News
Anti-gay views rampant in Dominican Republic
‘Ex-gay’ therapy remains popular
David, a victim of the abusive practices employed at Escuela Caribe as depicted in the documentary ‘Kidnapped for Christ.’ (Photo by Katrina Marcinowski)
Anti-LGBT religious leaders remain influential in the Dominican Republic in spite of local advocacy efforts that have grown more visible in recent years.
Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez of the Archdiocese of Santo Domingo last month told a Dominican newspaper that gay U.S. Ambassador to the U.S. James “Wally” Brewster “should take his pride elsewhere,” after he and his husband, Bob Satawake, released a video to celebrate Pride month. He described the gay U.S. ambassador as a “maricón” or “faggot” in Spanish during a June 2013 press conference after President Obama nominated him with the apparent approval of Dominican President Danilo Medina.
Rev. Luís Rosario of the Santo Domingo Youth Ministry has described Brewster as a “bad example” for Dominican society and families. Rev. Cristóbal Cardozo of the Dominican Evangelical Fraternity and other religious leaders also opposed the former Human Rights Campaign board member’s nomination.
“We are defending a person who is homosexual, that is gay and has come to occupy his country’s public position in the Dominican Republic,” Deivis Ventura of the Amigos Siempre Amigos Network of Volunteers told the Washington Blade during a March interview at his Santo Domingo home that more than a dozen other Dominican LGBT rights advocates also attended. “We are defending the right that we have to occupy public positions equally as gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans people.”
Ventura and other Dominican LGBT rights advocates with whom the Blade has spoken in recent months have pointed out that Brewster has made their efforts more visible through increased media coverage and debate of gay-specific issues in the country. Anti-LGBT discrimination, a lack of support from the government and persistent health and educational disparities are among the myriad issues they continue to confront.
López in 2010 described Parque Duarte in Santo Domingo’s Colonial City where hundreds of LGBT Dominicans gather on weekend nights as “a space where all types of insolences and vulgarities abound.” He and some neighbors have unsuccessfully tried to ban them from the square that is across the street from a church.
Ventura told the Blade last week that Dominican psychiatrists practicing so-called “reparative therapy” is becoming more common.
José Dunker Lambert, a psychiatrist and family therapist, on June 18 published on his website a list of 10 reasons “to treat homosexuality.” These include the arguments that homosexuality is a “social deviation” and “learned conduct.”
Dunker, Dominican Sexology Society President Martha Arredondo Soriano and Amigos Siempre Amigos Executive Director Leonardo Sánchez in April debated in a Dominican newspaper the topic of whether homosexuality is a choice.
“A person who has a homosexual orientation, who feels attracted to people of the same sex, in any given moment can decide to not exercise their true orientation,” Arredondo says. “But the science is clear and comes with evidence: Sexual orientations cannot be changed.”
“Kidnapped for Christ,” a documentary co-produced by Lance Bass that debuted at this year’s Sundance Film Festival features Escuela Caribe, a Christian boarding school near the city of Jarabacoa in the country’s mountainous interior. The institution that an Indiana-based Evangelical organization opened in 1972 subjected students to physical abuse and other forms of punishment that included forced labor and “conversion therapy.”
Ventura noted to the Blade that fundamentalist Christian churches in the U.S. fund Escuela Caribe — which closed in 2012 and reopened under a new name — and similar institutions in the Dominican Republic.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore on Tuesday signed a bill that decriminalizes HIV in the state.
State Dels. Kris Fair (D-Frederick County) and Luke Clippinger (D-Baltimore City) are among the lawmakers who sponsored House Bill 39 or the Carlton R. Smith Act, which is named after the long-time activist known as the “mayor” of Baltimore’s Mount Vernon neighborhood who died in May 2024.
Smith was a member of the Coalition to Decriminalize HIV in Maryland that advocated for the bill. FreeState Justice, a statewide LGBTQ rights group, was also part of the coalition.
“At FreeState Justice, we are proud to stand with advocates, health experts, and lawmakers who worked diligently to advance this bill. The bipartisan support for the Carlton R. Smith Act is a testament to the power of education, research, and courageous leadership,” said FreeState Justice Executive Director Phillip Westry in a statement. “It sends a clear message: Maryland is committed to evidence-based policymaking and to ending the criminalization of people living with HIV. We honor the memory of Carlton R. Smith by continuing the work of building a more just, inclusive, and informed society.”
Maryland is the fifth state to decriminalize HIV.
North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong, a Republican, in March signed a bill that decriminalized HIV in his state.
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.
Congress
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s bill to criminalize gender affirming care advances
Judiciary Committee markup slated for Wednesday morning
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)’s “Protect Children’s Innocence Act,” which would criminalize guideline-directed gender affirming health care for minors, will advance to markup in the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning.
Doctors and providers who administer medical treatments for gender dysphoria to patients younger than 18, including hormones and puberty blockers, would be subject to Class 3 felony charges punishable by up to 10 years in prison if the legislation is enacted.
LGBTQ advocates warn conservative lawmakers want to go after families who travel out of state to obtain medical care for their transgender kids that is banned or restricted in the places where they reside, using legislation like Greene’s to expand federal jurisdiction over these decisions. They also point to the medically inaccurate way in which the bill characterizes evidence-based interventions delineated in standards of care for trans and gender diverse youth as “mutilation” or “chemical castration.”
Days into his second term, President Donald Trump signed “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” an executive order declaring that the U.S. would not “fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit” medical treatments and interventions intended for this purpose.
Greene, who has introduced the bill in years past, noted the president’s endorsement of her bill during his address to the joint session of Congress in March when he said “I want Congress to pass a bill permanently banning and criminalizing sex changes on children and forever ending the lie that any child is trapped in the wrong body.”
Frank Kameny’s legacy lives on
Wes Moore signs HIV decriminalization bill
Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s bill to criminalize gender affirming care advances
Delaware considers enshrining same-sex marriage into state Constitution
Pete Buttigieg, eyeing a presidential run, holds Iowa town hall
Calendar: May 16-22
Documentary about Blade reporter to premiere this month
Antipathy toward queer workers
