District of Columbia
Blade event to celebrate 50th anniversary of historic APA speech
Gay psychiatrist John Fryer credited with changing LGBTQ history
The Washington Blade, in partnership with the American Psychiatric Association, is holding an event on May 12 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the historic speech by then closeted gay psychiatrist John Fryer before the APA’s 1972 national convention calling on the group to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.
Fryer, who had a psychiatric practice in Philadelphia and served as a professor of psychiatry at Temple University, disguised his identity when speaking at the APA convention in Dallas by wearing a rubber mask, a wig and speaking through a microphone that distorted his voice.
His compelling argument that scientific research showed homosexuality was not a mental illness, and that gays and lesbians were upstanding members of their communities, including practicing psychiatrists, is credited with playing a leading role in the APA’s decision one year later to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in its official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.
The Blade event will take place at Whitman-Walker’s The Corner community exhibition center at 1701 14th St., N.W. beginning with a panel discussion at 6 p.m. followed by a cocktail reception at 7 p.m.
The panel will feature four experts on the topic of John Fryer’s role in changing the thinking on homosexuality and LGBTQ people: Dr. Saul Levin, CEO and Medical Director of the APA; Dr. Karen Kelly, a friend and mentee of John Fryer; Katherine Ott, Ph.D. and curator in the history of medicine at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, where she documents LGBTQ history; and Dr. Amir Ahuja, president of the Association of LGBTQ Psychiatrists (AGLP).
The panel will be moderated by award-winning filmmaker Patrick Sammon, who co-directed “Cured,” a documentary film about the LGBTQ activists who successfully fought to convince the APA to remove the “diagnosis” of homosexuality from its manual of mental illnesses.
The APA’s partnership with the Blade in celebrating the significance of Fryer’s 1972 speech is viewed as a development symbolizing the APA’s dramatic change from an institution that stigmatized homosexuality to a strong supporter of LGBTQ rights, with its current CEO and Medical Director, Saul Levin, being an out gay psychiatrist.
“I feel it’s really fantastic that John Fryer and what he did is being remembered by our community,” Sammon told the Blade. “It’s too easy to forget our history and forget where we came from,” Sammon said. “So, it’s wonderful that we’re pausing and reflecting on what he did and how it impacted where we are today in the fight for equality.”
Experts on LGBTQ history have said among the changes brought about by the APA’s removal of homosexuality from its classification as a mental disorder were efforts around the country to repeal state sodomy laws, which made it illegal and in some places a felony for consenting adults to engage in sexual activity with a same-sex partner.
The APA’s action is also credited with boosting efforts to pass laws banning discrimination against gays and lesbians, which were later expanded to include nondiscrimination protections for transgender people.
Out gay psychiatrist Amir Ahuja, who serves as president of the Association of LGBTQ Psychiatrists, said the positive outcome from Fryer’s efforts has had a direct impact on his own career.
“I would say I think John Fryer opened the door for me to have a career and many of my colleagues who are LGBTQ+ psychiatrists in order to work in a field where we’re not stigmatized as having an illness,” Ahuja said. “Because we could have lost our job. That’s what happened to John Fryer multiple times,” according to Ahuja. “Before he gave that speech, he had lost two residencies at least. Because of his sexuality, people were discouraging him from continuing in the profession.”
Sammon and Ahuja said it’s also important to remember that Fryer’s groundbreaking speech came at a time when others in the pre-Stonewall early gay rights movement — sometimes called the homophile movement — played a pivotal role in the APA’s decision to change its position on homosexuality.
“It’s wonderful to put John Fryer in the spotlight, but it’s also important to think about all the other people who were involved in this fight,” Sammon said. He noted among those credited with starting the effort to change the APA going back to around 1965 was D.C. gay rights pioneer Frank Kameny, who had a doctorate degree in astronomy from Harvard University.
As a scientist, Kameny was among the first in the political area to point out that claims by the psychiatric profession that homosexuality was an illness were based entirely on studies of homosexuals who were psychiatric patients undergoing treatment for stress, stigma, and other mental health problems related to society’s condemnation of homosexuality.
Kameny, who referred to the then prevailing thinking on homosexuality as “junk science,” also pointed to a groundbreaking but little noticed study of homosexual men who were not suffering from any mental health problems conducted by Dr. Evelyn Hooker, a psychologist who had gay friends who helped her recruit subjects for her study, which was published in 1956.
The study, which was funded by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, included administering three longstanding tests to assess the mental health of individuals, including the Rorscharch ink blot test, on 30 exclusively gay men and 30 exclusively heterosexual men with no histories of mental illness, according to an American Psychological Association write-up on the study.
The results of the tests were reviewed by mental health experts who were not told which of the test results were from the gay or straight participants. Their conclusion was there were no differences in the state of the mental health of the homosexual and heterosexual participants.
District of Columbia
Push to elect more LGBTQ ANC members yields results
31 of 43 known LGBTQ ANC members elected in 2024 seeking re-election
A 2026 list of candidates released by the D.C. Board of Elections shows that 31 of the 43 known LGBTQ candidates who won election in 2024 as Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners have filed the required petition signatures to be placed on the ballot this year to run for re-election.
The Washington Blade reported in 2024 that 43 known LGBTQ candidates won election to ANC seats that year in the November election
In a related development, the president of Capital Stonewall Democrats, D.C.’s largest local LGBTQ political group, said the group this year has recruited at least 39 LGBTQ candidates to run for Advisory Neighborhood Commission seats in the city’s Nov. 3 general election.
The group’s president, Stevie McCarty, an incumbent ANC member in the city’s Shaw neighborhood who is running for re-election, said the 39 candidates and possibly more responded to the group’s Queering ANCs campaign launched on July 7 that includes a website with detailed instructions for how best to run for an ANC seat.
“Since launching in early July, the site has drawn more than 20,000 views, and 39 candidates have used it to actually run,” McCarty said in a statement. He said he wasn’t sure if all the 39 candidates wanted to be identified as LGBTQ, and he was reviewing the list of incumbent LGBTQ ANC members who won election in 2024 to determine if any of the 39 candidates recruited were among those incumbents. He said he was not ready to release the names of the 39 candidates he said his group recruited to run for an ANC seat.
If none of the 39 candidates recruited by Capital Stonewall Democrats are among the 31 known LGBTQ ANC incumbents running for re-election, it would mean at least 70 LGBTQ ANC candidates will be on the city’s November election ballot.
McCarty said Capital Stonewall Democrats will send candidate questionnaires to the known LGBTQ ANC candidates as part of its process for endorsing candidates in the November election. He said he expects the group to help campaign for and provide financial support for the ANC candidates it endorses.
The D.C. local government is believed to be unique among U.S. cities in currently having 46 Advisory Neighborhood Commissions consisting of 345 single member districts in neighborhoods throughout the city in which unpaid Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners are elected for two-year terms.
The commissions are charged with considering a wide range of policies and programs impacting their neighborhoods, including traffic, parking, recreation, street improvements, zoning, liquor licenses, and economic development. Although ANCs do not have authority to set or reject policies or actions by city agencies, the agencies are required to give “great weight” to ANC recommendations, according to the law creating the ANCs.
“As an ANC member, I know firsthand how these seats shape our neighborhoods, from housing and public safety to sanitation,” McCarty said in the Capital Stonewall Democrats statement announcing the launch of the Queering ANCs campaign in July. “I’m proud to lead this effort to ensure more LGBTQ+ Washingtonians see themselves as leaders in their communities,” he said.
Some local LGBTQ activists, who asked not to be identified, said they were not aware of a significant boost in new LGBTQ ANC candidates from the Queering ANCs campaign. However, they praised the effort to recruit more LGBTQ ANC candidates and said the campaign could have yielded more candidates if it had started sooner than less than a month before the deadline for becoming a candidate.
McCarty said Capital Stonewall Democrats will continue to recruit LGBTQ D.C. residents to run as write-in candidates for ANC seats, especially in the 45 single member districts in which no candidate will be on the ballot. The Board of Elections candidate list shows many ANC single member districts that have just one candidate running without an opponent.
Following is a list of 33 known LGBTQ ANC candidates running in D.C.’s November 2026 election and the single member districts and neighborhoods in which they are running. All but two – Vida Rangel and J. Swiderski – are incumbents running for re-election. The Washington Blade will update this list if and when more LGBTQ ANC candidates become known.
1A04 – (Columbia Heights) Jeremy Sherman, he/him
1A10 – (Columbia Heights) Vida Rangel, she/they [non-incumbent candidate]
1B03 – (Columbia Heights/U Street) J. Swiderski, they/he [non-incumbent candidate]
Jamie S. Sycamore, he/him
1B06 – (Columbia Heights/Meridian Hill) Miguel Trindade Deramo, he/him
1B07 – (U Street) Matthew Holden, he/him
1E01 – (Park View) Brad Howard, he/him
2B02 – (Dupont Circle) Jeffrey Rueckgauer, he/him
2B03 – (Dupont Circle) Vincent Slatt, he/him
2C01 – (Penn Quarter) Michael D. Shankle, he/him
2F05 – (Logan Circle) Christopher Dyer, he/him
2F07 – (Logan Circle) Kevin Cataldo, he/him
2G01 – (Shaw)Parker Griffin, he/him Howard Garrett, he/him
2G02 – (Shaw) Alexander ‘Alex’ Padro, he/him
2G04 – (Shaw) Steven McCarty, he/him
3B06 – (Wesley Heights) S. Robert Rodriquez, he/him
3F05 – (Van Ness/Cleveland Park) Adrian Jesus Iglesias, he/him
4B01 – (Takoma) Doug Payton, he/him
4B10 – (Lamond Riggs) Jinin Berry, she/her
4C06 – (Petworth) Christen Boss Hayes, they/them
4E02 – (16th Street Heights) Vince Micone, he/him
5B04 – (Brookland) Ra Amin, he/him
5B05 – (Brookland) Mónica Martínez López, she/her
5D05 – (Trinidad) Salvador Sauceda-Guzman, he/him
5F06 – (Eckington) Joe Bishop-Henchman, he/him
6B03 – (Capitol Hill) David Sobelsohn, he/him
6B09 – (Capitol Hill/Barney Circle) Karen Hughes, she/her
7C01 – (Deanwood) Brian Glover, he/him
7C03 – (Lincoln Heights) Carlos Richardson, he/him
7C04 (Deanwood) Anthony Lorenzo Green
7C08 – (Capitol View) Brandon M. Scott, he/him
8A01 – (Fairlawn) Tom Donohue, he, him
8B06 – (Garfield Heights) Marcus Thomas Hickman, he/him
District of Columbia
Gay-owned pizzeria in Dupont Circle burglarized
Protest Pizza owners say community has expressed support
Gay activist Randy Downs said he and his business and life partner Ricky Bennett are grateful for the support they have received from the Dupont Circle community after they released a video showing a suspect breaking into their recently opened pizza shop and taking money from a cash register shortly before 3 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 21.
The surveillance video shows a man wearing black clothing with his face covered, smashing the glass front door of Protest Pizza, located at 1633 ½ P St., N.W. The video, which Downs and Bennett provided to D.C. police, also shows the suspect climbing over the bar to get to a cash register, which he opened to take out cash.
A D.C. police report obtained by the Washington Blade lists the incident as a Burglary in the Second Degree and says the owners reported “approximately $78 in cash” was taken from the cash register. The report says the incident is not listed as a suspected hate crime.
Downs told the Washington Blade that after he and Bennett reported the break-in and theft on social media, they received an overwhelming showing of support from neighbors and others, including business owners, from across the nation.
“The break-in was upsetting, but it is not what will define Protest Pizza,” Downs said. “What defines us is how quickly people showed up,” he told the Blade. “One person came looking for a cash register; our community saw a gathering place worth protecting. The response reminded us that Protest’s real value was never in the register.”
Downs said he and Bennett, who live around the corner on the section of 17th Street, N.W., near several other bars and restaurants, including the gay bar JRs are located, opened Protest Pizza in November 2025.
“Ricky and I built Protest Pizza as a positive, welcoming, queer owned neighborhood restaurant and bar — a space for protest and joy,” he said.
A D.C. police spokesperson said police offer a reward of up to $1,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction of a suspect responsible for the type of burglary and theft that occurred at Protest Pizza. Police say anyone with information to help solve this type of crime should call the police tipline at 202-727-9099.
District of Columbia
Advocates honored at Engendered Spirit Awards
Annual ceremony held at conclusion of Trans Pride DC
The 2026 SaVanna Wanzer Engendered Spirit Awards ceremony took place at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library in D.C. on Saturday. The ceremony was held at the conclusion of the day-long Trans Pride DC: Encore.
Honorees included D.C. Mayor’s Office of Community Affairs Deputy Director Vida Rangel; the LGBT+ Counseling Collaborative, Inc.; and Connor Keuntje, CLP, CLPC.
Trans Pride DC: Encore was held throughout Saturday with several workshop sessions and a virtual conversation with actress and advocate Dominique Jackson.
The annual Engendered Spirit Awards were renamed the “SaVanna Wanzer Engendered Spirit Awards” in honor of SaVanna Wanzer, founder of D.C. Trans Pride. Wanzer died on April 24 of this year.
Speakers at the ceremony included Japer Bowles, director of the D.C. Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs and Bianca Sprague, executive director of D.C. Trans Pride.
“The intent behind this award and honoring members of our communities, organizations, and allies, is to really elevate all of the work that they’re doing to provide resources, tools, learning opportunities and connections: centering trans folks, gender non-conforming, and gender diverse individuals,” Sprague said.
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Two awesome, affordable rides
Advocates honored at Engendered Spirit Awards
Gay-owned pizzeria in Dupont Circle burglarized
