A 21-year-old man has pleaded guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct in connection with an Aug. 17 incident in which five juveniles and one adult were arrested for allegedly targeting three women for harassment on a street in Rehoboth Beach based on their perception of the victims’ sexual orientation.

Lt. Mark Sweet, a spokesperson for the Rehoboth Beach Police Department, said the adult suspect in the case, Jerome Charleston, was sentenced to a fine of $100 plus court costs at a Sept. 18 arraignment in which he pleaded guilty to a single count of disorderly conduct.

A statement released by Rehoboth police at the time of the incident says it occurred on Saturday, Aug. 17, at 2 a.m. at Baltimore Avenue and Second Street. The statement says three women flagged down a police officer after a vehicle drove past them and then came to a stop.

According to the statement, five juveniles exited the vehicle and approached the women, making statements that their behavior in public was not appropriate. During the exchange, the statement continues, one of the juveniles fired an Airsoft gun at the women and all five returned to the vehicle and fled the area.

Airsoft guns are replica guns designed to shoot non-metallic projectiles. No injuries were reported in the incident.

The police statement says officers in nearby Dewey Beach located the vehicle and apprehended the five juveniles and an adult driving the vehicle.

“Once in custody, it was determined that the only reason the suspects stopped to confront the victims was due to their perception of the victims’ sexual orientation,” the Rehoboth police statement says.

The police statement says three of the juveniles arrested in the case, two of whom were 15 years old and the other 14, were from Rehoboth Beach. It says another youth, age 14, was from nearby Lewes, and the other, at age 15, was from nearby Blades, Del.

The statement says each of the juveniles was charged with Aggravated Menacing, a felony; and the misdemeanor counts of Offensive Touching, Conspiracy in the Third Degree, Disorderly Conduct, and a Hate Crime.

Charleston, the only adult in the case, was charged with Disorderly Conduct, which is a misdemeanor.

The Washington Blade couldn’t immediately determine the status of the case against the juveniles. Police spokesperson Sweet said those cases were still pending and Rehoboth Police could not comment further on those cases.

In most jurisdictions, including Delaware, juvenile cases are kept confidential and are not part of the public court records.

President Joe Biden thanked a crowd of HIV/AIDS treatment advocates and community members on the South Lawn of the White House on Sunday for “the honor of our lives to serve in the White House, the people’s house, your house.” 

“We felt a special obligation to use this sacred place to ensure everyone is seen and the story of America is heard,” the president continued. “That’s why we’re all together here at this World AIDS Day.”

The president and first lady gave their remarks at a White House commemoration of World AIDS Day. They were joined by activist Jeanne White-Ginder. Panels of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt were on display on the lawn behind them as they spoke to guests.

A team of volunteers worked in the morning to assemble the panels in preparation for public viewing. One of the volunteers, Jerry Suarez, told the Blade that he had lost both his brother and father to the epidemic.

“I came here to bring my dad and brother here,” Suarez told the Blade as he motioned toward the panels on the quilt. 

“I couldn’t be prouder of the work the NAMES Project has done in taking care of my father and taking care of my brother,” continued Suarez. “I feel like this is the moment we’ve always wanted — we wanted for the longest time to have a sitting president to actually even notice us, and in ’96 when the Clintons came to the display, that was the first time . . . but we never could quite get in the door on the other side of the fence.”

The AIDS Memorial Quilt is overseen by the National AIDS Memorial. Sections of the quilt have been displayed throughout the world. According to the National AIDS Memorial, the last display of the entire AIDS Memorial Quilt was in October of 1996 when it covered the National Mall. The quilt is considered the world’s largest community folk art piece, with nearly 50,000 panels representing more than 100,000 names.

This marks the first time that panels of the quilt have been displayed on the South Lawn of the White House. President Barack Obama displayed a section of the quilt in the East Wing of the White House in 2012.

“As I look at this beautiful quilt, with its bright colors, the names in big block letters, renderings of lives and loves, I see it as a mom,” Jill Biden said. “And I think of the mothers who stitched their pain into a patchwork panel so that the world would remember their child. Not as a victim of a vicious disease, but as a son who had played in a high school jazz band, as a child who proudly grew up to serve our nation in uniform, as the daughter whose favorite holiday was Christmas.”

“Jeanne,” the first lady turned to White-Ginder. “I know you didn’t choose the life of an activist, but when Ryan got sick 40 years ago, you stepped up in the fight against discrimination and helped the world see this disease more clearly.”

White-Ginder is the mother of Ryan White, for whom the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program (RWHAP) is named. RWHAP is the largest federal program focused on HIV, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration.

White-Ginder said, “In 1990 . . . shortly after Ryan died, Sen. [Ted] Kennedy asked me if I would come to Washington to explain to senators how vital it was to pass the AIDS bill, which had been recently named after my son, called the Ryan White CARE Act. He said that I was something much more powerful than a lobbyist: I was a mother.”

“The first senator I met getting off the elevator at the Capitol was Sen. Joe Biden,” White-Ginder continued. “With tears in his eyes, he told me that he had lost his child, and that the only way that he had found to deal with . . . the grief was through a purpose.”

White-Ginder said, “In many ways, personal grief has fueled the AIDS movement since the beginning. Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have supported Ryan’s bill, and as a result, countless lives have been saved.”

President Biden thanked retiring associate administrator for HIV/AIDS Bureau Health Resources and Services Administration Dr. Laura Cheever, as well as former chief medical adviser to the president Anthony Fauci, and the recently deceased A. Cornelius Baker for their contributions to the fight against HIV/AIDS.

President Biden lauded the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), launched by George W. Bush, as the “single largest investment of any nation in the world to take on a single disease, saving more than 26 million lives so far.”

As a senator, Biden helped lead the bipartisan effort to authorize PEPFAR in 2003. Biden reauthorized PEPFAR last year and announced on Sunday’s World AIDS Day commemoration that he is “going to call on Congress to pass a five year PEPFAR reauthorization to sustain these gains made globally.”

The president promoted his administration’s National HIV/AIDS Strategy and discussed access to treatment and prevention as well as fighting stigma and discrimination.

Finally, the president announced that before the end of his term, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will update its guidance on HIV care, “encouraging states to adopt the best practices using the latest science and technology.”

Guests were invited to view the display of panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt on the South Lawn of the White House at the end of the program.

[See photos from the event here.]

SLOVENIA

The Constitutional Court has issued a ruling that laws barring same-sex couples and single women from accessing assisted reproduction are unconstitutional discrimination. 

The court has left the laws in place while giving parliament one year to bring the laws governing assisted reproduction into compliance with the constitution. 

The Slovenian LGBTQ advocacy group LEGEBITRA celebrated the ruling in a post on its web site.

“The decision of the Constitutional Court is a victory for all those who wanted to start a family in Slovenia and were unfairly deprived of this opportunity in the past. Rainbow (and single-parent) families are part of our society, and their children are part of the community in the country in which they live and grow up. It is only fitting that their story begins here,” the post says.

The Treatment of Infertility and in Vitro Fertilization Procedures Act has had its restrictions on single women and same-sex couples from fertility treatment targeted by progressive legislators since it was introduced in 2000. 

Amendments that would have allowed single women to access in vitro fertilization were passed in 2001 but were immediately put to a citizen-initiated referendum, which voted them down. 

Since then, the former Yugoslav republic has undergone a number of progressive changes, including joining the European Union in 2004 and gradually expanding LGBTQ rights.

In 2020, a group of legislators from the Left party asked the Constitutional Court to review the law, and the following year, their request was joined by the state’s Advocate for the Principal of Equality. 

The court spent more than four years deliberating the appeal, during which time it also struck down laws banning same-sex marriage in 2022. Parliament later amended the law so that same-sex couples enjoy all rights of marriage, including adoption, but left the ban on assisted reproduction in place.

The Slovenia Times reports that the ruling was welcomed by the governing coalition, which includes the Left party. The government has pledged to move quickly to implement the ruling.

“This corrects one of the gravest injustices done to women by right-wing politics and the Catholic Church in Slovenia, who denied women the right to become mothers,” the Left said.

The case was brought by a group of left-leaning MPs four years ago — but perhaps the delay is related to the fact that in that time, the court also struck down the ban on same-sex marriage in 2022. 

RUSSIA

Russian authorities raided three nightclubs in Moscow over the weekend as part of the state’s deepening crackdown on LGBTQ people and expression, Radio Free Europe reports.

The raids took place late Saturday night and early Sunday morning at the Mono, Arma, and Simach nightclubs in the capital. All three clubs have been known to host themed events for LGBTQ clientele. 

According to Russian state-owned media outlet TASS and several Telegram channels, patrons, and employees of the clubs were forced to lie on the floor with their hands behind their heads before they were carted away in police wagons. Patrons and workers had their phones, laptops, and cameras seized and documents inspected

It’s not yet known what prompted the raids, although Russian authorities frequently claim to be inspecting for illegal substances and drug users.

Russian authorities have carried out several raids on LGBTQ establishments since the passage of a law banning positive portrayals or information about queer people in 2022. Last year, the Russian Supreme Court ruled that the “international LGBT movement” is an “extremist organization” and granted a request from the Ministry of Justice to ban it from the country. 

Russia’s crackdown on LGBTQ rights has inspired copycat legislation among its neighbors, notably in Georgia, Belarus, and Kyrgyzstan.

CANADA

A small town in Northern Ontario has been fined C$10,700 (approximately $10,000) for its refusal to issue a Pride Month declaration or raise the rainbow flag.

The town of Emo population 1,300, which sits on the border with Minnesota about 200 miles northwest of Duluth, had been requested to issue the Pride declaration by Borderlands Pride in 2020 and raise the flag for one week, but the town council refused in a 3-2 vote, prompting a years-long legal battle. 

Last week, that came to an end as the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal found the town and its mayor guilty of discrimination and ordered the town to pay Borderlands Pride C$10,000 in compensation, and the mayor to pay an additional C$5,000 ($3,559.92).

“We didn’t pursue this because of the money. We pursued this because we were treated in a discriminatory fashion by a municipal government, and municipalities have obligations under the Ontario Human Rights Code not to discriminate in the provision of a service,” Doug Judson, a lawyer and board member of Borderlands Pride, told CBC News.

The tribunal also ordered the mayor to take a Human Rights 101 training course offered by the Ontario Human Rights Commission within 30 days. 

Mayor Harold McQuaker has not commented publicly on the ruling.

CHINA

Calls for Hong Kong government’s to officially recognize same-sex unions have intensified after the city’s Court of Final Appeal issued rulings last week that affirmed lower court rulings that found same-sex couples have equal rights to inheritance and social housing as heterosexual couples.

The ruling was in line with a similar ruling issued last year by the city’s top court, in which the city was ordered to provide legal recognition for same-sex couples by September 2025. 

The new ruling with facilitate same-sex couples’ access to public housing, a vital need in one of the world’s most housing-crunched cities. The ruling also affirms that same-sex spouses can inherit public housing from a deceased spouse. 

In both cases, the ruling only applies to spouses who have legally married overseas, because Hong Kong does not yet have a way for same-sex couples to legally register their relationships.

The nearest places where same-sex Hong Kong citizens can marry are Australia and the U.S. territory of Guam, with Thailand becoming available in the new year. Although same-sex marriage is legal in nearby Taiwan, residency requirements may block access there.

Although legislators have been slow to act on demands for civil unions or same-sex marriage, Hong Kongese same-sex couples have gradually gained access to more rights through court actions. 

The Court of Final Appeal has previously ordered the government to have foreign marriages recognized for immigration purposes, to allow same-sex couples to file their taxes jointly, and to stepchild adoption.