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Comings & Goings
Fanning joins CNAS board
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].
Eric Fanning (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Congratulations to Eric Fanning who has joined the Center for a New American Security’s (CNAS) board of advisors. The board is comprised of prominent leaders from the private sector, academia, the military, and government who help inform the Center’s research and expand its community of interest.
Fanning was the 22nd Secretary of the Army, appointed by President Obama on May 18, 2016. He is the first person to have held senior presidential appointments in three military departments. As Secretary of the Army, he had statutory responsibility for all matters relating to the United States Army, its $147 billion budget, and its 1.4 million people. Fanning previously served as chief of staff to the Secretary of Defense. From April 2013 until February 2015, he served as the 24th Under Secretary of the Air Force (the No. 2 civilian position in the Air Force) where he oversaw an annual budget of more than $110 billion while serving as co-chair of the top Air Force corporate decision making body, the Air Force Council, and also led the Air Force Space Board, the Air Force Energy Council and the Force Management and Development Council. From June 2013 through December 2013 he simultaneously served as Acting Secretary of the Air Force. Prior to that he served as the Deputy Under Secretary of the Navy/Deputy Chief Management Officer.
Congratulations also to Paul C. Hurdle III who has a new position with WilmerHale as senior conflicts attorney. “In this role I will work on compliance by the firm with the Rules of Professional Conduct and other ethical standards, especially the management of conflicts of interest in connection with the intake of new matters by the firm’s lawyers and the lateral entry of new lawyers into the firm,” Hurdle said.
Prior to joining WilmerHale Hurdle was a partner with McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP. He is the chair of the Legal Ethics Committee, District Of Columbia Bar. He volunteers with Whitman-Walker Health, Legal Services Division, and serves on its board of directors and handled numerous pro bono asylum cases. He also volunteers with Lambda Legal. He has a bachelor’s degree from the University of VA College of the Arts and Sciences and his J.D. is from the University Of Virginia School Of Law.
And congratulations also to Russell Roybal who has announced he’s leaving the National LGBTQ Task Force to return to California. He will become San Francisco AIDS Foundation’s Chief Advancement Officer, leading the organization’s marketing, communications and fundraising efforts.
Roybal is currently the Task Force’s deputy executive director. He manages the organization’s day-to-day operations and directs the organization’s policy and programmatic work, including the National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change. He has filled a number of roles at the Task Force, including deputy executive director of external relations and director of movement building where he managed the organization’s capacity building and training efforts.
Russell Roybal (Photo courtesy Russell Roybal)
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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