Local
LGBTQ contingent to join D.C.’s MLK Day Peace Walk
King family members to participate in commemorating civil rights leader
Members of Check It Enterprises, an LGBTQ youth-organized clothing store in Anacostia that provides community services and music events, were expected to participate as a contingent in D.C.’s Martin Luther King Day Peace Walk scheduled for Monday, Jan. 17.
Ron Motten, one of Check It Enterprises’ lead organizers, said he was hopeful that predictions of rain and possible snow would not materialize and as many people as possible would turn out for the event.
It couldn’t immediately be confirmed whether other LGBTQ organizations and activists would be joining this year’s annual MLK Day Peace Walk, but LGBTQ advocates have participated in the event in past years.
Among those expressing strong support for this year’s King Day Peace Walk is longtime gay activist Bo Shuff, who serves as executive director of DC Vote, the lead organization advocating for D.C. statehood.
Shuff told the Washington Informer that the King family, including Martin Luther King III, who will be playing a lead role in this year’s King Day Peace Walk, are strong supporters of D.C. statehood.
A large number of local LGBTQ activists have been involved with DC Vote, and a number of them were expected to participate in the Peace Walk.
Information posted on the Peace Walk website states that participants in the event will begin to assemble at 8:30 a.m. at the intersection of Potomac Avenue and South Capitol Street, S.E., across from Washington Nationals Stadium.
The Peace Walk was scheduled to kick off at 10 a.m. with hundreds of participants walking on and across the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge.
Martin Luther King III, his wife Andrea Waters King, and their daughter, Yolanda Renee King, along with other civil rights and human rights activists were scheduled to hold a press conference at 10:30 a.m. midway across the span of the bridge to call on the U.S. Senate to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act
Supporters say both bills are aimed at ensuring that all eligible Americans, especially members of minority groups, can vote without hurdles put in place by numerous state laws passed by Republican controlled state legislatures over the past year.
After crossing the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge, the Peace Walk was scheduled to travel southeast along Howard Road and South Capitol Street and make its way to Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, S.E., and Good Hope Road, S.E., before reaching its final destination — Ambassador Baptist Church at 1412 Minnesota Ave., S.E.
District of Columbia
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
‘This is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS’
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on March 20 signed a bill approved by the D.C. Council that requires health insurance companies to cover the costs of HIV prevention or PrEP drugs for D.C. residents at risk for HIV infection.
Like all legislation approved by the Council and signed by the mayor, the bill, called the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act, was sent to Capitol Hill for a required 30-day congressional review period before it takes effect as D.C. law.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) last year introduced the bill.
Insurance coverage for PrEP drugs has been provided through coverage standards included in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But AIDS advocacy organizations have called on states and D.C. to pass their own legislation requiring insurance coverage of PrEP as a safeguard in case federal policies are weakened or removed by the Trump administration, which has already reduced federal funding for HIV/AIDS-related programs.
Like legislation passed by other states, the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act requires insurers to cover all PrEP drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Studies have shown that PrEP drugs, which can be taken as pills or by injection just twice a year, are highly effective in preventing HIV infection.
“I think this is a win for our community,” Parker said after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the bill on its first vote on the measure in February. “And this is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
District of Columbia
Blade editor to be inducted into D.C. Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame
Kevin Naff marks 24 years with publication this year
Longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff will be inducted into D.C.’s Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame in June, the group announced this week.
Hall of Fame honorees are chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter. Naff and two other inductees — Seth Borenstein, a Washington-based national science writer for the AP and Cheryl W. Thompson, an award-winning correspondent for National Public Radio — will be celebrated at the chapter’s Dateline Awards dinner on Tuesday, June 9, at the National Press Club. The dinner’s emcee will be Kojo Nnamdi, host of WAMU radio’s weekly “Politics Hour.”
“I am tremendously honored by this recognition,” Naff said. “I have spent a lifetime in the D.C. area learning from so many talented journalists and am humbled to be considered in their company. Thank you to SPJ and to all the LGBTQ pioneers who came before me who made this possible.”
Naff joined the Blade in 2002 after years in print and digital journalism. He worked as a financial reporter for Reuters in New York before moving to Baltimore in 1996 to launch the Baltimore Sun’s website. He spent four years at the Sun before leaving for an internet startup and later joining the mobile data group at Verizon Wireless working on the first generation of mobile apps.
He then moved to the Blade and has served as the publication’s longest-tenured editor. In 2023, Naff published his first book, “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality — And How Our Enemies Could Take It All Away.”
Previous Hall of Fame inductees include luminaries in journalism like Wolf Blitzer, Benjamin Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, and Edgar Allen Poe. The Blade’s senior news reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. was inducted in 2015.
Maryland
Supreme Court ruling against conversion therapy bans could affect Md. law
Then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed statute in 2018
By PAMELA WOOD, JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV, and MADELEINE O’NEILL | The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ kids in Colorado, a ruling that also could apply to Maryland’s ban on the discredited practice.
An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide whether it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s majority, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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