is the concept of a chosen family.” Casa Ruby now has three homes, which include housing for homeless youth and adults, food service, job training, and medical and employment advocates.
Virginia
McPike wins special election for Va. House of Delegates
Gay Alexandria City Council member becomes 8th LGBTQ member of legislature
Gay Alexandria City Council member Kirk McPike emerged as the decisive winner in a Feb. 10 special election for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates representing Alexandria.
McPike, a Democrat, received 81.5 percent of the vote in his race against Republican Mason Butler, according to the local publication ALX Now.
He first won election to the Alexandria Council in 2021. He will be filling the House of Delegates seat being vacated by Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker (D-Alexandria), who won in another Feb. 10 special election for the Virginia State Senate seat being vacated by gay Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria).
Ebbin is resigning from his Senate next week to take a position with Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s administration.
Upon taking his 5th District seat in the House of Delegate, McPike will become the eighth out LGBTQ member of the Virginia General Assembly. Among those he will be joining is Sen. Danica Roem (D-Manassas), who became the Virginia Legislature’s first transgender member when she won election to the House of Delegates in 2017 before being elected to the Senate in 2023.
“I look forward to continuing to work to address our housing crisis, the challenge of climate change, and the damaging impacts of the Trump administration on the immigrant families, LGBTQ+ Virginians, and federal employees who call Alexandria home,” McPike said in a statement after winning the Democratic nomination for the seat in a special primary held on Jan. 20.
McPike, a longtime LGBTQ rights advocate, has served for the past 13 years as chief of staff for gay U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) and has remained in that position during his tenure on the Alexandria Council. He said he will resign from that position before taking office in the House of Delegates.
Local
Local LGBTQ groups, activists to commemorate Black History Month
Rayceen Pendarvis to moderate Dupont Underground panel on Sunday
LGBTQ groups in D.C. and elsewhere plan to use Black History Month as an opportunity to commemorate and celebrate Black lives and experiences.
Team Rayceen Productions has no specific events planned, but co-founder Rayceen Pendarvis will attend many functions around D.C. this month.
Pendarvis, a longtime voice in the LGBTQ community in D.C. moderated a panel at Dupont Underground on Feb. 8. The event, “Every (Body) Wants to Be a Showgirl,” will feature art from Black burlesque artists from around the country. Pendarvis on Feb. 23 will attend the showing of multimedia play at the Lincoln Theatre that commemorates the life of James Baldwin.
Equality Virginia plans to prioritize Black voices through a weekly online series, and community-based story telling. The online digital series will center Black LGBTQ voices, specifically trailblazers and activists, and contemporary Black queer and transgender people.
Narissa Rahaman, Equality Virginia’s executive director, stressed the importance of the Black queer community to the overall Pride movement, and said “Equality Virginia is proud to center those voices in our work this month and beyond.”
The Capital Pride Alliance, which hosts Pride events in D.C., has an alliance with the Center for Black Equity, which brings Black Pride to D.C. over Memorial Day weekend. The National LGBTQ Task Force has no specific Black History Month events planned, but plans to participate in online collaborations.
Cathy Renna, the Task Force’s director of communications, told the Washington Blade the organization remains committed to uplifting Black voices. “Our priority is keeping this at the forefront everyday,” she said.
The D.C. LGBTQ+ Community Center is also hosting a series of Black History Month events.
The D.C. Public Library earlier this year launched “Freedom and Resistance,” an exhibition that celebrates Black History Month and Martin Luther King Jr. It will remain on display until the middle of March at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library at 901 G St., N.W.
District of Columbia
U.S. Attorney’s Office drops hate crime charge in anti-gay assault
Case remains under investigation and ‘further charges’ could come
D.C. police announced on Feb. 9 that they had arrested two days earlier on Feb. 7 a Germantown, Md., man on a charge of simple assault with a hate crime designation after the man allegedly assaulted a gay man at 14th and Q Streets, N.W., while using “homophobic slurs.”
But D.C. Superior Court records show that prosecutors with the Office of the U.S. Attorney for D.C., which prosecutes D.C. violent crime cases, charged the arrested man only with simple assault without a hate crime designation.
In response to a request by the Washington Blade for the reason why the hate crime designation was dropped, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office provided this response: “We continue to investigate this matter and make no mistake: should the evidence call for further charges, we will not hesitate to charge them.”
In a statement announcing the arrest in this case, D.C. police stated, “On Saturday, February 7, 2026, at approximately 7:45 p.m. the victim and suspect were in the 1500 block of 14th Street, Northwest. The suspect requested a ‘high five’ from the victim. The victim declined and continued walking,” the statement says.
“The suspect assaulted the victim and used homophobic slurs,” the police statement continues. “The suspect was apprehended by responding officers.”
It adds that 26-year-old Dean Edmundson of Germantown, Md. “was arrested and charged with Simple Assault (Hate/Bias).” The statement also adds, “A designation as a hate crime by MPD does not mean that prosecutors will prosecute it as a hate crime.”
Under D.C.’s Bias Related Crime Act of 1989, penalties for crimes motivated by prejudice against individuals based on race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, and homelessness can be enhanced by a court upon conviction by one and a half times greater than the penalty of the underlying crime.
Prosecutors in the past both in D.C. and other states have said they sometimes decide not to include a hate crime designation in assault cases if they don’t think the evidence is sufficient to obtain a conviction by a jury. In some instances, prosecutors have said they were concerned that a skeptical jury might decide to find a defendant not guilty of the underlying assault charge if they did not believe a motive of hate was involved.
A more detailed arrest affidavit filed by D.C. police in Superior Court appears to support the charge of a hate crime designation.
“The victim stated that they refused to High-Five Defendant Edmondson, which, upon that happening, Defendant Edmondson started walking behind both the victim and witness, calling the victim, “bald, ugly, and gay,” the arrest affidavit states.
“The victim stated that upon being called that, Defendant Edmundson pushed the victim with both hands, shoving them, causing the victim to feel the force of the push,” the affidavit continues. “The victim stated that they felt offended and that they were also gay,” it says.
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