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Mayor Bowser hosts WorldPride welcome event after Shakira cancels

‘We’re proud to welcome the world to our city’

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About 300 people turned out for a WorldPride welcome event on Saturday. (Washington Blade photo by Lou Chibbaro, Jr.)

More than 300 people turned out on Saturday, May 31, for a WorldPride welcoming reception organized by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser that was held at the Rubell Museum in Southwest D.C.

The mayor’s office said the reception was expanded in scope following the sudden cancellation by singer Shakira of her WorldPride welcome concert scheduled for the same day at Washington Nationals Stadium.  

In a statement on social media, Shakira said due to logistical issues that also prompted her to cancel a concert in Boston one day earlier, she was unable to come to D.C. in time for the WorldPride welcoming event.

Bowser, Japer Bowles, director of the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs, and WorldPride organizers were among those who spoke at the reception, which also included a performance by members of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington.

Officials with the Capital Pride Alliance, the D.C.-based group serving as the lead organizer of WorldPride 2025 D.C., said that although a welcoming ceremony with multiple speakers was scheduled to take place at Nationals Stadium along with Shakira’s concert, they decided to cancel the entire event after learning Shakira would not be coming.

“It was a transition from one to the other,” said Ashley Smith, president of Capital Pride Alliance, when asked if the mayor’s reception was serving as a replacement to the Shakira welcoming ceremony.

“And it’s to not lose the importance of creating an opening experience for people who came internationally and domestically as well as to highlight the great work of our team and our city,” Smith told the Washington Blade at the reception.

“This has been a phenomenal event tonight, and I’m really thankful for the mayor and her team members who worked to pull this together,” Smith said.

Held in a large reception room at the Rubell Museum, which specializes in contemporary art and is located at 65 I St., S.W., beverages and appetizers were served while the crowd mingled and listened to at least six speakers, including Mayor Bowser.

“Shakira, girl, get yourself over here,” the mayor joked during her remarks at the event. “You’ve got the rest of the week. Get yourself here. We love you. We want to see you. We want to party with you. But we’re going to do it anyway,” she said, drawing laughter and loud applause from the crowd.

“If you live here, you know this,” Bowser said. “If you are visiting us let me tell you. D.C. has long been a leader in the fight for LGBTQ rights in the world. We’re proud to welcome the world to our city, to recognize the Fabric of Freedom as the theme of this year’s activities.”

“I am so proud to thank you, InterPride, for choosing us and making us the home of WorldPride 2025,” Bowser told the crowd. She was referring to the international association of LGBTQ Pride organizations, InterPride, that selects the location of the WorldPride celebrations through a bidding process. (D.C. actually lost the bid to host WorldPride to Taiwan in 2021. Taiwan later backed out and D.C. took over as the 2025 host city.)

Among those who spoke at the mayoral reception event was Rick Andre, InterPride’s co-president.

“Our theme this year, the Fabric of Freedom, reminds us of and honors the past, the fight in the present, and a just future for all,” he said. 

“Around the world, the LGBTQIA+ people still face discrimination, violence, and erasure,” he continued. We’re together and we say we are here, and we are proud, and we will not be silenced.”

Others who spoke included Capital Pride Alliance president Smith, Capital Pride Alliance Executive Director Ryan Bos, longtime D.C. LGBTQ advocate and talk show host Rayceen Pendarvis, and D.C. mayoral staffer Jim Slattery.

At the time she spoke, Bowser invited more than a dozen members of her staff and officials at D.C. government agencies to join her at the podium to thank them for their service for D.C. residents and support for WorldPride D.C.

 “I want to acknowledge the Capital Pride Alliance for spearheading hundreds of [World Pride] events in all eight wards across Washington, D.C.,” she said.  

Shakira, meanwhile, posted this statement May 30 on social media: “Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am sad and heartbroken that I will not be able to be in Washington, D.C., with you tomorrow. I hope that I can come back to D.C. as soon as I am able. Meanwhile, please know that I am eternally thankful for your unconditional support.”

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District of Columbia

Victim of anti-gay rock-throwing assault in D.C. speaks out

Homeowner says arrested juvenile harassed him, husband prior to attack

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Addam Lee Schauer-Mayhew (Photo courtesy of Addam Lee Schauer-Mayhew)

Addam Lee Schauer-Mayhew, the gay man who was struck in the face by a rock thrown through the front window of his house in Northeast D.C. on June 6 allegedly by a 13-year-old juvenile male says he and his husband think it’s important for the community to know more of the details surrounding this incident.

Schauer-Mayhew spoke to the Washington Blade about the incident after the Blade reached out to him for comment. He said he and his husband, Bryan C. Schauer, wanted to point out that the rock-throwing attack was the most recent in a series of incidents in which the same juvenile and others accompanying him have targeted them with anti-gay slurs and throwing rocks at their house and car since last October.

D.C. police announced on June 16 that they had arrested a 13-year-old juvenile male one day earlier on Sunday, June 15, on a charge of Assault With Significant Bodily Injury, in connection with the rock-throwing attack against Schauer-Mayhew.

A police report says the rock struck Schauer-Mayhew in the left eye causing a laceration under the eye.

A separate police statement said the charge against the juvenile was listed as a “Hate/Bias” incident and noted that “LGBTQ+ flags were displayed at the front of the home.”

Schauer-Mayhew told the Blade he and his husband have displayed at least one Pride flag at the front of their house since they purchased it in the city’s Kingman Park neighborhood four-and-a-half years ago, essentially “coming out” to their neighbors. He said the neighbors have been fully supportive of the two as a gay couple since they moved into their house.

But around October of last year, around the time of Halloween, a few juvenile males began targeting the couple at their house by yelling  homophobic slurs, including the word “faggot,” Schauer-Mayhew said, with the juvenile who assaulted him on June 6 of this year being among them.

Last November, over Thanksgiving weekend, the same juvenile male and a few of his cohorts broke into the couple’s backyard and carport while the couple was out of town visiting relatives, according to Schauer-Mayhew.

He said the break-in, as was the rock-throwing attack, was captured on video by surveillance cameras they have installed in several places on their house and property. Schauer-Mayhew said the couple provided D.C. police with video footage of the rock-throwing incident, in which he said the juvenile can be seen walking up to the house and throwing the rock through the window.

“I was sitting on our sofa in our living room, and I was just sitting there minding my own business,” Schauer-Mayhew told the Blade, while watching a tennis tournament on television.

“I heard the window break and then I felt something hit my face,” he said. “And my husband was upstairs, and he comes running down the stairs. And he was the one that called 911.”   

He added, “My face was covered with blood. My hands were covered with blood. I walked over to my kitchen sink, and I collapsed on the floor.”

But when paramedics arrived in an ambulance in response to the 911 call, he said he declined an offer to take him to a hospital.

Schauer-Mayhew pointed out that the attack occurred on the day he and his husband planned to attend the WorldPride Music Festival held at the RFK Stadium grounds located close to where they live.

“I did decline to go in an ambulance to the hospital because I very much still wanted to be able to enjoy Pride weekend,” he said. “I did receive a lovely black eye. But it has since subsided, and the wound is healing well. But I will have a gash on my face,” he told the Blade.

“And after all of this happened, and everything calmed down, I soldiered up and we went to the festival,” he said. But while there he said bleeding under his eye resumed, prompting him to go to an emergency medical services tent on the festival grounds. “I was able to get the proper attention, and then the wound kind of glued up and then I rejoined the rest of the festival.”

According to Schauer-Mayhew, people in the neighborhood played an important role in helping D.C police locate and arrest the juvenile who assaulted him. The arrest took place on June 15.

He said the youth who assaulted him and others who hung out with him were known as neighborhood troublemakers who, among other things, broke into homes and cars to engage in thefts. 

Just by chance, Schauer-Mayhew said he was in his car driving to a nearby grocery store on June 15 when he saw the juvenile who assaulted him leaning out of the window of another car driving nearby.

“And I instantly called my husband, and I said they’re back,” he said. By the time he arrived home he and his husband learned through an online “neighborhood chat chain” that others had also seen the juvenile and his cohorts and called police. The calls and follow-up sightings the next day, on June 16, enabled police to track down and arrest the 13-year-old juvenile.

“My message has always been I feel no malice toward them,” Schauer-Mayhew said when asked if he had a message for the juvenile who assaulted him and those he hung out with. “I just want them to get help and go down a better path than terrorizing people they don’t even know.”

Because court records of cases involving juveniles are sealed from public access, the Blade could not immediately determine the status of the case, including whether prosecutors with the Office of the D.C. Attorney General, which prosecutes juvenile cases, was prosecuting the case as a hate crime.

The gay man who was hit in the face by a rock thrown through the front window of his house, shown here, told the Blade he and his husband covered the boarded up window with a Pride flag. (Blade photo by Lou Chibbaro, Jr.)
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District of Columbia

Rainbow History Project WorldPride exhibition hit by vandalism

Organizers scramble to repair damaged exhibits in D.C.’s Freedom Plaza

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(Photo courtesy Rainbow History Project)

At least five of the multiple exhibits displayed in D.C.’s Freedom Plaza as part of the local Rainbow History Project’s WorldPride exhibition have been damaged by one or more vandals since the exhibition opened on May 18, according to Vincent Slatt, one of the exhibition’s lead organizers.   

The most recent incident took place during the early morning hours of Sunday, June 22, when someone pulled down two of the exhibits displayed on decorated chain link fences, Slatt told the Washington Blade.

The Rainbow History Project exhibition, called “Pickets, Protests, and Parades: The History of Gay Pride in Washington,” has been available for public viewing 24 hours each day since it opened in Freedom Plaza, which is located near the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. between 13th and 14th streets.

Slatt says it will remain open until its scheduled closing on July 6, regardless of efforts by vandals to strike at its individual LGBTQ exhibits.

“Covering 1965 to the present, the exhibition explores the history of Pride in D.C. in 10 distinct thematic eras,” a statement released by Rainbow History Project says. “Each of the 10 areas are detailed in thematic cubes rich with history and visuals,” it says.

Slatt said at least two instances of vandalism, including the June 22 incident, occurred between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. during the time when a security guard working for a security company retained by Rainbow History Project was scheduled to be on duty at the Freedom Plaza site. But Slatt said the guard appears to have left before his shift was supposed to end, leaving the exhibition unsupervised.

“And so sometime during that security guard’s shift last night it happened,” said Slatt, referring to the two exhibits that were pulled down Sunday morning, June 22.

He said a decision was made later that day to fire the security company and retain another company to provide security for the 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift. Slatt said volunteers recruited by Rainbow History Project have been acting as “monitors” to secure the site during daytime and the evening up to 11 p.m. He said the group was unable to recruit volunteers to staff the shift from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Rainbow History Project, according to Slatt, received a $1,000 payment invoice from the company that has been providing the metal fencing for the exhibits under  a rental agreement  after one of the vandals damaged two ten-foot-by-ten-foot fencing strips beyond repair last week. 

Slatt said a possible suspect for acts of vandalism appeared in Freedom Plaza the day before the exhibition opened on May 17, as volunteers were setting up the exhibits.

“The first night we were out there we had a homophobe yelling at us when he saw the word gay,” said Slatt, who described the person as a white male with red hair and a red beard appearing in his 30s or 40s in age. “He’s been out here a couple of times preaching the Bible and yelling slurs,” Slatt said.

At least one witness, a homeless man who sometimes sleeps in Freedom Plaza at night, has reported seeing a man fitting that same description vandalizing an exhibit, Slatt told the Blade.

He said Rainbow History Project has reported the vandalism incidents to the U.S. Park Police, which has jurisdiction over Freedom Plaza. A Park Police officer who came to the site on June 22 to prepare a report on the latest incident advised exhibition volunteers to call police immediately if they see the male suspect return to the site.

As if all this were not enough, Slatt said a few of the exhibits that had been damaged by a vandal and were structurally weakened were blown down by high winds during the storm that hit the D.C. area on June 19. He said volunteer workers put everything back together over the next few days only to have the yet unidentified vandal or vandals pull down two other exhibits on June 22.

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District of Columbia

Norton reintroduces bill to ban discrimination against LGBTQ jurors in D.C. Superior Court

Congresswoman notes Congress controls local court system

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D.C. Congressional Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

D.C. Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) on Friday, June 20, reintroduced her bill to ban discrimination against LGBTQ D.C. residents in the process for selecting people to serve as jurors in D.C. Superior Court.

“The bill would clarify that D.C. residents may not be excluded or disqualified from jury service in the local D.C. trial court, the D.C. Superior Court, based on sexual orientation or gender identity,” Norton said in a statement.

“Specifically, this bill would clarify that the term ‘sex,’ which is a protected class under the nondiscrimination law that applies to jurors in the D.C. Superior Court includes sexual orientation and gender identity,” Norton said.

She points out in her statement that under the D.C. Home Rule Act approved by Congress that created D.C.’s local government, including an elected mayor and City Council, the federal government retained control over the local court system.

“Therefore, until D.C. is given authority to amend Title 11 of the D.C. Code, which one of my bills would do, an act of Congress is required to clarify that LGBTQ+ jurors in the D.C. Superior Court are protected from discrimination,” according to her statement.

A spokesperson for Norton couldn’t immediately be reached to determine whether Norton is aware of specific instances where residents were denied jury service because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.  

Online records of congressional action on Norton’s juror nondiscrimination bill show she had introduced it in 2019, 2021, and 2023, when it died in committee each year, except for the 117th Congress in 2022, when it was approved by a committee but died in the full House.

“During Pride month we are reminded of the many contributions of the LGBTQ+ community,” Norton said in her June 20 statement. “Nobody, including D.C. jurors, should be discriminated against based on their sexual orientation or gender identity, and D.C. juries should not be deprived of the service of LGBTQ residents,” she added.

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