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Comings & Goings
Chavez wins Latino GLBT History Project award
The ‘Comings & Goings’ column chronicles important life changes of Blade readers.
The Comings & 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].
Yesenia Chavez
Congratulations to LGBT Congressional Staff Association’s Yesenia Chavez who received the Latino GLBT History Project’s Mujeres en el Movimiento Award.
The Latino GLBT History Project is a non-profit, volunteer-led organization whose mission is to investigate, collect, preserve and educate the public about the history, culture, heritage, arts, social and rich contributions of the Latino GLBT community in metropolitan Washington, D.C. Mujeres en el Movimiento is an annual event coordinated by LHP’s Women’s committee to recognize and celebrate Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Latina activists who have made significant contributions to empower and increase the visibility of LGBT Latinas and Latinos.
Todd Sloves, president of the LGBT Congressional Staff Association said, “We’re so proud of Yesenia for this well-deserved recognition. In her time serving on our board she has worked hard to expand our organization’s diversity and served as a mentor to numerous junior LGBT staff of color.”
On receiving the award, Chavez said, “I’m grateful to the Latino GLBT History Project for selecting me as a recipient of this distinguished honor. As vice president of the LGBT Congressional Staff Association and organizer of Latinas in the House, I have strived to build a pipeline for queer and women staffers on the Hill. I am honored to work on behalf of my community and to push for space for LGBT people and Latinas on the Hill.
Chavez has taken a leading role in organizing events focused on creating a safe space for women and queer people of color, including an annual “Galentine’s Day” breakfast, regular Queer People of Color (QPOC) and women’s events, and various guest speaker events.
Chavez currently works in the Office of Congressman Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) as a legislative assistant. She has worked for the Harris County Democratic Party Houston, and for Amigos de las Américas Perez Zeledón, Costa Rica as Associate Project Director and Project Supervisor. She holds a bachelor’s in Political Science and Liberal Studies from the University of Houston.
Congratulations also to Randy Downs, on his appointment to the Advisory Committee for the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs. Randy is also an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner on ANC 2B05.
Downs, a native of rural Missouri, started advocating for social and environmental causes at a young age. Through his early work as a community organizer he successfully helped elect progressive candidates across the state and advanced initiatives to strengthen labor standards and campaign finance rules, improve safety and healthcare, and lift up young and working families.
He moved to D.C. in 2011 to join the Sierra Club where he is currently a campaign representative. In his role, Downs has trained thousands of community organizers across the country, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars successfully fighting to build grassroots support for policies to combat climate change and protect the health of our communities. Three years ago Randy was diagnosed with cancer and as he tells it, “I fought my way to remission using the same motivation and focus I use in my advocacy.”
Downs lives in Dupont Circle with his longtime partner Dylan and volunteers at many organizations including Whitman-Walker Health, the Smith Cancer Center for Healing and the Arts, and the DC Center for the LGBT Community. He earned his bachelor’s from Southeast MO State University where he graduated cum laude.
Randy Downs
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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