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.
District of Columbia
Murdered Israeli embassy officials were supporters of D.C.’s LGBTQ synagogue
Bet Mishpachah calls fatal shooting outside Capital Jewish Museum ‘devastating’
The two Israeli embassy officials who were shot to death outside D.C.’s Capital Jewish Museum Wednesday evening, May 21, were strong supporters of Bet Mishpachah, D.C.’s LGBTQ supportive synagogue, according to a statement it released.
“We are especially devastated by the loss of our dear colleague and friend of Bet Mishpachah, Sarah Milgram, and her soon to be fiancé, Yaron Lischinsky,” the LGBTQ synagogue said in a May 22 statement.
“Sarah was the liaison between Bet Mishpachah and the Israeli Embassy, working closely with our staff and clergy,” the statement says. “Her warmth, professionalism, and deep commitment to building bridges within the Jewish community made her not only a trusted partner but a beloved part of our extended congregational family,” according to the statement.
A statement also released on May 22 by the office of the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia says Chicago resident Elias Rodriguez, 30, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder along with other weapons related charges in connection with the shooting deaths of Milgram and Lischinsky.
Officials with the D.C. police and the FBI, which has joined D.C. police in continuing to investigate the case, have said Rodriquez arrived in D.C. from Chicago one day prior to the shooting and appears to have targeted an event taking place at the Capital Jewish Museum for violence at the time it was hosting an event called “Young Diplomats Reception,” in which Israeli Embassy officials were in attendance.
Police and FBI officials have said Rodriguez allegedly shot Milgrim and Lischinsky after they left the Capital Jewish Museum at the conclusion of the event. The museum is located at 575 3rd Street, N.W.
“Surveillance footage reportedly shows Rodriquez walking past the victims before turning and firing multiple rounds,” the U.S. Attorney’s statement says. “After the victims fell, he allegedly continued firing at close range, including as one attempted to crawl away,” it says, adding, “Investigators recovered a 9 mm handgun and 21 spent shell casings at the scene.”
Police have said Rodriguez walked into the Capital Jewish Museum after the shooting and was detained by security guards until D.C. police arrived. Witnesses said he began to shout, “free, free Palestine” before police took him into custody.
“Make no mistake, this attack was targeted, antisemitic violence,” said Steven Jenson, an FBI assistant director working on the investigation. “The FBI will continue to pursue all leads and use all available resources to investigate this heinous murder,” he said in the statement.
The fatal shooting took place five days after the Capital Jewish Museum opened a special exhibition called “LGBT Jews in the Federal City” on May 16. “This landmark exhibition explores a turbulent century of celebrations, activism, and change in the nation’s capital by D.C.’s LGBTQ+ Jewish community,” the museum said in a statement announcing the exhibition.
Photos and documents related to Bet Mishpachah make up a prominent part of the exhibition.
During a May 22 press conference organized by the U.S. Attorney for D.C., Jeanine Pirro, to provide an update on the investigation into the two murders, Pirro and FBI official Jensen referred to the two murders as a hate crime and terrorist act.
In response to a question from the Washington Blade asking if investigators were looking into whether the LGBTQ exhibition at the Capital Jewish Museum might have played some role in Gonzales’s motive for targeting the museum, Pirro responded to the question.
“So, we are looking into absolutely everything,” she said. “There is so much information we’re looking at. And I must tell you, coming from New York, I’ve never seen the cooperation and coordination that I’m seeing here. It was immediate. It was instant. It was coordinated. And my hat’s off to this area. We’re going to clean it up, thank you,” she said in ending the press conference.
Josh Maxey, Bet Mishpachah’s executive director, said he and Israeli Embassy official Milgram became friends during their two-and-a-half-year interaction working on joint events between the embassy and Bet Mishpachah.
“This became a wonderful two and a half years journey of putting events together, of hosting events together, doing different programs for the community,” Maxey told the Blade. Among the activities the two worked on, he said, was the embassy’s annual LGBTQ Pride event.
Maxie said his own grieving over the death of Milgram and her boyfriend Lischinsky was heightened by the fact that he spoke with her by phone on the day of the shooting shortly before she arrived at the Jewish Museum over plans about this year’s LGBTQ Pride events.
“Sarah really championed us to be included in Israeli events,” Maxey said. “And so, I am just devastated that this true embodiment of an ally was so viciously and violently taken away from us.”
Delaware
Delaware marriage equality bill advances out of committee
Measure will now go before full state Senate
The bill that would amend Delaware’s state constitution to codify same-sex marriage advanced out of the Senate Executive Committee on Wednesday and now goes to the Senate chamber for a vote. If passed, the vote would go on to the House.
Three members of the committee voted favorable and one voted on its merits, meaning the member recommends the chamber take action on the legislation but does not take a position on what action should be taken.
Senate Bill 100 was introduced in April by Democratic Sen. Russ Huxtable of the sixth district of Delaware and has 21 co-sponsors. It is the first leg of an amendment to the Delaware Constitution. The act would “establish the right to marry as a fundamental right and that Delaware and its political subdivisions shall recognize marriages and issue marriage licenses to couples regardless of gender.”
Senate Substitute One was adopted in lieu of the original bill on May 16. SB 100 originally focused exclusively on marriage equality relating to gender and the bill was tweaked to include protection for all classes that fall under Delaware’s Equal Rights Amendment, including race, color, national origin, and sex.
The Wednesday committee meeting heard testimony on SS 1 for SB 100 from individuals and organizations, including John Reynolds, Deputy Policy and Advocacy Director of Delaware’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
“After hard fought recent victories, the rights of LGBTQ Americans are under attack in many places across our country,” Reynolds said during his testimony. “It is important that Delaware be proactive and serve as a firewall protecting individual civil liberties. SS 1 for SB 100 is an example of this important work cementing the protections for marriage equality in our state constitution.”
According to Sen. Huxtable, the ACLU helped provide feedback on some of the bill’s language. Reynolds said the ACLU thought it was important to testify because this is a moment when so much is changing.
“These attacks are not just on specific communities, they’re on this concept of equality and liberty,” Reynolds told the Washington Blade. “We need to build these firewalls to both prevent harm to folks on the frontline of these attacks but also ensure that we don’t set very problematic and damaging standards that can be used to roll back protections for large [swaths] of our population.”
SS 1 for SB 100 requires a vote of two-thirds of the members elected to each house of the General Assembly to pass. If passed, the next General Assembly after the next general election also has to pass it. Delaware is the only state in the country that can amend its state constitution without a vote of the people.
The Respect for Marriage Act was passed by the United States Congress in 2022 and signed into law by then-President Joe Biden. It codifies the right to same-sex and interracial marriage, requiring all states to recognize validly performed marriages from other states, regardless of whether they allow same-sex marriage within their own borders.
In Virginia, a bill codifying marriage equality was signed into law in 2024. California, Colorado and Hawaii have also passed amendments to codify same-sex marriage into their constitutions.
“We at the ACLU of Delaware are very excited that SS 1 for SB 100 passed out of committee yesterday,” Reynolds said. “It represents both Sen. Huxtable and the Delaware Legislature’s clear commitment to proactively protecting people’s rights within the LGBT community and outside to ensure that in this moment of uncertainty, we don’t sit idly by and wait for the worst to happen but take control of the things that we can to build the communities that we want.”
Photos
PHOTOS: Helen Hayes Awards
Gay Men’s Chorus, local drag artists have featured performance at ceremony
The 41st Helen Hayes Awards were held at The Anthem on Monday, May 19. Felicia Curry and Mike Millan served as the hosts.
A performance featuring members of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington and local drag artists was held at the end of the first act of the program to celebrate WorldPride 2025.
The annual awards ceremony honors achievement in D.C.-area theater productions and is produced by Theatre Washington.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Murdered Israeli embassy officials were supporters of D.C.’s LGBTQ synagogue
US hate groups fuel anti-LGBTQ rights movement in Africa
Delaware marriage equality bill advances out of committee
PHOTOS: Helen Hayes Awards
Laverne Cox, Reneé Rapp, Deacon Maccubbin named WorldPride grand marshals
Looking back at 50 years of Pride in D.C
WorldPride events round-up
Pope Leo XIV: Family based on ‘stable union between a man and a woman’
Wes Moore signs HIV decriminalization bill
