Pennsylvania
Brian Sims, four other LGBTQ candidates lose races in Pa.
Gay, trans hopefuls competing for Philly state house seat lose to straight ally
LGBTQ candidates running for the U.S. Senate, U.S. House, lieutenant governor, and a seat in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in Philadelphia’s ‘gayborhood’ each lost their races in the Keystone State’s May 17 Democratic primary.
Transgender community activist Deja Alvarez and LGBTQ rights and economic development advocate Jonathan Lovitz, who ran against each other in a four-candidate race for the 182nd District State House seat in Center City Philadelphia, were thought to have the best shot at winning among the four LGBTQ candidates running in the state primary.
The two were running neck-and-neck to one another but were trailing far behind straight LGBTQ ally and businessman Ben Waxman as of late Tuesday evening. With the votes counted in 52 of 59 of the district’s electoral divisions, Waxman had 41.6 percent of the vote, Lovitz had 19.1 percent, with Alvarez garnering 18.6 percent. Café owner, community activist, and LGBTQ ally Will Gross had 20.5 percent of the vote.
Lovitz and Alvarez along with Waxman and Gross were running for the seat held by gay State Rep. Brian Sims, who gave up the seat to run in Tuesday’s primary as the state’s first out gay candidate for lieutenant governor.
Sims lost that race to fellow State Rep. Austin Davis by a margin of 63.3 percent for Davis and 24.5 percent for Sims with 88 percent of the votes counted. The Associated Press declared Davis the winner early in the evening. A third candidate in the race, Ray Sosa, had 12.2 percent of the vote.
In a development that surprised many observers outside Pennsylvania, more than 40 prominent LGBTQ leaders from across the state endorsed Davis over Sims earlier this year, saying Davis is a strong and committed supporter of LGBTQ rights and has the best chance of winning in the general election in November.
Davis also received the strong backing of Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who ran unopposed in Tuesday’s primary for the Democratic nomination for governor. Shapiro, who also received strong backing from LGBTQ activists, said he considered Davis to be his running mate in the primary.
The fourth of the LGBTQ candidates running in Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary, State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta of the 181st District in North Philly, ran as a longshot candidate for the state’s U.S. Senate seat being vacated by GOP incumbent Patrick Toomey. Kenyatta lost to Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who was declared the winner with 88 percent of the votes counted.
Fetterman had 59.3 percent, with Kenyatta finishing in third place in a four-candidate race with 10.0 percent of the vote. U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb finished in second place with 26.6 percent of the vote as of early Wednesday morning, with IT specialist and former small business owner Alex Khalil finishing fourth with 4.2 percent of the vote.
Kenyatta, who was one of three gay speakers who joined others in delivering a joint keynote address at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, received the endorsement of the Philadelphia Gay News in his bid for the U.S. Senate seat.
Gay Democratic and LGBTQ rights activist and former congressional staff member Sean Meloy, who ran for the U.S. House seat in Pennsylvania’s 17th Congressional District in the Pittsburgh suburbs, was the fifth LGBTQ candidate competing in the state’s May 17 primary. Meloy lost his race to Chris Deluzio, director of the University of Pittsburgh’s cyber policy center.
With 93 percent of the votes counted, Deluzio had 63.2 percent of the vote compared to Meloy, who had 36.8 percent. If Meloy had won the race he would have become Pennsylvania’s first out gay member of Congress.
The race in which Lovitz and Alvarez competed for the State House seat in the 182nd District, which is believed to have more LGBTQ residents than any other legislative district in the state, drew the most attention among LGBTQ activists both in Philadelphia and in other parts of the country.
Both have been involved in LGBTQ rights issues for many years. Lovitz drew support from a wide range of LGBTQ and labor and small business leaders who he knew in his past role as senior vice president of the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce. Alvarez, a widely known transgender activist who led local community-based organizations providing services to the LGBTQ community, would have been the first transgender person to serve in the Pennsylvania General Assembly if she had been elected to the State House seat.
The LGBTQ Victory Fund, the national group that raises money in support of LGBTQ candidates for public office, drew criticism from some activists for endorsing Alvarez over Lovitz. Some argued that the group should have remained neutral or backed Lovitz, who had raised far more money for his campaign and appeared to be the most viable of the two candidates. Others expressed concern that two LGBTQ candidates running in a four-candidate race could result in a split in the LGBTQ vote that would help the straight candidates, who were known LGBTQ rights supporters.
As it turned out, the approximate combined share of the vote that Alvarez and Lovitz received — 38.2 percent — still fell short of the 42.6 percent of the vote received by Waxman.
Pennsylvania
Transgender Honduran woman canvasses for Harris in Pa.
Monserrath Aleman is CASA in Action volunteer
A transgender woman from Honduras has traveled to Pennsylvania several times in recent weeks to campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democratic candidates.
Monserrath Aleman traveled to York on Aug. 31 and Lancaster on Sept. 21 with a group of other volunteers from CASA in Action.
They door-knocked in areas where large numbers of African Americans, Black, and Latino voters live. Aleman and the other CASA in Action volunteers urged them to support Harris, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), and other down ballot Democratic candidates.
Aleman will be in Harrisburg on Nov. 2, and in York on Election Day.
“We achieved the goal that we had in mind and that we wanted to achieve,” she told the Washington Blade on Oct. 22 during a Zoom interview from Baltimore. “We knocked on doors, passed out flyers.”
Aleman cited Project 2025 — which the Congressional Equality Caucus on Thursday sharply criticized — when she spoke with the Blade.
“We know that there is a Project 2025 plan that would affect us: The entire immigrant Latino community, the LGBTI community, everyone,” said Aleman. “So that’s why I’m more motivated to go knocking on doors, to ask for help, for support from everyone who can vote, who can exercise their vote.”
She told the Blade that she and her fellow volunteers “did not have any bad response.”
Aleman grew up in Yoro, a city that is roughly 130 miles north of the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa.
She left Honduras on Nov. 25, 2021.
Aleman entered Mexico in Palenque, a city in the country’s Chiapas state that is close to the border with Guatemala. The Mexican government granted her a humanitarian visa that allowed her to legally travel through the country.
Aleman told the Blade she walked and took buses to Ciudad Juárez, a Mexican border city that is across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas.
She scheduled her appointment with U.S. Customs and Border Protection while living at a shelter in Ciudad Juárez. Aleman now lives in Baltimore.
“Discrimination against the LGBTI community exists everywhere, but in Honduras it is more critical,” said Aleman.
Aleman added she feels “more free to express herself, to speak with someone” in the U.S. She also said she remains optimistic that Harris will defeat former President Donald Trump on Election Day.
“There is no other option,” said Aleman.
Pennsylvania
Pa. House passes bill to repeal state’s same-sex marriage ban
Measure now goes to Republican-controlled state Senate
The Democratic-controlled Pennsylvania House of Representatives on July 2 passed a bill that would repeal the state’s same-sex marriage ban.
The marriage bill passed by a 133-68 vote margin, with all but one Democrat voting for it. Thirty-two Republicans backed the measure.
The bill’s next hurdle is to pass in the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania Senate.
State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D-Philadelphia), a gay man who is running for state auditor, noted to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review the bill would eliminate a clause in Pennsylvania’s marriage law that defines marriage as “between one man and one woman.” The measure would also change the legal definition of marriage in the state to “a civil contract between two individuals.”
Kenyatta did not return the Washington Blade’s requests for comment.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2015 in Obergefell v. Hodges extended marriage rights to same-sex couples across the country.
Justice Clarence Thomas in the 2022 decision that struck down Roe v. Wade said the Supreme Court should reconsider the Obergefell decision and the Lawrence v. Texas ruling that said laws that criminalize consensual same-sex sexual relations are unconstitutional. President Joe Biden at the end of that year signed the Respect for Marriage Act, which requires the federal government and all U.S. states and territories to recognize same-sex and interracial marriages.
Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin earlier this year signed a bill that codified marriage rights for same-sex couples in state law. Pennsylvania lawmakers say the marriage codification bill is necessary in case the Supreme Court overturns marriage rights for same-sex couples in their state and across the country.
Pennsylvania
Western Pa. transgender girl killed, dismembered
Pauly Likens, 14, brutally murdered last month
Editor’s note: The Philadelphia Gay News originally published this story.
BY TIM CWIEK | Prosecutors are pledging justice for Pauly Likens, a 14-year-old transgender girl from Sharon, Pa., who was brutally killed last month. Her remains were scattered in and around a park lake in western Pennsylvania.
“The bottom line is that we have a 14-year-old, brutally murdered and dismembered,” said Mercer County District Attorney Peter C. Acker in an email. “Pauly Likens deserves justice, her family deserves justice, and we seek to deliver that justice.”
On June 23, DaShawn Watkins allegedly met Likens in the vicinity of Budd Street Public Park and Canoe Launch in Sharon, Pa., and killed her. Watkins subsequently dismembered Likens’s corpse with a saw and scattered her remains in and around Shenango River Lake in Clark Borough.
On July 2, Watkins was arrested and charged with first-degree murder, aggravated assault, abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence. He’s being held without bail in the Mercer County jail.
The coroner’s office said the cause of death was sharp force trauma to the head and ruled the manner of death as homicide.
Cell phone records, social media and surveillance video link Watkins to the crime. Additionally, traces of Likens’s blood were found in and around Watkins’s apartment in Sharon, Pa., authorities say.
A candlelight vigil is being held Saturday, July 13, in remembrance of Likens. It’s being hosted by LGBTQIA+ Alliance Shenango Valley. The vigil begins at 7 p.m. at 87 Stambaugh Ave. in Sharon, Pa.
Pamela Ladner, president of the Alliance, mourned Likens’s death.
“Pauly’s aunt described her as a sweet soul, inside and out,” Ladner said in an email. “She was a selfless child who loved nature and wanted to be a park ranger like her aunt.”
Acker, the prosecutor, said Likens’s death is one of the worst crimes he’s seen in 46 years as an attorney. But he cautioned against calling it a hate crime. “PSP [Pennsylvania State Police] does not believe it in fact is one [hate crime] because the defendant admitted to being a homosexual and the victim was reportedly a trans girl,” Acker asserted.
Acker praised the criminal justice agencies who worked on the case, including the Pennsylvania State Police, the Hermitage Police Department, the Sharon Police Department, park rangers from the Shenango Reservoir, Mercer County Coroner John Libonati, and cadaver dog search units.
“The amount of hours dedicated to the identification of the victim and the filing of charges against the defendant is a huge number,” Acker added. “We take the murder of any individual very seriously, expressly when they are young and brutally killed and dismembered.”
Acker also noted that all criminal defendants are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
This is a developing story.
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