Local
The lawyer strengthening LGBTQ partnerships for five decades
Larry Jacobs’s lifetime of advocacy
When most people come out, becoming a pillar of the queer community isn’t usually top of mind. Instead, they often reflect on gaining confidence in their environment, finding love and relationships, and embracing their true selves. But when one Maryland lawyer came out, he unexpectedly found himself becoming a hero to many.
Fifty years ago Lawrence (Larry) Jacobs was living a life that looked picture-perfect: A successful law career, a wife, and a son. But when he came out as gay, everything changed.
“When I started practicing law 50 years ago, there was basically no such thing by and large as openly gay people, much less openly gay lawyers,” Jacobs told the Blade about his days prior to coming out. “I was married to a woman and had a kid. I was pretty closeted until the first 10 years of my career.”
Despite the beginnings of a successful career, Jacobs felt he wasn’t being truly himself and decided to change that. It was difficult leaving his familiar beginnings and facing unsupportive people.
“When I did come out in ‘83 I got tossed out of my own law firm for being gay by my [law] partner,” he said. “So that was not a good start.”
Yet he didn’t let this change in track become a setback. Instead he used what he learned through college, law school, and life to direct him to where he needed to be. This direction, stemming from his understanding of law, began to flourish into much more for the Maryland LGBTQ community.
“I started representing gay business owners in doing corporate and business work, which was always something I was interested in,” Jacobs said. “So lo and behold, as I got more comfortable being out and I had a [romantic] partner, I started nibbling around the edges of doing activist work in Montgomery County.”
This work began with working on wills and estate planning.
“I had my first set of gay business owner clients who said, ‘Larry, we need wills,’” he recounted. “And I said, ‘I’ve never written a will.’ And they basically said, ‘Figure it out.’ That was almost 2,000 wills ago.”
During the time when Jacobs started writing wills in the 1980s, HIV, AIDS, bigotry, and sadness came to many in the community with little support from mainstream politicians.
“You know the old AIDS days, ‘80s and ‘90s, where the families would swoop in and carry the body off to Iowa and the partner would never see them again,” Jacobs recalled. “There were all these heartbreaking stories about that.”
He explained that these stories were not just kept to the queer media sidelines either. This issue was growing more and more prevalent in American society.
“One of the turning points, ironically, was a made-for-TV movie that was on HBO called ‘If These Walls Could Talk.’” Jacobs said. “It was a series of vignettes about lesbians. A fabulous actress played a grieving surviving spouse of her partner who had just died. They’re literally carrying stuff out of the house, carrying the TV and furniture and paintings out, and she’s sitting there crying.”
Seeing these tragic stories playing out in front of him, both on screen and in real life motivated Jacobs. He knew he could do more to help.
“What little bits of things can I do to make gay life better in Montgomery County, for the people that come after me,” Jacobs began to wonder. He realized that in the fight for rights, being seen is crucial to gaining acceptance.
“Working with some people, we actually put together early Montgomery Prides and ran them for a few years, just to sort of build political visibility,” he said. “I kept telling people, ‘Nobody’s gonna listen to us if they don’t see us!’ And then right around the same time, around ‘95, everything just kind of took off.”
“I got appointed to the Montgomery County Human Relations Commission by our then county executive, Doug Duncan, as an openly gay man,” Jacobs said. “Well, I had never been an openly gay man much of anything before then, but it was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, OK.’”
This seat on the Montgomery County Human Relations Commission gave Jacobs the ability to wield power to help those who needed it the most. He remembered that fighting for LGBTQ student rights in schools was a particularly big hurdle that seems all too familiar today.
“Through an odd combination of coincidences, I, with Bonnie Berger, launched the Safe Schools movement in Montgomery County to protect LGBT kids in schools, and that turned into a three ring media circus,” he began to explain. “I mean, you want to see ugly? It included getting interviewed on a radio station with a Christian fundamentalist woman who said right to my face, ‘You know, gay men on average die at age 40.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m already past that. So is my partner.’”
Despite the “three ring circus,” Jacobs and Berger were able to make progress.
“We did get it passed, it got swept under the rug, but eventually we got more supportive schools,” he said. “But then I sort of somehow got involved more on the state level with the statewide organization that was then ironically called FreeState Justice.”
This then marked a shift from fighting for local policy changes to state policy changes, which Jacobs foresaw as the next step to gaining equality.
“We were desperately trying to get domestic partnership benefits,” Jacobs explained. “Nobody could get married. If you’re not married to somebody, you’re a stranger, whether that’s in Maryland or even in the District. Unless you’re registered domestic partners, you’re nothing [in the eyes of the law].”
Jacobs used his platform to inform the queer public. Without legal domestic partnerships he understood that everything two people in love had, regardless of gender and gender expression, could be taken away in an instant.
He started sharing his information by tabling and talking with members of the LGBTQ community about the state of things wherever he could, highlighting what could happen if a partner dies.
“Sometimes my husband and I, well, I would get a booth at Pride, and my husband would come with me and swelter. Sometimes my son would come with us and swelter, and it just started growing,” Jacobs said.
He would share stories about how having legally binding documents can protect a couple even against the most hateful of people.
“I had these two elderly women, one of whom was sick and we knew her partner was going to die,” he began. “I don’t remember how old she was, but she was sick. She died not long thereafter, and my client, the surviving client, went into the funeral home, and they gave her a hard time. ‘Who the hell are you? Why do you think you can make decisions?’”
“And she literally called me up and told me this. She [then] brought in a manila envelope with all the documents that we had done and pulled out the funeral document that named her, of course, as the power behind the throne, and handed it over to the funeral director, and he went ‘Oh, OK. That’s all we need.’”
While many of the issues that had plagued same-sex couples prior to Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court case that gave same-sex couples the same protections as opposite-sex couples, went away, Jacobs made it very clear legally being seen as a couple is the strongest defense to protecting everything you and your partner own.
“There’s certainly more acceptance because of marriage equality,” Jacobs explained. “And I will, without violating client confidentiality, tell you there are numerous clients that I have said to, ‘You need to get married. Yes, we’re doing these great documents, but you need to get married too for this and this and this and this reason.’ The right documents and a wedding license are a very powerful combination. Neither one by itself is foolproof, and marriage gets you a lot of things, but doesn’t get you everything.”
To summarize an extremely rewarding and impactful career Jacobs offers this piece of advice: “If I could be remembered for anything it would be ‘Get married, and get married while you can, because someday you’re going to need it, want it!” Jacobs said he plans to retire effective Dec. 27.
District of Columbia
Activists praise Mayor Bowser’s impact on city, LGBTQ community
‘She made sure LGBTQ residents knew they were seen, valued, loved’
Members of D.C.’s LGBTQ community offered their thoughts on the impact Mayor Muriel Bowser has had on them, the city, and LGBTQ people in statements and interviews with the Washington Blade in the week following Bowser’s announcement that she will not run for re-election in 2026.
Bowser’s Nov. 25 announcement came during the third year of her third four-year term in office as mayor and after she served as a member of the D.C. Council representing Ward 4 from 2007 to Jan. 2, 2015, when she took office as mayor.
The LGBTQ activists and mayoral staffers who spoke to the Blade agreed that Bowser has been an outspoken and dedicated supporter on a wide range of LGBTQ-related issues starting from her time as a Council member and throughout her years as mayor.
Among them is one of the mayor’s numerous openly LGBTQ staff members, Jim Slattery, who has served in the Cabinet-level position as the Mayor’s Correspondence Officer since Bowser first became mayor.
“As Mayor Muriel Bowser’s longest serving LGBTQIA+ staffer – dating back to her first term as the Ward 4 Council member – and a proud member of her Cabinet since day one of her administration, I have had the opportunity to witness her at work for the people she serves and leads,” Slattery said in a statement. “Noteworthy is that throughout the entirety of my 27 years in District government, I have always been able to do so as an out and proud gay man,” he stated.
Slattery added that he has witnessed first-hand Bowser’s “absolute belief” in supporting the LGBTQ community.
“She has led on HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, on shelter for vulnerable members of our community, housing for older members of the community, and has been a reliable and constant presence at events to LGBTQIA+ residents,” Slattery said. Among those events, he said, have been World AIDS Day, the D.C. Pride Parade, the 17th Street LGBTQ High Heel Race, and WorldPride 2025, which D.C. hosted with strong support from the mayor’s office.
Ryan Bos, CEO & president of Capital Pride Alliance, the D.C. group that organizes the city’s annual LGBTQ Pride events and served as lead organizer of WorldPride 2025, praised Bowser for being a longtime supporter of that organization.
“She played a very supportive role in helping us as an organization grow and to be able to bring WorldPride to Washington, D.C.,” Bos told the Blade. “And we commend her years of service, And our hope is that she helps us to continue to advocate for the support from the D.C. government of the LGBTQ+ community, especially during these times,” Bos said.
Bos, who was referring to the Trump administration’s hostility toward LGBTQ issues and sharp cutbacks in federal funds for nonprofit organizations, including LGBTQ organizations, said Capital Pride Alliance appreciated Bowser’s efforts to provide city funding for events like WorldPride.
“She provided support through the event process of WorldPride and ultimately along with the D.C. Council provided necessary funding to ensure WorldPride was a success,” Bos said. “And we are proud that we are able to show that Capital Pride and WorldPride had such a large economic impact for D.C. and the D.C. government,” he added.
Marvin Bowser, Mayor Bowser’s gay brother who operates a local photography business and has been active in the D.C. LGBTQ community for many years, said he has also witnessed first-hand his sister’s support for the LGBTQ community and all D.C. residents since the time she became a Council member and even before that.
Among his vivid memories, he said, was his sister’s strong support for the marriage equality law legalizing same-sex marriage in D.C. that the Council approved in 2009 under then-Mayor Adrian Fenty.
“I remember the first time she was standing up and giving clear and unequivocal support to the community when that law passed,” Marvin Bowser told the Blade. “And she was front and center in speaking very strongly in support of marriage equality,” he said.
Marvin Bowser also credits his sister with expanding and strengthening the then-Mayor’s Office of GLBT Affairs, among other things, by appointing advocate Sheila Alexander Reid as the office’s director in 2015.
Reid, who for many years prior to becoming director of the GLBT Affairs office was founder and publisher of the national lesbian publication Women In The Life, had the reputation of a “rock star,” according to Marvin Bowser.
He recalls that Mayor Bowser also played a lead role in D.C.’s bid to host to the quadrennial international LGBTQ sports competition Gay Games for 2022.
D.C lost its bid for the 2022 Gay Games after the Federation of Gay Games selected Hong Kong to host the event in an action that Marvin Bowser says was unfair and based on the effort to hold the Gay Games for the first time in Asia even though D.C. had a stronger bid for carrying out the event.
“Everything she’s done for the community has been very visible and from the heart,” he said of Muriel Bowser. “And in my personal relationship with her, she has also been nothing but absolutely supportive of me and my partner over the years,” he said.
“And we were just at her house helping her put up Christmas decorations,” he added. “And so, it’s been wonderful having her as a sister.”
Veteran D.C. LGBTQ advocate Japer Bowles, who serves as the current director of the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs, discussed the mayor’s record on LGBTQ issues in his own statement to the Blade.
“Mayor Muriel Bowser has been an unwavering champion for D.C.’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual community and movement,” he said. “Her more than 20 years of leadership brought consistent and historic investments for our LGBTQIA+ youth, seniors, veterans, and residents experiencing homelessness as well as impactful violence-prevention initiatives,” he added.
“Under her leadership, the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs grew into a national leader, delivering more than $10 million in community grants for LGBTQIA+ programs and managing 110 Housing Choice vouchers,” Bowles said in his statement.
“Because of her work, we are stronger, safer, more visible, and, proudly, ‘the gayest city in the world,’” he said in quoting Bowser’s often stated comment at LGBTQ events about D.C. being the world’s gayest city.
In a statement that might surprise some in the LGBTQ community, gay D.C. small business owner Salah Czapary, who served from 2022 to 2024 as director of the Mayor’s Office of Nightlife and Culture as a Bowser appointee, criticized some of the city’s non-LGBTQ related polices under the Bowser administration as being harmful to small businesses.
Bowser appointed Czapary, a former D.C. police officer, to the nightlife office position shortly after he lost his race as an openly gay candidate for the Ward 1 D.C. Council seat held by incumbent Brianne Nadeau.
“Mayor Bowser led D.C. through turbulent years and major growth, and we can all be proud of her leadership on many fronts,” Czapary said in a statement to the Blade. “She is also setting an example that more leaders should follow by stepping aside to allow a new generation to lead,” he said. “But as we turn the page, we must be honest about what the next mayor should deliver,” he says in his statement.
Without mentioning Bowser by name, he went on to list at least four things the next mayor should do that implied that Bowser did not do or did wrong. Among them were treating the D.C. Council as a “true governing partner,” not letting residents and small businesses “feel the weight of outdated, slow, and unresponsive systems,” and the need for leadership that “values competence over loyalty.”
He added that a “reversal” by the city of the city’s streetery program that was put in place during the COVID pandemic to allow restaurants to install outdoor seating into street parking lanes, was a “roll it back” on progress for small businesses.
He concluded by stating, “LGBTQ rights and inclusion are among the many fronts on which we can be very proud of the mayor’s leadership.”
The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to an offer by the Blade to give the office an opportunity to respond to Czapary’s statement.
A significantly different perspective was given by Sheila Alexander Reid, who said she was proud to serve as director of the Mayor’s LGBTQ Affairs Office during the first six-and-a-half years of Bowser’s tenure as mayor.
“I watched her evolve from a newly elected mayor finding her footing into a confident, seasoned leader who met every challenge head-on and time after time slayed the competition,” Alexander Reid said in a statement to the Blade.
“With each year in office, her voice grew stronger, more grounded, and more fearless,” her statement continues. “And she needed that strength, because being a Black woman mayor is not for the faint of heart, But Mayor Bowser never backed down. Instead, she showed the city what courageous, compassionate leadership truly looks like.”
Alexander Reid added that Bowser funded a new LGBTQ Community Center facility, expanded a workforce development program for the transgender community, and “made D.C. the first jurisdiction in the nation to require LGBTQ+ cultural competency training for healthcare providers.”
She also pointed to the mayor’s LGBTQ “safety nets” through low-barrier shelters and housing vouchers and her support for LGBTQ celebrations like the 17th Street High Heel Race.
“But what inspired me most was this,” Alexander Reid stated. “At a time when some elected officials across the country were retreating from LGBTQ support, Mayor Bowser was doing the opposite. She leaned in, she doubled down. She made sure LGBTQ residents knew they were seen, valued, protected, and loved by their city.”
District of Columbia
HIV/AIDS activists block intersection near White House
World AIDS Day provided backdrop for calls to fully fund PEPFAR
Upwards of 100 HIV/AIDS activists on Monday blocked an intersection near the White House and demanded the Trump-Vance administration fully fund PEPFAR.
Housing Works, Health GAP, Treatment Action Group, AIDS United, ACT UP Philadelphia, and the National Minority AIDS Council organized the protest that took place at the intersection of 16th and I Streets, N.W. The activists then marched to Lafayette Park.
(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)
(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)
Activists since the Trump-Vance administration took office in January have demanded full PEPFAR funding.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio Jan. 28 issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the freeze on nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending. HIV/AIDS service providers around the world with whom the Washington Blade has spoken say PEPFAR cuts and the loss of funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which officially closed on July 1, has severely impacted their work.
The State Department in September announced PEPFAR will distribute lenacapavir in countries with high prevalence rates. The first doses of the breakthrough HIV prevention drug arrived in Eswatini and Zambia last month.
The New York Times in August reported Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought “apportioned” only $2.9 billion of $6 billion that Congress set aside for PEPFAR for fiscal year 2025. (PEPFAR in the coming fiscal year will use funds allocated in fiscal year 2024.)
Bipartisan opposition in the U.S. Senate prompted the Trump-Vance administration in July withdraw a proposal to cut $400 million from PEPFAR’s budget. Vought on Aug. 29 said he would use a “pocket rescission” to cancel $4.9 billion for HIV/AIDS prevention and global health programs and other foreign aid assistance initiatives that Congress had already approved.
“Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, has defied the appropriations authority of Congress, slashing the budget for the program despite full funding enacted by lawmakers, stealing $1.6 billion despite the direction of Congress that PEPFAR be fully funded,” notes a press release that detailed Monday’s protest. “As a result, lifesaving treatment and prevention programs have closed across dozens of sub-Saharan African countries, while Vought has refused to release money ringfenced by Congress to save lives.”
Monday’s protest coincided with World AIDS Day.
The White House has not publicly acknowledged World AIDS Day. A State Department directive the New York Times obtained last week mandated employees and grantees “to refrain from messaging on any commemorative days, including World AIDS Day.”
“Trump thinks by banning commemoration of World AIDS Day, he can hide from the death and destruction that he’s causing around the world,” said Health GAP Executive Director Asia Russell in Lafayette Square. “But we’re here to say, we can see him. We see him stealing medicine, stealing support services, stealing HIV testing, stealing life-saving care from communities all around the world suffering and dying without access.”
The Clinton Health Access Initiative in a report it published last month said more people with HIV or are at risk of contracting the virus because of “HIV treatment and prevention cascades” during the first half of 2025. Specific figures include:
• 3.4 million fewer adults tested for HIV
• 24,000 fewer infants tested for HIV
• A 22 percent decline in new HIV diagnoses due to a reduction in testing among the most vulnerable, highest-risk people
• An 8 percent decline in people living with HIV receiving CD4 tests to diagnose advanced HIV disease
• 2,000 fewer infants and children with HIV started on life-saving medication
• A 37 percent reduction in PrEP initiations for people at risk for HIV
• 26,000 fewer infants and children on antiretroviral medications
• A 5 percent reduction in adults starting antiretroviral medications
• A 10 percent increase in people living with HIV disengaging from treatment
The Clinton Health Access Initiative also said more children around the world will die “due to undiagnosed and un- or under-treated HIV infection” if “these trends persist.”
The Human Rights Campaign Foundation in its 2025 Annual LGBTQ+ Community Survey notes more than 20 percent of adults said “policies the federal government have made accessing HIV prevention and treatment care more difficult in the last year.” The report indicates 30 percent of respondents identify as LGBTQ.
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 RODRIGO HENG-LEHTINEN on his new role as Trevor Project Senior Vice President of Public Engagement Campaigns. On accepting the position, he said, “My mission has long been to stop LGBTQ, and especially trans, people from being perceived as political footballs and start getting us seen as real people – your friends, your families, your neighbors. Now I get to focus on that 100% at The Trevor Project.”
Prior to this, he was executive director, Advocates for Trans Equality (A4TE), where he co-led the merger of two national transgender rights organizations, NCTE and TDLEF, to create the new organization. He had served as executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, leading that organization through a period of growth, restoring organizational size and stability. He had served as deputy executive director prior to that. Previously he served as vice president of Public Education, Freedom for All Americans, where he led a successful campaign for transgender nondiscrimination protections in New Hampshire. He oversaw a full range of legislative lobbying, field organizing, and communications strategies and oganized a leadership coalition, established structure, and divided roles for key committees of 17 state and national partner organizations and local activists.
Heng-Lehtinen conducted English-language interviews with outlets such as The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, and Politico. He planned a Transgender Leadership Summit for the Transgender Law Center and served as Development & Donor Services Assistant, Liberty Hill Foundation. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies from Brown University.
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