National
Lesbian software developer seeks to preserve lost LGBTQ history
Up until the early 2010s, if you searched “Babe Ruth” in the Baseball Hall of Fame, nothing would pop up. To find information on the greatest baseball player of all time, you would have to search “Ruth, George Herman.”
That is the way online archival systems were set up and there was a clear problem with it. Kristen Gwinn-Becker was uniquely able to solve it. “I’m a super tech geek, history geek,” she says, “I love any opportunity to create this aha moment with people through history.”
Gwinn-Becker is the founder and CEO of HistoryIT, a company that helps organizations create digital archives that are genuinely accessible. “I believe history is incredibly important, but I also think it’s in danger,” she says. “Less than 2% of our historical materials are digital and even less of that is truly accessible.”
Gwinn-Becker’s love for history is personal. As a lesbian, growing up, she sought out evidence of herself across time. “I was interested in stories, interested in people whose lives mirrored mine to help me understand who I was.”
“[My identity] influences my love of history and my strong belief in history is important,” she says.
Despite always loving history, Gwinn-Becker found herself living and working in San Francisco during the early dot com boom and bust in the ‘90s. “It was an exciting time,” she recounts, “if you were intellectually curious, you could just jump right in.”
Being there was almost happenstance, Gwinn-Becker explained: “I was 20 years old and wanted to live in San Francisco.” Quickly, she fell in love with “all of the incredible new tools.” She was working with non-profits that encouraged her to take classes and apply the new skills. “I was really into software, web, and database development.”
But history eventually pulled her back. “Tech was fun, but I didn’t want to be a developer,” she says. Something was missing. When the opportunity to get a Ph.D. in history from George Washington University presented itself, “I got to work on the Eleanor Roosevelt papers, who I was and remain quite passionate about.”
Gwinn-Becker’s research on Eleanor Roosevelt planted the seeds of digital preservation. “Eleanor Roosevelt doesn’t have a single archive. FDR has lots but the first ladies don’t,” she says. Gwinn-Becker wondered what else was missing from the archive — and what would be missing from the archive if we didn’t start preserving it now.
Those questions eventually led Gwinn-Becker to found HistoryIT in 2011. Since then, the company has created digital archives for organizations ranging from museums and universities to sororities, fraternities, and community organizations.
This process is not easy. “Digital preservation is more than scanning,” says Gwinn-Becker. “Most commercial scanners’ intent is to create a digital copy, not an exact replica.”
To digitally preserve something, Gwinn-Becker’s team must take a photo with overhead cameras. “There is an international standard,” she says, “you create an archival TIFF.”
“It’s the biggest possible file we can create now. That’s how you future-proof.”
Despite the common belief that the internet is forever, JPEGs saved to social media or websites are a poor archive. “It’s more expensive for us to do projects in the 2000 to 2016 period than to do 19th-century projects,” explains Gwinn-Becker, since finding adequate files for preservation can be tricky. “The images themselves are deteriorated because they’re compressed so much,” she says.
Her clients are finding that having a strong digital archive is useful outside of the noble goal of protecting history. “It’s a unique trove of content,” says Gwinn-Becker. One client saw a 790% increase in donations after incorporating the digital archive into fundraising efforts. “It’s important to have content quickly and easily,” says Gwinn-Becker, whose team also works with clients on digital strategy for their archive.
One of Gwinn-Becker’s favorite parts of her job is finding what she calls “hidden histories.”
“We [LGBTQ people] are represented everywhere. We’re represented in sports, in religious history, in every kind of movement, not only our movement. I’m passionate about bringing those stories out.”
Sometimes queer stories are found in unexpected places, says Gwinn-Becker. “We work with sororities and fraternities. There are a hell of a lot of our stories there.”
Part of digital preservation is also making sure that history being created in the moment is not lost to future generations. HistoryIT works with NFL teams, for example. One of their clients is the Panthers, who hired Justine Lindsay, the first transgender cheerleader in the NFL. Gwinn-Becker was excited to be able to preserve information about Lindsay in the digital record. “It’s making history in the process of preserving it,” says Gwinn-Becker.
Preserving queer history, either through “hidden histories” or LGBTQ-specific archives, is vital says Gwinn-Becker. “Think about whose history gets marginalized, whose history gets moved to the sidelines, whose history gets just erased,” she prompts. “In a time of fake news, we need to point to evidence in the past. Queer people have existed since there were humans, but their stories are hidden,” Gwinn-Becker says.
Meanwhile, Gwinn-Becker accidentally finds herself as part of queer history too. Listed as one of Inc. Magazine’s Top 250 Female Founders of 2024, she is surrounded by names like Christina Aguilera, Selena Gomez, and Natalie Portman.
One name stuck out. “Never in my life did I think I’d be on the same list – other than the obvious one – with Billie Jean King. That’s pretty exciting,” she said.
But she can’t focus on the win for too long. “When I go to sleep at night, I think ‘there’s so much history, and we have to transfer it to the digital,’” she says, “We have a very small period in which to do that in a meaningful way.”
(This story is part of the Digital Equity Local Voices Fellowship lab through News is Out. The lab initiative is made possible with support from Comcast NBCUniversal.)
New York
Men convicted of murdering two men in NYC gay bar drugging scheme sentenced
One of the victims, John Umberger, was D.C. political consultant
A New York judge on Wednesday sentenced three men convicted of killing a D.C. political consultant and another man who they targeted at gay bars in Manhattan.
NBC New York notes a jury in February convicted Jayqwan Hamilton, Jacob Barroso, and Robert DeMaio of murder, robbery, and conspiracy in relation to druggings and robberies that targeted gay bars in Manhattan from March 2021 to June 2022.
John Umberger, a 33-year-old political consultant from D.C., and Julio Ramirez, a 25-year-old social worker, died. Prosecutors said Hamilton, Barroso, and DeMaio targeted three other men at gay bars.
The jury convicted Hamilton and DeMaio of murdering Umberger. State Supreme Court Judge Felicia Mennin sentenced Hamilton and DeMaio to 40 years to life in prison.
Barroso, who was convicted of killing Ramirez, received a 20 years to life sentence.
National
Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information
Crucial datasets included LGBTQ, HIV resources
Nine private medical and public health advocacy organizations, including two from D.C., filed a lawsuit on May 20 in federal court in Seattle challenging what it calls the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s illegal deletion of dozens or more of its webpages containing health related information, including HIV information.
The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, names as defendants Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS itself, and several agencies operating under HHS and its directors, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration.
“This action challenges the widespread deletion of public health resources from federal agencies,” the lawsuit states. “Dozens (if not more) of taxpayer-funded webpages, databases, and other crucial resources have vanished since January 20, 2025, leaving doctors, nurses, researchers, and the public scrambling for information,” it says.
“These actions have undermined the longstanding, congressionally mandated regime; irreparably harmed Plaintiffs and others who rely on these federal resources; and put the nation’s public health infrastructure in unnecessary jeopardy,” the lawsuit continues.
It adds, “The removal of public health resources was apparently prompted by two recent executive orders – one focused on ‘gender ideology’ and the other targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’) programs. Defendants implemented these executive orders in a haphazard manner that resulted in the deletion (inadvertent or otherwise) of health-related websites and databases, including information related to pregnancy risks, public health datasets, information about opioid-use disorder, and many other valuable resources.”
The lawsuit does not mention that it was President Donald Trump who issued the two executive orders in question.
A White House spokesperson couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit.
While not mentioning Trump by name, the lawsuit names as defendants in addition to HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., Matthew Buzzelli, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health; Martin Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; Thomas Engels, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration; and Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management.
The 44-page lawsuit complaint includes an addendum with a chart showing the titles or descriptions of 49 “affected resource” website pages that it says were deleted because of the executive orders. The chart shows that just four of the sites were restored after initially being deleted.
Of the 49 sites, 15 addressed LGBTQ-related health issues and six others addressed HIV issues, according to the chart.
“The unannounced and unprecedented deletion of these federal webpages and datasets came as a shock to the medical and scientific communities, which had come to rely on them to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, assist physicians and other clinicians in daily care, and inform the public about a wide range of healthcare issues,” the lawsuit states.
“Health professionals, nonprofit organizations, and state and local authorities used the websites and datasets daily in care for their patients, to provide resources to their communities, and promote public health,” it says.
Jose Zuniga, president and CEO of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC), one of the organizations that signed on as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement that the deleted information from the HHS websites “includes essential information about LGBTQ+ health, gender and reproductive rights, clinical trial data, Mpox and other vaccine guidance and HIV prevention resources.”
Zuniga added, “IAPAC champions evidence-based, data-informed HIV responses and we reject ideologically driven efforts that undermine public health and erase marginalized communities.”
Lisa Amore, a spokesperson for Whitman-Walker Health, D.C.’s largest LGBTQ supportive health services provider, also expressed concern about the potential impact of the HHS website deletions.
“As the region’s leader in HIV care and prevention, Whitman-Walker Health relies on scientific data to help us drive our resources and measure our successes,” Amore said in response to a request for comment from the Washington Blade.
“The District of Columbia has made great strides in the fight against HIV,” Amore said. “But the removal of public facing information from the HHS website makes our collective work much harder and will set HIV care and prevention backward,” she said.
The lawsuit calls on the court to issue a declaratory judgement that the “deletion of public health webpages and resources is unlawful and invalid” and to issue a preliminary or permanent injunction ordering government officials named as defendants in the lawsuit “to restore the public health webpages and resources that have been deleted and to maintain their web domains in accordance with their statutory duties.”
It also calls on the court to require defendant government officials to “file a status report with the Court within twenty-four hours of entry of a preliminary injunction, and at regular intervals, thereafter, confirming compliance with these orders.”
The health organizations that joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs include the Washington State Medical Association, Washington State Nurses Association, Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Academy Health, Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, Fast-Track Cities Institute, International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, National LGBT Cancer Network, and Vermont Medical Society.
The Fast-Track Cities Institute and International Association of Providers of AIDS Care are based in D.C.
U.S. Federal Courts
Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections
Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has struck down guidelines by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission designed to protect against workplace harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
The EEOC in April 2024 updated its guidelines to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which determined that discrimination against transgender people constituted sex-based discrimination as proscribed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
To ensure compliance with the law, the agency recommended that employers honor their employees’ preferred pronouns while granting them access to bathrooms and allowing them to wear dress code-compliant clothing that aligns with their gender identities.
While the the guidelines are not legally binding, Kacsmaryk ruled that their issuance created “mandatory standards” exceeding the EEOC’s statutory authority that were “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent.”
“Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind themselves to the biological differences between men and women,” he wrote in the opinion.
The case, which was brought by the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, presents the greatest setback for LGBTQ inclusive workplace protections since President Donald Trump’s issuance of an executive order on the first day of his second term directing U.S. federal agencies to recognize only two genders as determined by birth sex.
Last month, top Democrats from both chambers of Congress reintroduced the Equality Act, which would codify LGBTQ-inclusive protections against discrimination into federal law, covering employment as well as areas like housing and jury service.
PHOTOS: D.C. Trans Pride
Men convicted of murdering two men in NYC gay bar drugging scheme sentenced
Looking back at 50 years of Pride in D.C
Gerry Connolly dies at 75 after battle with esophageal cancer
WorldPride begins — let’s hope it ends well
Looking back at 50 years of Pride in D.C
WorldPride events round-up
Pope Leo XIV: Family based on ‘stable union between a man and a woman’
Wes Moore signs HIV decriminalization bill
