District of Columbia
D.C. college students still reeling from Trump’s police takeover
‘Feeding into the racist, homophobic conceptions of crime’
LGBTQ college students in Washington, D.C. are still reeling from President Donald Trump’s decision two months ago to take over the local police force and deploy National Guard troops to patrol the city’s streets.
But to hear two students at Georgetown University tell it, queer students at the school don’t just fear the possibility of being profiled by police officers on campus. Queer students have also become apathetic toward the city’s law enforcement mechanisms, particularly as news reports show that Trump’s decision has led to an increase in racial profiling and disproportionately affected immigrants.
“It’s been upsetting in the sense that there’s more police presence near our university. The police on our campus, [Georgetown University Police Department], is a lot more active,” Allie Gaudion, a senior at Georgetown and advocacy director of Georgetown University Pride, said in an interview. “It feels suffocating, almost.”
Gaudion recounted an incident where “students felt unsafe” during a club fair after spotting National Guard and Drug Enforcement Agency officers walking through Georgetown’s campus. Gaudion added that there were concerns about whether students were being targeted or not.
“For a lot of students, it’s about international students being harassed or having their immigration status threatened,” Gaudion said.
Trump in August deployed the National Guard to the nation’s capital, claiming that Washington had been overrun by “bloodthirsty criminals” and “roving mobs of wild youth” — even though violent crime in the city has been declining and D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department reported a 30-year low in 2024 with rates dropping by an additional 26 percent in early 2025, and homicides down 12 percent year-over-year.
Initially, the White House said Trump’s takeover would last 30 days. However, the Army extended orders for the National Guard to remain deployed in the city until late November.
LGBTQ groups have publicly opposed Trump’s decision, arguing that an increased police presence in the city only escalates tensions. As Capital Stonewall Democrats President Howard Garrett put it back in August, “Flooding our neighborhoods with federal forces and seizing control of our police department will not make us safer – it will undermine trust, escalate tensions, and strip away D.C.’s right to govern itself.”
Devin Weil, a sophomore at Georgetown and communications director for Georgetown University Pride, emphasized how D.C. has become “scary” for “more vulnerable groups and queer students, especially international students.” (Over 4,500 students at Georgetown were international students in the fall of 2024, according to the college’s data.)
“Especially with the mass ICE deportations that have been occurring and the presence of federal agents, they’re going to attack marginalized groups without reason,” Weil said of the concerns some of his peers have shared with him. “[ICE] was literally detaining GrubHub drivers. It’s insane.”
“It’s feeding into the racist, homophobic conceptions of crime,” Weil added.
Despite the concerns around the impact of increased police presence in the city, queer students have begun contributing to efforts to make their campuses safer. Georgetown’s broader student association is drafting a resolution that would bar ICE agents’ presence on their campus, Weil said. Georgetown’s student association is also teaming up with organizations at other colleges to push university leadership to “send federal agents off of campuses,” Weil added.
For Gaudion, nothing demands more investment into Georgetown’s queer community than the current moment. Gaudion helps host weekly social events with the goal of connecting queer students and building a supportive environment. These events are “chill” and for “students to be able to just complain about whatever is going on in their lives or just have a cup of tea and a snack and feel better.”
“We’re trying to highlight queer voices and support queer voices and make sure that we’re cognizant and aware of what’s going on in our communities even if we’re [at Georgetown] temporarily,” Gaudion said.
Is she afraid that these gatherings could become an easy target for police officers?
Gaudion said no changes will be made to Georgetown University Pride’s programming.
“I don’t think being less present would be helpful to anyone,” she said. “ So we’re advertising and doing all of our programming as normal.”
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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