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 āI Have Something to Tell You,ā which is about growing up gay in the Midwest and his life with his husband.
The pair became parents to two newborns in September.
āWhen 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,ā said Pete Buttigieg, who joined the event virtually with Chasten. āBut 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.ā
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.
āYou’re all honoring me for the writing I’ve done that argues for our dignity, that illuminates our humanityāor at least that tries to do those things,ā Bruni said. āBut unlike Frank Kameny, unlike so many of his gay and lesbian contemporaries, unlike so many of youāI didn’t have to be courageous. I didn’t have to be visionary. Others covered that ground before, and for me.ā
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.ā
“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,ā 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.
āAs 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,ā Lazin wrote.
Each day in October, the Equality Forum will honor a different LGBTQ āicon.ā The 2021 icons include Bruni, members of Congress, entertainers, senior White House staffers, Mary Trump, Chopin and Myanmarās 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,ā Lazin wrote. āFew 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.
State Department
Transgender, nonbinary people file lawsuit against passport executive order
State Department banned from issuing passports with ‘X’ gender markers

Seven transgender and nonbinary people on Feb. 7 filed a federal lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s executive order that bans the State Department from issuing passports with “X” gender markers.
Ashton Orr, Zaya Perysian, Sawyer Soe, Chastain Anderson, Drew Hall, Bella Boe, and Reid Solomon-Lane are the plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Massachusetts, and the private law firm Covington & Burling LPP filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The lawsuit names Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as defendants.
Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken in June 2021 announced the State Department would begin to issue gender-neutral passports and documents for American citizens who were born overseas.
Dana Zzyym, an intersex U.S. Navy veteran who identifies as nonbinary, in 2015 filed a federal lawsuit against the State Department after it denied their application for a passport with an āXā gender marker. Zzyym in October 2021 received the first gender-neutral American passport.
The State Department policy took effect on April 11, 2022.
Trump signed the executive order that overturned it shortly after he took office on Jan. 20. Rubio later directed State Department personnel to āsuspend any application requesting an āXā sex marker and do not take any further action pending additional guidance from the department.ā
āThis guidance applies to all applications currently in progress and any future applications,” reads Rubio’s memo. “Guidance on existing passports containing an āXā sex marker will come via other channels.ā
The lawsuit says Trump’s executive order is an “abrupt, discriminatory, and dangerous reversal of settled United States passport policy.” It also concludes the new policy is “unlawful and unconstitutional.”
“It discriminates against individuals based on their sex and, as to some, their transgender status,” reads the lawsuit. “It is motivated by impermissible animus. It cannot be justified under any level of judicial scrutiny, and it wrongly seeks to erase the reality that transgender, intersex, and nonbinary people exist today as they always have.”
Solomon-Lane, who lives in North Adams, Mass., with his spouse and their three children, in an ACLU press release says he has “lived virtually my entire adult life as a man” and “everyone in my personal and professional life knows me as a man, and any stranger on the street who encountered me would view me as a man.”
āI thought that 18 years after transitioning, I would be able to live my life in safety and ease,” he said. “Now, as a married father of three, Trumpās executive order and the ensuing passport policy have threatened that life of safety and ease.”
“If my passport were to reflect a sex designation that is inconsistent with who I am, I would be forcibly outed every time I used my passport for travel or identification, causing potential risk to my safety and my familyās safety,ā added Solomon-Lane.
Federal Government
Education Department moves to end support for trans students
Mental health services among programs that are in jeopardy

An email sent to employees at the U.S. Department of Education on Friday explains that “programs, contracts, policies, outward-facing media, regulations, and internal practices” will be reviewed and cut in cases where they āfail to affirm the reality of biological sex.ā
The move, which is of a piece with President Donald Trump’s executive orders restricting transgender rights, jeopardizes the future of initiatives at the agency like mental health services and support for students experiencing homelessness.
Along with external-facing work at the agency, the directive targets employee programs such as those administered by LGBTQ resource groups, in keeping with the Trump-Vance administration’s rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion within the federal government.
In recent weeks, federal agencies had begun changing their documents, policies, and websites for purposes of compliance with the new administration’s first executive action targeting the trans community, āDefending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.ā
For instance, the Education Department had removed a webpage offering tips for schools to better support homeless LGBTQ youth, noted ProPublica, which broke the news of the “sweeping” changes announced in the email to DOE staff.
According to the news service, the directive further explains the administration’s position that āThe deliberate subjugation of women and girls by means of gender ideology ā whether in intimate spaces, weaponized language, or American classrooms ā negated the civil rights of biological females and fostered distrust of our federal institutions.”
A U.S. Senate committee hearing will be held Thursday for Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee for education secretary, who has been criticized by LGBTQ advocacy groups. GLAAD, for instance, notes that she helped to launch and currently chairs the board of a conservative think tank that “has campaigned against policies that support transgender rights in education.”
NBC News reported on Tuesday that Trump planned to issue an executive order this week to abolish the Education Department altogether.
While the president and his conservative allies in and outside the administration have repeatedly expressed plans to disband the agency, doing so would require approval from Congress.
State Department
Protesters demand US fully restore PEPFAR funding
Activists blocked intersection outside State Department on Thursday

Dozens of HIV/AIDS activists on Thursday protested outside the State Department and demanded U.S. officials fully restore President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief funding.
The activists ā members of Housing Works, Health GAP, and the Treatment Action Group ā blocked an intersection for an hour. Health GAP Executive Director Asia Russell told the Washington Blade that police did not make any arrests.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Jan. 24 directed State Department personnel to stop nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending for 90 days in response to an executive order that President Donald Trump signed after his inauguration. Rubio later issued a waiver that allows PEPFAR and other ālife-saving humanitarian assistanceā programs to continue to operate during the freeze.
The Blade on Wednesday reported PEPFAR-funded programs in Kenya and other African countries have been forced to suspend services and even shut down because of a lack of U.S. funding.
āPEPFAR is a program that has saved 26 million lives and changed the trajectory of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic,” said Housing Works CEO Charles King in a press release. “The recent freeze on its funding is not just a bureaucratic decision; it is a death sentence for millions who rely on these life-saving treatments. We cannot allow decades of progress to be undone. The U.S. must immediately reaffirm its commitment to global health and human dignity by restoring PEPFAR funding.”
āWe demand Secretary Rubio immediately reverse his deadly, illegal stop-work order, which has already disrupted life-saving HIV services worldwide,” added Russell. “Any waiver process is too little, too late.”
-
District of Columbia2 days ago
Booz Allen withdraws as WorldPride corporate sponsor
-
Out & About4 days ago
Camp Rehoboth Theatre Company kicks off new season
-
District of Columbia13 hours ago
Protests against Trump executive orders to take place in D.C. on Thursday
-
Federal Government3 days ago
Education Department moves to end support for trans students