Local
D.C. officials to hold ‘LGBTQ Nightlife Roundtable’
Promoting work of new Office of Nightlife and Culture
The recently created D.C. Mayor’s Office of Nightlife and Culture has invited owners, managers, and employees of the city’s gay bars to an “LGBTQ Nightlife Roundtable Discussion” scheduled for May 14 at the Adams Morgan gay bar Pitchers.
Pitchers owner David Perruzza said members of the D.C. Police LGBT Liaison Unit, which works with the Office of Nightlife and Culture, approached him and asked if Pitchers would consider hosting the event.
“We’re very close with them and they work with us, so they asked if we can do it and I said sure,” Perruzza told the Blade.
Perruzza was referring to the routine D.C. police interaction with bars, restaurants and nightclubs in the bustling Adams Morgan nightlife corridor that includes 18th Street and Columbia Road, N.W.
At the request of Mayor Muriel Bowser, the D.C. Council last year approved legislation creating the Office of Nightlife and Culture and a separate Commission on Nightlife to “promote efficiencies for the District’s after-hours economy by serving as a central point of contact between D.C. government, the nightlife industry, and District residents,” according to a write-up on the office’s website.
Among those expected to facilitate the LGBTQ Roundtable at Pitchers is Shawn Townsend, a former investigator at the D.C. Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration (ABRA), who Bowser named as director of the Office of Nightlife and Culture.
Townsend couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. People familiar with the office’s recent activities say Townsend has been holding similar meetings with owners and managers of bars, restaurants and nightclubs throughout the city to inform them of the office’s work.
Sheila Alexander-Reid, director of the Mayor’s Office of LGBT Affairs, said her office and the police LGBT Liaison Unit are co-hosting the roundtable event along with the Office of Nightlife and Culture at Pitchers, which she said is not open to the general public.
“We think it’s a great idea to do a small introductory meet and greet with the bar owners and club owners and promoters in the LGBTQ community,” Alexander-Reid said. “And this was his idea,” she said, in referring to Townsend.
Pitcher’s is one of at least 11 D.C. gay bars or nightclubs along with other clubs that regularly host “gay night” events.
“Residents and visitors to Washington, D.C. know that we have world-class food and entertainment options in neighborhoods across the District that appeal to all ages and all tastes – and that those choices continue to grow,” Bowser said in a statement last October when she signed the legislation creating the nightlife office.
“We know that this creates fantastic opportunities as well as a few challenges, and the Office of Nightlife and Culture is going to ensure that we’re working across D.C. government, with our residents and businesses, to ensure a vibrant D.C. nightlife that works for everyone,” she said.
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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