National
Westin Atlanta Hotel disputes anti-gay bias allegation
Gay guests say they were ejected from area ‘reserved for families’
A D.C. gay man claims he and several friends were asked to leave a Westin Hotel lounge in Atlanta.
The general manager of the Westin Atlanta Airport Hotel has apologized to a group of five gay and lesbian guests who say a hotel security officer asked them to leave the hotel’s cocktail lounge in April because it was “reserved for families and others.”
In a May 19 letter responding to a written complaint to the hotel by D.C. resident K. David Weidner, one of the gay guests, hotel manager Bill Henderson said the security officer asked them to leave the lounge because they “brought in food from the outside.”
“Because food sales are a core business for us, we reserve our outlet space for guests who want to purchase our food and beverages,” Henderson said in his letter.
But Weidner, the co-founder and president of a D.C.-based consulting firm, told the Washington Blade that his two gay male and two lesbian friends who were with him distinctly recall the security officer stressing that the lounge was “reserved” for families and other patrons whom he declined to define.
Weidner said he and his group had just returned from attending a funeral in Montgomery, Ala., for a mutual friend. He said he and the two males with him were dressed in dark suits and ties and the two women wore black dresses.
“We decided that before we changed clothes and refreshed ourselves we wanted to toast our dear friend whom we’d just buried in Montgomery,” Weidner told Henderson in a May 19 letter complaining about the security officer’s handling of the situation.
Weidner told the Blade he brought in $6 worth of crackers and chips he bought from the hotel’s sundry shop located steps away from the cocktail lounge. But he said he has no recollection of the security officer raising the issue of food when he asked his group to leave the lounge and directed them to a nearby dining room that Weidner said had “dirty tables” and no servers.
Before being asked to leave the lounge the group ordered a round of drinks, which a friendly server brought to their table, Weidner told Henderson in his letter. “But she was barely out of sight and we had barely a chance to toast our departed friend when a gentlemen approached our table and identified himself as the director of security,” Weidner said in his letter.
“He said in a rather direct and impolite tone that ‘we would have to remove ourselves from the table, as this area is reserved for families and others.’”
According to Weidner’s account, the security official then said they could enjoy their beverages in a nearby room called the “Revivals” area, which the group later described as a poorly lit space with two dirty tables.
“The five of us looked at each other – we were absolutely stunned,” Weidner said in his letter. “I asked the director of security to define ‘families and others.’ He replied that our party was ‘not welcome to sit at this reserved space, but that we would be welcome in the Revivals area,” Weidner said in his letter to Henderson. “He never did explain what ‘families and others’ meant.”
In response to an inquiry from the Blade, Katie Roberts, an official with a public relations firm representing the Starwood Westin Hotels chain, said the company has a strict policy of non-discrimination and is especially welcoming to the LGBT community.
“The interaction with Mr. Weidner’s group was most unfortunate and poorly handled by the Westin Atlanta Airport associate, but it was in no way discriminatory,” Roberts said in a statement.
“The only reason Mr. Weidner’s group was asked to move to another area was because they had brought in food from the outside into an area where the hotel serves food,” she said. “Starwood has zero tolerance of discrimination of any kind.”
Roberts noted that the Starwood hotel chain works closely with and supports “LGBT rights organizations” and is pleased that the Human Rights Campaign Foundation has recognized Starwood for “nine straight years as one of the ‘Top Employers’ for LGBT equality.”
Weidner said he’s skeptical about the explanations offered by the Westin Atlanta Airport Hotel and its PR firm, and noted that hotel officials did not respond to his requests for an explanation and an apology until the Blade began making inquiries to the Westin.
Upon learning that the city of Atlanta has a human rights law that bans discrimination against LGBT people, Weidner said he’s considering filing a discrimination complaint against the hotel.
“We understand your disappointment and assure you your experience was the exception to our usual guest experience,” Henderson told Weidner in his letter dated June 1. “We have reviewed your comments with our Director of Security to insure the officer is retrained and your experience is not repeated.”
But PR official Roberts told the Blade in a follow-up email that a female restaurant manager approached Weidner and his group first, informing them that they could not bring their own food into the lounge and would have to move.
“Although they did not verbally refuse to move, they remained in the lounge,” Roberts said. “That is when Security was contacted, and the Security officer stated he also mentioned that outside food consumption was not allowed in that area,” she said.
According to Roberts, the security officer told hotel officials “he did not tell the guests they had to move because it was being reserved for ‘families and others.’”
“My goodness, this is heating up,” said Weidner when asked about Roberts’s account of what happened. “Curious…curious,” he said in an email. “The fact that they are responding in this way leads me to speculate there is more going on here than ‘snacks.’”
He disputed the claim by Roberts that the security officer brought up the issue of food being brought in by his group.
“He only told us we were not welcome to stay in the bar because it was reserved for ‘families and others,’” said Weidner.
New York
Men convicted of murdering two men in NYC gay bar drugging scheme sentenced
One of the victims, John Umberger, was D.C. political consultant
A New York judge on Wednesday sentenced three men convicted of killing a D.C. political consultant and another man who they targeted at gay bars in Manhattan.
NBC New York notes a jury in February convicted Jayqwan Hamilton, Jacob Barroso, and Robert DeMaio of murder, robbery, and conspiracy in relation to druggings and robberies that targeted gay bars in Manhattan from March 2021 to June 2022.
John Umberger, a 33-year-old political consultant from D.C., and Julio Ramirez, a 25-year-old social worker, died. Prosecutors said Hamilton, Barroso, and DeMaio targeted three other men at gay bars.
The jury convicted Hamilton and DeMaio of murdering Umberger. State Supreme Court Judge Felicia Mennin sentenced Hamilton and DeMaio to 40 years to life in prison.
Barroso, who was convicted of killing Ramirez, received a 20 years to life sentence.
National
Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information
Crucial datasets included LGBTQ, HIV resources
Nine private medical and public health advocacy organizations, including two from D.C., filed a lawsuit on May 20 in federal court in Seattle challenging what it calls the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s illegal deletion of dozens or more of its webpages containing health related information, including HIV information.
The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, names as defendants Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS itself, and several agencies operating under HHS and its directors, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration.
“This action challenges the widespread deletion of public health resources from federal agencies,” the lawsuit states. “Dozens (if not more) of taxpayer-funded webpages, databases, and other crucial resources have vanished since January 20, 2025, leaving doctors, nurses, researchers, and the public scrambling for information,” it says.
“These actions have undermined the longstanding, congressionally mandated regime; irreparably harmed Plaintiffs and others who rely on these federal resources; and put the nation’s public health infrastructure in unnecessary jeopardy,” the lawsuit continues.
It adds, “The removal of public health resources was apparently prompted by two recent executive orders – one focused on ‘gender ideology’ and the other targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’) programs. Defendants implemented these executive orders in a haphazard manner that resulted in the deletion (inadvertent or otherwise) of health-related websites and databases, including information related to pregnancy risks, public health datasets, information about opioid-use disorder, and many other valuable resources.”
The lawsuit does not mention that it was President Donald Trump who issued the two executive orders in question.
A White House spokesperson couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit.
While not mentioning Trump by name, the lawsuit names as defendants in addition to HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., Matthew Buzzelli, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health; Martin Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; Thomas Engels, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration; and Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management.
The 44-page lawsuit complaint includes an addendum with a chart showing the titles or descriptions of 49 “affected resource” website pages that it says were deleted because of the executive orders. The chart shows that just four of the sites were restored after initially being deleted.
Of the 49 sites, 15 addressed LGBTQ-related health issues and six others addressed HIV issues, according to the chart.
“The unannounced and unprecedented deletion of these federal webpages and datasets came as a shock to the medical and scientific communities, which had come to rely on them to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, assist physicians and other clinicians in daily care, and inform the public about a wide range of healthcare issues,” the lawsuit states.
“Health professionals, nonprofit organizations, and state and local authorities used the websites and datasets daily in care for their patients, to provide resources to their communities, and promote public health,” it says.
Jose Zuniga, president and CEO of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC), one of the organizations that signed on as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement that the deleted information from the HHS websites “includes essential information about LGBTQ+ health, gender and reproductive rights, clinical trial data, Mpox and other vaccine guidance and HIV prevention resources.”
Zuniga added, “IAPAC champions evidence-based, data-informed HIV responses and we reject ideologically driven efforts that undermine public health and erase marginalized communities.”
Lisa Amore, a spokesperson for Whitman-Walker Health, D.C.’s largest LGBTQ supportive health services provider, also expressed concern about the potential impact of the HHS website deletions.
“As the region’s leader in HIV care and prevention, Whitman-Walker Health relies on scientific data to help us drive our resources and measure our successes,” Amore said in response to a request for comment from the Washington Blade.
“The District of Columbia has made great strides in the fight against HIV,” Amore said. “But the removal of public facing information from the HHS website makes our collective work much harder and will set HIV care and prevention backward,” she said.
The lawsuit calls on the court to issue a declaratory judgement that the “deletion of public health webpages and resources is unlawful and invalid” and to issue a preliminary or permanent injunction ordering government officials named as defendants in the lawsuit “to restore the public health webpages and resources that have been deleted and to maintain their web domains in accordance with their statutory duties.”
It also calls on the court to require defendant government officials to “file a status report with the Court within twenty-four hours of entry of a preliminary injunction, and at regular intervals, thereafter, confirming compliance with these orders.”
The health organizations that joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs include the Washington State Medical Association, Washington State Nurses Association, Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Academy Health, Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, Fast-Track Cities Institute, International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, National LGBT Cancer Network, and Vermont Medical Society.
The Fast-Track Cities Institute and International Association of Providers of AIDS Care are based in D.C.
U.S. Federal Courts
Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections
Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has struck down guidelines by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission designed to protect against workplace harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
The EEOC in April 2024 updated its guidelines to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which determined that discrimination against transgender people constituted sex-based discrimination as proscribed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
To ensure compliance with the law, the agency recommended that employers honor their employees’ preferred pronouns while granting them access to bathrooms and allowing them to wear dress code-compliant clothing that aligns with their gender identities.
While the the guidelines are not legally binding, Kacsmaryk ruled that their issuance created “mandatory standards” exceeding the EEOC’s statutory authority that were “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent.”
“Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind themselves to the biological differences between men and women,” he wrote in the opinion.
The case, which was brought by the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, presents the greatest setback for LGBTQ inclusive workplace protections since President Donald Trump’s issuance of an executive order on the first day of his second term directing U.S. federal agencies to recognize only two genders as determined by birth sex.
Last month, top Democrats from both chambers of Congress reintroduced the Equality Act, which would codify LGBTQ-inclusive protections against discrimination into federal law, covering employment as well as areas like housing and jury service.
Adams Morgan queer bar broken into and vandalized
‘Things Like This’ embraces formula and plus-size visibility
Calendar: May 23-29
Comings & Goings
New doc chronicles gay hero’s journey from rape to forgiveness
Looking back at 50 years of Pride in D.C
WorldPride events round-up
Wes Moore signs HIV decriminalization bill
Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections
