Local
Library of Congress staffer fired, claims anti-gay bias
Says he was outed on Facebook, ‘stalked’ by superior at D.C. gay bar
Peter TerVeer, 30, was fired last week from his job at the Library of Congress and claims his former boss cited biblical passages condemning homosexuality.
A gay man has charged in a discrimination complaint that he was fired last week from his job at the Library of Congress after being harassed and humiliated for more than a year by a supervisor who repeatedly cited passages from the Bible condemning homosexuality.
Peter TerVeer, 30, a management analyst at the Library of Congress’s Office of the Inspector General since 2008, says in his complaint that supervisor John R. Mech created a hostile work environment for him to such a degree that he suffered severe stress, forcing him to take disability leave last fall and earlier this year.
“I contend that I have been subjected to a hostile work environment by Mr. Mech since August 2009 on the basis of my sex (male), sexual orientation (homosexual), and religion (non-denominational Christian/Agnostic),” TerVeer states in an affidavit accompanying his complaint.
“I maintain that Mr. Mech has acted to impose his religious beliefs on me,” TerVeer says in the affidavit.
TerVeer’s attorney, Thomas Simeone, said he will likely file a discrimination related lawsuit against the library on TerVeer’s behalf regardless of how the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which is deliberating over the complaint, rules on the matter.
Gayle Osterberg, director of communications for the Library of Congress, said TerVeer’s complaint is considered a personnel matter and the library never comments on personnel-related issues pertaining to an individual employee.
She said that under library rules, neither John Mech, an accountant and lead auditor for the library’s Office of The Inspector General, nor any other library employee familiar with TerVeer’s case would be permitted to comment on the case.
Simeone said a key factor in the case is that library officials promoted TerVeer three times and praised his work and that negative job performance reviews suddenly began after Mech learned TerVeer was gay.
Asked about a policy adopted by the Library of Congress in the 1990s prohibiting employment discrimination based on sexual orientation, Osterberg declined to confirm whether such a policy is still in effect.
“We adhere to Title 7, period,” she said, referring to a provision in existing U.S. civil rights law that bans job discrimination based on race, religion, national origin, sex and other criteria but not on sexual orientation.
An internal “Librarian’s Policy Statement Regarding Non-Discrimination” issued to Library of Congress Employees on May 6, 2010, reiterates the 1990s-era statement pertaining to sexual orientation discrimination.
“Discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including sexual harassment), national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, and/or political affiliation will not be tolerated,” the statement says.
Osterberg declined to disclose whether that and previous sexual orientation non-discrimination statements were still in effect.
TerVeer’s complaint, filed with the EEOC, follows a September 2008 federal court decision finding that the Library of Congress violated federal law against sex discrimination by denying a job to a transgender woman.
In that case, the library had determined that the applicant was qualified and hired her shortly before she announced she was transitioning from male to female. When officials learned that David Schroer was transitioning to Diane Schroer they rescinded the job offer and refused to hire Schroer.
A U.S. District Court judge ruled in September 2008 that the library’s refusal to hire Schroer violated a federal law prohibiting sex discrimination, a development hailed by the ACLU as an important breakthrough for transgender rights. The library decided against appealing the case and agreed to an out-of-court settlement with Diane Schroer in which it paid her compensatory damages.
Library of Congress: ‘AWOL’ for 37 days?
Dome of the Library of Congress. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
In a March 29, 2012 letter to TerVeer, Karl W. Schornagel, the library’s Inspector General and head of the division where TerVeer worked, said he approved TerVeer’s firing on grounds that TerVeer had been absent from work without approved leave or “AWOL” since Jan. 4, 2012.
Schornagel states in the letter that under library personnel rules, absence without approved leave is considered a form of misconduct that could lead to disciplinary action, including dismissal.
“I considered that you failed to report for duty as scheduled for over 37 consecutive workdays and failed to properly request approved leave despite being reminded of the proper procedures for requesting approved leave and advised of the consequences of your failure to report for duty as scheduled,” Schornagel said in his letter.
TerVeer told the Blade that library officials approved disability leave he had requested in October 2011 at the urging of his therapist and doctor based on the therapist’s determination that a hostile work environment at the library caused him to suffer severe mental stress.
According to TerVeer, the unpaid disability leave approved by the library expired in January 2012. He said library officials declined his request for a transfer to another office and demanded he return to duty with Mech remaining as his supervisor.
Simeone, TerVeer’s attorney, said library rules may have allowed TerVeer to apply for an extended disability leave. But he said TerVeer by that time had exhausted his financial resources following three months of unpaid leave and couldn’t afford to pay doctors and his therapist for the necessary examination and documentation needed to apply for extended disability leave.
“He was in a bind,” said Simeone. “He loved working there and he wanted to continue. And as you can tell, he needed the money. He tried to get a transfer to a new setting or a new area, but it was just not possible. They wouldn’t do that.”
Simeone said going back to the office where TerVeer knew he would be subjected to the same harassment and stress wasn’t an option he could accept.
Outed by boss’s daughter
TerVeer told the Blade he never intended to come out as gay at work when he first started his job at the library in February 2008. He said he had recently moved to D.C. from rural Western Michigan, which he said was devastated by the economic recession.
With a bachelor’s degree in business management from Hope College in Michigan and his enrollment at the University of Maryland for a degree in accounting and auditing, TerVeer said the start of his employment at the library’s Office of The Inspector General appeared to be a perfect fit for his chosen career path.
“The first year and a half, almost two years I was there I was closeted and essentially I was kind of the golden boy in the office,” he said. “He took me under his wing and we had a cordial discourse,” he said of Mech. “And he appeared to come off initially as really nice.”
TerVeer said the cordial relationship was based, in part, on their shared interest in sports and TerVeer’s role as captain of a school football team in Michigan. At one point Mech invited him to join his wife and son at a University of Maryland football game, TerVeer said.
As TerVeer tells it, his problems started just after that, when Mech invited him to “look up his daughter” in the late summer or early fall of 2009. Within days, said TerVeer, Mech’s daughter Katie contacted him on Facebook and asked to become Facebook friends.
He said he accepted her request after using the appropriate Facebook privacy controls to hide information on his own Facebook page that identified him as gay. But a short time later, Facebook put in place changes in its settings in such a way that TerVeer’s link to a Facebook group in support of gay adoptions became publicly visible, TerVeer said.
“I get home one day and she saw it and commented and she said, ‘You’re not one of those weirdoes are you?’ I said I am actually, in fact, one of those weird ones if you’re referring to the fact that I’m gay.”
TerVeer said Katie Mech initially said she wasn’t troubled by this discovery, saying she had a good friend in San Francisco who’s gay.
However, the following day TerVeer said he discovered that she had both “de-friended” and blocked him from her Facebook page. Within days of that, John Mech began raising his religious beliefs with TerVeer in emails and in face-to-face conversations with him, TerVeer said.
“All of a sudden now, every time I’m going into his office he’s starting off with a religious conversation. Then it comes out where he pointed out he was a believer with a literal translation of the Bible,” said TerVeer. “Then he goes specifically into homosexuality.”
TerVeer said he knew then that Katie Mech informed her father that he is gay.
In his affidavit, TerVeer said things came to a head on June 21, 2010.
“He came into my office on that date and said he wanted to educate me on hell and that it was a sin to be a homosexual,” TerVeer says in the affidavit. “He said he hoped I repented because the Bible was very clear about what God does to homosexuals.”
Among other things, TerVeer says in the affidavit that Mech quoted the Old Testament passage of Leviticus, stating, “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their heads.”
TerVeer says in the affidavit, “He stated that as a homosexual I could never succeed because it was against God’s law.”
Four days later, on June 25, 2010, Mech spoke with TerVeer about TerVeer’s annual performance review and TerVeer expressed concern that his ratings were lower than he believed they should be, he says in the affidavit.
According to the affidavit, he politely told Mech he was concerned that the lower performance review might be biased because of Mech’s strongly expressed religious beliefs toward homosexuality.
“Mr. Mech became extremely upset and vehemently denied that my homosexuality and his personal views had an impact on his rating of me,” TerVeer says in the affidavit. “He accused me of attempting to injure his career and reputation and to ‘bring down the Library.’”
Gay official ‘stalks’ TerVeer
TerVeer says in his affidavit that beginning in July 2010 through the middle of 2011 Mech appeared to be “piling on” work assignments in an effort to set him up to fail. He said one particular project he was assigned to handle by himself had been previously worked on by six full-time employees and took more than a year to complete, yet he was told to complete it during a shorter period of time.
“I believe that Mr. Mech gave me this assignment to set me up for failure and to give him a better opportunity to identify and manufacture deficiencies in my performance,” TerVeer says in the affidavit. “I believe he decided in advance to give me negative ratings in my next performance review and began to create a record of alleged ‘job deficiencies’ to support this.”
In an effort to appeal what he believed to be an unfairly negative job performance rating calling for denying him a normally routine “step” pay increase, TerVeer said he approached Mech’s supervisor, Nicholas Christopher, the assistant inspector general for audits. “Mr. Christopher declined to change my performance evaluation and denied me a WIGI [Within Grade Increase]” in pay, he says in the affidavit.
When he indicated he was in the process of filing a possible discrimination complaint, TerVeer said that both Mech and Christopher appeared to warn him against doing so, saying he could face consequences such as additional poor performance ratings.
In a staff meeting on June 28, 2011, TerVeer says in the affidavit that Mech demanded that he explain, “what I was doing” concerning his stated intention to appeal the low job performance rating.
“He berated and humiliated me in front of my co-workers,” TerVeer says in the affidavit. “He interrogated me regarding the exact nature of my appeal and who I was filing the action against.”
After beginning his disability leave in the fall of 2011, TerVeer said he was startled when Christopher appeared at the D.C. gay bar Number Nine, where TerVeer had been working as a security staffer, and began to take a video of him with his cell phone.
TerVeer and his lawyer at the time, Brennan McCarthy, said TerVeer’s therapist believed working a job at a gay bar provided a friendly, supportive work environment and was an important part of his recovery from the stress-related ailment that required he take a leave from his job at the library.
In a Feb. 16, 2012 letter to Vicki Magnus, acting deputy director of the library’s Office of Opportunity, Inclusiveness and Compliance, which investigates discrimination complaints, McCarthy expressed concern that Christopher had “commenced a pattern of harassment, including stalking Mr. TerVeer at his second job and videotaping Mr. TerVeer while working.”
McCarthy said Christopher appeared to have begun harassing TerVeer after Christopher learned that TerVeer was considering filing a discrimination complaint.
“Following that revelation, Mr. Christopher took all steps possible not only to keep Mr. TerVeer from filing his complaint with your office, but also stated that poor performance reviews are ‘what happens’ when someone tried to bring down the Library of Congress (i.e., files an EEOC complaint),” McCarthy said in his letter.
Sources familiar with the Library of Congress have told the Blade that it’s widely known at the library that Christopher is gay. Christopher states in the publicly accessible part of his Facebook page that his “relationship status” is “single” and he’s “interested in” men.
He also describes his religious views on his Facebook page as being “vociferously atheist.”
Christopher didn’t respond to a Blade message asking whether he was troubled over TerVeer’s allegation that Mech had been reciting biblical passages to TerVeer at work condemning his homosexuality.
District of Columbia
LGBTQ voters divided in Ward 8 special election
All four candidates on DC Council seat ballot are allies
Political observers, including LGBTQ activists, believe LGBTQ voters in Ward 8, like most if not all voters in the ward, are divided over which of the four candidates to support in the July 15 special election to fill the ward’s vacant D.C. Council seat.
Each of the four candidates, all of whom are Democrats, including ousted Ward 8 council member Trayon White, who is running to recapture his seat, have expressed support for LGBTQ related issues.
The special election was called earlier this year after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to expel White following his indictment and arrest by the FBI on a federal bribery charge in August 2024.
He has pleaded not guilty to the charge and under D.C. law he can legally run for and regain his council seat until the time he is convicted of the charge. His trial is scheduled to begin in January 2026.
The three candidates challenging White — Sheila Bunn, Mike Austin, and Salim Adofo — are longtime Ward 8 community advocates who have been involved in local government affairs for many years and, according to LGBTQ activists who know them, have been supportive of LGBTQ rights.
White also has a record of supporting LGBTQ issues while serving on the council since 2017. Following his indictment, he won re-election by a wide margin in the November 2024 general election against a lesser-known Republican opponent.
Political observers say White’s indictment on a bribery charge is likely to alienate some of his past supporters, but they say he remains popular in the ward, and with three candidates dividing the opposition vote he could win the election with less than 50 percent of the divided vote count.
Two of the candidates, Bunn and Adofo, responded to a request by the Washington Blade sent to each of the four candidates asking for a statement summarizing their positions on LGBTQ related issues. In their respective statements Bunn and Adofo expressed strong support on a wide range of LGBTQ issues.
“In my nearly 30 years of public service, I have consistently supported the rights and worked to improve the quality of life for the LGBTQIA+ community,” Bunn said in her statement. She noted that much of her work on behalf of LGBTQ rights took place when she served as chief of staff for D.C. Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton and as a senior staff member for former D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray.
In his statement, Adofo said he advocated for a wide range of LGBTQ issues, including housing programs for homeless LGBTQ youth and supportive employment training programs for transgender residents.
“At the heart of our platform is a steadfast commitment to uplifting LGBTQ+ communities, ensuring that policy is shaped not just for them, but with them,” his statement says. Adofo’s positions in support of LGBTQ rights are also posted on his campaign website.
GLAA D.C, formerly known as the Gay and Lesbian Activists of Washington, released its ratings of three of the four candidates on June 22, based on its recent policy of basing its ratings mostly on non-LGBTQ specific issues. The group rates candidates on a scale of -10, the lowest possible rating, to +10, its highest rating.
It assigned a rating of +7.5 for Bunn, +6.5 for Austin, and +4.5 for Adofo. In a statement accompanying its ratings, GLAA said each of the three have a record of support on LGBTQ issues, but they lost rating points for not supporting non-LGBTQ related issues deemed important by GLAA.
GLAA said it did not issue a rating for White based on its policy of not rating candidates who are removed from office or resign due to allegations of ethics violations.
The Capital Stonewall Democrats, D.C.’s largest local LGBTQ political group, chose not to make an endorsement in the Ward 8 special election.
“We thought that this is best because this is a special election and in these unfamiliar times, we decided not to take a stand,” Howard Garrett, the group’s president, told the Blade.
Ward 8 gay Democratic activist Phil Pannell is supporting Adofo, he told the Blade, on grounds of Adofo’s strong support on LGBTQ issues and Adofo’s role as the only candidate in the Ward 8 special election who supported Initiative 83, the ballot measure passed by D.C. voters in November 2024 calling for a ranked choice voting system and open D.C. primaries. A lawsuit challenging the initiative filed by the D.C. Democratic Party has delayed its implementation.
Another longtime Ward 8 gay Democratic activist, David Meadows, is supporting Bunn. Meadows cites Bunn’s support for LGBTQ rights and her positions on other issues he supports as his reason for backing her candidacy.
The D.C. Board of Elections website shows that the board mailed ballots for the special election to all Ward 8 registered voters. The website shows that as of July 7, 2,483 voters sent back their ballots by mail or placed them in drop boxes located throughout the ward.
Early in-person voting at several polling places was scheduled to begin July 11, the website says, prior to the official election date of July 15 at all polling places throughout the ward.
Salim Adofo statement on LGBTQ issues:
Our campaign is rooted in the belief that everyone deserves to live with dignity, security, and opportunity. We are committed to building a safer, healthier, and more equitable District for all — where every voice is heard and every community is empowered. At the heart of our platform is a steadfast commitment to uplifting LGBTQ+ communities, ensuring that policy is shaped not just for them, but with them. We recognize that the fight for equity is interconnected, and we prioritize action in the areas that most deeply impact our residents’ daily lives. As [a] council member, I will advocate for healthcare for all, boost funding for HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis, STD, and TB Administration (HAHSTA) programs to address disparities in health outcomes.
• Expand access to care by exempting digital-only telehealth services from the Certificate of Need (CON) process and increasing funding through the Department of Behavioral Health (DBH).
• Build a culturally competent workforce by removing licensure barriers and expanding the pipeline of LGBTQ+ mental health providers.
• Employment and economic equity: sustain workforce development efforts like Project LEAP, a successful investment in economic empowerment for TGD residents.
• Foster public-private partnerships by requiring D.C. HR to work with labor unions and local employers to host trans-affirming job fairs.
• Fund community-led training by supporting programs developed by TGD organizations, modeled after California’s Transgender Economic Empowerment Initiative.
• Housing with dignity: every LGBTQ+ resident deserves stable, affirming, and permanent housing. End youth homelessness with a community-centered strategic plan focused on expanding permanent housing and wraparound services.
• Support inclusive housing by continuing funding for LGBTQ+ housing vouchers and senior housing initiatives.
• Safety and community support: create safe shelters by investing $2 million in a 20-bed LGBTQIA2S+ shelter for survivors of intimate partner violence and sexual assault.
• Empower community organizations with no-cost capacity-building support and streamlined access to D.C. grants for LGBTQ+-serving CBOs.
Sheila Bunn statement on LGBTQ issues:
In my nearly 30 years of public service, I have consistently supported the rights and worked to improve the quality of life for the LGBTQIA+ community.
As chief of staff to Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, I helped prevent Congress from overturning the District’s 2009 marriage equality bill and worked on removing congressional riders from the District’s budget that prohibited the expenditure of locally raised funds for our needle-exchange program, which has been pivotal in HIV/AIDS prevention.
As part of Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s senior staff, I assisted in launching the District’s transgender employment initiative under the Project Empowerment Program, increasing training and job opportunities for transgender residents. We also employed a member of the transgender cohort in the Mayor’s Office of Community Affairs after their tenure, demonstrating our commitment to the program. I facilitated efforts to end health insurance discrimination based on gender identity with DISB’s 2013 bulletin, ensuring coverage for services like mastectomies and hormone replacement therapy. Additionally, I helped to coordinate Mayor Gray’s first LGBTQIA+ Youth Town Hall to address the concerns of LGBTQIA+ youth and participated in cultural competency training to better support the District’s significant LGBTQIA+ population.
Currently, I am a member of the Capital Stonewall Democrats, actively engaging in Pride events and supporting LGBTQIA+ causes like the DC LGBTQ+ Community Center, a one-stop shop for services and programs with critical social service partners. Through direct outreach to organizations serving the LGBTQIA+ community, I aim to understand and represent their issues effectively. I look forward to collaborating with GLAA, Capital Stonewall Democrats, and other allied organizations to shape legislation and policies that benefit our LGBTQIA+ residents and all District residents.
Virginia
Defying trends, new LGBTQ center opens in rural Winchester, Va.
‘It has taught me that I am not alone in this place’
A new LGBTQ community center celebrated its grand opening on June 30 in Winchester, Va., defying recent trends amid a federal crackdown on DEI and LGBTQ funding.
The local HIV/AIDS service organization AIDS Response Effort, Inc. (ARE) worked with a team of volunteers to open the area’s first physical center.
ARE’s R.I.S.E. (Resources, Inclusion, Support and Empowerment) Center, located near the heart of Old Town Winchester on West Piccadilly Street, is more than a renovated bank building to the local LGBTQ community. The empty teller window on the side of the structure and converted vault inside give away the building’s past. But the volunteers, program participants, and well-wishers gathered at the ribbon-cutting ceremony tell the Blade that they are hopeful for a thriving future for the building — and the community.
The Washington Blade spoke with the executive director of ARE as well as the co-directors of ARE’s R.I.S.E. Center during a tour of the facility ahead of the opening.
Katy Vance, executive director of ARE told the Blade, “I started [at ARE] about five years ago and we were an AIDS service organization, we have been for about 35 years now. We started as a group of volunteers out at the hospital —with Valley Health, and we’ve grown into a program that provides HIV case management for folks living with HIV in the community.”
Vance explained that as community needs have changed for service organizations like ARE, it has led to some soul-searching among advocates.
“We had this big meeting about, ‘who are we?,’ ‘who do we want to be?,’ ‘who do we want to be in a few years?,’” Vance recalls. “As things shift and change with HIV … we have a lot of folks that come into our office who are newly diagnosed. They will get connected to a medical case manager, they’ll get on medication, and they are undetectable within one to two months, which means they are untransmittable, which is amazing.”
“So, science and technology has come so far,” Vance continued. “And so, who are we when this tends to go in the direction of no longer being the major epidemic it has been for the last 40 years, right?”
“But, when I came in, we also had a general housing program for anyone in the community,” Vance said. “That was confusing for a lot of people who came into our doors trying to figure out who we were and what we are. We called it, our ‘identity crisis,’ essentially.”
“Are we an HIV service organization? Are we a housing program?” Vance asked. “So we worked with our local Goodwill and the board got together and we decided to transition our housing program out and we realized we wanted to open an LGBTQ center.”
“We have had a little bit of pushback as to why an HIV agency is opening a center,” ARE’s R.I.S.E. Center Co-Director Matt Buracker said. “Obviously, HIV and LGBT identities have a long history and a lot of stigma, but we felt like it was kind of irresponsible to talk about one without talking about the other. And we’ve always been supporting the LGBT community, so we’re just expanding our services to encompass more.”
The center seeks to serve the LGBTQ community in a county that Donald Trump carried with more than 63% of the vote in the 2024 election. While ARE receives state and federal grants for its operations, the LGBTQ center is currently funded by community donations and a founders’ campaign and is staffed with volunteers.
Vance tells the Blade that the Center met its initial fundraising goal of $50,000 very quickly. The building housing the center was renovated with a combination of grants, donations and volunteer work.
“I think our fundraising goals now are going to be more programmatic so that we can do the things that we want to do,” R.I.S.E. Center Co-Director Mary Bohacek said. “Because Matt and I are great at finding things to do for free. But there are other things that people are asking us to do, craft events or things that aren’t free to do. Eventually, we might need a license if we want to do movie screenings. So there is always going to be a fundraising need to fund the programming, but the building has been a huge success.”
“The support from the community has been overwhelming,” Buracker told the Blade. “We’ve had such a positive response from the community and it’s just it’s been so emotional to see that the need has been here and we are the one to finally do something about it.”
Vance interjected, “And of course, there are community members that aren’t a fan that are ‘keyboard warriors’ that are coming out saying stuff. What is amazing is: we had an article in the paper and they put it up on their Facebook page and people were making just terrible comments. But then, we got new volunteers from that. The community support has been, like Matt said, amazing and overwhelming.”
ARE’s R.I.S.E. Center is a member of CenterLink, a community of LGBTQ centers. Other LGBTQ community centers in the wider region include the Roanoke Diversity Center in Roanoke, Va, the Shenandoah LGBTQ Center in Staunton, Va., Diversity Richmond in Richmond, Va., NOVA Prism Center in McLean, Va., the DC Center for the LGBT Community in Washington, D.C. and the Frederick Center in Frederick, Md. A new MoCo Pride Center is scheduled to open in Bethesda, Md. in August.
While the physical building opened to the public on June 30, the R.I.S.E. Center in Winchester has held events for more than a year.
“We’ve had programming going on for almost two years now,” Bohacek told the Blade. “Our first event was a ‘Friendsgiving.’ There were so many people that showed up that we literally didn’t have enough space: we needed to knock down walls.”
The staff and volunteers at ARE and the nascent Center used that momentum to foster the growth of affinity groups, community groups and services.
Affinity groups are described as “not just support groups or social groups, but rather as something of a hybrid between the two.” As Bohacek says about the affinity groups, “if someone needs community or needs a place to talk about queer issues, they have a space to do that.”
Affinity groups hosted by the Center include a group for trans and gender non-conforming people, a group for the families of trans people, a polyamorous affinity group, an aro-ace group, a “Rainbow Connection” all-purpose group, and a “Gay-RP” affinity group for people 50 and older.
“We also have a young adult group, which is for ages 18-25, which is one of the more vulnerable sections of our community,” Bohacek said. “So we want to make sure that they have places to connect.”
As reported in the Blade, the youth advocacy organizations Hopelab and Born this Way Foundation recently issued a report that suggests LGBTQ youth (ages 15 to 24) living in rural communities face greater challenges than their suburban or urban peers in dealing with their sexual orientation or gender identity, though have significantly benefited from online resources.
“We also have some community-wide programming that allies are welcome attend,” Bohecek said. Programming includes a monthly game night, a volunteer night for the many Center volunteers, as well as the “stitch and bitch” group, who “sit, crochet, embroider and talk.”
“And Coffee and Coloring!” Bohecek exclaims. “That’s one of my favorites. We like to say it’s about — just sit down, relax, have a cup of coffee — but frankly it’s about community building.”
Bohacek proudly lists the many other services the center offers, including a transgender/gender-affirming closet, which is currently overflowing with donations of clothes.
“We also have an amazing library of all kinds of identities and all kinds of ages for people to come and see,” Bohacek told the Blade. “This building is actually an old bank, so we put our books into the vault.”
The old bank, now vibrant community center, was filled to capacity for the official opening ceremony on a hot Monday afternoon in late June. People from across the Shenandoah Valley who had come to the ribbon-cutting event snacked on rainbow-colored cupcakes as they toured the renovated building.
“To be a gay man growing up in a small, rural area . . . we didn’t have anything like this,” Front Royal, Va. resident Ed McKee told the Blade. Though he lives in a town a few miles away, he works at a salon in Winchester and had come to see the new center opening.
“We didn’t have anything like this when I was growing up,” McKee said as he gestured toward the packed LGBTQ community center. “If we had, it would have made my life so much easier. I probably would have come out sooner — I didn’t come out until I was about 30 — because I would have felt the support, you know?”
“Especially now with everything that is going on in our country,” McKee continued. “We need to show strength in numbers: come together. And the center is allowing for that to happen.”
McKee’s husband, Winchester business owner Paul Miller, agreed.
“I’m hoping that [the Center] can be a great way to connect with people who might not otherwise understand how they can come together,” Miller told the Blade. “And I’m hoping that, while I’m not sure that this is its mission, I’m hoping that it has a political effect in Virginia.”
Members of the community who came to witness the opening gathered outside of ARE’s R.I.S.E. center for the ribbon cutting. Speakers at the ceremony included the Center’s co-director Bohacek.
“Today, we’re celebrating the renovation of the building,” Bohacek began. “But, we’re also celebrating the rise of this community.”
“This community has taught me resilience and it has taught me friendship and it has taught me that I am not alone in this place,” Bohacek told the crowd. “There are people that care. And we are so proud to have a place where we can be ourselves, where anyone and everyone is welcome — and we mean it. So, with that said, let’s keep on rising!”
Maryland
Maryland’s oldest rural gay bar — and one of the last — is a log cabin in the woods
The Lodge is a Boonsboro watering hole resembling a log cabin
By SAPNA BANSIL | In the woods of a conservative Western Maryland town of fewer than 4,000 people is an unlikely landmark of state LGBTQ history.
The Lodge, a Boonsboro watering hole that resembles a log cabin, is Maryland’s oldest rural gay bar — one of a few remaining in the country, according to historians.
For about four decades, the Washington County venue has offered safety, escape and community to queer people far from large, liberal cities. Starting Friday night, The Lodge will close out Pride month with one of its biggest parties of the year: a weekend of dancing, drinking and drag in celebration of Frederick Pride, held about 20 miles away in the area’s largest city.
The rest of this article the Baltimore Banner published on June 27 can be read on its website.
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