Opinions
We must resist Trump with our voices and votes
It is important for all of us to speak out each day
It’s time to stop the felon in the White House — not with guns, not with violence, but with our voices, and our votes. In every possible way Republicans, who are today a MAGA cult, are in their way waging a form of war against the people of America.
Now the felon in the White House is focused on screwing the people of the District of Columbia. He is doing it with his attacks on transgender people; by sending masked ICE agents into the District to harass communities of law-abiding, tax-paying residents; the mass firings of federal workers, many living in the District; and then not insisting his MAGA pawn, Speaker Johnson, pass the bill the Senate sent to him allowing the District to spend $1.1 billion of its own tax dollars.
Trump added insult to injury by declaring a phony emergency, federalizing the District’s police, and sending armed national guard troops onto the streets of D.C. He created fear, and caused a major drop in business for restaurants, bars, and hotels, while serving no real purpose other than again, scaring people. Judging by the videos I have seen, the vast majority of the National Guard, taken from their families, are spending their time standing around, and now, picking up trash, and spreading mulch, in federal parks. This is what the felon in the WH thinks makes him look like a strongman to the world. So much of it done to keep the people from thinking about all his failures. His kissing Putin’s ass and still getting played by him, and trying to have people forget about, and keeping the Epstein files, from becoming public.
The people of the District are fighting back, and I applaud them for it. They are speaking out, and demonstrating. They are trying to protect their neighbors from the masked ICE Gestapo. I have joined in some demonstrations, and take opportunities like this to call out the felon, who is acting like Hitler, with his own Goebbels, in the guise of Stephen Miller. It is important for all of us to speak out every day, wherever and whenever, we can. People around the country need to understand we are different here in D.C. We are 700,000 Americans who don’t control our own destiny. In normal times we still need to submit all legislation our council passes, and our annual budget, to the Congress for a thirty-day review. If they don’t approve, they can make changes, and they have. We have only had home rule since 1974 when the District was finally allowed to elect its own mayor, and council. But it’s part of that home rule legislation that allowed the felon in the WH to do what he is doing today. He always controls the national guard here, not the Mayor. While he called them out now, it’s important to remember when his cult attacked the Congress on January 6, 2021, he sat in the WH watching the carnage on TV, and refused to call them out. Many may remember in 1995 Congress voted to install a ‘control board’ in the District of Columbia. While not ending home rule, they in essence gave the president the right to take over running the city. Then President Bill Clinton, named the chair of the Control Board, Alice Rivlin, and she, and the board, dramatically cut city spending. They took over the city’s agencies across the board. They, not the mayor or the Council, were in control. Yes, the city was broke, and in the long run many believe it is what saved the city. Then Anthony Williams was elected mayor in 1998. The Control Board Chair, Alice Rivlin, trusted him enough to turn management of the city agencies back to him. But the control board stayed in effect until 2001.
Today, I am thankful we have a mayor, Muriel Bowser, who understands her role in this. She has told us her North Star is trying to ensure the District of Columbia does not lose home rule. She is faced with a felon as president who has threatened to actually end it. If he asks Congress to do that, and they bow down to him as they have done on every other issue, he would get to appoint the mayor of the District. If you think things are bad now, just imagine who Trump would appoint. So, in essence, the only person who stands between what we have today, and that happening, is our current mayor. I think it’s time people understand that, and thank her for what she is trying to do, and so far, has successfully done. She is being forced to play the same game as many of our international allies are, as they try to save Ukraine. She, and they, find they have to play to the ego of the felon. Sad, but a fact of life in the world today.
There are three major things the mayor is now trying to influence. One is keeping Congress from extending the felon’s phony emergency, and she has been successful with that. The second is trying to keep ICE off our streets, and if the felon insists on sending them in, which he can, that they are unmasked, with visible name badges. Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) joined with our representative, Eleanor Holmes Norton, to introduce a bill in Congress to do that. The third is to get the occupation troops, the National Guard, off our streets. The problem is the felon controls the D.C. National Guard, and said he will extend their mission at least through November. We need to keep fighting that, and the D.C. Attorney General, Schwalb, is trying to do it in the courts.
So, as I sit at my coffee shop in Dupont as I write this, my friend, an MPD officer, stops by for his morning coffee. He tells me what is happening around the District, and it is frightening. I recently had my first contact with National Guard troops as they strolled Q street. I chatted with three of them, two young men and a woman, all from Louisiana. I asked what they were doing and they told me basically nothing, just walking around. They were given a perimeter to walk each morning. They were staying at a hotel and didn’t know how long they would be here. One of them missed his kid’s first day in school, and another was missing classes. I told them while I respected their being in the guard, they had to know and understand why none of us welcomed them here. Total insanity. I have not personally seen any of the ICE Gestapo around here, and my life seems to go on as always. Yet I know from my MPD friend, and seeing the headlines and videos, that in other parts of the District people are suffering, and afraid. I know some of my friends, who look a little different than I do, now need to carry their papers with them at all times. They can’t walk down the block without being afraid. They live in constant fear because of the felon in the White House. Any decent person has to see that is unacceptable and fight it.
The least I can do is continue to rage on their behalf. Continue to call out the insanity we are being forced to live with, because nearly 50% of the nation voted for the sick bastard in the White House. I will work every day, without violence, to rid our country of him, and his MAGA cult. I will support every Democrat around the nation running for office, even if they aren’t someone who I would personally choose. Because today, because of the felon’s control of his party, any Democrat is better than any Republican. I have a friend running in Iowa for United States Senate who gives me hope for the future of our nation. He is the kind of person I hope David Hogg and his PAC will actually support. He is the young man who when he was in college, made a speech to the Iowa Legislature in support of his two moms. He then went on to run, and win, a seat in the Iowa State Senate, and rose to be Minority Leader. He continued the fight for his moms and all the people of Iowa. Today Zach Wahls wants to take that fight to the United States Senate, and fight for all of us. For all moms, wherever they may be. He is a sixth generation Iowan, and he and his wife have just had a son, who he is now fighting for as well. He is the type of person I want to see leading our nation. He is the future, and there are others like him out there who need our support as we wage a peaceful fight at the ballot box against what the felon and his sycophants are doing to this nation we love, and to the world.
It’s time to get all your neighbors to join in this fight. We can take back our country without guns, if we use our voices, and our votes. Never give up, never give in. We can, and we will, win; because we have justice on our side.
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.
The state of Tennessee has a long history of political discrimination against its 225,000 LGBTQ citizens. In 2019, a district attorney remarked that gay people should not receive domestic violence protections, and in 2023, for five months in Murfreesboro, homosexual acts in public were illegal, prompting a federal judge to have the ordinance removed.
In 2022, I briefly lived in Tennessee and played rugby with the LGBTQ-inclusive Nashville Grizzlies, who welcomed me with open arms as an ally, teaching me that rugby isn’t always about winning or losing – it’s about creating a safe, inclusive, and joyful space for people looking to feel welcome.
In Tennessee, where 87% of the LGBTQ community has experienced workplace discrimination, and where, each year, countless bills that target their identities are introduced, it can be difficult to feel welcome. The Nashville Grizzlies played rugby with the exuberance of newly liberated people who were finally able to be their authentic selves. I was inspired by their brotherhood.
When I read about the Charlie Kirk Act being passed last week, I felt a visceral need to write about it.
While the bill is presented as legislation that strengthens free speech and encourages greater public discourse on campuses, it would effectively allow a school to expel a student who felt compelled to walk out on a speaker with hateful views, forcing marginalized groups to sit through existentially harmful rhetoric.
And ironically, it doesn’t seem like free speech goes both ways — a Tennessee University administrator lost their job last year for sharing negative views on Charlie Kirk, and countless LGBTQ books have been banned not only in schools, but even in adult libraries.
We like to think that as time moves forward, progress is inevitable, but this isn’t always the case. In a 2023 study, 27% of LGBTQ Tennesseans and 43% of transgender people in the state have considered relocating, forcing them to reckon with leaving home in pursuit of a better life. Nashville Grizzlies Captain Ethan Thatcher told me, “I’ve thought about leaving Tennessee. Hard not to when the government does not want you here. What has kept me here is the Grizzlies community, and the thought that existence is resistance.”
Everybody in our country deserves to feel safe. I thought that was a core value of the American ethos, but apparently, in some states, certain groups are welcome while others are ostracized.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee should reject the Charlie Kirk Act.
Tyler Kania is a 2025 IAN Book of the Year nominated author and civil rights activist from Columbia, Conn.
Opinions
The latest Supreme Court case erasing LGBTQ identity
Chiles v. Salazar a major setback for movement
In its recent decision in Chiles v. Salazar, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated Colorado’s law prohibiting licensed counselors from engaging in efforts to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of minors. The decision, which puts into question similar laws in 22 other states, relied on the First Amendment to hold that the law violates counselors’ free speech rights. But the decision also strikes a blow against LGBTQ dignity, a point the court’s opinion does not even address.
The eight-member majority, which included Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, who usually side with LGBTQ groups, justified its reasoning by suggesting that the law was one-sided: it permitted treatment that affirms LGBTQ identity but forbade treatment that seeks to change it. But the law is one-sided, as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s lone dissent pointed out, because the medical evidence only supports one side: reams of research show that “survivors of conversion therapy continue to suffer from PTSD, anxiety, and suicidal ideation.” And major medical associations all agree, no evidence demonstrates the efficacy of conversion efforts. This isn’t surprising. Medicine often take sides — some treatments work, and some don’t.
But particularly concerning is the vision of LGBTQ identity that undergirds the majority opinion when compared to the dissent. Justice Jackson’s dissent explains that LGBTQ identity is simply “a part of the normal spectrum of human diversity” — not something to be “cured.” By contrast, for the majority, how best to help LGBTQ minors is “a subject of fierce public debate.” That can hardly be the case if LGBTQ identity stands on equal ground with straight, cisgender identity, or if LGBTQ people are as deserving of safety, rights, and dignity.
Indeed, the LGBTQ rights movement only began in earnest when advocates in the 1960s decided to end the “debate” over gay identity. Until then, community leaders would routinely cooperate with psychiatrists who were interested in researching homosexuality as a medical condition. A new generation of activists, led by Frank Kameny, a key movement founder, began arguing that this got the issue upside down: Rather than wondering if they could be “cured,” LGBTQ people had to assert a right to their identity. As Kameny put it—“we have been defined into sickness.” Only once the case was made that it was society that had to change, and not LGBTQ people, could LGBTQ consciousness, LGBTQ pride and LGBTQ rights develop. Their activism led to the first Pride parade in New York, and the official declassification of homosexuality as a disease in 1973.
The Supreme Court’s conservatives don’t just want to reignite this half-century old medical “debate”; they also treat medical claims that undermine LGBTQ identity very differently from those who support it. Last year, in an opinion backingTennessee’s law that banned gender affirming care for minors, the court sympathetically marched through the reasons Tennessee offered for “why States may rightly be skeptical” of such care, and cited three times, in some detail, to “health authorities in a number of European countries” (that is, some Nordic countries and the UK) that had curbed pediatric care. It failed to mention that most of Western Europe and every major American medical association provides access to this care.
In Chiles, by contrast, the court cites none of the evidence that Colorado amassed that conversion therapy harms LGBTQ children. None of the countries that the court had invoked to justify anti-trans policies allow conversion therapy in their health care systems (indeed, one of them criminalizes such practices). So rather than cite medical evidence, the court simply asked — why trust medical evidence at all? “What if,” asks the court, “reflexive deference to currently prevailing professional views [does] not always end well?” and cites an infamous 1927 Supreme Court case, Buck v. Bell.
In Buck, the Supreme Court embraced eugenic reasoning, backing a eugenic state law that allowed the sterilization of individuals with mental disabilities, on the grounds that such disabilities were hereditary. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes opined, “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Look at what happens when we listen to medical expertise, today’s court seems to say, as an excuse to disregard the LGBTQ-affirming medical evidence they don’t like.
But the court has missed the key lesson of Buck. The law at issue in Buckdiscriminated against a certain group, seeking, through sterilization measures, to erase it from existence. Indeed, LGBTQ people (whom doctors of the day would have referred to as sexual “inverts”) were exactly the kind of people that the eugenic program of Bucksought to eliminate. Conversion therapy seeks similar erasure.
The lesson of the 1960s LGBTQ rights movement remains as relevant today as it was then. Without an unapologetic LGBTQ identity, LGBTQ Pride, LGBTQ rights and the LGBTQ movement itself can all founder. By supporting only the anti-LGBTQ side in this medical saga — and by suggesting that LGBTQ existence is subject to medical debate at all — the court is reaffirming, rather than repudiating, minority erasure.
Craig Konnoth is a professor of law at University of Virginia School of Law.
I was disappointed when the Blade didn’t publish my response to a personal attack on me in a column by Hayden Gise, in last week’s print edition. They did publish it online. To be clear, I have no problem with people disagreeing with my columns and opinions. That is absolutely fair. But when they get into personal attacks, it often means they don’t have enough to say about the ideas they are trying to criticize.
In a recent column ‘Why the Democratic Socialists of America are right for D.C.,’ the author decided to attack me personally. Here is the response I wrote to her column:
“I am responding to a column by Hayden Gise who says in her column she is a transgender, lesbian, Jewish, Democratic Socialist, and supports having the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in Washington, DC. She is definitely as entitled to her view on this, as I am to mine. However, I was surprised she clearly felt it important to use the column to attack me personally, without even knowing me. What she didn’t do is respond to the issues in the DSA platform I wrote having a problem with, and which I asked candidates endorsed by the DSA to respond to. 1. Are they for the abolishment of the State of Israel? 2. What is their definition of a Zionist? 3. What is their definition of antisemitism? 4. Will they meet with Zionist organizations? 5. Do they support BDS? One needs to know when a candidate claims they are only a member of the local DSA, according to the DSA bylaws no person can be a member of a local DSA without being a member of the national organization. So Hayden Gise has a little better idea of who I am she should know: I was a teacher and a union member. I worked for the most progressive member of Congress at the time, Bella S. Abzug (D-N.Y.), and supported her when she introduced the Equality Act in 1974, to protect the rights of the LGBTQ community, and have fought for its passage ever since. I have spent a lifetime fighting for civil rights, women’s rights, disability rights, and LGBTQ rights. I have no idea what Hayden Gise’s background is, or what her history of working for the causes she espouses is. But I would be happy to meet with her to find out. But she should know, I take a back seat to no one in the work I have done over my life fighting for equality, including economic equality, for all. So, I will not attack her, as I don’t know her, and contrary to her, don’t personally attack people I don’t know much about.
“I have, and will continue to attack, what the government of Israel is doing to the Palestinian people, and now to those in Lebanon and Iran. I will also attack the government of my own country, and the felon in the White House, and his sycophants in Congress, for what they are doing to our own people, and people around the world, and will continue to work hard to change things. However, I will also continue to stand for a two-state solution with the continued existence of the State of Israel, calling for a different government in Israel. I also strongly support the Palestinian people and believe they must have the right to their own free state.”
I have not heard from Gise, but I hope she knows that since she wrote her column indicating her support for Janeese Lewis George for mayor, her preferred candidate has attended a birthday party to celebrate a person who still refers to gay people as ‘fags.’
We should not personally attack people we don’t know as a way to criticize their views on an issue. Once again, I have no problem with people disagreeing with what I write, and having the Blade publish those contrary columns. But a plea to all who disagree with any columnist, or story: disagree with the issues and refrain from making personal attacks on the writer. That actually takes away from whatever point you are trying to make.
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.
Australia lifts additional restrictions on LGBTQ blood donors
Top EU court strikes down Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ propaganda law
Tennessee’s Charlie Kirk Act is harmful
Victory Fund brunch draws top LGBTQ officials, 2028 hopeful Andy Beshear
Inside the lonely world of MAGA gay men
Charlie Kirk Act advances in Tenn.
LGBTQ Catholic groups slam Trump over pope criticism
Grindr to host first-ever White House Correspondents’ Dinner party
Calendar: April 17-23
