Local
LGBTQ rights advocate John Burlison dies at 69
Served as co-chair of Maryland’s Free State Justice
John S. Burlison, a resident of North Bethesda, Md. who worked as a technical editor and writer and later as a software products manager and who served in the 1990s as a board member and co-chair of the Maryland LGBTQ rights group Free State Justice Campaign, died March 18 at his home of complications associated with abdominal cancer. He was 69.
Burlison was born in Moscow, Idaho, and attended high school in Potlach, Idaho before graduating from the University of Idaho with a bachelor’s degree in Speech Communication, according to a write-up released by his husband, Ron Dagani.
He studied at Illinois State University before beginning his professional career as a technical editor and writer at Battelle-Northwest Laboratories in Richland, Wash. He moved to Washington, D.C. in 1983 where he met Dagani, and the two have resided together in Maryland since 1984, the write-up says. Burlison and Dagani were married in 2013 on the 30th anniversary of their meeting each other.
According to Dagani, Burlison worked for several companies in the D.C. area that provide contract work for the federal government as a usability consultant and later as a software product manager. Among the firms he worked for were Computer Sciences Corporation and General Sciences Corporation.
He worked for the Federal National Mortgage Association known as Fannie Mae from 1997 until his retirement in 2007, Dagani’s write-up says.
The write-up, which Dagani said was prepared mostly by Burlison, notes that Burlison served for a number of years in the 1990s on the board of the Free State Justice Campaign and served for two years as the then Maryland gay rights organization’s co-chair as it advocated for LGBTQ rights legislation before the Maryland General Assembly. The organization later became Equality Maryland.
In the early 2000s Burlison took up square dancing with the D.C. Lambda Squares, an LGBTQ square dancing club for which he served on its board for nine years, the write-up says. He was an avid cyclist and traveled with friends on extended bicycle trips along the U.S. East Coast and throughout central Europe.
Dagani said religion and faith were an important part of Burlison’s life and that presented a conflict with his status as a proud gay man. According to Dagani, Burlison grew up in a religious Methodist home in Idaho but converted to the Mormon faith in the early 1970s shortly before he married a Mormon woman in 1973 who had been his childhood sweetheart, Susan Comstock.
The couple, who had four children, divorced while living in Washington State around the time Burlison was working for Battelle-Northwest Laboratories. Dagani said Mormon Church officials had earlier told Burlison, who loved his wife and told her he was gay before they married, that getting married would solve his “gay problem.” But church officials later excommunicated Burlison for homosexuality and “apostasy,” Dagani said.
When his wife remarried she and her new husband took legal action to arrange for the husband to adopt the children and deny parental rights for Burlison, Dagani said. But despite this trying experience, years later while living in Maryland in a fulfilling relationship with Dagani, Burlison returned to the Mormon Church in what turned out to be a supportive Kensington Ward congregation in Maryland near his and Dagani’s home.
“At first it was awkward and surreal – people who are rejected by a church do not normally re-enter the good graces of that community,” Dagani wrote in a draft obituary he plans to deliver when the coronavirus epidemic subsides and a memorial service for Burlison can be held. “But with time he found a place in the Kensington Ward, which he found to be warm, loving, and accepting of both of us,” Dagani wrote. “As one ward member told me recently, ‘John has touched the lives of so many current and past ward members,’” Dagani recounted.
Burlison also became involved with the LGBTQ Mormon group Affirmation, Dagani said.
“John was a sweet, gentle, loving, soft-spoken man with a whimsical sense of humor,” Dagani told the Washington Blade. “He was modest, often referring to himself as ‘an Idaho country farm boy.’ That he was, but he was also intelligent, smart, well-read, and curious about the world.”
Dagani, who noted that Burlison’s close friends addressed him by the nickname Happy, said he will miss his husband for his many talents, including his cooking and his “wacky, whimsical sense of humor…Most of all, though, I will miss his love. He was truly the love of my life,” said Dagani. “Thank you, Happy.”
Burlison was predeceased by his brother, Vernon Burlison Jr. In addition to his husband Ron Dagani, Burlison is survived by his siblings Grace Burlison Wallace, Frank Burlison, Katherine Clancy, Stephen Burlison, Patricia Finn, and John Michael Finn; his four children, Timothy Mauery, Sarah Mauery Foutz, Vernon Mauery, and Mary Mauery Haeberle; 23 grandchildren; and many friends.
Dagani said a celebration of Burlison’s life will be scheduled at a later date.
District of Columbia
‘Sandwich guy’ not guilty in assault case
Sean Charles Dunn faced misdemeanor charge
A jury with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday, Nov. 6, found D.C. resident Sean Charles Dunn not guilty of assault for tossing a hero sandwich into the chest of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent at the intersection of 14th and U streets, N.W. at around 11 p.m. on Aug. 10.
Dunn’s attorneys hailed the verdict as a gesture of support for Dunn’s contention that his action, which was captured on video that went viral on social media, was an exercise of his First Amendment right to protest the federal border agent’s participating in President Donald Trump’s deployment of federal troops on D.C. streets.
Friends of Dunn have said that shortly before the sandwich tossing incident took place Dunn had been at the nearby gay nightclub Bunker, which was hosting a Latin dance party called Tropicoqueta. Sabrina Shroff, one of three attorneys representing Dunn at the trial, said during the trial after Dunn left the nightclub he went to the submarine sandwich shop on 14th Street at the corner of U Street, where he saw the border patrol agent and other law enforcement officers standing in front of the shop.
Shroff and others who know Dunn have said he was fearful that the border agent outside the sub shop and immigrant agents might raid the Bunker Latin night event. Bunker’s entrance is on U Street just around the corner from the sub shop where the federal agents were standing.
“I am so happy that justice prevails in spite of everything happening,“ Dunn told reporters outside the courthouse after the verdict while joined by his attorneys. “And that night I believed that I was protecting the rights of immigrants,” he said.
“And let us not forget that the great seal of the United States says, E Pluribus Unum,” he continued. “That means from many, one. Every life matters no matter where you came from, no matter how you got here, no matter how you identify, you have the right to live a life that is free.”
The verdict followed a two-day trial with testimony by just two witnesses, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent Gregory Lairmore, who identified Dunn as the person who threw the sandwich at his chest, and Metro Transit Police Detective Daina Henry, who told the jury she witnessed Dunn toss the sandwich at Lairmore while shouting obscenities.
Shroff told the jury Dunn was exercising his First Amendment right to protest and that the tossing of the sandwich at Lairmore, who was wearing a bulletproof vest, did not constitute an assault under the federal assault law to which Dunn was charged, among other things, because the federal agent was not injured.
Prosecutors with the Office of the U.S. Attorney for D.C. initially attempted to obtain a grand jury indictment of Dunn on a felony assault charge. But the grand jury refused to hand down an indictment on that charge, court records show. Prosecutors then filed a criminal complaint against Dunn on the misdemeanor charge of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers of the United States.
“Dunn stood within inches of Victim 1,” the criminal complaint states, “pointing his finger in Victim 1’s face, and yelled, Fuck you! You fucking fascists! Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city!”
The complaint continues by stating, “An Instagram video recorded by an observer captured the incident. The video depicts Dunn screaming at V-1 within inches of his face for several seconds before winding his arm back and forcefully throwing a sub-style sandwich at V-1.
Prosecutors repeatedly played the video of the incident for the jurors on video screens in the courtroom.
Dunn, who chose not to testify at his trial, and his attorneys have not disputed the obvious evidence that Dunn threw the sandwich that hit Lairmore in the chest. Lead defense attorney Shroff and co-defense attorneys Julia Gatto and Nicholas Silverman argued that Dunn’s action did not constitute an assault under the legal definition of common law assault in the federal assault statute.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael DiLorenzo, the lead prosecutor in the case, strongly disputed that claim, citing various provisions in the law and appeals court rulings that he claimed upheld his and the government’s contention that an “assault” can take place even if a victim is not injured as well as if there was no physical contact between the victim and an alleged assailant, only a threat of physical contact and injury.
The dispute over the intricacies of the assault law and whether Dunn’s action reached the level of an assault under the law dominated the two-day trial, with U.S. District Court Judge Carl J. Nichols, who presided over the trial, weighing in with his own interpretation of the assault statute. Among other things, he said it would be up to the jury to decide whether or not Dunn committed an assault.
Court observers have said in cases like this, a jury could have issued a so-called “nullification” verdict in which they acquit a defendant even though they believe he or she committed the offense in question because they believe the charge is unjust. The other possibility, observers say, is the jury believed the defense was right in claiming a law was not violated.
DiLorenzo and his two co-prosecutors in the case declined to comment in response to requests by reporters following the verdict.
“We really want to thank the jury for having sent back an affirmation that his sentiment is not just tolerated but it is legal, it is welcome,” defense attorney Shroff said in referring to Dunn’s actions. “And we thank them very much for that verdict,” she said.
Dunn thanked his attorneys for providing what he called excellent representation “and for offering all of their services pro bono,” meaning free of charge.
Dunn, an Air Force veteran who later worked as an international affairs specialist at the U.S. Department of Justice, was fired from that job by DOJ officials after his arrest for the sandwich tossing incident.
“I would like to thank family and friends and strangers for all of their support, whether it was emotional, or spiritual, or artistic, or financial,” he told the gathering outside the courthouse. “To the people that opened their hearts and homes to me, I am eternally grateful.”
“As always, we accept a jury’s verdict; that is the system within which we function,” CNN quoted U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro as saying after the verdict in the Dunn case. “However, law enforcement should never be subjected to assault, no matter how ‘minor,’” Pirro told CNN in a statement.
“Even children know when they are angry, they are not allowed to throw objects at one another,” CNN quoted her as saying.
Maryland
Democrats hold leads in almost every race of Annapolis municipal election
Jared Littmann ahead in mayor’s race.
By CODY BOTELER | The Democratic candidates in the Annapolis election held early leads in the races for mayor and nearly every city council seat, according to unofficial results released on election night.
Jared Littmann, a former alderman and the owner of K&B Ace Hardware, did not go so far as to declare victory in his race to be the next mayor of Annapolis, but said he’s optimistic that the mail-in ballots to be counted later this week will support his lead.
Littmannn said November and December will “fly by” as he plans to meet with the city department heads and chiefs to “pepper them with questions.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
Democrats on Tuesday increased their majority in the Virginia House of Delegates.
The Associated Press notes the party now has 61 seats in the chamber. Democrats before Election Day had a 51-48 majority in the House.
All six openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual candidates — state Dels. Rozia Henson (D-Prince William County), Laura Jane Cohen (D-Fairfax County), Joshua Cole (D-Fredericksburg), Marcia Price (D-Newport News), Adele McClure (D-Arlington County), and Mark Sickles (D-Fairfax County) — won re-election.
Lindsey Dougherty, a bisexual Democrat, defeated state Del. Carrie Coyner (R-Chesterfield County) in House District 75 that includes portions of Chesterfield and Prince George Counties. (Attorney General-elect Jay Jones in 2022 texted Coyner about a scenario in which he shot former House Speaker Todd Gilbert, a Republican.)
Other notable election results include Democrat John McAuliff defeating state Del. Geary Higgins (R-Loudoun County) in House District 30. Former state Del. Elizabeth Guzmán beat state Del. Ian Lovejoy (R-Prince William County) in House District 22.
Democrats increased their majority in the House on the same night they won all three statewide offices: governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general.
Narissa Rahaman is the executive director of Equality Virginia Advocates, the advocacy branch of Equality Virginia, a statewide LGBTQ advocacy group, last week noted the election results will determine the future of LGBTQ rights, reproductive freedom, and voting rights in the state.
Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin in 2024 signed a bill that codified marriage equality in state law.
The General Assembly earlier this year approved a resolution that seeks to repeal the Marshall-Newman Amendment that defines marriage in the state constitution as between a man and a woman. The resolution must pass in two successive legislatures before it can go to the ballot.
Shreya Jyotishi contributed to this article.
Nancy Pelosi: an LGBTQ appreciation of the retiring House speaker emerita
Gala Hispanic Theatre’s Flamenco Festival returns
Calendar: November 7-13
A nation voting between fear and hope
Supreme Court rules White House can implement anti-trans passport policy
‘Sandwich guy’ not guilty in assault case
Gay speedskater racing toward a more inclusive future in sports
Jonathan Bailey is People’s first openly gay ‘Sexiest Man Alive’
Reggie White explores the many definitions of home in ‘Fremont Ave.’
Sexual desire is waning, should we open our relationship?
-
District of Columbia21 hours ago‘Sandwich guy’ not guilty in assault case
-
Sports1 day ago
Gay speedskater racing toward a more inclusive future in sports
-
Celebrity News3 days ago
Jonathan Bailey is People’s first openly gay ‘Sexiest Man Alive’
-
Theater5 days ago
Reggie White explores the many definitions of home in ‘Fremont Ave.’
