Local
Comings & Goings
Curve Foundation announces honorees
The Comings & Goings column is about sharing the professional successes of our community. We want to recognize those landing new jobs, new clients for their business, joining boards of organizations and other achievements. Please share your successes with us at [email protected].
Congratulations to Kyle Fradkin on his new position as D.C.-based Legislative Policy Advisor with the County of San Diego. On accepting the position, he said, “As someone who’s first job was working for the County of Los Angeles while in high school, this new role as the D.C.-based Legislative Policy Advisor with the County of San Diego feels like a full circle kind of moment. I look forward to bringing a decade of experience in government affairs to advocate for the residents of the county here in Washington.”
Prior to this, Fradkin was Deputy Director of Public Policy with MAZON: A JEWISH RESPONSE TO HUNGER. Among other duties he managed the organization’s relationship with members of Congress and their staff. Prior to that he was Senior Government Affairs Associate for J Street. He started with them as Senior Regional Associate in San Francisco.
Congratulations also to the three journalists awarded the inaugural Curve Award for Excellence in Lesbian Coverage. The award, sponsored by the Curve Foundation, honors the contributions of journalists who have dedicated their careers to telling the stories of the Curve community. The award includes a $2,500 cash award and access to unique professional development opportunities. Awardees will be honored with a digital exhibit at curvemag.com, archiving major moments and career accomplishments, and available throughout the year.
Victoria A. Brownworth is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated, award-winning journalist. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, among others. Her work focuses on social justice issues and local and national politics. She is the author and editor of more than 20 books
Dana Piccoli has been writing about the LGBTQ community for more than a decade and is now the editor of News is Out, a queer media collaborative. With a special dedication to queer women’s issues, Piccoli has written for numerous sites, including The Mary Sue, The Decider, Curve, and NBC. She’s the former Managing Editor of the Bella Media Channel and the founder of Queer Media Matters. She lives in Vancouver with her wife.
Femi Redwood is an award-winning journalist not afraid to ask tough questions or have uncomfortable conversations that lead to teachable moments. Redwood was a host and managing producer of podcasts at Audacy’s NYC news stations, 1010 WINS and WCBS Newsradio 880. She launched several successful shows, including Beyond Black History Month. Redwood spent more than a decade in TV news, including working as a correspondent in prominent newsrooms such as CBS Newspath and VICE News. Redwood is co-chair of the National Association of Black Journalists’ LGBTQ+ Task Force. Redwood lives in Brooklyn with her wife and cat.
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.
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
JD Vance to travel to Hungary next week
Pam Bondi ousted as attorney general
VIDEO: Gay journalist detained for booing Trumps at ‘Chicago’ opening night
Idaho Gov. signs harshest anti-trans bathroom bill in the country
‘Out for McDuffie’ event held at D.C. gay bar
‘Jonah’ an undeniably compelling but unusual memory play
The Oscar-losing performance that’s too good to miss
Thousands attend ‘No Kings’ protests in D.C.
