Local
Smithsonian acquires Academy drag group’s archives
Museum will house photos, program books
Members of the Academy joined Mame Dennis, center front, for the organization’s 50th anniversary in 2011. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History announced on Tuesday that it has acquired through a donation the archives of the Academy of Washington, D.C., an LGBT organization that produced nationally recognized extravaganza drag pageants.
“The Academy was a leading private organization in the Washington, D.C., metro area presenting, mentoring and championing female and male impersonation in the nation’s capital for 54 years,” a statement released by the history museum says.
“The collection of 16 boxes containing photos, program books, newsletters and organizational history will be housed in the museum’s Archives Center,” the statement says.
Valeska Hilbig, a spokesperson for the American History Museum, said the museum has no immediate plans for displaying some of the Academy’s archival material in an exhibit. She noted that only 2 percent of the museum’s vast collections are on display at any given time.
But she said like all of the museum’s collections, the Academy of Washington, D.C. collection will be available to researchers and authors who may wish to explore its documents and other materials that provide a rich history of one aspect of the LGBT community.
“The collection expands the breadth of the museum’s entertainment and LGBT collections and adds another component to how these artifacts document history and experience,” said Bob Horton, chair of the museum’s Archives Center.
“The collection includes programs from 54 years of ‘Golden Boy’ awards (formerly known as the Oscars, a take on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences), the Miss Gaye Universe (D.C.) and Miss Gaye America (D.C.) pageants, the events of member houses and all of the performance events of the organization, as well as internal newsletters and organizational history,” according to the statement released by the museum.
Members of the Academy’s board, which donated the archival material to the history museum, announced in 2015 that the organization was disbanding after having the distinction of being D.C.’s oldest continuously operating LGBT organization with a 54-year history.
The announcement that the group was ending its operations came eight months after one of its two co-founders, Carl Rizzi, died at the age of 74. Rizzi, who was known by his drag performance name of Mame Dennis, served as president of the Academy from 1973 until the time of his death in February 2015.
As part of its LGBT collections, which date back to the 19th century, the American History Museum currently has on display two exhibits that include protest picket signs prepared by the late D.C. gay rights pioneer Frank Kameny for 1960s-era protests outside the White House. One of the picket signs is on display in the museum’s The American Presidency exhibition and the other is part of its The American Democracy exhibition.
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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