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Comings & Goings
New leadership for the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus
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].
Congratulations to Heine Lund who has a new position in customer service with Colorado Grand Vacations in Breckenridge, Colo. Lund said, “I am thrilled to be working in the mountains where it is truly God’s country.” Many will know Lund from his years of living in D.C. and Rehoboth Beach, Del. He has always been an avid skier and has worked in many different areas but one of the most interesting was as instructor with the Twin Cities Trapeze Center.
Prior to moving to Colorado he worked in retail as a sales consultant with Allen Edmunds. He continues his work on a contract basis as a personal trainer and Stretch Zone Practitioner. For 14 years he was a flight attendant with Delta Airlines.
Congratulations also to Philip Shelly who begins his new position as a staff assistant to Congresswoman Angie Craig (D-Minn.). On starting the position Shelly said, “I am proud to work for the first LGBTQ mom in Congress and I thank everyone who has helped me to earn this opportunity.” He moved to this position after completing an internship with Congresswoman Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.).
Prior to that he worked as in intern with the Human Rights Campaign in the Major Gifts Office. He has also worked for Correct The Record as Digital Media Manager. While in school Shelly worked with the Galesburg Downtown Council in Galesburg, Ill., where he organized a committee of local government and business leaders to discuss expansion of access to recycling facilities in the downtown and designed a new website and refined its content to improve availability of information to members of the Special Service Area, board members, and grant applicants. He graduated cum laude from Loyola University Chicago with a bachelor’s in history and political science.
Congratulations also to Shawn Gaylord, the new executive director of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus. The mission of the caucus is to work for LGBT rights, the repeal of discriminatory laws, the elimination of hate-motivated violence, and improved health and well-being for all persons, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. The caucus serves as a resource for members of Congress, their staffs, and the public on LGBT issues. Membership in the LGBT Equality Caucus is open to any member who is willing to advance LGBT rights, regardless of their sexual identity or orientation. It has historically been co-chaired by every openly LGBT member of the House. In February 2016 the caucus formed the Equality PAC to support candidates running for federal office who are LGBT or seek to advance LGBT rights. Upon accepting the position Gaylord said, “I am excited to be stepping into this role at such an important moment. The expanded leadership of the Equality Caucus and the momentum behind important legislation such as The Equality Act make this an exciting time to be engaged in this work.”
Prior to joining the Equality Caucus he worked for a number of different organizations including PL+USas legislative director where he worked on paid family leave issues. He worked for Human Rights First as Advocacy Counsel and for the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network in a number of positions including Public Policy Director.
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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