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Comings & Goings
Heng-Lehtinen joins board of AsylumConnect
The Comings & Goings column is about sharing the professional successes of our community. We want to recognize those landing new jobs, new clients for their business, joining boards of organizations and other achievements. Please share your successes with us at: [email protected].
Congratulations to Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen on joining the board of AsylumConnect, which provides an online platform for LGBTQ refugees and asylum seekers to find affirming resources — lawyers, healthcare providers, housing services, etc. — anywhere in the country.
Rodrigo said “AsylumConnect is the first tech resource like this in the world for LGBTQ people fleeing persecution. By using the app or website, LGBTQ asylum seekers across the U.S., from Delaware to South Dakota, can find safe service referrals. It’s a 24/7 digital one-stop-shop. With Trump fostering hostility toward both migrants and LGBTQ people alike, it’s more important than ever that those who live at the intersection of these issues be able to find safe resources.”
Rodrigo works full-time on the leadership team at the National Center for Transgender Equality where he is Deputy Executive Director for Policy and Action.
Congratulations and welcome also to Jean-François Hould who began his third posting in the United States as director of the Québec Government Office in Washington. Upon accepting the position Jean-Francois said “Québec’s LGBTQ record shows that state-led initiatives can have a global impact. I look forward to building new relationships with LGBTQ partners and allies here in Washington, at a time when cross-border collaboration and solidarity is more necessary than ever.”
In this position he is responsible for furthering Québec’s bilateral relations with the U.S. federal government. This strategic post in the American capital builds on his successes supporting Québec’s economic and political interests in the United States. Previously he served as Québec’s representative in Chicago, fostering Québec political and economic relations in the Midwest. He was particularly involved in Great Lakes issues and trade. He also served as Cultural Attaché in New York promoting Québec’s artistic development in the mid-Atlantic.
Hould has a long history of public service beginning his governmental career in 2001. He was recruited to various political positions in ministerial cabinets including serving as Deputy Chief of Staff and Political Adviser to the Minister of Culture and Chief of Staff to the Minister of International Relations and la Francophonie.
Congratulations also to the winners of LGBT Tech’s PowerOn awards. PowerOn is a national program of the LGBT Technology Institute. The Awards Ceremony was held on Oct. 1 to recognize program participants and supporters dedicated to closing the digital divide for the LGBTQ community.
Awards were presented in four categories: The Visionary Award, honoring an individual or individuals whose work has empowered LGBTQ+ individuals to achieve success through technology and the internet, was presented to Kelli and Jacques van Gool of Houston and Staunton, Va., for their longtime support of PowerOn’s efforts. The Change Agent Award, honoring an individual in public service or social justice whose significant contributions to connectivity have helped support underserved populations, including the LGBTQ+ community, was presented to Dr. Nicol Turner Lee, director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution in D.C. The Superstar Center Award, honoring a PowerOn partner center or organization that has made outstanding contributions to the program and to the community the organization serves, was presented to Triangle Community Center of Norwalk, Ct., with a runner up award presented to Kaleidoscope Youth Center of Columbus, Ohio. The Role Model Award, honoring a youth or young adult who set the bar for themselves and their peers while participating in the PowerOn Program, was presented to Jordan Paris of Triangle Community, with a runner up award presented to Mackenzie Williams of OUTMemphis in Tennessee.
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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