National
Equality Forum honors Buttigieges for LGBT History Month
Organization will honor LGBTQ icon each day in October
LGBTQ leaders and allies joined the Equality Forum in Philadelphia on Sunday to launch LGBT History Month with an award ceremony honoring Pete and Chasten Buttigieg and New York Times columnist Frank Bruni.
The Equality Forum, a national LGBTQ civil rights organization, granted the Buttigieges the International Role Model Award, which is a long-standing recognition of activists and allies who have advanced LGBTQ civil rights.
Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary and first openly LGBTQ person to serve in the Cabinet, previously served as the first openly gay mayor of his hometown of South Bend, Ind. Chasten Buttigieg is a teacher, LGBTQ rights advocate and author of the best-selling memoir “I Have Something to Tell You,” which is about growing up gay in the Midwest and his life with his husband.
The pair became parents to two newborns in September.
“When I began my career in public life, I wasn’t sure whether it was even possible to be out and to serve openly at the same time,” said Pete Buttigieg, who joined the event virtually with Chasten. “But my service as mayor, my candidacy for office and my role in public life has shown that now you can be out and serve your country. There’s a long way to go, but the work of groups like the Equality Forum and the history makers who came before I, made this possible.”
Previous winners of the award include Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, California Gov. Gavin Newson and activist Judy Shepard.
Bruni received the Frank Kameny Award, which is named after the prominent leader of the LGBTQ rights movement. Kameny led efforts to overturn the Eisenhower administration’s Executive Order 10450, which prohibited the employment of LGBTQ people by the federal government.
The first openly gay columnist for the Times, Bruni is a Pulitzer Prize nominee who joined the paper in 1995. He later served as a White House correspondent covering George W. Bush.
Bruni was named an op-ed writer in 2011, and recently left his post in 2021 to work as the endowed chair in journalism at Duke University. Bruni continues to write for the Times and contributes to CNN.
In his virtual acceptance speech, Bruni thanked the late Kameny and other trailblazers for fighting for LGBTQ rights.
“You’re all honoring me for the writing I’ve done that argues for our dignity, that illuminates our humanity—or at least that tries to do those things,” Bruni said. “But unlike Frank Kameny, unlike so many of his gay and lesbian contemporaries, unlike so many of you—I didn’t have to be courageous. I didn’t have to be visionary. Others covered that ground before, and for me.”
Equality Forum also joined the African American Museum in Philadelphia on Sunday in establishing the Alain Locke Historic Marker in front of the museum. A gay man from Philadelphia, Locke is remembered as the “Father of the Harlem Renaissance.”
“African American, women’s and LGBTQ history were invisible. LGBT History Month and the historic markers bring to public attention the LGBTQ community’s important national and international contributions,” said Equality Forum Executive Director Malcolm Lazin in an emailed statement to the Washington Blade.
This is the 10th government-approved, nationally significant LGBTQ historic marker overseen and underwritten by Equality Forum, Lazin said. Locke was the first African American Rhodes Scholar, earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University and became the chair of Howard University’s Philosophy Department.
“As the leader of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, Alain Locke for the first time brought to national attention the diversity and vibrancy of the music, visual arts and literature of African American culture. Those who he mentored and promoted became legendary,” Lazin wrote.
Each day in October, the Equality Forum will honor a different LGBTQ “icon.” The 2021 icons include Bruni, members of Congress, entertainers, senior White House staffers, Mary Trump, Chopin and Myanmar’s Miss Universe. The Equality Forum will feature a video, biography, downloadable images and other resources for each Icon.
LGBT History Month, an Equality Forum project, has archived 496 icons with resources since it began 16 years ago. It is the largest online educational resource of its type worldwide, Lazin said. In 2019, Lou Chibbaro Jr., the Blade’s senior news reporter, was honored as an icon.
“We present the icons alphabetically. Oct. 1 was Susan B. Anthony,” Lazin wrote. “Few LGBTQ Americans know that the nation’s leading suffragette was a lesbian. Like Susan B. Anthony, LGBT History Month provides visibility for LGBTQ icons that have made monumental contributions.”
To learn more about the 2021 icons, visit www.lgbthistorymonth.com.
New York
Two teens shot steps from Stonewall Inn after NYC Pride parade
One of the victims remains in critical condition
On Sunday night, following the annual NYC Pride March, two girls were shot in Sheridan Square, feet away from the historic Stonewall Inn.
According to an NYPD report, the two girls, aged 16 and 17, were shot around 10:15 p.m. as Pride festivities began to wind down. The 16-year-old was struck in the head and, according to police sources, is said to be in critical condition, while the 17-year-old was said to be in stable condition.
The Washington Blade confirmed with the NYPD the details from the police reports and learned no arrests had been made as of noon Monday.
The shooting took place in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, mere feet away from the most famous gay bar in the city — if not the world — the Stonewall Inn. Earlier that day, hundreds of thousands of people marched down Christopher Street to celebrate 55 years of LGBTQ people standing up for their rights.
In June 1969, after police raided the Stonewall Inn, members of the LGBTQ community pushed back, sparking what became known as the Stonewall riots. Over the course of two days, LGBTQ New Yorkers protested the discriminatory policing of queer spaces across the city and mobilized to speak out — and throw bottles if need be — at officers attempting to suppress their existence.
The following year, LGBTQ people returned to the Stonewall Inn and marched through the same streets where queer New Yorkers had been arrested, marking the first “Gay Pride March” in history and declaring that LGBTQ people were not going anywhere.
New York State Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, whose district includes Greenwich Village, took to social media to comment on the shooting.
“After decades of peaceful Pride celebrations — this year gun fire and two people shot near the Stonewall Inn is a reminder that gun violence is everywhere,” the lesbian lawmaker said on X. “Guns are a problem despite the NRA BS.”
New York
Zohran Mamdani participates in NYC Pride parade
Mayoral candidate has detailed LGBTQ rights platform
Zohran Mamdani, the candidate for mayor of New York City who pulled a surprise victory in the primary contest last week, walked in the city’s Pride parade on Sunday.
The Democratic Socialist and New York State Assembly member published photos on social media with New York Attorney General Letitia James, telling followers it was “a joy to march in NYC Pride with the people’s champ” and to “see so many friends on this gorgeous day.”
“Happy Pride NYC,” he wrote, adding a rainbow emoji.
Mamdani’s platform includes a detailed plan for LGBTQ people who “across the United States are facing an increasingly hostile political environment.”
His campaign website explains: “New York City must be a refuge for LGBTQIA+ people, but private institutions in our own city have already started capitulating to Trump’s assault on trans rights.
“Meanwhile, the cost of living crisis confronting working class people across the city hits the LGBTQIA+ community particularly hard, with higher rates of unemployment and homelessness than the rest of the city.”
“The Mamdani administration will protect LGBTQIA+ New Yorkers by expanding and protecting gender-affirming care citywide, making NYC an LGBTQIA+ sanctuary city, and creating the Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs.”
U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court upholds ACA rule that makes PrEP, other preventative care free
Liberal justices joined three conservatives in majority opinion
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday upheld a portion of the Affordable Care Act requiring private health insurers to cover the cost of preventative care including PrEP, which significantly reduces the risk of transmitting HIV.
Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh authored the majority opinion in the case, Kennedy v. Braidwood Management. He was joined by two conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, along with the three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown-Jackson.
The court’s decision rejected the plaintiffs’ challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s reliance on the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force to “unilaterally” determine which types of care and services must be covered by payors without cost-sharing.
An independent all-volunteer panel of nationally recognized experts in prevention and primary care, the 16 task force members are selected by the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to serve four-year terms.
They are responsible for evaluating the efficacy of counseling, screenings for diseases like cancer and diabetes, and preventative medicines — like Truvada for PrEP, drugs to reduce heart disease and strokes, and eye ointment for newborns to prevent infections.
Parties bringing the challenge objected especially to the mandatory coverage of PrEP, with some arguing the drugs would “encourage and facilitate homosexual behavior” against their religious beliefs.
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