National
HRC president terminated after dispute with board on his role in Cuomo affair
David vows lawsuit to challenge termination
Human Rights Campaign President Alphonso David has been terminated as head of the nation’s leading LGBTQ group following a public dispute with the board over his role in the Andrew Cuomo scandal.
Jodie Patterson and Morgan Cox, co-chairs of the Human Rights Campaign, issued a statement late Monday explaining the decision that David, the first Black president of the LGBTQ group, was being terminated under the “for cause” provision of his contract.
“At HRC, we are fighting to bring full equality and liberation to LGBTQ+ people everywhere. That includes fighting on behalf of all victims of sexual harassment and assault,” Patterson and Cox wrote. “As outlined in the New York Attorney General report, Mr. David engaged in a number of activities in December 2020, while HRC President, to assist Gov. Cuomo’s team in responding to allegations by Ms. Boylan of sexual harassment. This conduct in assisting Governor Cuomo’s team, while president of HRC, was in violation of HRC’s Conflict of Interest policy and the mission of HRC.”
According to the statement, the boards for the Human Rights Campaign and Human Rights Campaign Foundation voted to terminate David. The board names Joni Madison, the current chief operating officer of the Human Rights Campaign as interim president effective immediately as board members engage in a search to replace David as president.
The decision to fire David comes after public sniping between him and the board co-chairs on the independent review the Human Rights Campaign initiated after he was named nearly a dozen times in the report issued by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Both the Human Rights Campaign campaign board and the Human Rights Campaign voted to terminate David. A source familiar with the vote said it happened Monday night and no one voted “no” in either case. The campaign board vote was unanimous and there were two abstentions in foundation board vote, the source said.
The source familiar with the vote said David never told Human Rights Campaign he was helping Cuomo during his role as Human Rights Campaign president or talking to the New York attorney general. The first board members heard about it was when it hit the press, the source said.
According to a report in the New York Times, a person familiar with the deliberations among the HRC board said that David “never told the organization that he was helping to advise Mr. Cuomo when the accusations came to light.” Further, David didn’t consult the LGBTQ group’s counsel, or inform them he was going to be interviewed by James’s office, the Times reported.
The ignominious outcome of David’s tenure at the Human Rights Campaign comes after two years with him at the helm of the organization. Observers had high hopes for him as the first person of color to run the nation’s leading LGBTQ group, which he took into new directions with a foray into legal work on LGBTQ rights.
David, via Twitter, where his profile as of Tuesday morning still identifies him as HRC president, vowed to fight the decision to terminate him in court.
“As a Black, gay man who has spent his whole life fighting for civil and human rights, they cannot shut me up,” David wrote. “Expect a legal challenge.”
The board identified as reasons for termination David’s inability to serve as the public face of the Human Rights Campaign as well as “material damage” David has caused to the Human Rights Campaign as evidenced by media coverage and “hundreds of calls, emails and other negative communications HRC has received from staff, members of the Board of Governors, volunteers, program partners, general members, supporters, corporate partners, political figures, and more expressing serious concern with Mr. David’s conduct and its inconsistency with the values and mission of HRC.”
“This is a painful moment in our movement,” Patterson and Cox said. “While the Board’s decision is not the outcome we had ever envisioned or hoped for in terms of Mr. David’s tenure with HRC, his actions have put us in an untenable position by violating HRC’s core values, policies and mission.”
Over the weekend, David tweeted in a statement the board came to him late Friday telling him the review is completed, but suggested he resign even though they could produce no evidence of wrongdoing.
“I have the support of too many of our employees, board members and stakeholders to walk away quietly into the night,” David said. “I am not resigning.”
The next day, the board sent the email to their fellow members, saying they were “surprised and disappointed by the inaccuracies in his portrayal of events.” The email was shared with the Blade and three sources confirmed its accuracy.
Among the “mischaracterizations” identified by the board was David’s “assertion that there was ‘no indication of wrongdoing on his part.'”
David has said from the beginning he has committed no wrongdoing and wouldn’t resign as HRC president, even though other activists caught up in the scandal — Tina Tchen, president of “Time’s Up,” and Roberta Kaplan, board member of the same organization — made the decision to step down.
After the HRC board email became public on Monday, David issued a subsequent statement on Twitter: “The facts are that I was contacted by the board co-chairs late Friday night,” David wrote. “They told me that the Sidley Austin review was complete, but they would not provide the report to me or anyone. They gave me a deadline of 8 am the next morning to tell them whether I would resign. They didn’t offer a shred of evidence of any wrongdoing on my part when I asked repeatedly.”
At the time news of the New York attorney general report emerged, the board initially supported David, and renewed his contract for five years. The next week, however, the Human Rights Campaign board and David announced they had agreed to an independent review on his involvement in the Cuomo scandal that would be conducted by Sidley Austin LLP and last no longer than 30 days.
Sidley didn’t respond to multiple requests from the Washington Blade to comment over the weekend on the review. The board chairs have indicated the results of the review would be confidential.
According to the New York Times, the person familiar with the review, said there was no written report and there was never going to be one. Instead, there were oral presentations to the board. David is said to have given names to the board of people who would speak on his behalf during the investigation, in addition to the 10 hours he spent being interviewed, the Times reported.
Some legal experts had doubted the validity of a review by Sidley Austin on the basis it was among the legal firms agreeing in 2019 to help with the Human Rights Campaign entering into litigation to advance LGBTQ rights, an agreement David spearheaded upon taking the helm of the organization.
New York Attorney General Letitia James’s report on Cuomo names David nearly a dozen times. Among other things, the report indicated after his tenure as counselor to Cuomo, he kept the personnel file of an employee accusing the governor of sexual misconduct, then assisted in returning that file to Cuomo staffers seeking to leak it to the media in an attempt to discredit her.
(A representative has disputed the characterization of materials David kept as a personnel file, saying it was memorandum on an internal employment matter David kept because he, in part, worked on it. David has said he was legally required to return the material.)
Further, the report finds David allegedly said he would help find individuals to sign their names to a draft op-ed that sought to discredit the survivor but went unpublished, although he wouldn’t sign the document himself. Also, the report indicates David was involved in the discussions about secretly calling and recording a call between a former staffer and another survivor in a separate effort to smear her.
In response, David said he agreed to help with only one version of the letter that was more positive in nature and his part in the discussion about recording a survivor was limited to his role as counselor.
The nation’s leading LGBTQ group is now faced with the task of finding a new president at a time of significant challenges for the movement. The Equality Act is all but dead in Congress and numerous states have enacted laws targeting transgender youth, many of which are being challenged by litigation that was filed by the Human Rights Campaign.
U.S. Supreme Court
Activists rally for Andry Hernández Romero in front of Supreme Court
Gay asylum seeker ‘forcibly deported’ to El Salvador, described as political prisoner
More than 200 people gathered in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday and demanded the Trump-Vance administration return to the U.S. a gay Venezuelan asylum seeker who it “forcibly disappeared” to El Salvador.
Lindsay Toczylowski, president of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, a Los Angeles-based organization that represents Andry Hernández Romero, is among those who spoke alongside U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) and Human Rights Campaign Campaigns and Communications Vice President Jonathan Lovitz. Sarah Longwell of the Bulwark, Pod Save America’s Jon Lovett, and Tim Miller are among those who also participated in the rally.
“Andry is a son, a brother. He’s an actor, a makeup artist,” said Toczylowski. “He is a gay man who fled Venezuela because it was not safe for him to live there as his authentic self.”
(Video by Michael K. Lavers)
The White House on Feb. 20 designated Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, as an “international terrorist organization.”
President Donald Trump on March 15 invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which the Associated Press notes allows the U.S. to deport “noncitizens without any legal recourse.” The Trump-Vance administration subsequently “forcibly removed” Hernández and hundreds of other Venezuelans to El Salvador.
Toczylowski said she believes Hernández remains at El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security prison known by the Spanish acronym CECOT. Toczylowski also disputed claims that Hernández is a Tren de Aragua member.
“Andry fled persecution in Venezuela and came to the U.S. to seek protection. He has no criminal history. He is not a member of the Tren de Aragua gang. Yet because of his crown tattoos, we believe at this moment that he sits in a torture prison, a gulag, in El Salvador,” said Toczylowski. “I say we believe because we have not had any proof of life for him since the day he was put on a U.S. government-funded plane and forcibly disappeared to El Salvador.”
“Andry is not alone,” she added.
Takano noted the federal government sent his parents, grandparents, and other Japanese Americans to internment camps during World War II under the Alien Enemies Act. The gay California Democrat also described Hernández as “a political prisoner, denied basic rights under a law that should have stayed in the past.”
“He is not a case number,” said Takano. “He is a person.”
Hernández had been pursuing his asylum case while at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego.
A hearing had been scheduled to take place on May 30, but an immigration judge the day before dismissed his case. Immigrant Defenders Law Center has said it will appeal the decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which the Justice Department oversees.
“We will not stop fighting for Andry, and I know neither will you,” said Toczylowski.
Friday’s rally took place hours after Attorney General Pam Bondi said Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who the Trump-Vance administration wrongfully deported to El Salvador, had returned to the U.S. Abrego will face federal human trafficking charges in Tennessee.
National
A husband’s story: Michael Carroll reflects on life with Edmund White
Iconic author died this week; ‘no sunnier human in the world’
Unlike most gay men of my generation, I’ve only been to Fire Island twice. Even so, the memory of my first visit has never left me. The scenery was lovely, and the boys were sublime — but what stood out wasn’t the beach or the parties. It was a quiet afternoon spent sipping gin and tonics in a mid-century modern cottage tucked away from the sand and sun.
Despite Fire Island’s reputation for hedonism, our meeting was more accident than escapade. Michael Carroll — a Facebook friend I’d chatted with but never met — mentioned that he and his husband, Ed, would be there that weekend, too. We agreed to meet for a drink. On a whim, I checked his profile and froze. Ed was author Edmund White.
I packed a signed copy of Carroll’s “Little Reef” and a dog-eared hardback of “A Boy’s Own Story,” its spine nearly broken from rereads. I was excited to meet both men and talk about writing, even briefly.
Yesterday, I woke to the news that Ed had passed away. Ironically, my first thought was of Michael.
This week, tributes to Edmund White are everywhere — rightly celebrating his towering legacy as a novelist, essayist, and cultural icon. I’ve read all of his books, and I could never do justice to the scope of a career that defined and chronicled queer life for more than half a century. I’ll leave that to better-prepared journalists.
But in those many memorials, I’ve noticed something missing. When Michael Carroll is mentioned, it’s usually just a passing reference: “White’s partner of thirty years, twenty-five years his junior.” And yet, in the brief time I spent with this couple on Fire Island, it was clear to me that Michael was more than a footnote — he was Ed’s anchor, editor, companion, and champion. He was the one who knew his husband best.
They met in 1995 after Michael wrote Ed a fan letter to tell him he was coming to Paris. “He’d lost the great love of his life a year before,” Michael told me. “In one way, I filled a space. Understand, I worshiped this man and still do.”
When I asked whether there was a version of Ed only he knew, Michael answered without hesitation: “No sunnier human in the world, obvious to us and to people who’ve only just or never met him. No dark side. Psychology had helped erase that, I think, or buffed it smooth.”
Despite the age difference and divergent career arcs, their relationship was intellectually and emotionally symbiotic. “He made me want to be elegant and brainy; I didn’t quite reach that, so it led me to a slightly pastel minimalism,” Michael said. “He made me question my received ideas. He set me free to have sex with whoever I wanted. He vouchsafed my moods when they didn’t wobble off axis. Ultimately, I encouraged him to write more minimalistically, keep up the emotional complexity, and sleep with anyone he wanted to — partly because I wanted to do that too.”
Fully open, it was a committed relationship that defied conventional categories. Ed once described it as “probably like an 18th-century marriage in France.” Michael elaborated: “It means marriage with strong emotion — or at least a tolerance for one another — but no sex; sex with others. I think.”
That freedom, though, was always anchored in deep devotion and care — and a mutual understanding that went far beyond art, philosophy, or sex. “He believed in freedom and desire,” Michael said, “and the two’s relationship.”
When I asked what all the essays and articles hadn’t yet captured, Michael paused. “Maybe that his writing was tightly knotted, but that his true personality was vulnerable, and that he had the defense mechanisms of cheer and optimism to conceal that vulnerability. But it was in his eyes.”
The moment that captured who Ed was to him came at the end. “When he was dying, his second-to-last sentence (garbled then repeated) was, ‘Don’t forget to pay Merci,’ the cleaning lady coming the next day. We had had a rough day, and I was popping off like a coach or dad about getting angry at his weakness and pushing through it. He took it almost like a pack mule.”
Edmund White’s work shaped generations — it gave us language for desire, shame, wit, and liberation. But what lingers just as powerfully is the extraordinary life Ed lived with a man who saw him not only as a literary giant but as a real person: sunny, complex, vulnerable, generous.
In the end, Ed’s final words to his husband weren’t about his books or his legacy. They were about care, decency, and love. “You’re good,” he told Michael—a benediction, a farewell, maybe even a thank-you.
And now, as the world celebrates the prolific writer and cultural icon Edmund White, it feels just as important to remember the man and the person who knew him best. Not just the story but the characters who stayed to see it through to the end.
District of Columbia
In town for WorldPride? Take a D.C. LGBTQ walking tour
Scenes of protest, celebration, and mourning
As Washington welcomes the world for WorldPride, it’s essential to honor the city’s deep-rooted LGBTQ history—an integral part of the broader story of the nation’s capital. The following locations have served as cornerstones of queer life and activism in D.C., shaping both local and national movements for LGBTQ rights. So take a walk around “the gayest city in America” and check out these sites.
DUPONT CIRCLE AREA
Dupont Circle
Central hub of LGBTQ life since the early 20th century, hosting Pride parades, Dyke Marches, and cruising culture. A long-standing site of protests and celebrations.
Washington Hilton – 1919 Connecticut Ave NW
Hosted D.C.’s first major hotel drag event in 1968 and the iconic Miss Adams Morgan Pageant. Protested in 1978 during Anita Bryant’s appearance.
Lesbian Avengers – 1426 21st St NW
Formed in 1992, the group empowered lesbians through bold direct actions. They met in Dupont Circle and launched the city’s first Dyke March.
Lambda Rising Bookstore (former) – 1724 20th Street NW
D.C.’s first LGBTQ bookstore and the birthplace of the city’s inaugural Pride celebration in 1975.
Women In The Life (former office) – 1623 Connecticut Ave NW
Founded in 1993 by Sheila Alexander-Reid as a safe space and support network for lesbians of color.
17th Street NW Corridor – Between P & R Streets NW
Core of the LGBTQ business district, home to the annual High Heel Race in October and the June Block Party celebrating the origins of D.C. Pride.
CAPITOL HILL / SOUTHEAST
Tracks (former) – 80 M St SE
Once D.C.’s largest gay club, famous for inclusive parties, RuPaul shows, and foam nights from 1984 to 2000.
Ziegfeld’s / The Other Side – 1345 Half Street SE
Legendary drag venue since 1978, hosting famed performers like Ella Fitzgerald.
Club 55 / Waaay Off Broadway – 55 K Street SE
Converted theater central to D.C.’s early drag and Academy pageant scenes.
Congressional Cemetery – 1801 E Street SE
Resting place of LGBTQ figures like Sgt. Leonard Matlovich and Peter Doyle. Offers queer history tours.
Mr. Henry’s – 601 Pennsylvania Ave SE
LGBTQ-friendly bar since 1966 and the launching stage for Roberta Flack’s career.
The Furies Collective House – 219 11th Street SE
Home to a 1970s lesbian feminist collective that published “The Furies.” Members included Rita Mae Brown.
ARCHIVES / PENN QUARTER
Archives Metro & Center Market Site – 7th St & Pennsylvania Ave NW
Where Walt Whitman met Peter Doyle in 1865, commemorated by a sculpture linking Whitman and poet Fernando Pessoa.
COLUMBIA HEIGHTS / PETWORTH
Palm Ballroom (former) – 4211 9th Street NW
Mid-20th century venue for Black drag balls and LGBTQ events during segregation.
NATIONAL MALL AREA
National Mall / Washington Monument Grounds
Historic site of LGBTQ activism and remembrance, including the 1987 display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt and a mass same-sex wedding. Hosted major civil rights marches in 1979, 1987, and 1993.
NORTHWEST DC
Dr. Franklin E. Kameny House – 5020 Cathedral Ave NW
Home of gay rights pioneer Frank Kameny and the Mattachine Society of Washington; now a national landmark.
LAFAYETTE SQUARE / WHITE HOUSE
Lafayette Park – Pennsylvania Ave & 16th St NW
Historic gay cruising area and epicenter of government surveillance during the Lavender Scare.
Data from: SSecret City by James Kirchick, The Deviant’s War by Frank Kameny, Brett Beemyn, The Rainbow History Project, NPS Archives, Washington Blade Archives.
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