Local
Nats player apologizes for anti-gay tweets
Trea Turner wrote messages as teenager
Trea Turner apologized for anti-gay tweets he sent when he was 18. (Photo courtesy MLB)
Washington Nationals shortstop Trea Turner issued an apology on July 29, after anti-gay slurs he posted in several tweets in 2011 and 2012 when he was 18 years old and playing college baseball at North Carolina State University resurfaced.
According to media reports, including a report in the LGBT blog Out Sports, Turner used the word “faggot” in four tweets sent in response to messages from acquaintances in which it was unclear whether they were intended as insults or were used in jest.
Regardless of the intent and the fact they were made when Turner, now 25, was a teenager, Nationals General Manager Mike Rizzo issued a statement calling the tweets “inexcusable” but noting that Turner has taken full responsibility for his actions.
“There are no excuses for my insensitive and offensive language on Twitter,” he said in a separate statement released by the Nationals. “I am sincerely sorry for those tweets and apologize wholeheartedly. I believe people who know me understand those regrettable actions do not reflect my values or who I am,” he said.
“But I understand the hurtful nature of such language and am sorry to have brought any negative light to the Nationals organization, myself or the game I love,” he said.
News of Turner’s six- and seven-year-old tweets came as a surprise to people familiar with his participation and support of Major League Baseball’s “Shred Hate” anti-bullying program. The Washington Blade reported in its sports issue last month that Turner has worked with gay former MLB player Billy Bean, who coordinates the Shred Hate program, in speaking with school kids about how bullying is harmful and should be stopped.
Earlier this year, Turner appeared in a video public service announcement speaking out against bullying, which has been shown on the large video screen at Nationals Stadium during games.
In a development that started MLB officials, Turner became the third MLB player in the past month discovered to have posted anti-gay tweets in years prior to their joining MLB teams. The other two are Atlanta Braves pitcher Sean Newcomb and Milwaukee Brewers relief pitcher Josh Hader. In one of his offending tweets Newcomb used a racial slur as well as an anti-gay slur.
“The Nationals organization does not condone discrimination in any form, and his comments do not in any way reflect the values of our club,” Rizzo said of Turner’s tweets. “Trea has been a good teammate and model citizen in our clubhouse, and these comments are not indicative of how he as conducted himself while part of our team.”
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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