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John Robert Lewis, the ‘Boy from Troy’

His fight for civil rights included LGBTQ Americans

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John Lewis, United States House of Representatives, U.S. Congress, Georgia, Democratic Party, gay news, Washington Blade
John Robert Lewis, United States House of Representatives, U.S. Congress, Georgia, Democratic Party, gay news, Washington Blade
Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

We remember John Robert Lewis who died on July 17 at the age of 80 as an icon of the civil rights movement. A congressman who Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others have called the ‘moral conscience’ of the United States Congress.

It was Martin Luther King, Jr. who gave him the nickname, “The boy from Troy.” Lewis said when he first met him: “Dr. King said, ‘Are you the boy from Troy? Are you John Lewis?’ And I said, ‘I am John Robert Lewis,’ I gave my whole name. And he still called me ‘the boy from Troy.’” 

That was 63 years ago in Montgomery, Ala., at King’s First Baptist Church. Over the years we know how much John Lewis did to further the rights of African Americans in this country. He was president of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He wanted to motivate other young people like himself to get involved in the fight for civil rights. But he, like King, tried to make it a non-violent fight. When riots erupted like the one at the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, it was others who started those riots. John Lewis did nothing but try to walk across that bridge to demand his rights when he was nearly beaten to death on what became known as Bloody Sunday. He always said that when he got into trouble it was ‘good trouble.’ Edmund Pettus, whom the bridge was named after, was head of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan, and a U.S. senator. He was honored for his role in supporting slavery and racism. Because of that there is a movement today to rename the bridge. One suggestion is to name it the John Robert Lewis Bridge.

In the six days of remembrances planned for Congressman Lewis, the changes he and those who fought in the civil rights movement made can be plainly seen. He is being accompanied on his last trip over the Pettus Bridge by Alabama state troopers whose predecessors were the ones who nearly beat him to death on Bloody Sunday. His body will be taken to the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery where he will lie in state. His body will be met and welcomed by Gov. Kay Ivey in the place where in 1963 after being elected governor George Wallace stood and said in his inaugural address, “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

Lewis was an amazing man who lived many lives in his 80 years. From his humble beginnings, his parents were sharecroppers in Troy, Ala., to the heights of power and respect in the United States Congress. In his lifetime he witnessed the passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. He saw the Supreme Court issue its unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education, ruling that racial segregation in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. He saw the nation slowly move forward on the promise of equal protection under the law promised in our founding documents. But he always knew there was much more to do. Then he saw the nation elect Donald Trump, a racist, who made racist statements and gave tacit permission for others to do the same.

In his last days he saw the shooting of George Floyd and the strengthening of the Black Lives Matter movement. One of the last things he witnessed was the spectacle of a president using federal troops to shoot rubber bullets and tear gas at peaceful protesters in front of the White House, which must have brought his thoughts back to Bloody Sunday. Then shortly before his death he stood with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on Black Lives Matter Plaza.

He knew what he had accomplished and surely he trusted the next John Lewis’s, whoever they would be, to continue the fight for full equality, a fight he made for all people including women and the LGBTQ community. I am sure John Lewis felt confident there are young men and women who will take the torch he passed to them and lead the way to a better future for all.

Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist. He writes regularly for the Blade.

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Trans people need to be terrified

And we need to stay strong and take action

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(Photo by Creatista/Bigstock)

Donald Trump has held the presidency for less than six months in 2025. But already, trans people have been defaced, demoralized, and fatigued. On June 18, the Supreme Court upheld a ban on gender affirming care for trans youth in nearly half of U.S. states. This ensures that trans youth do not have access to hormone blockers that prevent them from becoming their hated gender. 

The Trump administration has also ensured that Medicaid can no longer provide subsidized and insurance-covered care to trans adults. In addition to this, Trump’s White House has banned trans people from the military and has stripped all government agencies and universities of having Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) departments. Even progressive minded institutions like Yale (my alma mater) and Harvard have stripped themselves of DEI. Trump’s cruelty knows no bounds. 

This month, former president Obama stated over Instagram that Trump’s administration was becoming more and more like an autocracy. Recently, a tourist was stripped of his U.S. visa when federal agents discovered a JD Vance meme on his phone. 

ICE is raiding more and more immigrant families–immigrants who provide critical labor to our U.S. fields and other important industries. Immigrant children are forced to stand testimony and defend themselves–without a lawyer–in court. The United States, in other words, is becoming more and more like a fascist state. Look no further than Trump’s removal of the Kennedy Center board, and his ban of a Pride event at the Kennedy Center. During his campaign years, Trump held queer events for “LGB” folk — but made sure to drop the “T”, because it is becoming all too apparent that he is cruel to trans people. 

In a past article I wrote for the Blade, I stated that not enough trans people are scared in the U.S. right now. Other countries, including European countries, are quickly warning their trans citizens against traveling to the U.S., citing the fact that we are a hostile place for folks like them. Unfortunately, this is true. 

Trans people have to start looking to move to sanctuary states right now. In fact, we have already been doing this for many years: trans citizens have been fleeing red, conservative states–states where men shoot trans women (and trans men). But now is the time to do so more than ever. Check out outcoast.com for a useful list of some sanctuary cities for trans people in the U.S. right now. But other cities not on the list, including my college town of New Haven, Connecticut, are also welcoming places for trans people. 

Transgender Americans have to take into consideration the fact that Trump and his cronies have sought to overthrow us in just less than six months’ time. They are trying to make us weak, vulnerable, up for the taking. Yet we have to stand strong amid all the attacks from Republican lawmakers. One has to question the fact that ICE is starting to use social media to go after any naysayer — and deliberate whether ICE will be going after trans Americans in two or three years to come. If Trump is doing so much damage to the trans community already, what will be happening in 2028? A move to Canada can surely be on the horizon. 

Transgender Americans need to be scared right now. But more than just scared, we need to be taking action. 


Isaac Amend is a writer based in the D.C. area. He is a transgender man and was featured in National Geographic’s ‘Gender Revolution’ documentary. He serves on the board of the LGBT Democrats of Virginia. Contact him at [email protected] or on Instagram at @literatipapi.

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Felon-in-Chief either has dementia or is just plain dumb

Trail of gaffes raise questions about Trump’s fitness for office

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(Image by doddis/Bigstock)

Some ask why I often write about the felon in the White House. It’s because we should never stop highlighting his outrageousness, how he is destroying our country, and creating havoc in the world. His gaffes are often venal, and in most cases just his way of insulting someone. Recently it’s again obvious he either has dementia, or is just plain dumb. Clearly, he is being manipulated by some corrupt aides and personally motivated by vindictiveness. He asked the president of Liberia how his English is so good, apparently not knowing that English is the language of Liberia. 

He was asked who stopped the shipments of weapons to Ukraine, didn’t know, or remember. Then appears to forget, or doesn’t know, only two countries actually came to final tariff deals with the U.S. He went to Iowa to tout his disgusting bill and used the term “Shylock,” the name of the Jewish character in the “Merchant of Venice,” clearly used today as an anti-Semitic slur, and lied saying he never heard of it that way. Then he said Putin was a hero in World War II, when he wasn’t born until after the war ended. Now he thinks we should change the Department of Defense back to Department of War. He often forgets where he is in speeches. 

This is the man who occupies the most powerful office in the world. He is an embarrassment to the nation. He uses the presidency to get back at his perceived enemies, doing it openly. He is a grifter, enriching himself using the power that comes with being president of the United States. Others are helping, or excusing him. House Speaker Johnson was asked about the president taking grift, and said contrary to his attacks on Biden, who he said did it secretly, what Trump is doing is OK, since he is doing it publicly. Yes, he is doing it publicly, taking a jet from Qatar and cutting deals to build hotels in the Middle East. He said he wants to build a resort in Gaza after removing all the Palestinians. While enriching himself and his friends, in the process he is screwing the American people. 

Trump is making policy based on personal interests. Like framing his threat to slap a bruising 50 percent tariff on Brazil as a quest for justice for his friend and ally, far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro. Then he upped the ante based on a recent BRICS meeting, one of Trump’s top foreign policy targets, a coalition of emerging economies that includes founding members Brazil, Russia, India, and China, as well as South Africa and six other countries that have joined the group in recent years. They are stronger based on the felon’s policies. 

I keep writing about this felon because he is always doing something outrageous. The MAGA Republicans in Congress keep supporting him, willingly screwing their constituents. The MAGA Log Cabin Republicans, supporting Trump, recently honored four MAGA members of Congress, all of whom are opposed to the Equality Act. One, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), when asked by her constituents why she supported taking away their Medicaid, said “It doesn’t matter you will die anyway.” That is the attitude of the felon in the White House and all his MAGA supporters. 

I am not blind to the fact that there has always been racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia, in our society. But for many years we worked hard to ensure those feelings couldn’t be voiced in the public square. If someone did voice them, they were called out for it. Then during Trump’s first term, from the day he came down that escalator to announce his candidacy and called out people in derogatory terms, he gave others tacit permission to do the same. If he could do it, then why couldn’t they? And things only got worse from there. 

Trump took hold of the Republican Party and rational Republicans simply dropped like flies afraid to criticize him. It became clear nearly 35% of the Republican Party became a Trump cult, and no Republican could win without their votes. So today, the Republican Party supports a sick, old, lying felon, a racist, homophobe, misogynist, found liable for sexual assault, whose closest allies produced Project 2025, the blueprint for destroying democracy. 

So that is why I will always write about him, and urge others to do the same. We must all speak out every day, until we rid ourselves of this despot in our midst.


Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist. He writes regularly for the Blade.

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Pride must be inclusive, intentionally intersectional

Organizers of local UK Pride led anti-Israel, pro-Houthi slogans

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Pro-Palestine protesters at the 2024 Capital Pride Parade (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

There are a lot of conversations in the LGBTI community about Prides becoming “too commercial,” but what about grassroots, leftist radical Prides? Well, the idea of community-organized, grassroots Prides is amazing, but unfortunately, it is very human to make mistakes.

While big LGBTI Prides that are organized with help from businesses are trying to be inclusive, grassroots Prides have sometimes gone too far in their attempts to create an “edgy,” rebellious atmosphere. Some slogans that have been used at “independent” Prides create more problems than they solve, making these events non inclusive and unacceptable for a large part of the LGBTI community.

I believe in intersectionality. I was one of the very few activists in Russia who began writing and speaking about the need for intersectional approaches in the LGBTI community — speaking up for neurodivergent, disabled, non-white, Muslim, and Jewish LGBTI people. In the U.K., I’m part of various groups supporting LGBTI refugees.

And this is why I see that some modern attempts by Western LGBTI activists to be mindful of different forms of oppression have actually excluded people from Pride and divided the LGBTI community. I’ve seen these tendencies across Europe, the U.S., and the U.K.

Personally, I’ve never felt less included at a Pride than I did last weekend at a local U.K. Pride, where the crowd was forced to yell: “Death to the IDF (Israel Defense Forces),” “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and “Yemen, Yemen made us proud, turn another ship around.”

The last slogan, about Yemen, didn’t even catch on with the crowd — probably because most people at the Pride had no idea why they should be proud of Yemen. And the truth is, they shouldn’t. The slogan refers to Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, who have hijacked and fired missiles at dozens of commercial and military ships in the Red Sea, supposedly to “protect” Palestinian rights.

Let me make it clear: I have no problem with the “protecting Palestinian people” part of the story. I believe that there are many war criminals in the current Israeli administration, and the bombing of Gaza refugee camps is unacceptable, no matter what.

But at the same time, I couldn’t understand why we were being asked to support attacks on commercial ships or show solidarity with the Houthi rebels, who, according to Amnesty International, are not only responsible for the deaths of dozens of LGBTI people, but are also extremely authoritarian and prone to sectarian violence.

If we’re speaking from an intersectional perspective, I know how triggering those slogans must have been for many Sunni Muslims (and yes, most Muslims from Gaza are Sunni), as well as for LGBTI refugees from Yemen and Iran who may have lost loved ones to the Houthis or the Iranian regime that support them. And I am sure there were likely some queer Iranians at that Pride.

The chanting about the Israel Defence Forces was also extremely disturbing — not only because there were likely Jewish queers at the Pride, some of whose relatives may even oppose Israeli actions in Gaza and support a two-state solution, but who served in the Israeli army due to conscription laws. But the problem is, I’ve never heard people at a Pride chant in support of Ukrainian people, or Chechens, or Uyghurs, or Yazidis — despite the fact that all of them have survived genocide. I’ve never heard queer people at Pride yelling “death to Russian occupiers,” even when Russian missiles destroyed Ukrainian schools and shelters in Mariupol, bombed Aleppo, persecuted Crimean Tatars, or wiped out entire Chechen villages.

China built concentration camps for Uyghurs, but no one is promoting the death of the Chinese government. Moreover, China, Russia, and Assad’s Syria are more homophobic than Israel. So, what is the reason for yelling “Death to the IDF” but not, for example, calling for the Russian government’s collapse or the end of the Chinese Communist Party? There are only two logical explanations:

• It is either antisemitism or ignorance about other wars except for the one that is going on in Gaza. Both reasons are quite bad.

• It is not intersectionality. It is anti-intersectionality, because it erases every other war survivor who isn’t Palestinian from LGBTI community. It also alienated LGBTI Jewish people because only Jewish State had a “special” hatred for war crimes that atheists and Christian don’t have. 

It’s also an attempt to turn the LGBTI movement into an ideological club instead of a group fighting for the rights of a specific marginalized community.

Another triggering thing I saw at this Pride was the glorification of socialism. But not all LGBTI people are socialists, and not all countries that called themselves “socialist” have been LGBTI-friendly.

I couldn’t even imagine what a queer person from North Korea, or a gay man who was imprisoned in the Soviet Union for being gay must have felt when hearing calls for a socialist revolution at Pride. It must have been devastating. Pride should feel like a free, anti-authoritarian space.

Pride also needs to focus on the real problems LGBTI people face. In the U.K., the Supreme Court ruled that only cis women can be considered real women. Thousands of trans kids have lost access to hormone therapy. LGBTI books are being censored in libraries. The government is cutting benefits for disabled people: LGBTI disabled people will be among the first to be harmed, because they face double stigma and more challenges finding employment, even when they are able to work.

But none of this was the main point at Pride. For some reason, we were asked to repeat pro-Palestinian slogans more often than slogans defending trans people or LGBTI people with disabilities.

The organisers were so obsessed with Palestine and socialism that, if I weren’t already involved in LGBTI activism, I might have assumed the LGBTI community has no real problems left — and that now we just campaign about unrelated political issues.

But that would be a false impression.

LGBTI people are under attack in countries around the world — from U.S. to Russia to the U.K. Moreover, far-right ideologies are rising across the West. Yes, it’s important to understand the international context, but now, more than ever, it is equally important to unite against the global rise of fascism and not divide the movement based on economic ideology or international political views.

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