Local
Rehoboth Beach sued over refusal to approve theater buildings
Clear Space says permit revocation violates laws
A lawsuit filed on Aug. 13 by the Clear Space Theatre Company in Rehoboth Beach, Del., charges the city’s mayor and Board of Commissioners with violating local and state law by refusing to approve its plans to build a larger theater and an adjacent rehearsal theater in a new location.
Clear Space filed its lawsuit in the Superior Court of Delaware six weeks after the Board of Commissioners, which acts like a city council, and Rehoboth Mayor Stan Mills, who’s a member of the board, voted for the second time in eight months to overturn a decision by the city’s Planning Commission to approve plans for the two new theater buildings.
Supporters of the theater project, including many of Rehoboth’s LGBTQ residents and summer visitors, expressed strong opposition to the Board of Commissioners’ and mayor’s decision. Supporters have said the action was based on opposition to the theaters by a small but vocal minority of homeowners and renters who don’t want the theater buildings near their homes, even though they would be built on Rehoboth Avenue, which serves as the city’s main business and commercial boulevard.
The opponents have said the back walls of the two proposed theater buildings would face a residential street lined with houses and would create excessive noise and parking problems among other adverse effects. Wesley Paulson, the Clear Space Theatre executive director, has said steps have been taken to minimize noise and parking related issues and that the plans for the two theaters were in full compliance with zoning and building codes.
“We have worked patiently and respectfully through an arduous process for the past several years to obtain permits to build two new buildings on Rehoboth Avenue,” Clear Space says in a statement announcing the filing of the lawsuit. “Our permits were twice approved by the town building inspector and the Planning Commission – and is broadly supported by residents and the local business community,” the statement says.
“We were left with no choice but to file a petition with the courts,” Paulson said in the statement. “We are simply asking the city to follow the law and allow us to build a new theater at our property just down the street,” Paulson said.
Clear Space Theatre is currently located on Baltimore Avenue near the boardwalk and beach. The nonprofit theater company, which for many years has produced Broadway plays and musical performances that have attracted audiences from throughout the state and the mid-Atlantic region, said it has outgrown its current building and was hoping to move into its planned new buildings on Rehoboth Avenue.
The lawsuit was filed on the theater’s behalf by attorneys from the Wilmington law firm Barnes & Thornburg. It states that the vote by the mayor and city commissioners denying the theater’s building plans was in “legal error for multiple reasons.”
Among other things, the lawsuit says the mayor and commissioners incorrectly cite as one of their reasons for turning down the theater’s building plans was that the Planning Commission approved the smaller of the two buildings to be used for educational purposes such as theater classes. Opponents of the theater’s plans have pointed out that allowing the building to be used for educational purposes would violate the zoning law unless Clear Space provides a large number of parking spaces on the site of the two theater buildings, something Clear Space was not able to do.
But the lawsuit says the theater’s official application for its new buildings does not call for an educational use of the buildings and that it was the Planning Commission that added that provision to its approval of the plans on its own as an “accessory” use of the buildings. According to the lawsuit, “the Mayor and City Commissioners do not possess jurisdiction to decide what is or is not an accessory use.” That function is the responsibility of the Rehoboth Beach Board of Adjustment, the lawsuit says.
“The Mayor and City Commissioner’s decision erroneously conflates the Applications’ site plans, which were before the Planning Commission for approval, with the Applications’ building plans, which were not,” the lawsuit says. It calls on the court to reverse the mayor and city commissioners’ decision to overturn the Planning Commission’s approval of the building project.
Rehoboth City Manager Sharon Lynn, who often acts as the city’s official spokesperson, declined to comment on the lawsuit other than to say the city usually does not comment on pending legal matters, according to a report by the Cape Gazette, the local Rehoboth area newspaper.
Under court rules, the mayor and commissioners must respond to the lawsuit within 20 days after they are served legal papers informing them of the suit.
Gay D.C. attorney Harvey Shulman, who owns a home in Rehoboth and is one of the leaders of the opponents of the theater’s building plan, expressed strong doubts about the merits of the lawsuit, which he said was “grasping at straws, and even the straws aren’t there.”
Shulman has said that at least 15 percent of the 63 Rehoboth homeowners or renters who signed on as official “appellants” to oppose the Clear Space building plans are gay.
D.C. gay activist Peter Rosenstein, who also owns a home in the Rehoboth area and supports the theater’s building project, said he believes the overwhelming majority of Rehoboth’s large LGBTQ community supports the theater’s building plans.
Virginia
Gay Va. State Sen. Ebbin resigns for role in Spanberger administration
Veteran lawmaker will step down in February
Alexandria Democrat Adam Ebbin, who has served as an openly gay member of the Virginia Legislature since 2004, announced on Jan. 7 that he is resigning from his seat in the State Senate to take a job in the administration of Gov.-Elect Abigail Spanberger.
Since 2012, Ebbin has been a member of the Virginia Senate for the 39th District representing parts of Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax counties. He served in the Virginia House of Delegates representing Alexandria from 2004 to 2012, becoming the state’s first out gay lawmaker.
His announcement says he submitted his resignation from his Senate position effective Feb. 18 to join the Spanberger administration as a senior adviser at the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority.
“I’m grateful to have the benefit of Senator Ebbin’s policy expertise continuing to serve the people of Virginia, and I look forward to working with him to prioritize public safety and public health,” Spanberger said in Ebbin’s announcement statement.
She was referring to the lead role Ebbin has played in the Virginia Legislature’s approval in 2020 of legislation decriminalizing marijuana and the subsequent approval in 2021of a bill legalizing recreational use and possession of marijuana for adults 21 years of age and older. But the Virginia Legislature has yet to pass legislation facilitating the retail sale of marijuana for recreational use and limits sales to purchases at licensed medical marijuana dispensaries.
“I share Governor-elect Spanberger’s goal that adults 21 and over who choose to use cannabis, and those who use it for medical treatment, have access to a well-tested, accurately labeled product, free from contamination,” Ebbin said in his statement. “2026 is the year we will move cannabis sales off the street corner and behind the age-verified counter,” he said.
Maryland
Steny Hoyer, the longest-serving House Democrat, to retire from Congress
Md. congressman served for years in party leadership
By ASSOCIATED PRESS and LISA MASCARO | Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the longest-serving Democrat in Congress and once a rival to become House speaker, will announce Thursday he is set to retire at the end of his term.
Hoyer, who served for years in party leadership and helped steer Democrats through some of their most significant legislative victories, is set to deliver a House floor speech about his decision, according to a person familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it.
“Tune in,” Hoyer said on social media. He confirmed his retirement plans in an interview with the Washington Post.
The rest of this article can be found on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
District of Columbia
Kennedy Center renaming triggers backlash
Artists who cancel shows threatened; calls for funding boycott grow
Efforts to rename the Kennedy Center to add President Trump’s name to the D.C. arts institution continue to spark backlash.
A new petition from Qommittee , a national network of drag artists and allies led by survivors of hate crimes, calls on Kennedy Center donors to suspend funding to the center until “artistic independence is restored, and to redirect support to banned or censored artists.”
“While Trump won’t back down, the donors who contribute nearly $100 million annually to the Kennedy Center can afford to take a stand,” the petition reads. “Money talks. When donors fund censorship, they don’t just harm one institution – they tell marginalized communities their stories don’t deserve to be told.”
The petition can be found here.
Meanwhile, a decision by several prominent musicians and jazz performers to cancel their shows at the recently renamed Trump-Kennedy Center in D.C. planned for Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve has drawn the ire of the Center’s president, Richard Grenell.
Grenell, a gay supporter of President Donald Trump who served as U.S. ambassador to Germany during Trump’s first term as president, was named Kennedy Center president last year by its board of directors that had been appointed by Trump.
Last month the board voted to change the official name of the center from the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center For The Performing Arts to the Donald J. Trump And The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center For The Performing Arts. The revised name has been installed on the outside wall of the center’s building but is not official because any name change would require congressional action.
According to a report by the New York Times, Grenell informed jazz musician Chuck Redd, who cancelled a 2025 Christmas Eve concert that he has hosted at the Kennedy Center for nearly 20 years in response to the name change, that Grenell planned to arrange for the center to file a lawsuit against him for the cancellation.
“Your decision to withdraw at the last moment — explicitly in response to the Center’s recent renaming, which honors President Trump’s extraordinary efforts to save this national treasure — is classic intolerance and very costly to a non-profit arts institution,” the Times quoted Grenell as saying in a letter to Redd.
“This is your official notice that we will seek $1 million in damages from you for this political stunt,” the Times quoted Grenell’s letter as saying.
A spokesperson for the Trump-Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to an inquiry from the Washington Blade asking if the center still planned to file that lawsuit and whether it planned to file suits against some of the other musicians who recently cancelled their performances following the name change.
In a follow-up story published on Dec. 29, the New York Times reported that a prominent jazz ensemble and a New York dance company had canceled performances scheduled to take place on New Year’s Eve at the Kennedy Center.
The Times reported the jazz ensemble called The Cookers did not give a reason for the cancellation in a statement it released, but its drummer, Billy Hart, told the Times the center’s name change “evidently” played a role in the decision to cancel the performance.
Grenell released a statement on Dec. 29 calling these and other performers who cancelled their shows “far left political activists” who he said had been booked by the Kennedy Center’s previous leadership.
“Boycotting the arts to show you support the arts is a form of derangement syndrome,” the Times quoted him as saying in his statement.
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