District of Columbia
HIV treatment advocates warn GOP ‘cuts will kill’ at Capitol rally
‘These cuts will kill’
Advocates for HIV treatment and prevention gathered on Capitol Hill on Wednesday afternoon for a rally following meetings with lawmakers. Speakers at the rally included U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the entertainers Peppermint and Javier Muñoz, as well as several movement leaders. The rally was held as NMAC, formerly known as the National Minority AIDS Council, hosts the U.S. Conference on HIV/AIDS in Washington, D.C. this week.
“As thousands of HIV advocates from across the world gather in D.C. this week to share scientific breakthroughs, build up capacity training and surround ourselves with community, we recognize that this particular moment demands a fight for our very existence,” said Harold Phillips, incoming CEO of NMAC, to the crowd. “We are here today not just to raise our voices, but to demand and defend our future.”
“At a time when public health structures are under attack, and when science is politicized, and when the most vulnerable among us is being pushed further to the margins, we stand united to say, ‘funding for HIV testing, prevention, treatment, housing and research must be protected,’” Phillips continued.
Peppermint, advocate and entertainer of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” fame, gave remarks at the rally.
“The cuts being proposed will completely erase all of our progress, all of the progress we’ve made since the 1980s. Not just in programs, but in science and in lives saved. These cuts will kill,” Peppermint said.
“I stand here today a proud actress, a proud performer, a proud advocate, and a very proud Black, trans woman,” Peppermint continued. “My very existence is the American dream: free to love, and live and express myself. This American dream is, once again, under threat. But from the inside. And I am calling on Congress to see us. Because we are not disposable, we are not invisible and we will not be silent.”
In the remarks Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) gave at the rally, the congresswoman spoke about U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Secretary Kennedy faced a grilling on Capitol Hill Thursday in the U.S. Senate.
“My staff was trying to remind me of the letter that I sent to Kennedy asking him, first of all, not to fire everybody, and secondly to make sure that he supported the funding,” Waters told the crowd at the rally. “Well, I knew that was going to be a useless thing to do because of who he is, how he has defined himself, how he cannot be trusted and he doesn’t know what the hell he is doing. I sent it anyway, because we learned that you have to do everything that you possibly can from the first time we first realized what needed to be done in order to save lives and to provide the kind of care that was needed for those who were HIV+. “
“Let’s not feel like we are so intimidated by what is going on with the president and all of the sycophants he has appointed to his Cabinet,” Waters continued. “Let’s not be intimidated. Let’s say, it’s time to fight like hell, maybe in ways we’ve never had to do before.”
Hamilton star Javier Muñoz gave a personal account of his experience living with HIV.
“Throughout my 23 years of living with HIV, there have been times when my employment as an artist has waned,” Muñoz recounted. “And with that came the inevitable loss of my health insurance coverage. It has been in these moments that were it not for the financial support from partially federally funded programs and organizations like ADAP [AIDS Drug Assistance Program], I would not have been able to afford the costs of my life-saving and life-sustaining medications.”
“Back when this epidemic first began, without any treatment options, we watched it ravage an entire generation,” Muñoz continued. “Killing our friends, our neighbors, our brothers, our sisters, our mothers and fathers. Personally robbing me of a future with the love of my life who died in my arms in what was St. Vincent’s Hospital. These cuts threaten to take us back to those times. Back to that grief and that suffering and that violent neglect, which needlessly took thousands of lives. Cuts to HIV funding kill. Period. Cuts to HIV funding increases the need for lifelong healthcare, costing all of us billions of dollars and countless lives in what could be saved right now by preventing these cuts from passing.”
“No matter where you live, no matter who you are, everyone deserves the integrity, the dignity and humanity that only access to healthcare can bring,” Muñoz said. “Access to treatment, access to services: that’s why we keep fighting. Whether we are fighting for ourselves, for someone we love, for the ways this intersects with so many other causes, or for the overall good of the fight — we stand together, now, tomorrow, always. To all living with HIV like me, do not give up and do not be silent.”
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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D.C. goes gaga for Gaga
Gay priest credited with boosting church support for LGBTQ Catholics
‘How We Survived’ panel set for March 25
Calendar: March 21-26
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