National
LGBTQ community shared nation’s grief after 9/11 attacks
Gay passenger may have helped stop hijackers from crashing into White House
Many in the LGBTQ community throughout the country were expected to join their friends, neighbors, and family members this week in commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the New York World Trade Center’s Twin Towers and on the Pentagon just outside Washington, D.C., as well as a hijacking that ended with a crash in Shanksville, Pa.
Activists involved with local and national LGBTQ advocacy organizations have said they recall a coming together of LGBTQ people and their co-workers, neighbors, and family members to support one another during a time of unimaginable horror and grief.
A total of 2,996 people died in the 9/11 attacks, including 19 terrorists who hijacked four jetliners whose passengers included Americans and citizens of 78 countries, according to history.com.
“The gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities and those living with HIV/AIDS have worked diligently to overcome other forms of evil, whether it be bigotry or violence,” said A. Cornelius Baker, who at the time was executive director of D.C.’s Whitman-Walker Clinic, in a statement during the week of the 9/11 attacks.
“And we will stand side by side with our fellow Americans and our fellow citizens of the world to do everything we can to overcome this new threat to humanity,” Baker said
For many LGBTQ residents of New York and the D.C. area, the suffering over the loss of loved ones, including same-sex partners, was heightened a short time later when they learned they were initially ineligible for local and federal programs aimed at providing financial assistance to survivors of the victims of the 9/11 attacks because same-sex partners were not legally recognized.
At the urging of LGBTQ rights organizations, state, and local officials in New York and the D.C. area took steps to address the initial denial of financial support for surviving same-sex partners in programs under their control. Officials with a massive, multi-million-dollar federal aid program for 9/11 survivors, however, said they did not have legal authority to authorize payments to same-sex partners.
The officials, in the administration of President George W. Bush, said the best they could do would be to leave it up to local authorities to determine whether state probate laws would recognize a same-sex partner as a family member for eligibility in the federal aid program for 9/11 survivors, many of whom lived in states outside New York and the D.C. area.
Among those who lost their lives in the 9/11 attacks was American Airlines co-pilot David Charlebois, an out gay man and member of the National Gay Pilots Association, who was on American Airlines Flight 77, which the terrorists crashed into the Pentagon.
Also among the terrorists’ victims in the 9/11 attacks was public relations executive and rugby enthusiast Mark Bingham of San Francisco, who contacted his mother by cell phone shortly before the United Airlines jet he was taking from Newark, N.J. to San Francisco crashed into the countryside in western Pennsylvania.
Surviving family members of other passengers on that flight have said they too were called by their loved ones who told them some of the passengers were planning an attempt to somehow regain control of the jet from the terrorists.
Bingham’s mother, Alice Hoagland, who at the time was a United Airlines flight attendant, said she believed her son joined other passengers to prevent the terrorists from carrying out what authorities said was their plan to crash the jet into the U.S. Capitol or possibly the White House. She said her son’s reputation as a fighter for civic justice, along with a past episode where he fought off muggers, led her to believe he was among those who foiled the terrorists’ plans to fly the jet to Washington.
An investigation into the 9/11 attacks by a federal 9/11 commission later found that flight data recordings from the cockpit of United Airlines Flight 93, where Bingham was among 44 people aboard, showed that one of the four hijackers who took control of the jetliner shortly after its takeoff responded to an attempt by passengers to storm the cockpit by deliberately steering the plane into a downward direction at about 500 miles per hour, causing it to crash into an empty field near the town of Shanksville in western Pennsylvania at 10:10 a.m. All 44 people were killed.
“The fact that he was so close to the action, it is likely that he was able to get at these guys,” Hoagland told the Associated Press. “It gives me a great deal of comfort to know my son may have been able to avert the killing of many, many innocent people,” she said.
Hoagland became an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ rights and for the gay rugby teams that Mark Bingham helped to create in the years after her son’s death. She died on Dec. 22, 2020, of natural causes at the age of 71 at her home in Los Gatos, Calif., according to the Associated Press.
Longtime LGBTQ rights advocate Jay Fisette, who at the time of the 9/11 attacks held the elected position of chair of the Arlington County Board, which serves as the county’s governing body, was among the Arlington officials that came to the Pentagon’s grounds to oversee efforts by Arlington firefighters to rescue Pentagon workers on the day of the attack.
Fisette noted that the Pentagon is in Arlington County, and it was largely the county’s firefighters and emergency medical teams that put out the fire caused by the jetliner crash and provided medical assistance to survivors of the crash.
At an Oct. 7, 2001, 9/11 Day of Remembrance and Appreciation ceremony held in Arlington, Fisette expressed the views of many in the community in response to the 9/11 attacks.
“Tonight, our community gathers as a family,” he told the gathering. “We gather in sorrow and in disbelief, in remembrance and appreciation,” he said. “But we come here, too, with resolve and pride. We come together as Arlingtonians who love our county, as Americans who love our country,” he said.
“Our enemies may hurt our bodies and destroy our buildings, but they will never defeat our determination to make this a world of peace and a community in which our children grow up safe and secure,” Fisette told participants at the gathering.
Although some of the same-sex partners of those killed in the 9/11 attacks faced obstacles in obtaining financial support through the federal 9/11 relief program, Tom Hay, the surviving partner of 14 years of American Airlines pilot David Charlebois was treated with respect and honor by American Airlines officials and colleagues at Charlebois’ funeral mass at D.C.’s St. Matthews Cathedral.
More than a dozen uniformed company pilots and flight attendants attended the mass. In a news release issued in June of this year, American Airlines mentions Charlebois’ relationship with Hay and tells how Hay stood with Charlebois when Charlebois pushed for equal rights for LGBTQ people in the airline industry through his involvement with the National Gay Pilots Association.
“David was an early member of the NGPA,” the American Airlines statement says. “His contribution helped ensure ongoing progress toward fairness and solidarity,” it says.
Activists in New York have said the 9/11 attacks drew attention to the need for legal protections for same-sex couples, including the need for legal recognition of same-sex marriage.
Ros Levi, who in 2001 served as executive director of the New York LGBTQ advocacy group Empire State Pride Agenda, or ESPA, said his group became aware that same-sex partner survivors were being treated differently when New York City and private relief agencies like the Red Cross set up an emergency station on a pier along the Hudson River. The station was intended to help people find a family member missing and as yet unaccounted for in the World Trade Center carnage.
“Literally, [gay] people had to go there, turn around, go back home, and get some paperwork that spouses didn’t have to get to prove a relationship existed,” Levi told the Washington Blade in 2011 when the Blade reported on the 10-year anniversary events related to the 9/11 attacks.
“You were nervous and scared and sad and then you had to go through that,” Levi said. “And worse, other people turned them away, even with the paperwork, saying sorry you’re not a family according to our guidelines.”
Activists said New York City and New York State officials quickly recognized the inequities faced by same-sex partner survivors and took steps to change policies and laws to correct the situation. Among other things, activists were pleased when New York’s then GOP Gov. George Pataki issued an executive order in October 2001 that included surviving partners of gay and lesbian victims of the World Trade Center attacks in receiving full spousal benefits from the state’s Crime Victims Board.
The New York State Legislature soon took its own action by approving three separate bills that included same-sex partner survivors in various state benefits to be allocated to 9/11 survivors and their families.
“The grief and loss were the same between heterosexual and same-sex couples, and a perception of this seemed to come through to much of the public,” said Jennifer Pizer, the then senior counsel for the LGBTQ litigation group Lambda Legal.
In a separate development, Lambda Legal, ESPA, the Human Rights Campaign and other LGBTQ advocacy groups created the September 11 Gay & Lesbian Family Fund to provide some support to surviving same-sex partners who were ineligible for help from the federal relief fund program.
“The Family Fund was established in December [2001] to help offset the discrimination gay and lesbian partners faced in obtaining benefits automatically afforded to surviving spouses, including Social Security and Workers Compensation survivor benefits and compensation under the Federal 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund,” ESPA said in a statement.
Among the other gay people known to have lost their lives in the 9/11 attacks was Father Mychal Judge, 68, a Franciscan priest who served as a Catholic chaplain for the New York City Fire Department. According to the National Catholic Reporter, Judge rushed to the scene of the World Trade Center to assist firefighters shortly before the Twin Towers collapsed. He was fatally struck by debris falling from the south tower while giving last rites to a fallen firefighter, the Catholic publication reported this week.
“He was a decent, wonderful human being,” said New York gay journalist Andy Humm, who had interviewed Judge for LGBT related stories prior to the 9/11 attacks. “When gays were kept out of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, he gave me an interview on the street telling me how terrible it was for us to be discriminated against and for the church to be doing it,” Humm told the Blade.
“I saw him at many demonstrations for gay and AIDS causes, showing up in his Franciscan monk’s cassock,” said Humm. “And he was equally beloved by the Fire Department, there at every major fire tragedy in the city, lending moral support to firefighters.”
New Ways Ministries, the Maryland based LGBTQ Catholic group that advocates for LGBTQ supportive policies within the church, has announced it is reaching out to other faith-based organizations, asking them to form an association to call on the Catholic Church to officially recognize Fr. Judge as a saint by canonizing him.
Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministries’ executive director, has written a biography of Judge, which the group says will be published in March 2022 by Liturgical Press, one of the larger Catholic publishers.
A gay couple from California, Daniel Brandhorst and Ronald Gamboa, and their adopted son, David Brandhorst, were among those who died aboard the United Airlines flight that crashed in Pennsylvania. The Los Angeles Times reported that Brandhorst, a lawyer and Gamboa, the manager of a Santa Monica Gap store, had adopted 3-year-old David when he was an infant.
Florida
AIDS Healthcare Foundation sues Fla. over ‘illegal’ HIV drug program cuts
Tens of thousands could lose access to medications
Following the slashing of hundreds of thousands of dollars from Florida’s AIDS Drug Assistance Program, AIDS Healthcare Foundation filed a lawsuit against the Florida Department of Health over what it says was an illegal change to income eligibility thresholds for the lifesaving program.
The Florida Department of Health announced two weeks ago that it would make sweeping cuts to ADAP, dramatically changing how many Floridians qualify for the state-funded medical coverage — without using the formal process required to change eligibility rules. As a result, AHF filed a petition Tuesday in Tallahassee with the state’s Division of Administrative Hearings, seeking to prevent more than 16,000 Floridians from losing coverage.
The medications covered by ADAP work by suppressing HIV-positive people’s viral load — making the virus undetectable in blood tests and unable to be transmitted to others.
Prior to the eligibility change, the Florida Department of Health covered Floridians earning up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level — or $62,600 annually for an individual. Under the new policy, eligibility would be limited to those making no more than 130 percent of the federal poverty level, or $20,345 per year.
The National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors estimates that more than 16,000 patients in Florida will lose coverage under the state’s ADAP because of this illegal change in department policy. Florida’s eligibility changes would also eliminate access to biktarvy, a widely used once-daily medication for people living with HIV/AIDS.
Under Florida law, when a state agency seeks to make a major policy change, it must either follow a formal rule-making process under the Florida Administrative Procedure Act or obtain direct legislative authorization.
AHF alleges the Florida Department of Health did neither.
Typically, altering eligibility for a statewide program requires either legislative action or adherence to a multistep rule-making process, including: publishing a Notice of Proposed Rule; providing a statement of estimated regulatory costs; allowing public comment; holding hearings if requested; responding to challenges; and formally adopting the rule. According to AHF, none of these steps occurred.
“Rule-making is not a matter of agency discretion. Each statement that an agency like the Department of Health issues that meets the statutory definition of a rule must be adopted through legally mandated rule-making procedures. Florida has simply not done so here,” said Tom Myers, AHF’s chief of public affairs and general counsel. “The whole point of having to follow procedures and rules is to make sure any decisions made are deliberate, thought through, and minimize harm. Floridians living with HIV and the general public’s health are at stake here and jeopardized by these arbitrary and unlawful DOH rule changes.”
AHF has multiple Ryan White CARE Act contracts in Florida, including four under Part B, which covers ADAP. More than 50 percent of people diagnosed with HIV receive assistance from Ryan White programs annually.
According to an AHF advocacy leader who spoke with the Washington Blade, the move appears to have originated at the state level rather than being driven by the federal government — a claim that has circulated among some Democratic officials.
“As far as we can tell, Congress flat-funded the Ryan White and ADAP programs, and the proposed federal cuts were ignored,” the advocacy leader told the Blade on the condition of anonymity. “None of this appears to be coming from Washington — this was initiated in Florida. What we’re trying to understand is why the state is claiming a $120 million shortfall when the program already receives significant federal funding. That lack of transparency is deeply concerning.”
Florida had the third-highest rate of new HIV infections in the nation in 2022, accounting for 11 percent of new diagnoses nationwide, according to KFF, a nonprofit health policy research organization.
During a press conference on Wednesday, multiple AHF officials commented on the situation, and emphasized the need to use proper methods to change something as important as HIV/AIDS coverage availability in the sunshine state.
“We are receiving dozens, hundreds of calls from patients who are terrified, who are confused, who are full of anxiety and fear,” said Esteban Wood, director of advocacy, legislative affairs, and community engagement at AHF. “These are working Floridians — 16,000 people — receiving letters saying they have weeks left of medication that keeps them alive and costs upwards of $45,000 a year. Patients are asking us, ‘What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to survive?’ And right now, we don’t have a good answer.”
“This decision was not done in the correct manner. County health programs, community-based organizations, providers across the state — none of them were consulted,” Wood added. “Today is Jan. 28, and we have just 32 days until these proposed changes take effect. Nearly half of the 36,000 people currently on ADAP could be disenrolled in just over a month.”
“Without this medication, people with HIV get sicker,” Myers said during the conference. “They end up in emergency rooms, they lose time at work, and they’re unable to take care of their families. Treatment adherence is also the best way to prevent new HIV infections — people who are consistently on these medications are non-infectious. If these cuts go through, you will have sicker people, more HIV infections, and ultimately much higher costs for the state.”
“Patients receiving care through Ryan White and ADAP have a 91 percent viral suppression rate, compared to about 60 percent nationally,” the advocacy leader added. “That’s as close to a functional cure as we can get, and it allows people to live healthy lives, work, and contribute to their communities. Blowing a hole in a program this successful puts lives at risk and sets a dangerous precedent. If Florida gets away with this, other states facing budget pressure could follow.”
The lawsuit comes days after the Save HIV Funding campaign pressed Congress to build bipartisan support for critical funding for people living with or vulnerable to HIV. In May of last year, President Donald Trump appeared to walk back his 2019 pledge to end HIV as an epidemic, instead proposing the elimination of HIV prevention programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and housing services in his budget request to Congress.
House appropriators, led by the Republican majority, went further, calling for an additional $2 billion in cuts — including $525 million for medical care and support services for people living with HIV.
While Senate appropriators ultimately chose to maintain level funding in their version of the spending bills, advocates feared final negotiations could result in steep cuts that would reduce services, increase new HIV infections, and lead to more AIDS-related deaths. The final spending package reflected a best-case outcome, with funding levels largely mirroring the Senate’s proposed FY26 allocations.
“What the state has done in unilaterally announcing these changes is not following its own rules,” Myers added. “There is a required process — rule-making, notice and comment, taking evidence — and none of that happened here. Before you cut 16,000 people off from lifesaving medication, you have to study the harms, ask whether you even have the authority to do it, and explore other solutions. That’s what this lawsuit is about.”
National
Federal authorities arrest Don Lemon
Former CNN anchor taken into custody two weeks after Minn. church protest
Federal authorities on Thursday arrested former CNN anchor Don Lemon in Los Angeles.
CNN reported authorities arrested Lemon after 11 p.m. PT while in the lobby of a hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., while he “was leaving for an event.” Lemon’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, in a statement said his client was in Los Angeles to cover the Grammy Awards.
Authorities arrested Lemon less than two weeks after he entered Cities Church in St. Paul, Minn., with a group of protesters who confronted a pastor who works for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (An ICE agent on Jan. 7 shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis woman who left behind her wife and three children. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents on Jan. 24 shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse who worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs, in Minneapolis.)
Lemon insists he was simply covering the Cities Church protest that interrupted the service. A federal magistrate last week declined to charge the openly gay journalist in connection with the demonstration.
“Don Lemon was taken into custody by federal agents last night in Los Angeles, where he was covering the Grammy awards,” said Lowell in his statement. “Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done. The First Amendment exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable.”
“Instead of investigating the federal agents who killed two peaceful Minnesota protesters, the Trump Justice Department is devoting its time, attention and resources to this arrest, and that is the real indictment of wrongdoing in this case,” Lowell added. “This unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration will not stand. Don will fight these charges vigorously and thoroughly in court.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi on X confirmed federal agents “at my direction” arrested Lemon and three others — Trahern Jeen Crews, Georgia Fort, and Jamael Lydell Lundy — “in connection with the coordinated attack on Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.”
Fort is also a journalist.
At my direction, early this morning federal agents arrested Don Lemon, Trahern Jeen Crews, Georgia Fort, and Jamael Lydell Lundy, in connection with the coordinated attack on Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.
More details soon.
— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) January 30, 2026
Lemon, who CNN fired in 2023, is expected to appear in court in Los Angeles on Friday.
“Freedom of the press is a cornerstone of a free society; it is the tool by which Americans access the truth and hold power to account. But Donald Trump and Pam Bondi are at war with that freedom — and are threatening the fundamentals of our democracy,” said Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson on Friday in a statement. “Don Lemon and Georgia Fort were doing their jobs as reporters. Arresting them is not law enforcement it is an attack on the Constitution at a moment when truthful reporting on government power has never been more important. These are the actions of a despot, the tactics of a dictator in an authoritarian regime.”
The White House
Expanded global gag rule to ban US foreign aid to groups that promote ‘gender ideology’
Activists, officials say new regulation will limit access to gender-affirming care
The Trump-Vance administration has announced it will expand the global gag rule to ban U.S. foreign aid for groups that promote “gender ideology.”
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau in a memo, titled Combating Gender Ideology in Foreign Assistance, the Federal Register published on Jan. 27 notes “previous administrations … used” U.S. foreign assistance “to fund the denial of the biological reality of sex, promoting a radical ideology that permits men to self-identify as women, indoctrinate children with radical gender ideology, and allow men to gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women.”
“Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. It also threatens the wellbeing of children by encouraging them to undergo life-altering surgical and chemical interventions that carry serious risks of lifelong harms like infertility,” reads the memo. “The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women and children but, as an attack on truth and human nature, it harms every nation. It is the purpose of this rule to prohibit the use of foreign assistance to support radical gender ideology, including by ending support for international organizations and multilateral organizations that pressure nations to embrace radical gender ideology, or otherwise promote gender ideology.”
President Donald Trump on Jan. 28, 2025, issued an executive order — Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation — that banned federal funding for gender-affirming care for minors.
President Ronald Reagan in 1985 implemented the global gag rule, also known as the “Mexico City” policy, which bans U.S. foreign aid for groups that support abortion and/or offer abortion-related services.
Trump reinstated the rule during his first administration. The White House this week expanded the ban to include groups that support gender-affirming care and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
The expanded global gag rule will take effect on Feb. 26.
“None of the funds made available by this act or any other Act may be made available in contravention of Executive Order 14187, relating to Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, or shall be used or transferred to another federal agency, board, or commission to fund any domestic or international non-governmental organization or any other program, organization, or association coordinated or operated by such non-governmental organization that either offers counseling regarding sex change surgeries, promotes sex change surgeries for any reason as an option, conducts or subsidizes sex change surgeries, promotes the use of medications or other substances to halt the onset of puberty or sexual development of minors, or otherwise promotes transgenderism,” wrote Landau in his memo.
Landau wrote the State Department “does not believe taxpayer dollars should support sex-rejecting procedures, directly or indirectly for individuals of any age.”
“A person’s body (including its organs, organ systems, and processes natural to human development like puberty) are either healthy or unhealthy based on whether they are operating according to their biological functions,” reads his memo. “Organs or organ systems do not become unhealthy simply because the individual may experience psychological distress relating to his or her sexed body. For this reason, removing a patient’s breasts as a treatment for breast cancer is fundamentally different from performing the same procedure solely to alleviate mental distress arising from gender dysphoria. The former procedure aims to restore bodily health and to remove cancerous tissue. In contrast, removing healthy breasts or interrupting normally occurring puberty to ‘affirm’ one’s ‘gender identity’ involves the intentional destruction of healthy biological functions.”
Landau added there “is also lack of clarity about what sex-rejecting procedures’ fundamental aims are, unlike the broad consensus about the purpose of medical treatments for conditions like appendicitis, diabetes, or severe depression.”
“These procedures lack strong evidentiary foundations, and our understanding of long-term health impacts is limited and needs to be better understood,” he wrote. “Imposing restrictions, as this rule proposes, on sex-rejecting procedures for individuals of any age is necessary for the (State) Department to protect taxpayer dollars from abuse in support of radical ideological aims.”
Landau added the State Department “has determined that applying this rule to non-military foreign assistance broadly is necessary to ensure that its foreign assistance programs do not support foreign NGOs and IOs (international organizations) that promote gender ideology, and U.S. NGOs that provide sex-rejecting procedures, and to ensure the integrity of programs such as humanitarian assistance, gender-related programs, and more, do not promote gender ideology.”
“This rule will also allow for more foreign assistance funds to support organizations that promote biological truth in their foreign assistance programs and help the (State) Department to establish new partnerships,” he wrote.
The full memo can be found here.
Council for Global Equality Senior Policy Fellow Beirne Roose-Snyder on Wednesday said the expansion of the so-called global gag rule will “absolutely impact HIV services where we know we need to target services, to that there are non-stigmatizing, safe spaces for people to talk through all of their medical needs, and being trans is really important to be able to disclose to your health care provider so that you can get ARVs, so you can get PrEP in the right ways.” Roose-Snyder added the expanded ban will also impact access to gender-affirming health care, food assistance programs and humanitarian aid around the world.
“This rule is not about gender-affirming care at all,” she said during a virtual press conference the Universal Access Project organized.
“It is about really saying that if you want to take U.S. funds — and it’s certainly not about gender-affirming care for children — it is if you want to take U.S. funds, you cannot have programs or materials or offer counseling or referrals to people who may be struggling with their gender identity,” added Roose-Snyder. “You cannot advocate to maintain your country’s own nondiscrimination laws around gender identity. It is the first place that we’ve ever seen the U.S. government define gender-affirming care, except they call it something a lot different than that.”
The Congressional Equality Caucus, the Democratic Women’s Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Asian and Pacific American Caucus, and the Congressional Black Caucus also condemned the global gag rule’s expansion.
“We strongly condemn this weaponization of U.S. foreign assistance to undermine human rights and global health,” said the caucuses in a statement. “We will not rest until we ensure that our foreign aid dollars can never be used as a weapon against women, people of color, or LGBTQI+ people ever again.”
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