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Russia boycott calls divide LGBT activists

Group protested country’s gay rights record outside Russian embassy in D.C.

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Russia, anti-gay, gay news, Washington Blade
Russia, anti-gay, gay news, Washington Blade

Protesters gathered outside of the Russian Embassy on Wednesday, July 31, 2013. (Washington Blade photo by Damien Salas)

LGBT rights advocates remain divided over calls to boycott the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia and Russian vodka in response to the country’s gay rights record.

Author Dan Savage, LGBT rights advocate Cleve Jones and the group Queer Nation last week launched the “Dump Russian Vodka” campaign that calls for a boycott of Stoli, Russian Standard and other Russian vodka brands. The campaign also urges the U.S. and other countries to boycott the 2014 Winter Olympics that will take place in Sochi, Russia, in February.

“Do not drink Russian vodka,” Savage said in an op-ed in the Stranger, a weekly newspaper in Seattle, published on July 24. “Do not buy Russian vodka. Ask your bartender at your favorite bar — gay or otherwise — to DUMP STOLI and DUMP RUSSIAN VODKA.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent weeks signed a broadly worded law that bans the promotion of so-called gay propaganda to minors and a statute that bans foreign same-sex couples and any couple from a country in which gays and lesbians can legally marry from adopting Russian children. LGBT rights groups are among those that face fines under a law that requires non-governmental organizations that receive funding from outside Russia to register as a “foreign agent.”

About a dozen LGBT rights advocates gathered in front of the Russian embassy in Northwest D.C. to protest the country’s anti-LGBT rights record on Wednesday.

Larry Poltavtsev of Spectrum Human Rights was among those who attended.

“We’re here today to protest LGBT human rights violations in Russia,” he said.

The anti-gay laws have come into effect against the backdrop of increasing anti-LGBT discrimination and violence in Russia.

Two men in the southern Russia city of Volgograd and on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the country’s Far East have been killed in recent months during what local authorities have described as anti-gay attacks.

Police in St. Petersburg on June 29 arrested 40 LGBT activists and a handful of nationalists who confronted them during a gay rights rally. Authorities in the Russian capital in May arrested 30 LGBT rights advocates who tried to stage a Pride celebration outside Moscow City Hall.

Authorities in the city of Murmansk on July 21 took into custody four Dutch LGBT rights advocates who were filming a documentary about gay life in Russia. A St. Petersburg appellate court on July 25 overturned a lower court’s ruling that fined Coming Out, a local LGBT advocacy group, 500,000 rubles or slightly more than $15,202 for violating the “foreign agent” law.

Russian advocate: Boycott will have no effect

Gay bars in Seattle, Chicago, London and other cities have already begun to remove Stoli and other Russian products from their shelves. Gay City News reported a handful of ACT UP members protested a Stoli event at a gay bar in New York City on Tuesday night.

Gay bars in D.C. have thus far not indicated they will participate in the boycott.

Cobalt had been scheduled to host a Stoli-sponsored event for the website GayCities on Thursday, but the company postponed it.

The company did not return the Blade’s request for comment.

Val Mendeleev, CEO of SPI Group, Stoli’s parent company, said in a July 25 statement from Luxembourg the Russian government does not own the brand. He acknowledged the vodka contains Russian ingredients, but it is distilled in a factory in neighboring Latvia.

Mendeleev further pointed out SPI Group has supported a number of pro-LGBT groups and initiatives. These include Pride celebrations in South Africa and Austria and its “Most Original Stoli Guy” partnership with Gaycities.com.

“Stoli firmly opposes such attitude and actions,” Mendeleev said in response to growing concerns over Russia’s gay rights record. “As a company that encourages transparency and fairness, we are upset and angry.”

Nikolai Alekseev of Gay Russia, an LGBT advocacy group, told the Washington Blade from Moscow on Tuesday he feels a boycott of Russian vodka will “not have an effect.”

“The real target of this protest should be the politicians who are behind these initiatives,” he said.

Actor and playwright Harvey Fierstein called for a Sochi boycott in an op-ed the New York Times published on July 21.

Gay Olympic diver Greg Louganis, who was unable to compete in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow because then-President Jimmy Carter boycotted them over the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan the year before, told Frank Bruni of the New York Times on July 28 that he feels athletes should have the opportunity to compete in Sochi in spite of Russia’s LGBT rights record. Retired tennis champion Martina Navratilova; the LGBT advocacy groups All Out and Athlete Ally and Cyd Zeigler, Jr., co-founder of OutSports, are among those who also oppose a boycott of the Sochi games.

“We want to encourage and support athletics, particularly the Olympics, and feel that a boycott would only hurt the athletes,” Hudson Taylor, executive director of Athlete Ally, told the Blade on Tuesday. “We understand the rationale behind a boycott, but are also cognizant that our call for a boycott could result in negative ramifications and backlash for regional LGBT and ally organizations in Russia.”

State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki on July 26 said the U.S. does not support calls to boycott the Sochi Olympics.

“That’s certainly not what we’re calling for,” she told reporters during her daily briefing in response to the Blade’s question about Russia’s LGBT rights record.

Gay athlete to wear rainbow pin in Sochi

Blake Skjellerup, a gay short track speed skater from New Zealand who plans to compete in Sochi in spite of the calls to boycott the games, last week announced he will wear a gay Pride pin during the Olympics.

He stressed to the Blade his decision is “not about defiance.”

“Wearing a Pride pin is about humanity and unity,” Skjellerup said. “It’s about representing something that is very important to me, and standing up for those who cannot stand up or help themselves.”

The Human Rights Campaign said in a July 24 letter to NBC Universal that the network has “a unique opportunity — and a responsibility — to expose” what it described as the “inhumane and unjust” anti-gay propaganda law during its coverage of the Sochi games. Mark Lazarus, chair of NBC’s sports group, deflected questions about his network’s potential coverage of Russia’s LGBT rights record during a presentation at the Television Critics Association gathering in New York City over the weekend.

The International Olympic Committee has assured gay athletes and others who travel to Sochi that authorities will not arrest them under the Russia’s anti-gay propaganda law. Vitaly Milonov, a St. Petersburg lawmaker behind the city’s gay propaganda to minors ban that took effect in 2012, told the Interfax news agency on Tuesday he has not heard of any plans to suspend the national statute during the games.

“If a law has been approved by the federal legislature and signed by the president, then the government has no right to suspend it,” Milonov said, according to Gay Star News. “It doesn’t have the authority.”

Officials urged to ban Russian lawmakers from U.S.

Alekseev and other Russian LGBT rights advocates have launched a petition on the White House’s website that urges the U.S. to ban Milonov and Elena Mizulina, a Russian Parliamentarian who co-sponsored the national gay propaganda ban, from entering the country. It has received 4,775 signatures as of late on July 30.

“This is the way forward because these people are the real people behind the homophobic legislation,” Alekseev told the Blade.

 

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Delaware

Vote to enshrine same-sex marriage in state constitution fails in Delaware

‘General Assembly turned its back on the people of this state’

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State Sen. Russ Huxtable (D-07) introduced the measure to enshrine same-sex and interracial marriage rights in the Delaware Constitution. (Washington Blade file photo by Daniel Truitt)

The Delaware General Assembly on Tuesday failed to pass Senate Bill 100 (SB-100), an amendment that would add protections for same-sex and interracial marriage to the Delaware Constitution. 

In order for the bill to pass, 28 out of 41 members needed to vote ‘yes,’ meaning all 27 Democrats and one Republican needed to vote in favor of the bill. 

Rep. Eric Morrison (D-27) told the Blade that an anonymous Republican member agreed to vote in favor prior to the vote but ultimately did not follow through on that promise.

“It’s a shame,” said Rep. Morrison, who’s gay. He explained the difficult nature of passing this amendment with only three legislative days remaining in this session. 

The bill needs to receive a two-thirds majority vote in two different sessions and the current two-year long session ends on July 1. Thus, if the bill does not pass before July 1, it will take a minimum of three years to pass the amendment. 

The bill was introduced by State Sen. Russ Huxtable (D-07) on June 5, 2025. 

Rep. Josue Ortega (D-03) was one of two Democrats to not vote in favor of the bill, voting ‘no.’ Rep. Ortega has not responded to the Blade’s request for comment. 

Rep. Madinah Wilson-Anton (D-27) was the other Democrat missing from the ‘yes’ votes. She did not vote on the bill. 

Sponsor of the measure, Rep. Claire Snyder-Hall (D-14), made a technical decision to reverse her vote from a ‘yes’ to a ‘no’ last-minute in order to keep the bill alive. 

In a Facebook post, Rep. Snyder-Hall said that, “The General Assembly turned its back on the people of this state.”

“When we had the chance to add an extra layer of protection from attempts to turn back the clock and strip our constituents of the rights that Democrats fought for decades to secure, we failed,” said Snyder-Hall. 

However, Snyder-Hall said that the failure to pass this bill is not the end. “There are still three legislative days left in the 153rd General Assembly and I am hopeful that we will be able to get the votes required to pass this incredibly basic — but important — bill.” 

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New York

Judge blocks DOJ from obtaining transgender patients’ medical records

Advocacy groups sued White House

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Protesters pushed for protections for transgender children’s right to healthcare outside the D.C. Attorney General’s office in 2025. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

A judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has granted a request from multiple transgender people for a temporary restraining order, blocking the disclosure of plaintiffs’ and class members’ medical information to the Justice Department.

Judge Katherine Polk Failla approved the Temporary Restraining Order and Provisional Class Certification, preventing any further information from being provided to the Trump-led DOJ.

The medical data was requested through subpoenas issued by the Trump-Vance administration’s DOJ to multiple hospitals in New York City — most notably NYU Langone — which halted its Transgender Youth Health Program in May following a federal push to stop providing trans minors with gender-affirming care.

In May 2026, NYU Langone Hospitals received a subpoena from a federal grand jury in Fort Worth, Texas, demanding that the hospitals turn over the identities and sensitive health information of any patient who had received medical treatment for gender dysphoria while under the age of 18 at NYU Langone between January 2020 and May 2026.

Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit, “Coe, et al. v. Blanche, et al.,” against the Trump-Vance administration on behalf of three families with trans youth and two trans young adults who were minors when they began care, in June 2026.

The lawsuit requests a temporary restraining order blocking the DOJ from violating the patients’ constitutional privacy rights by obtaining identifying and sensitive health information as part of its investigation into unspecified health offenses. The DOJ issued subpoenas to NYU Langone and other similar healthcare institutions in New York City, including Mount Sinai, that provide or have provided gender-affirming medical care to trans minors. All plaintiffs have filed under pseudonyms to maintain their privacy and anonymity.

Multiple leaders of organizations that helped push for the restraining order provided quotes about the ongoing situation and what it means for the fight for trans children’s access to healthcare in the U.S.

“Today’s order from the court is a victory for the basic privacy of our clients and all families like theirs across New York City. It is no secret that this administration will use every lever in its power to attack transgender people and fulfill its misguided goal to ‘end’ gender-affirming medical care — care that is legal and protected in New York State. Using subpoenas to attain the identities and sensitive health information of transgender young people to effectuate such goals should send chills down the spine of every American. Our laws and our Constitution recognize that we all have a right to confidentiality about the most intimate and private information about ourselves,” said Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, senior counsel and health care strategist at Lambda Legal. “Whether a young person receives any type of medical care is a decision for that patient, their family, and their doctor, not for political appointees to decide, interfere with, or know. The government cannot abuse its powers to violate the constitutional rights of transgender young people and their families. It is an enormous relief for these families that the court has stopped them from doing so as this case proceeds.”

“We’re thankful the court has granted our emergency request to protect the privacy interests of transgender New Yorkers and their families,” said Chase Strangio, co-director of the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Rights Project. “Patients and families trust their doctors with their most intimate, private information and should trust in turn that this information will be protected from impermissible and harassing demands for disclosure from the federal government or anyone else. For the past year, the Trump administration has not only decided that it knows better than these families and their doctors what their medical needs are, but has also sought to obtain troves of sensitive information about patients in New York. We will continue to fight on behalf of these families and the fundamental liberty of all transgender New Yorkers and those who come here to seek needed medical care.”

“New York’s laws recognize that transgender youth deserve fundamental privacy protections for their sensitive medical records and unobstructed access to the care they need,” said Bobby Hodgson, deputy legal director at the New York Civil Liberties Union. “As the Trump administration tries to bully transgender youth, scare families, and intimidate healthcare providers into dropping their patients, we’re thankful the court found these tactics are likely unconstitutional and put a stop to them here in New York.”

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Federal Government

Trump holds housing bill hostage to anti-trans SAVE Act

President’s SAVE Act failed in the Senate

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People protesting the restrictive and anti-trans SAVE Act in March. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

President Donald Trump is refusing to sign a new bipartisan housing bill unless his SAVE Act is approved by the legislative branch.

The bill being prevented from being enacted into law is the “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act.” The legislation is an attempt by Congress to make buying a home in the U.S. Senate more affordable in response to various factors — including housing shortages and regulatory constraints — that have made homeownership increasingly difficult. The total number of homeowners has nearly stopped growing, with high interest rates and surging home prices pushing more Americans toward renting.

The housing bill was considered highly bipartisan, something that is rare in this Congress. The House voted to pass the bill 358-32 on Tuesday after the Senate approved the measure 85-5 a day earlier. The legislation was led by U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.) in the Senate and U.S. Reps. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and French Hill (R-Ark.) in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Some of the highlights of the legislation are aimed at increasing the supply of affordable housing while making homeownership more accessible. The bill would streamline environmental reviews and direct the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to provide guidance to communities on reforming zoning and land-use policies that can create barriers to housing development.

The legislation would also expand the definition of “manufactured housing,” making it cheaper and easier to mass-produce homes built in factories before being transported to their sites. To encourage additional development, the bill would provide grants and loans for the construction of new housing, the rehabilitation of aging properties, and the conversion of vacant buildings into residential units. It would also increase certain banks’ Public Welfare Investment cap, allowing them to direct more capital toward low-income and affordable housing projects.

In an effort to help more Americans purchase homes, the legislation would create a program to expand access to small-dollar mortgages, which are often used to finance lower-cost homes, while also seeking to improve housing opportunities for veterans. The bill would further promote homeownership by limiting the number of single-family homes that large institutional investors can own and requiring them to disclose how many such properties they control, a measure intended to prioritize American families over corporate buyers.

The bill the president wants enacted — the SAVE Act — is a restrictive and anti-transgender piece of proposed legislation.

The bill would impose a number of new limitations on voter registration across the country by amending the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to require in-person proof of citizenship for anyone seeking to vote in U.S. elections. The bill would also limit acceptable forms of identification to documents such as a birth certificate or passport — records that the Brennan Center for Justice estimates more than 21 million Americans do not possess — effectively restricting access to the ballot. It would also ban online voter registration, DMV voter registration efforts, and mail-in voter registration.

Trump pushed for the SAVE Act to include a provision that would ban gender-affirming medical care for trans minors, even with parental consent, and prohibit trans people from participating in school or professional sports consistent with their gender identity rather than their sex assigned at birth.

Trump also pressed Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) to eliminate the filibuster so the Republican-controlled Congress could pass the SAVE Act, saying Republicans will never win another election without it.

It is expected that Congress will override the president’s veto and pass the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, as it requires a two-thirds supermajority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate — a threshold the legislation currently exceeds.

It is not expected that the SAVE Act will pass the Senate in its current form. It passed the House, but every Democrat and four Republicans voted against it in the Senate.

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