Local
Baltimore mayor honors LGBTQ leaders at reception
Celebrating ‘42 years of rallying together’
Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh (center) with this year’s Pride honorees. (Blade photo by Steve Charing)
About 50 people attended a reception at City Hall on June 12 in which Baltimore Mayor Catherine F. Pugh bestowed mayoral medallions upon leaders of the LGBTQ community. The event, which kicked off the final week before Baltimore Pride, was the first LGBTQ awards ceremony to take place at City Hall in connection with the annual celebration.
After preliminary introductions that included Police Commissioner Kevin Davis, the 2017 Queen of Pride Dee A. Diamond, and executive director of the Center for Black Equity Baltimore Carlton Smith, Pugh noted “42 years of rallying together” in displaying the mayor’s proclamation celebrating Pride month.
“The more we understand that that we have more in common than we are different, the better we will be,” Pugh said. “LGBT residents are invaluable to our city. How wonderful your contributions have been to our society.”
Pugh presented the medallions to the following:
Lillian Amaya, co-founder of IRIS (Individuality, Respect, Integrity, Sexuality), an organization that promotes unity among the various Baltimore Latino LGBTQ communities; Sgt. Kevin Bailey, a gay officer serving as the Baltimore Police Department’s LGBT liaison; Ian James, who works with STAR TRACK, an organization which seeks to improve the health of youth and young adults in the city and the state; and Del. Maggie McIntosh of Baltimore’s 43rd legislative district, the first openly LGBTQ member of the state legislature and who has been in the forefront of the movement to expand LGBTQ rights in Maryland.
In addition, medallions were given to: Mark McLaurin, the political director for SEIU Maryland and D.C. and is co-chair of Police Commissioner Davis’ LGBT Advisory Committee; Merrick Moise, the LGBTQ Community Liaison for the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office; Kenneth Morrison, co-executive director of the GLBT Community Center of Baltimore and Central Maryland (GLCCB); Ava Pipitone, executive director of the Baltimore Transgender Alliance, the only peer-run transgender advocacy organization in Baltimore; and Steve Ziger, who serves on several boards including the Baltimore Community Foundation where he is co-chair for the LGBTQ focus group.
“I am incredibly honored to receive this award,” Merrick Moise, the only transgender African-American man who was a delegate to the 2016 Democratic National Convention, told the Blade.
“The City of Baltimore is showing its commitment to our community. We have a long way to go but we are making strides,” he said.
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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