News
Ros-Lehtinen meets LGBT activists from Russia, former Soviet republics
Florida Republican sat down with three advocates on Wednesday
Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (left) meets with LGBT rights advocates from Russia, Ukraine and Georgia in D.C. on Sept. 18. (Photo courtesy of Alex Cruz)
Florida Congresswoman and pro-LGBT Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen on Wednesday met with gay rights advocates from Russia, Ukraine and Georgia.
Igor Kochetkov of the Russian LGBT rights group Sphere, Gay Alliance Ukraine Director Taras Karasiichuk and Anna Rekhviashvili of the Georgian advocacy organization Identoba met with the lawmaker in the Rayburn Room of the U.S. Capitol. The three activists, who traveled to the United States for the first time, were in D.C. to take part in an LGBT civil and human rights training sponsored by the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program.
“During my meetings with these brave LGBT activists, I impressed upon them my firm belief that they must continue their work for equal rights and that I have supported them every step of the way,” Ros-Lehtinen told the Washington Blade on Friday.
Kochetkov was one of the LGBT advocates who met with President Obama earlier this month during the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg. The activist told the Blade he was pleased the meeting took place, but claimed Obama said he couldn’t make human rights a priority in U.S.-Russia relations.
Kochetkov said he disagreed with that sentiment.
Countries’ LGBT rights records sparks concern
Ros-Lehtinen’s meeting with the three activists comes against the backdrop of ongoing concern and outrage over anti-LGBT discrimination and persecution Russia, Georgia and Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in June signed a bill into law that bans gay propaganda to minors. A second statute that prohibits same-sex couples and anyone else from a country in which same-sex couples are allowed to marry from adopting Russian children took effect in July.
The aforementioned laws and growing outrage over the Kremlin’s ongoing LGBT crackdown threatens to overshadow the 2014 Winter Olympics that will take place in Sochi, Russia, in February.
Thousands of people in May attacked a few dozen Georgian LGBT rights advocates who tried to stage a rally in Tbilisi the country’s capital, to commemorate the annual International Day Against Homophobia. Identoba Executive Director Irakli Vacharadze told the Washington Blade before the IDAHO march that violence against gays and lesbians in the former Soviet republic remains a serious concern.
Russian police on May 25 arrested 30 LGBT rights advocates who tried to stage a Pride celebration outside Moscow City Hall.
Dozens of advocates on the same day held Ukraine’s first gay rights rally in the country’s capital, Kiev, in spite of an earlier court ruling that banned it. U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Tefft is among those who supported the march.
“It’s increasingly difficult for LGBT individuals in Russia, Georgia and Ukraine to live openly and authentically due to the repressive governments that continue to advance policies that are hostile and discriminatory,” Ros-Lehtinen told the Blade. “These folks just want to live normal lives with their loved ones, but the governments of these nations are either physically harassing them or intimidating them through the legislative process. Responsible nations should condemn these actions and relate to these governments that equality should be for all their citizens and that these human rights abuses will not be tolerated.”
Ros-Lehtinen’s meeting with Kochetkov, Karasiichuk and Rekhviashvili also took place less than two months after she met with Cuban LGBT rights advocates Wendy Iriepa Díaz and Ignacio Estrada Cepero in her Capitol Hill office. The Cuban-born Republican who supports marriage rights for same-sex couples also co-sponsored a bill that Wisconsin Congressman Mark Pocan and U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) introduced on Thursday that would ensure gay federal employees would have access to employee benefits for their same-sex partners even if they are not legally married.
Iran
Grenell: ‘Real hope’ for gay rights in Iran as result of nationwide protests
Former ambassador to Germany claimed he has sneaked ‘gays and lesbians out of’ country
Richard Grenell, the presidential envoy for special missions of the United States, said on X on Tuesday that he has helped “sneak gays and lesbians out of Iran” and is seeing a change in attitudes in the country.
The post, which now has more than 25,000 likes since its uploading, claims that attitudes toward gays and lesbians are shifting amid massive economic protests across the country.
“For the first time EVER, someone has said ‘I want to wait just a bit,” the former U.S. ambassador to Germany wrote. “There is real hope coming from the inside. I don’t think you can stop this now.”
Grenell has been a longtime supporter of the president.
“Richard Grenell is a fabulous person, A STAR,” Trump posted on Truth Social days before his official appointment to the ambassador role. “He will be someplace, high up! DJT”
Iran, which is experiencing demonstrations across all 31 provinces of the country — including in Tehran, the capital — started as a result of a financial crisis causing the collapse of its national currency. Time magazine credits this uprising after the U.N. re-imposed sanctions in September over the country’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.
As basic necessities like bread, rice, meat, and medical supplies become increasingly unaffordable to the majority of the more than 90 million people living there, citizens took to the streets to push back against Iran’s theocratic regime.
Grenell, who was made president and executive director of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts last year by Trump, believes that people in the majority Shiite Muslim country are also beginning to protest human rights abuses.
Iran is among only a handful of countries in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain punishable by death, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Virginia
Mark Levine loses race to succeed Adam Ebbin in ‘firehouse’ Democratic primary
State Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker won with 70.6 percent of vote
Gay former Virginia House of Delegates member Mark Levine (D-Alexandria) lost his race to become the Democratic nominee to replace gay state Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria) in a Jan. 13 “firehouse” Democratic primary.
Levine finished in second place in the hastily called primary, receiving 807 votes or 17.4 percent. The winner in the four-candidate race, state Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker, who was endorsed by both Ebbin and Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger received 3,281 votes or 70.6 percent.
Ebbin, whose 39th Senate District includes Alexandria and parts of Arlington and Fairfax Counties, announced on Jan. 7 that he was resigning effective Feb. 18, to take a job in the Spanberger administration as senior advisor at the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority.
Results of the Jan. 13 primary, which was called by Democratic Party leaders in Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax, show that candidates Charles Sumpter, a World Wildlife Fund director, finished in third place with 321 voters or 6.9 percent; and Amy Jackson, the former Alexandria vice mayor, finished in fourth place with 238 votes or 5.1 percent.
Bennett-Parker, who LGBTQ community advocates consider a committed LGBTQ ally, will now compete as the Democratic nominee in a Feb. 10 special election in which registered voters in the 39th District of all political parties and independents will select Ebbin’s replacement in the state senate.
The Alexandria publication ALX Now reports that local realtor Julie Robben Linebery has been selected by the Alexandria Republican City Committee to be the GOP candidate to compete in the Jan. 10 special election. According to ALX Now, Lineberry was the only application to run in a now cancelled special party caucus type event initially called to select the GOP nominees.
It couldn’t immediately be determined if an independent or other party candidate planned to run in the special election.
Bennett-Parker is considered the strong favorite to win the Feb. 10 special election in the heavily Democratic 39th District, where Democrat Ebbin has served as senator since 2012.
Congress
Van Hollen speaks at ‘ICE Out for Good’ protest in D.C.
ICE agent killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7
U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) is among those who spoke at an “ICE Out for Good” protest that took place outside U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s headquarters in D.C. on Tuesday.
The protest took place six days after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis.
Good left behind her wife and three children.
(Video by Michael K. Lavers)
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