Opinions
Supreme Court poised to roll back LGBTQ rights
Rebalance stolen court via expansion, term limits
LGBTQ advocates were rightly relieved when the Supreme Court handed down Bostock v. Clayton County this past June, a case that extended the prohibition against discrimination in employment to include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. And with the most LGBTQ-friendly President-elect in U.S. history poised to take office in a matter of days, our community has even more reason to be hopeful.
Despite these positive developments, however, the Supreme Court poses a grave danger to the LGBTQ community. As the court ushers in a new era of conservative dominance—with anti-LGBTQ justices holding a 6-3 supermajority—the fragile judicial coalition on which the movement for equality has relied is at significant risk of being cast aside.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s recent confirmation to the court is deeply concerning. Justice Barrett has defended Justice Roberts’ dissent in Obergefell, indicating that the issue of marriage equality should belong to state legislatures. She has repeatedly used transphobic and homophobic language, and even argued that Title IX does not protect transgender people. Her extremist positions will embolden the anti-LGBTQ conservative justices on the court – Justices Kavanaugh and Alito recently held an inappropriate private meeting with an anti-gay activist who had filed briefs in pending cases — and other Trump-appointed judges, as well as state legislatures to take anti-LGBTQ stances. With equality hanging in the balance, the LGBTQ community cannot afford a Supreme Court that stands to crush any progress made.
Marriage equality: In October, the Supreme Court denied certiorari to a case involving Kentucky woman Kim Davis, who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. However, the denial of certiorari came with warning signs: Justices Alito and Thomas wrote a section that cast doubt on the constitutionality of Obergefell, the landmark Supreme Court case in which Justice Kennedy’s opinion that held that marriage is a fundamental right guaranteed to same-sex couples by the Constitution. In the certiorari denial, Justice Thomas wrote: “By choosing to privilege a novel constitutional right over the religious liberty interests explicitly protected in the First Amendment, and by doing so undemocratically, the Court has created a problem that only it can fix. Until then, Obergefell will continue to have ‘ruinous consequences for religious liberty.’” While broad majorities of the American people support marriage equality and opponents of it might not have the votes on the Supreme Court to overturn the precedent, it is nonetheless a troubling sign that two Justices would sign onto discrimination against our fellow citizens.
Discrimination: The currently pending case before the Supreme Court about discrimination is Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. The case emerged from circumstances in 2018: The city of Philadelphia had hired a number of agencies for foster care service. When the city learned that two agencies denied same-sex couples as foster parents, Philadelphia threatened to stop using the agencies unless they agreed to nondiscrimination requirements. While one of the agencies complied, the other, the Catholic Social Services (“CSS”), sued the city in federal district court. The federal district court found in Philadelphia’s favor, which the Third Circuit then unanimously affirmed. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court granted certiorari.
The CSS claims that because the city looks to several factors, including religious and racial factors, in spite of anti-discrimination law, it cannot at the same time prohibit the agency from considering the sexual orientation of foster parents under the guise of “religious belief.” If Philadelphia makes exceptions to its anti-discrimination laws in foster placement, it must also allow religious agencies an exception as well. If Philadelphia does not do so, it violates the First Amendment. The city claims that it can choose not to provide government contracts to organizations that do not adhere to its nondiscriminatory requirements. For the court to decide otherwise, it would mandate that the city discriminate.
The stakes are high, in part because a ruling against equality in Fulton could provide cover for undermining Bostock, which extended Title VII protections to LGBTQ employees. An expansion of the religious liberty to discriminate could eat away at Bostock. Even a 5-4 court with Justice Kennedy ruled against LGBTQ rights in Masterpiece Cakeshop. Now, with a 6-3 conservative supermajority, Fulton could strike a big blow against equality.
Health care and family: If the Supreme Court strikes down the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in California v. Texas, health care protections for the LGBTQ community would be eliminated. Section 1557 of the ACA is the law’s non-discrimination provision, which bans discrimination in health care on the basis of sex. The Obama administration’s rule interpreted Section 1557’s ban on sex discrimination to include discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. In addition to Section 1557, the ACA as a whole has been enormously important for the LGBTQ community. The uninsured rate for lesbian, gay and bisexual Americans fell dramatically due to the ACA and LGBTQ adults have become more likely to report having regular access to health care. For transgender Americans, who are more likely to live in poverty or be unemployed and to face enormous challenges and have negative experiences accessing health care, the ACA’s Medicaid expansion and provision of individual health insurance through the marketplaces are critical. The 6-3 conservative supermajority on the court makes the end of the ACA significantly more likely, with disastrous consequences that will disproportionately affect the LGBTQ community.
Lawsuits challenging the Obama administration’s interpretation of Section 1557, particularly in regard to its ban on discrimination on the basis of gender identity, have been percolating in the federal courts for years. The Trump administration has attempted to reverse those protections, but it is widely expected that the Biden administration will revert to the Obama-era rule. Even if the ACA survives, this line of litigation could undermine critical protections for transgender individuals in the health care system. While the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County last term interpreting similar language in Title VII (discrimination on the basis of sex) to cover gender identity should be definitive, the 6-3 conservative supermajority could decide to distinguish these cases and allow for discrimination against LGBTQ individuals in health care. Since so many of the nation’s hospitals are affiliated with religious organizations such as the Catholic Church, the court could seize on Justice Gorsuch’s language in Bostock suggesting that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) could trump Title VII to require broad religious exemptions from non-discrimination in health care.
Transgender rights: In addition to the massive blow that a gutted ACA could have for transgender rights, other cases about transgender rights percolating in the lower courts may someday make their way to the Supreme Court. In Saba v. Cuomo, for example, a transgender, nonbinary resident sued the state of New York for refusing to allow Mx. Saba to obtain a driver’s license that accords with Mx. Saba’s gender identity. In August, a lower court preliminarily enjoined Idaho’s law that barred transgender women from participating on women’s sports teams. That decision is currently being appealed.
Just this past year, the Fourth Circuit and the Eleventh Circuit considered whether school bathroom policies violated transgender students’ rights. Though both circuits ruled in favor of the students, the Grimm case briefly reached the Supreme Court in 2017 before being sent back to the lower court. In 2019, the Supreme Court rejected certiorari in a case involving transgender bathrooms, leaving a lower court’s trans-affirming decision in place. But it only takes four votes for the Court to take a case, and with a 6-3 supermajority now firmly in place, there is no telling the havoc it could wreak on transgender rights.
As we celebrate the end of the Trump era, and as we prepare to work with the incoming Biden administration to restore rights that have been destroyed over the past four years while advancing the case for equality, the LGBTQ community must pay attention to the danger posed by anti-LGBTQ justices, and we must advocate forcefully for judicial reforms such as court expansion and term limits that rebalance the stolen, illegitimate court.
Aaron Belkin is the director of the Palm Center and of Take Back the Court, and a political science professor at San Francisco State University.
Opinions
A vice president marches by our side
New exhibit explores Pride in the 2020s and asks what’s to come
A photograph can change how we understand ourselves. In Rainbow History Project’s exhibit “Pickets, Protests, and Parades: The History of Gay Pride in Washington,” one pairing does exactly that: 10 Washingtonians in their Sunday best picketing the White House in 1965, and, a few panels later, Vice President Kamala Harris in a “Love is Love” Tshirt marching down Pennsylvania Avenue for Capital Pride in 2021. Between those two moments—anxious, buttonedup defiance on one side of the White House fence and a sitting vice president cheering among rainbow flags on the other—lies the story this exhibit tells.
Last year, we stretched that story along Freedom Plaza for WorldPride 2025, just three blocks from the White House. Over seven weeks, visitors from around the globe walked a timeline that showed how a small, risky White House picket helped ignite six decades of increasingly visible, intersectional Pride in the nation’s capital. They met organizers who insisted that gay history did not start at Stonewall, and that D.C. has been a laboratory for LGBTQ resistance since at least that first 1965 picket.
This June, as part of Dupont Underground’s “Matters of Pride” programming, we’re inviting you back underground to revisit what we showed the world last year—and to look harder at what it asks of us now. The tunnels below Dupont Circle will host the early eras of the exhibition: the White House picket; block parties at Lambda Rising bookstore, the first National March for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1979 that brought more than 100,000 people onto the Mall; and the first D.C. Pride march that began at Howard University, led by BIPOC activists who carried every part of their identities into the streets.
Seen together, these moments make the theme “A Vice President Marches By Our Side” less about a single VIP participant and more about a changing relationship between our movements and the state. In 1965, picketers carefully followed dress codes to appear “employable” enough to be heard at all. By 1979, marchers filled the National Mall with banners that linked sexuality to feminism, racial justice, and antiwar activism. By the 2020s, a vice president could show up at Capital Pride, call for the Equality Act, and speak explicitly about protecting trans youth and communities of color. None of those shifts were guaranteed. All of them were built, step by step, by people who kept organizing whether or not anyone in power joined them.
The reinstall is also a chance to notice details you may have rushed past on a crowded WorldPride weekend: a handlettered sign demanding federal jobs in 1965; a quote from a 1970s organizer about the sheer relief of dancing in public; a photograph of local pioneers like SaVanna Wanzer, the founder of D.C. Trans Pride and Black Trans Pride, whose work helped make today’s Pride more fully trans inclusive even as Black trans folx remain under attack. These are not just artifacts; they are reminders of how much was risked so that we could take Pride for granted at all.
We are reinstalling this exhibit at a moment when very little about the future feels guaranteed. America’s 250th birthday is around the corner, and national debates over whose stories “belong” in the classroom, the public square, or in the archives, are already shaping policy. In that context, going back to the origins of D.C. Pride is more than nostalgia. It is a strategy lesson. The 1960s picketers, the 1979 marchers, the BIPOC activists leaving an intersectionality conference at Howard and marching to the Mall—all of them faced hostile climates, limited resources, and no certainty of success. Yet they showed up anyway, and in doing so, they expanded what was imaginable.
That is why, at the end of the reinstall, the exhibit turns back on you. The final section, “The Next 60 Years of Pride,” remains intentionally unwritten. Instead, you will find a simple question on the wall: “What will you do?” Visitors will have the chance to add their own commitments—large or small—to the story: what they will march for, organize for, or quietly sustain in the years ahead.
A vice president once marched by our side. This month at Dupont Underground, we are asking something both humbler and more radical: after everything we have learned from the past six decades of Pride in Washington, who will you be standing with, and what will you be brave enough to do next?
In conjunction with WorldPride 2025 the Rainbow History Project exhibited “Pickets, Protests, and Parades: The History of Gay Pride in Washington.” More than two years of planning resulted in seven weeks of outdoor education, centering the voices of Pride’s organizers. In the final of the 10 themes, we discuss “A Vice President Marches By Our Side,” about what Pride looked like in the 2020s and asking about Pride in the years to come.
Vincent Slatt volunteers as the senior curator at the Rainbow History Project.
Opinions
Leaving for a barge trip through canals of Burgundy
Nervous about European reactions to Americans given Trump’s war in Iran
As those who read my columns know, I love cruising, the kind you do on water. I have had many different cruise experiences, including sailing through the Galapagos and the Norwegian fjords. This time, I will be doing something a little different and am off on a new adventure. With 18 others, will be on a barge for six days, going from Lyon to Paris, through the canals of Burgundy. Each day will bring a new adventure. We will be embarking in Besancon, and traveling to Beaune, Arc-et-Senans, Dole, Saint-Jean-De-Losne, Seurre, Chalon-Sur-Saone, and then disembarking in Auxerre, en route to Paris. Of the 18 people, four are friends from D.C. and Rehoboth Beach. I look forward to meeting the other travelers.
I leave for Paris on June 8 and made arrangements for a car in Paris to take me to the Gare De Lyon, to board a fast train to Lyon. A quick two-hour trip. In Lyon I will head to the hotel for a welcome dinner, where I will meet our guide and other travelers. This is a Gate 1 adventure booked by my friends at My Lux Cruise. We will be spending two days in Lyon before boarding the MS Daniele, built in 2016. It is modern, with space for both indoor and outdoor dining, a small lounge, the requisite bar, and very simple staterooms. Mine will have two single beds. Can’t forget the hot tub on the bow. I will be writing a blog during my trip, which will be published in the Blade, likely after my return. I will post pictures during the trip on social media. After six days on the barge, we arrive in Paris, where I will spend a couple of days with good friends. One planned excursion is to see the rebuilt Notre Dame.
I will be away from D.C. on June 16, primary day. Since for the first time there will be ranked choice voting, it is possible we won’t know who wins until I get back on June 19. I hope everyone votes, and urge you to vote, as I already have, for Kenyan McDuffie for mayor. His main opponent, Janeese Lewis George, clearly doesn’t understand how D.C. government really works. She is trying to emulate NYC Mayor Mamdani with promises, but hers won’t happen. We don’t have a governor, and state legislature, to help. Our governor is in essence the felon in the White House, and our state legislature is the Congress. They won’t be helping. In addition, George has claimed the endorsement of an antisemitic organization, DSA, and is going to birthday parties for a guy who calls gay men like me ‘fags’ and says they shouldn’t be teaching his children in the public schools. The winners of the Democratic primary races will determine how D.C. moves forward. It really makes a difference.
The world is a different place today than it was just a short 18 months ago, when the felon began his second term. This is the first time I will be out of the country since he began this illegal war with Iran, plunging the world into chaos. I wonder what the reception for an American will be in Europe these days. I remember back when Ronald Reagan was first elected, which was the last time in my travels, before Trump, I felt compelled to apologize for my country. At that time people would actually come up to me and ask, what did America do, and why? Yet as bad as times seemed then, they were nowhere as bad as they are today. The felon in the White House has made life so much worse for people around the world. Europeans have seen him get on his knees to Putin, and screw Ukraine. Now with this illegal, and unnecessary, war in Iran, he is impacting their lives directly. Fuel prices are rising dramatically, and there is a drastic shortage of jet fuel, causing cuts in flights. They see him work hand-in-hand with the war criminal, Netanyahu, in Israel. They see how he simply wants to enrich himself with things like his ‘Board of Peace,’ and in the long run, screw the Palestinian people. It will be interesting to hear how Europeans feel about all this. I look forward to listening to them. All I can say in response is I didn’t vote for Trump and will continue to demonstrate, and write against him, as often as I can.
Putting politics aside, which is hard to do these days, I am excited about this new adventure, and look forward to sharing some of my experiences with you.
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.
Opinions
Barney Frank’s powerful legacy for LGBTQ federal employees
The ‘Great Gay Communicator’ deserves respect
Former Congressman Barney Frank, who died last week, was dogged during his life over being gay. The self-proclaimed only “left-handed, gay, Jewish congressman,” in Congress deserved better.
Frank’s perseverance paved the way for others. With wit and intelligence, he helped educate Americans about sexuality. As a federal employee and a member of the Federal Gay, Lesbian or Bisexual Employees (GLOBE), a government-wide organization founded by Dr. Len Hirsch, I saw Frank’s unforgettable speaking style when he was a guest speaker at our monthly events.
Frank’s detailed presentations about federal employment policies were not recorded. The only record of them, edited by Dr. Hirsch and other members of the GLOBE board, is in the minutes of the GLOBE meetings. I held several positions in GLOBE, including secretary, assistant newsletter editor, and as an elected member of the board. I drafted the minutes of the meetings.
GLOBE’s minutes were edited to protect the identity of federal employees. This was important because then-U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) attempted to obtain the minutes. Helms felt LGBT advocacy in the federal workplace was an illegal form of political activity. GLOBE was also concerned that the minutes would be illegally accessed and forwarded to Helms or used to blackmail federal employees. GLOBE’s minutes are preserved at the National Archives.
When I was named Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Program Manager at the Department of Agriculture in 1993, I immediately notified Frank’s office of my appointment. After a federal newsletter published an article about a speech I gave, Helms accused me of using government resources to support “a homosexual agenda.” During several hours on the evening of July 19, 1994, Helms told the Senate and C-SPAN’s television audience that LGBT federal employees had their minds in their crotches. He called LGBT federal employees “perverts.”
Helms had government documents that described the position of “Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Program Manager.” It was a program that used the incendiary words “promote” and “recruit” homosexuals. It was a huge mistake for government bureaucrats to have written such a program. Helms published it in the Congressional Record. Frank helped us through this battle and others.
Aside from Frank, there were other LGBT members of Congress in the 1990s. Gerry Studds (D-Mass.), Steve Gunderson (R-Wisc.), and James Kolbe (R-Ariz.). Studds was censured for an affair with a 17-year-old male page in the House. Gunderson was publicly outed by a fellow House Republican. Kolbe was subject to sexual accusations.
Among these gay congressmen, Frank weathered a hostile media, personal scandal, and vicious attacks from his Republican colleagues. In 1995, former Texas GOP House Majority Leader Dick Armey was caught referring to Frank as “Barney Fag.” His apology was grudging.
“I rule out that it was an innocent mispronunciation,” responded Frank. “I turned to my own expert, my mother, who reports that in 59 years of marriage, no one ever introduced her as Elsie Fag.”
After celebrating his 72nd birthday, Frank married his longtime partner. He successfully worked to place marriage equality into the 2012 Democratic platform, which President Obama endorsed.
Still, Frank was dogged by homophobia. The Tea Party’s Doug Mainwaring called Frank’s wedding “a mockery, a parody, a staggering caricature of the most fundamental and towering of American institutions.”
In an interview with Washingtonian magazine, Frank said he “hates being classified as ‘the gay congressman,’” as his legislative accomplishments go beyond gay rights. He co-sponsored the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
Frank will especially be remembered in Washington for his sharp wit. He once referred to advocating for gay marriage legalization as “cruising for gay rights.” He wrote devastatingly funny op-ed pieces, notably for the Washington Post.
Though Frank may not have wanted to be known as a gay congressman, when he spoke, the LGBT community listened. He was the Great Gay Communicator. Barney Frank deserved respect. May his memory be a blessing.
James Patterson, a life member of the American Foreign Service Association, is a writer and communications consultant in the D.C. area.
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