Local
Marriage law prompts gay Md. couple to move to D.C.
Gansler opinion not enough to keep Silver Spring pair from selling house
DeWayne Davis (left) and Kareem Murphy of Silver Spring, Md., are selling their home and moving to D.C. to enjoy the benefits of marriage. (DC Agenda photo by Michael Key)
Kareem Murphy and DeWayne Davis of Silver Spring, Md., have been together for nearly 19 years.
The two gay men, who are active members of D.C.’s Metropolitan Community Church, said they have been grappling for several years over whether to remain in Maryland or move back to the District, where they lived in the 1990s.
“Moving back to D.C. was attractive, but when the marriage issue took off it made the choice between Maryland and D.C. very clear in D.C.’s favor,” said Murphy, a lobbyist with a firm that represents local municipal governments.
“It kind of sealed the deal,” he said, referring to the D.C. same-sex marriage law that took effect Wednesday.
The couple has placed their Silver Spring house up for sale and is actively looking for a new home in the District.
Murphy and Davis, both 38 and graduates of Howard University, belong to a demographic group that gay activists and city officials say they will closely monitor over the next year or two to measure the economic impact of same-sex marriage in the nation’s capital.
An analysis prepared by the staff of D.C.’s chief financial officer estimates that the city would see a multi-million dollar increase in tax and business revenue during the first few years of legalized gay marriage. The tax and business revenue would be generated by a surge in weddings for same-sex couples from other states as well as from the District and nearby suburbs.
Studies conducted in other states that have legalized same-sex marriage have also found that gay male and lesbian couples have moved into those states for the sole purpose of being able to marry.
Davis, a former congressional staffer and lobbyist, recently left the realm of politics to enter D.C.’s Wesley Theological Seminary to become a minister. He said he and Murphy are rearranging their lives to move into the District not because of economic issues but because marriage is an important component of their faith-based beliefs.
“It has been made that much more important for us because we really want to be married,” Davis said. “We’ve called ourselves married and we’ve debated many times about going places to get married. But we’ve always said we didn’t want to move out of this area to marry.
“If we were going to marry, we wanted to be here, where we are. And so that was a deliberate decision we made. It was so important to us that this was going to happen in D.C.”
Murphy and Davis’ decision to move from Maryland to the District comes at a time when both jurisdictions have been rocked by ongoing struggles between same-sex marriage supporters and opponents.
In D.C., an ongoing campaign by Bishop Harry Jackson, a minister from Beltsville, Md., to overturn the city’s same-sex marriage law through proposed ballot measures and court injunctions appears to have been halted for the time being. The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday denied Jackson’s request for a stay to prevent the marriage law from taking effect March 3.
In Maryland, a long-awaited legal opinion by state Attorney General Douglas Gansler saying out-of-state same-sex marriages appear to have full legal standing under Maryland law has drawn the ire of conservative members of the state legislature.
Officials with Equality Maryland have hailed Gansler’s Feb. 24 opinion as an important breakthrough in efforts to bring about same-sex marriage equality in the state. But Equality Maryland Executive Director Morgan Meneses-Sheets acknowledged that the Gansler opinion has stirred up anti-gay groups and lawmakers who are mobilizing to block a same-sex marriage equality bill that activists hope to persuade the legislature to pass in 2011.
Meanwhile, Equality Maryland and other LGBT groups are studying the Gansler opinion and the response by Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley to determine what, if any, marital rights and benefits same-sex couples in Maryland can realize in their home state if they marry in other jurisdictions, including D.C.
Gansler has said his opinion was based on a careful legal analysis showing that most lawful marriages from other states — including same-sex marriages — are recognized under Maryland law. But he noted that the state’s high court would have to make the final decision on same-sex marriage recognition if opponents challenge state agencies that provide marital rights and benefits to gay couples.
District of Columbia
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
‘This is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS’
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on March 20 signed a bill approved by the D.C. Council that requires health insurance companies to cover the costs of HIV prevention or PrEP drugs for D.C. residents at risk for HIV infection.
Like all legislation approved by the Council and signed by the mayor, the bill, called the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act, was sent to Capitol Hill for a required 30-day congressional review period before it takes effect as D.C. law.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) last year introduced the bill.
Insurance coverage for PrEP drugs has been provided through coverage standards included in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But AIDS advocacy organizations have called on states and D.C. to pass their own legislation requiring insurance coverage of PrEP as a safeguard in case federal policies are weakened or removed by the Trump administration, which has already reduced federal funding for HIV/AIDS-related programs.
Like legislation passed by other states, the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act requires insurers to cover all PrEP drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Studies have shown that PrEP drugs, which can be taken as pills or by injection just twice a year, are highly effective in preventing HIV infection.
“I think this is a win for our community,” Parker said after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the bill on its first vote on the measure in February. “And this is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
District of Columbia
Blade editor to be inducted into D.C. Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame
Kevin Naff marks 24 years with publication this year
Longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff will be inducted into D.C.’s Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame in June, the group announced this week.
Hall of Fame honorees are chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter. Naff and two other inductees — Seth Borenstein, a Washington-based national science writer for the AP and Cheryl W. Thompson, an award-winning correspondent for National Public Radio — will be celebrated at the chapter’s Dateline Awards dinner on Tuesday, June 9, at the National Press Club. The dinner’s emcee will be Kojo Nnamdi, host of WAMU radio’s weekly “Politics Hour.”
“I am tremendously honored by this recognition,” Naff said. “I have spent a lifetime in the D.C. area learning from so many talented journalists and am humbled to be considered in their company. Thank you to SPJ and to all the LGBTQ pioneers who came before me who made this possible.”
Naff joined the Blade in 2002 after years in print and digital journalism. He worked as a financial reporter for Reuters in New York before moving to Baltimore in 1996 to launch the Baltimore Sun’s website. He spent four years at the Sun before leaving for an internet startup and later joining the mobile data group at Verizon Wireless working on the first generation of mobile apps.
He then moved to the Blade and has served as the publication’s longest-tenured editor. In 2023, Naff published his first book, “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality — And How Our Enemies Could Take It All Away.”
Previous Hall of Fame inductees include luminaries in journalism like Wolf Blitzer, Benjamin Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, and Edgar Allen Poe. The Blade’s senior news reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. was inducted in 2015.
Maryland
Supreme Court ruling against conversion therapy bans could affect Md. law
Then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed statute in 2018
By PAMELA WOOD, JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV, and MADELEINE O’NEILL | The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ kids in Colorado, a ruling that also could apply to Maryland’s ban on the discredited practice.
An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide whether it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s majority, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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