Local
Bowser names lesbian activist as head of GLBT Affairs Office
Media professional Alexander-Reid joins the administration
Sheila Alexander-Reid (Photo by Ron Simms, Jr.)
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on Thursday named veteran lesbian activist and media professional Sheila Alexander-Reid as director of the Mayor’s Office of GLBT Affairs.
Alexander-Reid becomes the third openly gay or lesbian cabinet-level official that Bowser has appointed so far to her administration, which began when the new mayor took office on Jan. 2.
As an activist involved in the local community for many years, Alexander-Reid is well known to the city’s LGBT community leaders and activists.
She most recently worked as Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at the Washington Blade. Prior to joining the Blade last year, Alexander-Reid worked as Director of Strategic Engagement for the Washington City Paper. Both positions involved marketing, advertising sales and community outreach duties.
Alexander-Reid is the founder and former executive director of Women in the Life Association, a social justice organization advocating for lesbians of color. She has also served as producer and host of Inside Out, the D.C. area’s only LGBT radio show, which has aired on WPFW FM. She served as vice president of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the city’s largest LGBT political group, from 2008 to 2011.
“We’re sorry to see her go,” said Blade publisher Lynne Brown, “but we know she’ll do terrific work for the city under Mayor Bowser and we wish her the best in this important new role.”
In December, Bowser named lesbian housing and services-for-the-homeless expert Polly Donaldson as director of the D.C. Department of Housing and Community Development. Bowser named Matt Brown, who served as director of the D.C. Department of Transportation under Mayor Vincent Gray and who’s gay, as director of the Mayor’s Office of the Budget.
She has also named several other LGBT people to middle-level positions in her administration, prompting some familiar with the mayor’s office to say Bowser is expected to surpass Mayor Gray in making the most LGBT mayoral appointments of any D.C. mayor.
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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