Local
City pushes D.C. bid for Gay Games
City faces competition from Hong Kong, Guadalajara
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has pledged full city support for the Gay Games bid. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
The leader of the city’s official convention and sports authority has pledged to wage an aggressive campaign in support of D.C.’s bid to host the 2022 Gay Games, the quadrennial LGBT athletics competition that draws as many as 15,000 competitors and between 80,000 and 100,000 spectators.
Max Brown, chairman of the board of Events D.C., which owns and operates more than a dozen D.C. sports and events facilities, including RFK Stadium and the Washington Convention Center, said the organization has already lined up locations where most of the Gay Games events would be held should D.C. win its bid to host the competition.
Last week, the Federation of Gay Games, the organization that selects the host city, announced that D.C. had been picked as one of three finalists to host the Games in July 2022. The other two cities in contention are Hong Kong and Guadalajara, Mexico.
“We’re just really excited about being part of the team pursuing the Gay Games,” Brown told the Washington Blade. “We have a lot of experience working in large-scale events like this, not only in the city but across the region,” he said. “We’re hopeful that we’ll be selected.”
Brent Minor, chair of the Gay Games Washington, D.C. 2022 Bid Committee, said Brown and Events D.C. have been doing a “great job” in working with the committee in support of the bid.
He noted that Events D.C. and its sister organization, Destination D.C., which serves as the city’s lead promoter of conventions and sporting and entertainment events, are listed as partner organizations in the official bid for the Games.
According to Minor, the two organizations will provide support for the bid committee in May when representatives of the Federation of Gay Games come to D.C. for an official site visit of all of the locations where Gay Games events would be held.
“The delegation will visit and inspect all proposed sites for Games events, evaluate the logistics for the Games, and appraise the level of community support for the bid,” Minor said in a statement.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and the D.C. City Council have also pledged full city support for the bid, including financial support.
Last October, Council members Anita Bonds (D-At-Large) and Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) introduced a Council resolution supporting the city’s bid for the Games.
“D.C. looks forward to welcoming LGBTQ athletes from around the world and I truly hope the committee selects D.C. because of our rich history of support for equal rights and world renowned cultural attractions,” Bonds said in a statement.
The FGG is scheduled to make its final decision selecting the host city at its Annual General Assembly meeting in Paris in October.
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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