Local
Rehoboth’s Pamala Stanley raises $2,725 for Beebe Healthcare
Online tea dance to become weekly event
A one-time concert to raise money for Delaware’s Beebe Healthcare has turned into a weekly show for singer Pamala Stanley.
Owners of The Pines Rehoboth Beach restaurant and nightspot announced the singer’s first concert on April 26 was so successful that she’ll perform a virtual tea dance to benefit Beebe every Saturday until The Pines can open again.
“We raised a lot of money for a very fantastic cause,” said Pines co-owner David Gonce, during a break in the show. “We’ll be doing this every Saturday until this terrible pandemic is over and our beautiful town reopens.”
“The beauty of a local community is what we’re doing here tonight,” added Tom Protack, president of the Beebe Medical Foundation, the fundraising arm for Beebe Healthcare. “Local singer, local restaurant, local supporters making it happen…What better way to spend a Saturday night?”
Pines representatives said the concert raised $2,725 for the medical foundation — $2,150 in cash and $575 from the sale of $25 gift cards to be given to first responders. They said future benefits will be held on Saturdays from 7-9 p.m. on Facebook and may have guest performers joining Stanley.
Located in Lewes, Del., Beebe Healthcare serves Sussex County, which includes Rehoboth Beach, Bethany Beach and other communities in lower Delaware.
Saturday’s benefit, which drew hundreds of viewers, was Stanley’s first virtual tea dance after years of live performances in Rehoboth Beach and elsewhere. Dressed in a sparkling red jumpsuit, she sang from The Top of the Pines, the second-floor piano lounge above the restaurant at 56 Baltimore Ave.
The Pines isn’t open for table service during the COVID-19 pandemic but was offering prix fixe dinners and drinks to go, with a portion of the proceeds going to first responders. It also had gift cards that viewers could buy and donate to first responders, as well as gifts that viewers could bid on, including designer face masks and a “COVID relief package.” Sponsors included Jack Lingo Realtor, Visit Rehoboth and Jungle Jim’s water park.
Stanley, who has a large gay following, walked out on stage wearing a face mask but took it off once she started singing. She sang nearly two dozen songs during her two-hour performance, told stories between songs and even showed off her fan-dancing skills.
Stanley dedicated one of her biggest hits, “Coming Out of Hiding,” to all her fans who are getting restless after weeks in quarantine: “This is for everybody,” she said, “because we have been in hiding for way too long, don’t you agree?” She said she’ll be taking requests in future virtual shows and expressed hope that The Pines will be able to be open for more than curbside service by Memorial Day.
At one point, Stanley demonstrated a new option for when the bars are open again: a “COVID drinking mask” that enables the wearer to have a drink in a bar or on a plane without potentially endangering the lives of others.
“Just because we have to wear masks does not mean we shouldn’t enjoy a drink,” she reasoned. “Am I right?”
The drinking mask comes from Totes of the Town, an online accessories shop (totesofthetown1.com) that’s based in Rehoboth Beach and features “seasonal and coastal” wine totes, pillows and other items, including face masks. Owner and resident mask designer Joseph Scott joined Stanley online, QVC-style, to demonstrate the mask and explain how it works.
Scott showed that the drinking mask has a small grommet strategically located where the mouth is, so wearers can stick in a straw and sip their Rose Kennedys or Cosmos without fear of spraying respiratory “droplets” in the air, one of the ways COVID-19 can spread.
“Everybody has been wondering how they’re going to drink in COVID,” Scott told Stanley. “So here we have it.”
Although Totes of the Town offers a variety of face masks for sale online, Scott said the drinking masks aren’t on the market yet. But he hinted they may be soon.
“These are not COVID-compliant,” he warned. “They’re not for sale. They’re not yet. Let’s be COVID compliant for a while. These will be coming, shortly.”
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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