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.
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 Leigh Miles Jackson, Ph.D., named executive director of The Institute for Health Research & Policy at Whitman-Walker, and Angel Earle, Ph.D. named as chief operating officer, Whitman-Walker Health System.
Upon her appointment Dr. Jackson said, “Under my leadership, I would love for The Institute for Health Research & Policy at Whitman-Walker to be known as a trusted, forward-looking research organization that shapes policies, strengthens practices and creates measurable change for the community.” Dr. Jackson spent 12 years with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, leading national initiatives on minority-serving institutions and economic evidence for investments in children, youth and families. Dr. Jackson holds an extensive educational background, including postdoctoral fellowships in developmental Psychology and Neurogenomics from Vanderbilt University, a Ph.D. in molecular and systems pharmacology from Emory University and a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Wake Forest University.
Upon her appointment Dr. Earle said, “When we talk about parity and inequities and research, it’s never just about the dollars that are out there. It’s about making sure that we’re cultivating a change that embraces equity at the heart of everything that it does. As the COO for Whitman-Walker Health System I will be working closely to support The Institute for Health Research & Policy at Whitman-Walker and the Whitman-Walker Foundation to drive advancement in research and support the strategic goals of all of the Whitman-Walker Heath System entities.”
Dr. Earle is a genetic epidemiologist and senior executive. She brings a background from the London School of Economics and the University of South Carolina, with expertise in global health, corporate strategy and socioeconomic policy. She has co-authored peer-reviewed research on cancer genetics, nephrology biomarkers and reproductive genomes.
Dr. Heather Aaron, CEO of Whitman-Walker Health System said, “both leaders bring research-driven expertise and operational strength to the organization as it continues expanding research, health care access, and health outcomes for residents across the Washington, D.C., region, including the LGBTQ+ community, people living with and at risk for HIV, and communities experiencing persistent health disparities.”
The Institute for Health Research & Policy at Whitman-Walker is also expanding its research agenda beyond HIV to address the complex health conditions affecting people living with and at risk for HIV, as well as the broader communities The Institute for Health Research & Policy at Whitman-Walker serves.
District of Columbia
Former Capital Pride board member reiterates sexual harassment allegation
Trans activist says resignation of board chair won’t change org’s culture
Taylor Lianne Chandler, who earlier this year resigned from the Capital Pride Alliance Board of Directors after expressing concern that the board failed to address instances of “sexual misconduct” within the Capital Pride organization, said this week she doesn’t believe her concerns will be addressed following the resignation of the board’s current chairperson.
Capital Pride Alliance serves as the lead organizer of D.C.’s annual LGBTQ Pride events.
Anna Jinkerson, who has served as chair of the Capital Pride board for only 10 months and has served on the board for the past four years, confirmed she is resigning from the board effective Sept. 30.
In a statement to the Washington Blade commenting on the possible impact of Jinkerson’s resignation, Chandler said Capital Pride board member Natalie Thompson would be replacing Jinkerson as board chair, and she didn’t expect that change to impact what she called Capital Pride’s problematic “culture.”
But Ryan Bos, the Capital Pride president and CEO, told the Blade that Thompson had not been selected as the new board chair and that a new chair would not be selected until the board holds an election scheduled for October.
Chandler, who identifies as transgender, said it was a Capital Pride board member who told her that Natalie Thompson had been or would be selected as the new Capital Pride board chair. She didn’t identify the board member.
“My concerns about how Capital Pride has handled serious allegations of sexual misconduct have not disappeared with a change in leadership,” she told the Blade in her statement. “When leadership continues to socialize, smile for photographs, and share spaces with someone facing serious allegations, what message does that send to the people who say they were harmed,” she said.
Chandler has told the Blade a Capital Pride investigation identified an individual implicated in a “pattern” of sexual harassment-related behavior but said she was bound by a Non-Disclosure Agreement that applied to all board members and she could not provide further details.
When asked by the Blade to comment on Chandler’s allegations at the time she resigned from the board in February of this year, board chair Jinkerson said Capital Pride acts “quickly and appropriately” to address concerns such as those raised by Chandler. But she and other Capital Pride officials did not at that time or since then specifically acknowledge whether someone associated with the organization engaged in sexual harassment.
“The community deserves transparency, accountability, and leadership willing to make difficult decisions,” Chandler said in her statement to the Blade this week. “Changing the chair doesn’t change the culture,” she added. “Actions do.”
In response to a request from the Blade for an update on its response to Chandler’s allegations about alleged sexual misconduct within the Capital Pride organization, Bos sent the Blade a statement on behalf of Capital Pride.
“The Capital Pride Alliance takes allegations of harassment, misconduct, and unsafe behavior seriously,” the statement says. “The organization follows standard procedures and engages appropriate resources to support a thorough, confidential, and impartial review, when information is reported.”
The statement adds, ”Because these matters require maintaining confidentiality and protecting the privacy of personnel, volunteers, and governance processes, we will not comment on specific individuals, allegations, investigative findings or communications involving law enforcement.”
It concludes by stating, “We remain committed to fostering a safe, respectful, and inclusive environment, appropriately addressing concerns raised, and continuing to strengthen our policies, governance practices, and organizational culture.”
Although the statement refers to “communications involving law enforcement,” Capital Pride has not disclosed whether instances of alleged sexual harassment or, as stated by Chandler, a possible instance of sexual assault, have been reported to D.C. police.
A D.C. police spokesperson, in response to a Blade inquiry, said they have no record of a sexual harassment or sexual assault complaint surfacing from the Capital Pride office, which is located in the D.C. LGBTQ+ Community Center building at 1827 Wiltberger Street, N.W.
But the Blade has obtained a D.C. police incident report that appears to confirm Capital Pride COO June Crenshaw’s claim in a recent Facebook post that she reported at least one incident of sexual harassment related to Capital Pride to D.C. police.
The report, which was filed on Oct. 11, 2025, states that Crenshaw told a police officer who prepared the report that another person told her “that a board member of Capital Pride Alliance groped his genitals at a Capital Pride event.” The report says Crenshaw told the officer the person who reported being groped “did not want to speak to the police at this time.”
The incident report, which is a public document, says the groping reportedly happened on Oct. 8, 2025. It concludes by saying Crenshaw was given “resource information” to provide to the person who said he was groped. It does not identify that person or the board member who allegedly committed the groping.
Officials at Capital Pride recently exchanged testy public Facebook posts with Chandler. Crenshaw criticized Chandler for her social media posts on the matter.
“It is remarkable to watch people publicly accuse others of failing to create safe spaces when, during the time they themselves held positions of leadership and significant volunteer responsibility, they claim to have witnessed deeply troubling behavior, yet never reported what they allegedly witnessed to fellow leaders, law enforcement, the Office of the Attorney General, legal counsel, or staff responsible for addressing such concerns,” Crenshaw wrote. “When I became aware of allegations or personally witnessed conduct that required intervention, I reported what I knew through the appropriate channels, including to law enforcement and other relevant authorities. Investigations were conducted. Those processes created records, documentation, correspondence, timelines, and conclusions.”
Chandler responded, “I was NOT in organizational leadership or fully informed about the scope of these allegations when much of what you reference occurred. I was read into the situation after becoming an executive officer. By that point, the investigation had already concluded, and we were awaiting the final report. … Once that report became available to me, and once I understood the seriousness and scope of what was being alleged, my position was anything but ambiguous: I did not believe this individual should be welcomed at, participate in, or have access to official Pride events.”
Capital Pride’s attorney Nick Harrison then joined the exchange, accusing Chandler of violating confidentiality rules.
“You served on the Board for years. You cannot now present yourself as an outsider with no responsibility for what occurred during your tenure,” Harrison wrote. “When the situation became difficult, you resigned, provided your resignation letter to the media, disclosed confidential organizational matters, and recast yourself as the victim.”
Again, no one has publicly identified the person Chandler references as being welcome at Pride events and photographed with Capital Pride leadership.
District of Columbia
Center for Black Equity’s annual gala to take place Oct. 3
Advocacy group to honor Black LGBTQ community champions
The Center for Black Equity, the D.C.-based international network of LGBTQ activists and organizations that advocate for Black LGBTQ communities and organize Black Pride events worldwide, will hold its annual 2026 BE Gala in D.C. on Oct. 3.
The event, to be held at the Conrad Washington Hotel at 950 New York Ave., N.W., among other things, will honor at least a dozen “distinguished Black individuals” and organizations that champion Black LGBTQ communities, according to a statement released by the Center for Black Equity.
“The honorees will receive awards recognizing extraordinary leadership, advocacy, and service across civil rights, public health, the arts, media, entrepreneurship, and community life,” the statement says.
“With an elegant atmosphere and a bold mission, this unforgettable evening brings together advocates, allies, and change makers committed to equity and joy,” the statement says in referring to the Oct. 3 BE Gala.
The statement notes that tickets for the event, which serves as a fundraiser for the Center of Black Equity, begin at $250 for individuals and include dinner and two drinks. It says reserved tables for eight were being offered for $2,000, and “Premier” tables for eight were selling for $2,500 and include seating near the stage.
“The BE Gala is more than an evening of celebration,” according to the statement. “It is an opportunity to honor Black LGBTQ+ leadership while investing in the work of the Center for Black Equity.”
Kenya Hutton, the Center for Black Equity’s CEO, told the Washington Blade the name “BE” for the gala is not an acronym. “The name is rooted in the idea of being: being seen, being celebrated and being fully and authentically yourself,” he said.
“BE Gala creates a space to celebrate Black LGGTQ+ people for who they are, the lives they lead and the impact they make,” he added.
The Center for Black Equity until 2012 was called the International Federation of Black Prides and was founded by organizers of D.C.’s Black Pride celebration.
Its current website includes a statement saying it’s mission is to “promote a multinational LGBTQ+ network dedicated to improving health and wellness opportunities, economic empowerment, and equal rights while promoting individua and collective work, responsibilities, and self-empowerment.”
The 2026 Center for Black Equity award honorees as announced in its statement released this week are:
Courtney Snowden: Welmore Cook Advocacy & Service Award
Clover Barnes: Ernest Hopkins Public Health Leadership Award
Nikki Alexander: Unsung Hero Award
Darryl G. Moore: Center for Black Equity Leadership Award
The Freelux Project: Center for Black Equity Small Business Award
Tori Cooper: Earline Budd Transgender Leadership Award
Bishop Steven R. Sawyer: Bishop Kwabena Rainey Cheeks Spiritual & Community Leadership Award
Rev. Carmarion D. Anderson-Harvey: Bishop Kwabena Rainey Cheeks Spiritual & Community Leadership Award
Monroe Alise: Trans Power in Media Award
Justin N. Stewart: National Black Pride Image Award
Marlene McNeese: Curtis L. Etherly Jr. Ally Award
Venton Jones: Eleanor Holmes Norton Civil Rights & Justice Award
In Our Own Voices, Inc.: Ruth Ellis Community Impact Award
‘Lizzie Borden’ might be the best ‘Monster’ yet
Comings & Goings
Tyler Clementi Foundation to host fundraiser in Rehoboth
Calendar: September 25-October 1
Former Capital Pride board member reiterates sexual harassment allegation
For lesbian victims of domestic violence, competent care is scare
United States Conference on HIV/AIDS grapples with federal budget cuts
Washington Blade responds to concerns over White House pool duties
UN human rights chief sounds alarm over ‘comprehensive onslaught’ against LGBTQ rights
Gov. Whitmer to serve as keynote speaker for Saturday’s HRC National Dinner
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Health5 days ago
United States Conference on HIV/AIDS grapples with federal budget cuts
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United Nations5 days ago
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Commentary4 days ago
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