Local
Blade reporter robbed on street in Columbia Heights
Daytime attack not believed to be motivated by sexual orientation
Washington Blade political reporter Chris Johnson became yet another victim in a crime spree hitting the D.C. LGBT community in the past two weeks when three male suspects on Monday shoved him to the ground while he was walking on 13th Street, N.W., in Columbia Heights near his home and stole his cell phone and wallet.
D.C. police arrested two of the three suspects believed to have committed the daytime robbery a short time after it happened when a nearby witness called 911 and police arrived while the suspects were still in the area. The third suspect fled before police could apprehend him.
Johnson, while shaken over the incident, was not injured. He said the three young men who committed the robbery did not make any reference to his sexual orientation and he does not believe he was targeted because he’s gay. He said the three were not carrying a weapon.
A D.C. police spokesperson said one of the two arrested is a 17-year-old juvenile male of Southeast D.C. whose name will not be disclosed and the other is 21-year-old Jaleel Ware also of Southeast D.C. A police report says both were charged with robbery.
The robbery of Johnson came at the end of a two-week period in which at least five LGBT people were subjected to violent crimes or threats of violence. The most serious of the incidents was the June 13 murder of D.C. transgender woman Zoe Spears, 23, who was shot to death in Fairmount Heights, Md., just across the D.C. line near Eastern Avenue.
Prince George’s County police, who are investigating the murder, say they have no suspects and no known motive for the killing.
The other incidents include the attack and assault of a gay male couple walking on U Street, N.W. by a group of nearly a dozen male suspects while one or more of them shouted anti-gay names at the couple. One of the victims was hospitalized after suffering two broken teeth.
During the same two-week period a transgender woman was assaulted by one of three suspects who called her anti-trans names while she was in a grocery store in the city’s Eckington neighborhood. Another incident involved an unidentified male suspect who pulled out a gun and threatened three transgender women outside the Casa Ruby LGBT community center building on Georgia Avenue, N.W. None of the women were injured.
What appeared to be a sudden crime spree impacting the LGBT community prompted LGBT activists to hold a vigil against violence in Dupont Circle on June 21.
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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