District of Columbia
17th Street bars hit with D.C. liquor agency crackdown during High Heel Race
Official says no citations issued for patrons illegally carrying drinks on sidewalk
Investigators with the D.C. Alcoholic Beverage and Cannabis Administration (ABCA) created a stir during the annual LGBTQ Halloween High Heel Race on Tuesday night, Oct. 24, when they showed up at several bars and restaurants located along the two-block stretch of 17th Street, N.W. near Dupont Circle where the race and costume celebration took place.
According to observers attending the event, as thousands of spectators lined the street and sidewalks and capacity crowds filled the restaurants and bars, the ABCA investigators reportedly ordered some of the businesses to stop selling alcoholic beverages in their outdoor areas because they failed to prevent customers from carrying their drinks outside the establishments and onto the street and sidewalks.
An ABCA official told the Washington Blade that under D.C. law, bars, restaurants, and other businesses that sell and serve alcoholic beverages are required to prevent patrons from taking their drinks with alcohol off the premises of those businesses.
The official, ABCA Chief of Staff Jared J. Powell, said the ABCA investigators directed the bars and restaurants not to allow patrons to take drinks with alcohol off their premises, but he said the businesses were not told to stop serving alcohol in outdoor spaces for which they were licensed to sell and serve alcohol.
“ABCA responded to the scene in response to requests for assistance from two District government agencies, including MPD [D.C. Metropolitan Police Department], due to patrons leaving licensed establishments with open containers of alcohol and patrons drinking in the street,” Powell told the Blade in a statement.
“ABCA responded to the scene and observed more than 50 patrons leaving licensed establishments with open containers and drinking alcoholic beverages on the public street,” he said in his statement, adding that the ABCA agents advised the business to stop allowing this to happen.
“D.C. Code 25-113(a)(2)(A)(ii) makes it a violation for a restaurant or tavern to knowingly allow a patron to exit the licensed establishment with an alcoholic beverage in an open container,” Powell said in the statement.
But he said despite what ABCA agents believed were multiple violations no citations or official warnings were issued to any business visited by the ABCA investigators.
Ann Blackwell, executive director of Historic Dupont Circle Main Streets, a business advocacy organization that promotes historic preservation, said the illegal action by some businesses may have been prompted by confusion over whether the law Powell cited applied to a large outdoor event in which the streets were closed to vehicle traffic.
“I’m not quite sure which hand was not talking to the other because the event was set up just like it was in past years,” Blackwell told the Blade. She said she was informed that in past years the city did not enforce restrictions against taking drinks out of bars and restaurants and onto the street or sidewalk because people thought the race was an enclosed event.
“So, all those same rules applied,” she said. “It’s just that in years past there’s never been a crackdown. So, I’m not quite sure how it happened.”
People attending the event said the businesses visited by the ABCA investigators and told to stop allowing customers to take drinks off their licensed premises included Dupont Italian Kitchen, which has a gay bar on its upper floor; Annie’s Paramount Steakhouse, which has a large LGBTQ clientele; and JR.’s.
Powell said bars and restaurants under current D.C. law can apply for a one-day “substantial change” to temporarily extend their outdoor drinking areas to public or private spaces. He said none of the 17th Street businesses applied for that extension for the Oct. 24 event.
Blackwell said one reason the businesses may not have applied for the extension is because under city rules the expanded area must be enclosed in a fence, which she said would likely be very expensive to install in the two-block area where the High Heel Race took place.
“ABCA did not advise licensed establishments to stop selling, serving or allowing the consumption of alcoholic beverages on licensed outdoor spaces, including Streeteries,” Powell said in his statement. “Rather, ABCA advised MPD that establishments were legally allowed to operate, sell, serve and consume alcoholic beverages outdoors, including on licensed Streeteries.”
Powell was referring to the extended outdoor spaces, including spaces in city streets, known as Streeteries, that came into use during the COVID pandemic when indoors spaces were closed.
District of Columbia
Gay priest credited with boosting church support for LGBTQ Catholics
Fr. Tom Oddo’s biographer speaks at Dignity Washington event
The author of a biography of a U.S. Catholic priest said to have advocated for support by the Catholic Church of gay Catholics in the early 1970s has called Father Thomas ‘Tom’ Oddo a little known but important figure in the LGBTQ rights movement.
Tyler Bieber, author of the recently published book “Against The Current: Father Tom Oddo And the New American Catholic,” told of Oddo’s life and work on behalf of LGBTQ rights at a March 22 talk before the local LGBTQ Catholic group Dignity Washington.
Among Oddo’s important accomplishments, Bieber said, was his role as a co-founder of the national LGBTQ Catholic group Dignity U.S.A. in 1973 at the age of 29.
But as reported in the prologue of his book, Bieber presented details of the sad news that Oddo died in a fatal car crash in 1989 at the age of 45 in Portland, Ore., where he was serving as the highly acclaimed president of the University of Portland, a Catholic institution.
“He was a major figure in the gay rights movement in the 1970s, an unsung hero of that movement,” Bieber told Dignity Washington members, who assembled for his talk in a meeting room at St. Margaret Episcopal Church near Dupont Circle, where they attend their weekly Catholic mass on Sundays.
“And Dignity U.S.A. saw intense growth in membership and visibility” during its early years under Oddo’s leadership, Bieber said. “The story of Father Tom and his contemporaries is a story largely untold in the history of the gay rights movement, but one worth knowing and considering,” he said.
As stated in his book, Bieber told the Dignity Washington gathering Oddo was born and raised in a Catholic family on Long Island, N.Y., and attended a Catholic high school in Flushing Queens. It was at that time when he developed an interest in becoming a priest, according to Bieber.
After studying at the University of Notre Dame and completing his religious studies he was ordained as a priest in 1970 and began his work as a priest in the Boston area, Bieber said. It was around that time, Bieber told the Dignity Washington audience, that gay Catholics approached Oddo to seek advice on how they should interact with the Catholic Church. It was also around that time that Oddo became involved in a group supportive of then gay Catholics that later became a Dignity chapter in Boston.
In a development considered unusual for a Catholic priest, Bieber said Oddo in 1973 testified in support of gay rights bill before a committee of the Massachusetts Legislature and collaborated with then Massachusetts gay and lesbian rights advocate Elaine Noble.
In 1982, at the age of 39, Oddo was selected as president of the University of Portland following several years as a college teacher in the Boston area, Bieber’s book states. It says he was seen as a “vibrant and capable administrator who delivered real results to his campus,” adding, “His magnetism was obvious. One student described him as ‘John Kennedyesque’ to the university’s student newspaper.”
Bieber said that although Oddo was less active with Dignity U.S.A. during his tenure as UP president, he continued his support for gay Catholics and what is now referred to as LGBTQ rights.
“For those that knew him prior to his term at UP, though, he represented something greater than an accomplished university administrator and educator,” Bieber’s book states. “He was a new kind of priest, a gay man living and ministering in a world set loose from tradition by the Second Vatican Council,” the book says.
It was referring to the Vatican gathering of worldwide Catholic leaders from 1962 to 1965 concluding under Pope Paul VI that church observers say modernized church practices to allow far greater participation by the laity and opened the way for sympathetic consideration of gay Catholics.
District of Columbia
HRC to host National Rainbow Seder
Bet Mishpachah among annual event’s organizers
The 18th National Rainbow Seder will take place at the Human Rights Campaign on Sunday.
The sold out event is the country’s largest Passover Seder for the Jewish LGBTQ community.
Organizations behind the event include Bet Mishpachah, a local D.C. LGBTQ synagogue that Rabbi Jake Singer-Beilin leads, and GLOE, an Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center program that sponsors events for the queer Jewish community. The theme for this year’s Seder is “Liberation For All Who Journey: Remembering, Resisting, Rebuilding.” Rabbis Atara Cohen, Koach Frazier, and Avigayil Halpern will lead it.
The Seder will honor the late GLOE co-chair Michael Singer. Singer also served on the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center’s board.
“This Seder is both a celebration of how far we have come and a call to continue building a more just and inclusive world.” Bet Mishpachah Executive Director Joshua Maxey told the Washington Blade.
District of Columbia
Trans Day of Visibility events planned
Rally on the National Mall scheduled for Saturday
The Christopher Street Project has a number of events planned for the 2026 Trans Day of Visibility, including a rally on the Mall and an “Empowerment Ball” at the Eaton Hotel. Plenaries, panel discussions and meetings with members of Congress are scheduled in the three days of programming.
Announced speakers include N.H. state Rep. Alice Wade; Commissioner of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago Precious Brady-Davis; activist and performer Miss Peppermint (“RuPaul’s Drag Race”); Lexington, Ky. Councilwoman Emma Curtis; Rabbi Abby Stein; D.C. activist and host Rayceen Pendarvis; Air Force Master Sgt. Logan Ireland; among other leaders, advocates and performers.
Conference programming on Thursday and Friday includes an educational forum and a Capitol Hill policy education day. Registration for the two-day conference has closed.
The “Trans Day of Visibility PAC Reception” is scheduled for Thursday, March 26 from 7:30-9 p.m. at As You Are (500 8th St., S.E.). Special guests include Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nevada) and Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.). Tickets are available at christopherstreetproject.org starting at $25.
The National Council of Jewish Women and the Christopher Street Project host a “Trans Day of Visibility Shabbat” on Friday, March 27 from 7-8 p.m. at Sixth & I (600 I St., N.W.). The service is to be led by Rabbi Jenna Shaw and Rabbi Abby Stein.
The “Now You See Me: Trans Empowerment Social & Ball” is scheduled for Friday, March 27 from 6-11 p.m. at the Eaton Hotel (1201 K. St., N.W.). The trans-themed drag ball is hosted by the Marsha P. Johnson Institute with support from the D.C. Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ+ Affairs, the Capital Ballroom Council, the Christopher Street Project, the Center for Black Equity, Generation for Common Good, and Parenting is Political. RSVP online at christopherstreetproject.org.
The National Transgender Day of Visibility Rally is scheduled for Saturday, March 28 on the National Mall at 11 a.m. The rally will include speakers and performances. Following the rally, attendees are encouraged to participate in the “No Kings” rally being held at Anacostia Park.
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