Local
Barry Smythers-Wieczorek dies at 34
Memorial set for Wednesday for beloved hairstylist
Barry Smythers-Wieczorek, left, with husband Tom Wieczorek. (Photo courtesy Facebook)
Barry Smythers-Wieczorek, 34, a D.C. hairstylist, sports enthusiast and advocate for AIDS-related causes, died May 21 in Washington. Friends said he took his own life.
“It is with a heavy heart that we announce that on Saturday afternoon our beloved friend and family member Barry Smythers sent himself home to heaven,” a message posted by friends on a Facebook page says.
Father Rich Vitale, a priest at D.C.’s Church Of The Holy City and longtime friend of Smythers-Wieczorek, called Smythers-Wieczorek a warm and caring person who “touched the lives of every single person he met.”
Vitale said in addition to his role as a popular hairstylist at the Logan 14 Aveda Salon and Spa on 14th Street, N.W., Smythers-Wieczorek was an avid participant in the city’s gay sports scene, especially the Stonewall Kickball Club.
He said Smythers-Wieczorek also was active with the AIDS LifeCycle bicycle riding events, which raise money for AIDS-related causes.
According to Vitale, Smythers-Wieczorek was born and raised in La Plata, Md. Smythers-Wieczorek’s Facebook page says he graduated from Henry E. Lackey High School in Indian Head, Md.
On Facebook, Smythers-Wieczorek wrote that an important milestone in his life happened in 2007, when he met Thomas Wieczorek, to whom he became engaged in 2009 and married in 2011.
Molly Ryan, manager of the Logan 14 Aveda Salon and Spa, said Smythers-Wieczorek attended the Graham Webb International Academy of Hair in Arlington, Va., and became a licensed hair stylist in 2007 or 2008. She said he worked at other D.C. hair salons before joining the staff of Logan 14 in 2015.
“He just truly was someone to light up any room he walked into,” Ryan said. “He was just so generous and thoughtful with everybody,” she said. “His clients had such an amazing relationship with him. He was passionate about his craft. He was inspirational and a leader to others within our salon.”
Ryan said Smythers-Wieczorek was also highly committed to social justice and public health causes, including fundraising for AIDS prevention efforts, public education and research.
“He definitely brought that passion to his co-workers and he got everybody involved with fundraising,” she said.
“He was just pure joy and love and just a wonderful, wonderful person,” Vitale said. “He will be missed terribly because he was just so loved.”
A celebration of life/memorial service for Smythers-Wieczorek is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, May 25, at Church Of The Holy City at 1611 16th St., N.W., beginning at 4 p.m. A funeral Mass will be held at the church at 6 p.m. immediately following the memorial service.
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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