Local
Comings & Goings
Rosenberg lands fellowship promoting affordable housing
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]. We also invite LGBTQ+ college students to share their successes with us. If you have been elected to a student government position, landed an internship, or are graduating and beginning your career with a great job, let us know so we can share your success.
Congratulations to Jeremy Rosenberg who begins his appointment as an Excelsior Fellow Attorney with New York State Homes and Community Renewal working on preserving and creating affordable housing, homelessness prevention policies, and poverty reduction initiatives. It’s a two-year fellowship in the legal department of the agency where he will be working mainly on policy.
Rosenberg’s experience includes work as a pro-bono scholar and full-time Clinical Extern for JASA, legal services for the elderly in Queens, N.Y. He was a summer associate in the Education Law Group with Lewis Johs Avallone Aviles, LLP New York, a Legal and Legislative Fellow in the office of NYC Council member Benjamin J. Kallos, and worked as an outreach volunteer to the LGBT community for Hillary for America.
Rosenberg received his bachelor’s degree in International Affairs with a concentration in International Politics from the George Washington University, Elliott School of International Affairs in D.C. and his Juris Doctor from the CUNY School of Law, New York, where he was in the New York State Pro Bono Scholars program.
Congratulations also to Larry Gamache who has started a new company, Bluepenpartners.com. Gamache said, “I started Blue Pen Partners to help companies and organizations better define their strategy and provide the tactical communications support necessary to achieve business goals. All too often I have found really talented people, with amazing ideas, who are struggling to get the word out. They are often understandably so focused on making their vision become a reality they don’t have the time to tell their story. We offer them expert guidance with brand strategy development, public relations, marketing communications, employee branding and social media support.”
Gamache is a senior marketing professional with more than 20 years’ experience leading communications and brand positioning for national corporate, non-profit and government organizations. Strong bias-to-action coupled with a dedication to data-driven decision making has led to his track record of creative problem solving and proven business results.
For the past nearly 15 years, Gamache successfully managed media relations and developed corporate messaging efforts at CARFAX. Prior to that he worked for a number of companies as an account manager and supervisor including Medialink/US Newswire, Ketchum Public Relations, and Porter Novelli. Gamache began his career working at Whitman-Walker Clinic helping bring the organization’s lifesaving message and services to young men throughout the region. He earned his bachelor’s in education from George Mason University.
From left, Jeremy Rosenberg and Larry Gamache (Photos courtesy of the subjects)
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.
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
JD Vance to travel to Hungary next week
Pam Bondi ousted as attorney general
VIDEO: Gay journalist detained for booing Trumps at ‘Chicago’ opening night
Idaho Gov. signs harshest anti-trans bathroom bill in the country
‘Out for McDuffie’ event held at D.C. gay bar
‘Jonah’ an undeniably compelling but unusual memory play
The Oscar-losing performance that’s too good to miss
Thousands attend ‘No Kings’ protests in D.C.
