Local
A home for Norman
D.C. couple finalizes family in ‘Adoption Day’ program
Chad Copeland, Scooter Ward and their son, Norman Moore with Judge Noel Johnson at an adoption day proceeding last weekend in D.C. Superior Court. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Norman Moore loves “Dora the Explorer,” playing Legos and macaroni and cheese.
“Give him those, and he’d be just fine,” his dad, Chad Copeland, says.
His other dad, Scooter Ward, calls Norman, 5, “quite an actor” and “a big ham.”
He also, “likes to be a teacher,” Ward says. “Loves to show you how to do something.”
The three of them, together since Norman was placed with them as a foster son in January 2011, became a permanent family unit last weekend when Judge Lee Satterfield of D.C. Superior Court signed their adoption decree. Of the 34 children adopted last weekend in D.C., five were to gay male couples.
“It’s ceremonial but also a legal proceeding,” Copeland, 36, a D.C. assistant attorney general, says. “Each family and child is called up and you go up with any close friends or family you have with you and a small speech is made.”
Ward says it was an emotional end to a very long process.
“I was kind of thinking beforehand, ‘Oh, it’s no big deal, he’s been with us almost two years, blah blah blah, but then about an hour into it, I started to get pretty emotional,” he says. “I started to really think about how long the journey has been and even though it’s been relatively smooth in a lot of ways, it’s also been very hard in some ways as well. There were many points along the way where things came up that could have changed the outcome, so knowing we’ve overcome all that was really amazing.”
For his part, Norman, who calls Copeland “Dad” and Ward “Pops,” says he was “happy when the lady called my name.” He also says he “got lots of goodies.”
Copeland and Ward have a D.C. domestic partnership. They met at a Human Rights Campaign fundraiser in Dallas, where they formerly lived (though neither are from Texas). They’ve been together almost seven years and have lived together about five years. After starting their relationship in Texas, Ward moved to Washington for a job in 2006. Copeland followed in 2007. Copeland is adopted himself, so they talked fairly early in their relationship about the possibility of adopting.
Working with D.C.’s Child and Family Services Agency, the couple took a licensing course and within about four months, Norman came to live with them. He had been born in D.C. but the couple declines to go into details about his biological family or situation.
“He was just a pretty normal kid who was in a situation where he could not be cared for the way he needed to be,” Copeland says.
Although there were some long nights and an inevitable adjustment period for everyone, the couple says for the most part, it “just clicked.”
“We were extremely tired,” Ward says. “We’d both been kind of extreme night owls before and we’d suddenly have family and friends calling us at, like, 10 at night and we’d be ready for bed … but in many ways it was a very organic change.”
Ward, 35, took a few weeks off from his job as a project manager for a D.C.-based software company, but Norman had already been in preschool, so neither parent had to give up his career.
Both say their being gay was never an issue in the adoption.
Copeland says he knew from his legal work — he’d worked on cases involving anti-gay Maryland minister Rev. Harry Jackson who’d sued the District — that D.C.’s Human Rights Act of 1977 is solid.
“I fully understood the breadth of protection that exists within the law,” he says. “I didn’t anticipate a problem and we never once had a single problem.”
Ward says he was bracing himself just in case.
“As a bi-racial gay couple, I kind of expected there to be a different layer there or something, some level of strife, but we never had any problems at all. It was almost a bit of a let down — I wanted to be advocate for something, but that says a lot of great things about where we live that it wasn’t.”
There was a chance early on, that Norman may have returned to his biological family.
“That’s usually the initial goal in a foster care situation,” Copeland says. “It would have been very hard because he really is just the sweetest little boy and it was very easy to just get so attached to him. There were certainly moments where we may never have made it to adoption, but our social workers were always there to help us understand the next steps.”
The couple praises the D.C. staff they worked with throughout — social workers LaTasha McKinley and Sarah McDonald and also Mallory Martin of the Children’s Law Center who acted on Norman’s behalf.
It all sounds so perfect — surely there were some struggles for the new family, right?
The couple says the hardest part was the element of so much being unknown at the outset.
“We were just foster parents for a long time,” Ward says. “We had no idea what the next court hearing could bring. There was a lot of pandering and stress and emotion and I don’t want to discount that. There’s a lot of emotion tied to it.”
But it did all work out. The family is in Dallas this week for Thanksgiving with Ward’s family. Copeland is in his native Louisiana and both say their respective parents were quick to welcome Norman as a grandchild.
“He does everything here he’s not allowed to do at home, which is just how it should be at your grandparents’ house,” Ward says with a chuckle.
On Tuesday this week, Norman spent the day hanging out with “Nana,” Ward’s mother. This wasn’t his first plane ride, Copeland has to remind him. His favorite time in Texas so far has been playing with his cousin, Erica. They’ll have Thanksgiving dinner Thursday at Uncle Tim’s.
Since same-sex marriage is legal in Washington, the couple may eventually wed. They have no immediate plans to, though, and say that wasn’t an issue in the process nor would it have been had they been a straight couple.
Norman is in kindergarten and attends a charter school in D.C.
The couple says he’s doing great overall and they’re often amused by, as Ward puts it, his “amazing level of innocence.”
“He’s very happy to have a home,” Copeland says. “He loves us and is a very sweet and happy boy. Happy is the right word in some ways, but it’s also an insufficient word because there are so many more emotions attached to it. You realize you’ve contributed to something bigger. This little boy had so many obstacles in his path. It’s all just sort of humbling and overwhelming at the same time.”
District of Columbia
D.C. Council member proposes change for Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs
Parker also seeks increased funding for LGBTQ programs in FY 2025 budget
D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5), the Council’s only LGBTQ member, has asked his fellow Council members to support a proposal to change the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs to become a “stand-alone entity outside the Executive Office of the Mayor to allow for greater transparency and accountability that reflects its evolution over the years.”
In an April 30 letter to each of his 12 fellow Council members, Parker said he plans to introduce an amendment to the city’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Support Act to make this change for the LGBTQ Affairs Office.
His letter also calls for adding to the city’s FY 2025 budget two specific funding proposals that local LGBTQ activists submitted to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser that the mayor did not include in her budget proposal submitted to the Council. One calls for $1.5 million to fund the completion of the build out and renovation for the D.C. Center for the LGBTQ Community’s new building in the city’s Shaw neighborhood and $300,000 in subsequent years to support the LGBTQ Center’s operations.
Parker’s second budget proposal calls for what he said was about $450,000 to fund 20 additional dedicated LGBTQ housing vouchers as part of the city’s existing program to provide emergency housing support for LGBTQ residents and other residents facing homelessness.
“The Office of LGBTQ+ Affairs currently manages about 90 vouchers across various programs and needs,” Parker said in his letter to fellow Council members. “Adding an additional 20 vouchers will cost roughly $450,000,” he wrote, adding that dedicated vouchers “play a crucial role in ensuring LGBTQ+ residents of the District can navigate the complex process of securing housing placements.”
In her proposed FY ’25 budget, Bowser calls for a 7.6 percent increase in funding for the Office of LGBTQ Affairs, which amounts to an increase of $132,000, bringing the office’s total funding to $1.7 million.
“To be clear, I support the strong work and current leadership of the Office of LGBTQ+ Affairs,” Parker says in his letter to fellow Council members. “This push for change is in recognition of the office’s notable achievements and the significant demands being placed on it, which require a greater level of accountability.”
Parker told the Blade in an April 30 telephone interview that he believes Japer Bowles, the current director of the Office of L|GBTQ Affairs is doing an excellent job in operating the office, but he believes the office would be able to do more for the LGBTQ community under the change he is proposing.
“Making it a stand-alone office versus it being clustered within the Community Affairs division of the mayor’s office, it will get more attention,” Parker told the Blade. “The leadership will have greater flexibility to advocate for the interest of LGBTQ residents, And we will be able to conduct greater oversight of the office,” he said, referring to the Council’s oversight process.
Parker noted that other community constituent offices in the mayor’s office, including the Office of Latino Affairs and the Office of Veterans Affairs are stand-alone offices that he hopes to bring about for the LGBTQ Affairs Office. He said Council member Brianne Nadeau, who chairs the Council committee that has oversight for the LGBTQ Affairs Office, has expressed support for his proposal.
Also expressing support for Parker’s proposal to make the LGBTQ Affairs Office a stand-alone office is the D.C. Advisory Neighborhood Commission Rainbow Caucus. Vincent Slatt, the caucus’s chairperson, submitted testimony last week before the D.C. Council Committee on Public Works and Operations, which is chaired by Nadeau, calling for making the LGBTQ Affairs Office a stand-alone office outside the Executive Office of the Mayor.
Slatt also stated in his testimony that the office has a “chronic staffing shortage” and recommended that at least three additional staff members be assigned to the office.
Daniel Gleick, the mayor’s press secretary, told the Blade the mayor’s office is reviewing Parker’s budget proposals, including the proposed change for the Office of LGBTQ Affairs.
Rehoboth Beach
Former CAMP Rehoboth official sentenced to nine months in prison
Salvator Seeley pleaded guilty to felony theft charge for embezzlement
Salvator “Sal” Seeley, who served as an official with the Rehoboth Beach, Del., CAMP Rehoboth LGBTQ community center for 20 years, was sentenced on April 5 by a Sussex County Superior Court judge to nine months in prison and to pay $176,000 in restitution to the organization.
The sentencing took place about five weeks after Seeley pleaded guilty to a charge of Theft in Excess of $50,000 for allegedly embezzling funds from CAMP Rehoboth, a spokesperson for the Delaware Department of Justice told the Washington Blade.
Seeley’s guilty plea came shortly after a grand jury, at the request of prosecutors, indicted him on the felony theft charge following an investigation that found he had embezzled at least $176,000 from the nonprofit LGBTQ organization.
“Salvatore C. Seeley, between the 27th day of February 2019 and the 7th day of September 2021, in the County of Sussex, State of Delaware, did take property belonging to CAMP Rehoboth, Inc., consisting of United States currency and other miscellaneous property valued at more than $50,000, intending to appropriate the same,” the indictment states.
“The State recommended a sentence of two years of incarceration based on the large-scale theft and the impact to the non-profit organization,” Delaware Department of Justice spokesperson Caroline Harrison told the Blade in a statement.
“The defense cited Seeley’s lack of a record and gambling addiction in arguing for a probationary sentence,” the statement says. “Seeley was sentenced in Superior Court to a nine-month prison term and to pay a total of $176,000 in restitution for the stolen funds,” Harrison says in the statement.
Neither Seeley nor his attorney could immediately be reached for comment.
At the time of Seeley’s indictment in February, CAMP Rehoboth released a statement saying it first discovered “financial irregularities” within the organization on Sept. 7, 2021, “and took immediate action and notified state authorities.” The statement says this resulted in the investigation of Seeley by the state Department of Justice as well as an internal investigation by CAMP Rehoboth to review its “financial control policies” that led to an updating of those policies.
“As we have communicated from day one, CAMP Rehoboth has fully cooperated with law enforcement,” the statement continues. “At its request, we did not speak publicly about the investigation while it was ongoing for fear it would jeopardize its integrity,” according to the statement. “This was extremely difficult given our commitment to transparency with the community about day-to-day operations during the recent leadership transition.”
The statement was referring to Kim Leisey, who began her job as CAMP Rehoboth’s new executive director in July of 2023, while the Seeley investigation had yet to be completed, following the organization’s process of searching for a new director. It says Seeley left his job as Health and Wellness Director of CAMP Rehoboth in September of 2021 after working for the organization for more than 20 years.
“Mr. Seeley’s actions are a deep betrayal to not only CAMP Rehoboth but also the entire community we serve,” the statement says.
Maryland
Christian Siriano to serve as grand marshal of Annapolis Pride Parade
Fashion designer is an Annapolis native
BY JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV | He’s conquered fashion week. His designs have slayed the red carpet during award season. And now Christian Siriano is coming home.
The Annapolis native will serve as grand marshal and keynote speaker June 1 for the annual Annapolis Pride Parade and Festival, which is a major coup as the event enters its fourth year.
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
D.C. Council member proposes change for Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs
United Methodist Church removes 40-year ban on gay clergy
Republican state AGs challenge Biden administration’s revised Title IX policies
University students have a right to protest
Former CAMP Rehoboth official sentenced to nine months in prison
Md. governor signs Freedom to Read Act
HHS reverses Trump-era anti-LGBTQ rule
4th Circuit rules gender identity is a protected characteristic
PHOTOS: Capital Pride Pageant
