Local
Clinical psychologist, former teacher Roger Bartman dies at 77
Met longtime partner via Blade personals ad in 1987
Erwin “Roger” Bartman, a high school teacher in Baltimore and Silver Spring, Md. before becoming a clinical psychologist in private practice in Reston, Va., for 42 years, died on Jan. 12 at his home outside Leesburg, Va. of complications associated with Leukemia. He was 77.
Peter Kelpinski, Bartman’s life partner since 1987 and husband since 2004, said Bartman was extraordinarily dedicated to his patients and improved the lives of countless people who sought his services as a mental health professional.
Bartman was born in Lawton, Okla., and grew up in Louisville, Ky., where he graduated from St. Xavier High School in 1961 and entered the Xavarian Brothers Roman Catholic order. Kelpinski said that after completing his novitiate and taking his first vows he began his studies at Catholic University in D.C.
He received bachelor’s degrees at Catholic University in 1967 in mathematics and religious education. He received his master’s degree in mathematics education at Johns Hopkins University the following year.
According to Kelpinski, under the name of Brother Raphael, Bartman began his career teaching advanced math courses at Xavarian High Schools in Baltimore and Silver Spring, Md. His resume provided by Kelpinski says he held the positions of assistant dean at Xaverian Junior College in Silver Spring from 1965 to 1967 and served as a summer camp counselor in his role as Xaverian brother in Maryland and Kentucky from 1964 through 1966.
His resume shows that he returned to Catholic University to enter its doctoral program in psychology and received his Ph.D. there in clinical psychology in 1976. Upon completion of his doctorate degree, he began an internship at the Fairfax County Northwest Center for Community Health in Reston, Va. and soon began work there as a clinical psychologist. He served in that position through 1986.
Kelpinski said Bartman and four partners, while still working at the Northwest Center, started their own private practice in 1977 called Reston Psychotherapy. Bartman later withdrew from his position at Northwest Center to devote his full time work to the Reston Psychotherapy practice, where he remained until his retirement in 2019, Kelpinski said.
Kelpinski said he and Bartman first met in January 1987 through a classified personals ad that Kelpinski placed in the Washington Blade seeking to meet someone for a relationship. He said Bartman was one of many people who responded to the ad, but it was Bartman who immediately stood out from the others.
Kelpinski’s ad in the Blade, among other things, mentioned he had a “Catholic background,” which he later learned caught Bartman’s attention. It turns out that both men were involved with a Catholic religious order in their early adult years, with Kelpinski becoming involved with the Marians of the Immaculate Conception after considering becoming a priest.
Similar to Bartman, who chose to leave the Xavarian Order on amicable terms, as Kelpinski recalls Bartman telling him, to enter a secular life as a practicing psychologist, Kelpinski also chose to leave his religious order for a career as a florist.
Upon speaking by phone for the first time in January 1987 after Bartman responded to Kelpinski’s Blade ad, the two men had their first date over brunch at a restaurant in Old Town Alexandria. “And then we walked around Old Town and just gabbed and gabbed,” as Kelpinski tells it.
“And we kind of clicked,” Kelpinski said. “We got along immediately. We were from the same background. It was really amazing.”
Among the many things they did together that year was to participate in the October 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian & Gay Rights, which drew hundreds of thousands of LGBTQ people to the nation’s capital.
Not long after that, the couple bought a house on a large tract of land just outside Leesburg, Va., where they lived until Bartman’s passing on Jan. 12 of this year.
“He was the love of my life,” said Kelpinski. “He’s one of those few people who could say they changed the world because he helped so many people in their own lives so that they actually were able to live better lives,” said Kelpinski in referring to Bartman’s role as a psychotherapist. “And they made the world better.”
Memorial services for Bartman were being planned for this summer in Reston and Louisville. Bartman’s ashes were to be interred in Bay City, Mich., where Kelpinski plans to move to return to his hometown.
In addition to Kelpinski, Bartman is survived by his siblings Kathy Furlong and James Bartman of Louisville, Ky., and Lally House of Woodbury, Ky.; an aunt and uncle, Dolores and Frank Lally of Louisville; sisters and brothers-in-law Nancy and Jack MacKenzie and Sandi and Hank Bridges of Bay City, Mich.; and many nieces and nephews, great nieces and nephews, cousins, and numerous friends.
He was predeceased by his parents Erwin R. and Mary Kathryn Bartman and grandparents Erwin R. and Louise Bartman and Frank and Orvilla Lally.
Contributions in Bartman’s name can be made to Holy Cross Abbey in Berryville, Va.
District of Columbia
Capital Stonewall Democrats set to celebrate 50th anniversary
Mayor Bowser expected to attend March 20 event
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, members of the D.C. Council, and local and national Democratic Party officials are expected to join more than 150 LGBTQ advocates and supporters on March 20 for the 50th anniversary celebration of the city’s Capital Stonewall Democrats.
A statement released by the organization says the event is scheduled to be held at the Pepco Edison Place Gallery building at 702 8th St., N.W. in D.C.
“The evening will honor the people who built Capital Stonewall Democrats across five decades – activists who fought for rights when the odds were against them, public servants who opened doors and refused to let them close, and a new generation of leaders ready to carry the work forward,” the statement says.
Founded in 1976 as the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the organization’s members voted in 2021 to change its name to the Capital Stonewall Democrats.
Among those planning to attend the anniversary event is longtime D.C. gay Democratic activist Paul Kuntzler, 84, who is one of the two co-founders of the then-Gertrude Stein Democratic Club. Kuntzler told the Washington Blade that he and co-founder Richard Maulsby were joined by about a dozen others in the living room of his Southwest D.C. home at the group’s founding meeting in January 1976.
He said that among the reasons for forming a local LGBTQ Democratic group at the time was to arrange for a then “gay” presence at the 1976 Democratic National Convention, at which Jimmy Carter won the Democratic nomination for U.S. president and later won election as president.
Maulsby, who served as the Stein Club president for its first three years and who now lives in Sarasota, Fla., said he would not be attending the March 20 anniversary event, but he fully supports the organization’s continuing work as an LGBTQ organization associated with the Democratic Party.
Steven McCarty, Capital Stonewall Democrats’ current president, said in the statement that the anniversary celebration will highlight the organization’s work since the time of its founding.
“Capital Stonewall Democrats has been fighting for LGBTQ+ political power in this city for 50 years, electing people, training organizers, holding this community together through some really hard moments,” he said. “And right now, with everything going on, that work has never mattered more. This gala is the first moment of our next chapter, and I want the community to be a part of it.”
The statement says among the special guests attending the event will be Democratic National Committee Vice Chair Malcolm Kenyatta, who became the first openly gay LGBTQ person of color to win election to the Pennsylvania General Assembly in 2018.
Other guests of honor, according to the statement, include Mayor Bowser; D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5, the Council’s only gay member; D.C. Council member Anita Bonds (D-At-Large); Earl Fowlkes, founder of the International Federation of Black Prides; Vita Rangel, a transgender woman who serves as Deputy Director of the D.C. Mayor’s Office of Talent and Appointments; Heidi Ellis, director of the D.C. LGBTQ Budget Coalition; Rayceen Pendarvis, longtime D.C. LGBTQ civic activist; and Phillip Pannell, longtime D.C. LGBTQ Democratic activist and Ward 8 civic activist.
Information about ticket availability for the Capital Stonewall Democrats anniversary gala can be accessed here: capitalstonewalldemocrats.com/50th
Maryland
Md. Legislative LGBTQ+ Caucus outlines 2026 priorities
Expanded PrEP access among objectives
Maryland’s Legislative LGBTQ+ Caucus outlined legislative priorities for the remainder of the General Assembly’s 2026 term during a press conference on March 5.
State Del. Kris Fair (D-Fredrick County) led the press conference. State Del. Ashanti Martinez (D-Prince George’s County) and other caucus members also spoke.
Caucus members are sponsoring 12 bills and supporting four others.
Martinez is sponsoring House Bill 1114, which would expand PrEP access in Maryland.
“PrEP is 99 percent effective in preventing HIV transmission,” he explained, noting PrEP’s cost often turns away potential users.
The bill aims to extend insurance coverage and expand pharmacists’ ability to prescribe PrEP along with other HIV treatments and testing. Martinez is working with state Sen. Clarence Lam (D-Anne Arundel and Howard Counties) and FreeState Justice on the bill.
The House Health Committee had a hearing last week that included HB1114.
“Ending the HIV epidemic is about expanding access and providing these life-saving tools to all persons in Maryland,” Martinez said.
Several other pieces of legislation were highlighted during the press conferences. They included measures focused on youth and education, birth certificate markers, so-called conversion therapy, and hormone medications.
State Sen. Cheryl Kagan (D-Montgomery County) is cosponsoring Senate Bill 950, which would update and strengthen conversion therapy laws. State Del. Bonnie Cullison (D-Montgomery County) has introduced an identical bill that would extend the statute of limitations on individuals who facilitate conversion therapy.
Kagan explained the bill would allow conversion therapy victims to come to terms with their experience undergoing the widely discredited practice that “creates shame and it silences survivors.”
When questioned, Fair explained the press conference happened late into the legislative session because “we [the caucus] are constantly having to respond in real time to what’s happening in Washington” while drafting and considering pieces of legislation.
The Frederick County Democrat described this session’s bills as the “most ambitious list of priorities to date.” Fair also described the caucus’s goals.
“It’s decency, it’s dignity, and its humanity,” he said.
District of Columbia
Owner of D.C. gay bar Green Lantern John Colameco dies at 79
Beloved businessman preferred to stay ‘behind the scenes’
John Colameco, owner of the popular D.C. gay bar Green Lantern, has died, according to a March 7 announcement posted on the bar’s website and Instagram account. The announcement didn’t provide a date of his passing or a cause of death.
Green Lantern manager Howard Hicks said Colameco was 79 at the time of his passing.
“It is with great sadness that Green Lantern announces the death of our beloved owner, John Colameco,” the announcement says. “Most of our patrons might have heard John’s name, but might not have known his face,” it says.
“He was a ‘behind-the-scenes’ kind of guy who avoided the limelight,” the announcement continues. “He preferred to stay in the back of the house with staff and team ensuring everything was running smoothly so that everyone out front was having a good time.”
The announcement adds, “As a veteran and businessman, John wasn’t a member of the LGBTQ + community, but he was one of the best damn allies our community has ever had.”
It says he “long provided spaces for the queer community to come together” since the 1990s when he owned and operated a popular restaurant on 17th Street, N.W. called Peppers.
According to the announcement, Colameco and his then business partner Greg Zehnacker opened the Green Lantern in 2001 in an alley off of 14th Street, N.W., between Thomas Circle and L Street, N.W.
The announcement points out that the Green Lantern first opened in the same location in the early 1990s before it later closed when the original owners decided to purchase and open other bars, one of which was the gay bar Fireplace near Dupont Circle. Colameco and Zehnacker were able to reopen the bar with the Green Lantern name.
“When Greg died unexpectedly in February 2014, John remained steadfastly committed to carrying on their vision and ensuring that Green Lantern remained part of the fabric of D.C.’s queer community,” the announcement says.
“Over the years, through Green Lantern, John has provided support to many community organizations, most notably Stonewall Sports, the Gay Men’s chorus of Washington, and ONYX Mid-Atlantic with Green Lantern serving as a gathering hub for their activities,” it states.
The announcement adds that Colameco’s family was planning a memorial for him in his hometown of Philadelphia.
“His Green Lantern family will celebrate his life by operating the bar as usual and we encourage you to stop by and join us,” it says. “Community coming together and having a good time – it’s exactly what John would want.”
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