National
EXCLUSIVE: Gay Russian doctor to seek asylum in U.S.
‘I have suffered persecution and discrimination in Russia’
George Budny is seeking asylum in the U.S. (Photo courtesy of George Budny)
A gay Russian doctor told the Washington Blade during an exclusive interview on Feb. 7 that he plans to seek asylum in the U.S. because of anti-gay persecution he said he faced in his homeland.
“I have suffered persecution and discrimination in Russia due to my political views and sexual orientation,” said George Budny. “I am fearful for my safety, the safety of my family and friends and fearful of the fact that I will never be allowed to become a productive and successful member of society in my home country.”
Budny, who is from St. Petersburg, spoke with the Blade in Dupont Circle hours after the 2014 Olympic Games officially opened in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi – and police in his hometown and Moscow arrested 14 LGBT rights advocates. Budny and his boyfriend also attended an opening ceremony viewing party at the Human Rights Campaign.
He said he began to experience homophobia after his mother began to inquire about why the Supreme Council of the United Russia Party in Moscow replaced her and other local officials ahead of the country’s 2007 parliamentary elections.
Budny, 29, said party bosses told his mother they replaced her with a civil servant who was affiliated with Russia’s Federal Security Bureau – which succeeds the former Soviet Union’s KGB – because of him.
An employee at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg told Budny’s father that she knew his ex-boyfriend with whom he was very close. An official with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs told his father he had seen Budny at a gay bar.
Budny told the Blade his father realized his is gay when he found “Queer As Folk” DVDs in his apartment.
“I had to admit, yes I am, please forgive me,” said Budny.
Budny said his mother was “crying for about a year” after she learned about his sexual orientation. She thought he “turned out gay” because she had sinusitis when she was pregnant with him.
Budny told the Blade his father sent him to treatment and to female prostitutes because he said “they will fix you.”
He said his father eventually kicked him out of his family’s apartment early one morning in late 2007 because “the scandals became intolerable.” Parliamentary elections took place around the same time.
Budny told the Blade he had secretly saved $1,000 because he said he expected his parents would force him to leave their home. He said his father took the aforementioned money before he kicked him out.
“I stopped being their son and they regarded me as a cancer in the family, destroying them from within,” said Budny, noting his younger brother was only 8 years old when his father forced him to leave the family’s apartment. “The reason was to save their younger son because he didn’t know what he was dealing with.”
Life with boyfriend in St. Petersburg ‘amazing’
Budny moved in with his then-boyfriend from Malaysia with whom he studied at a St. Petersburg medical school. The couple worked and traveled to Sweden, Norway, Germany and other European countries during their relationship that lasted five years.
“We would earn money and spent it on trips,” said Budny. “It was amazing.”
Budny had a post-doctoral fellowship at an Ohio university for three years. He returned to St. Petersburg in the fall of 2011 as protests against Putin and the United Russia Party he heads took place ahead of parliamentary elections.
“I felt like I was gaining hope in Russia when I saw all these people,” Budny told the Blade, noting it was the first time he had ever seen LGBT rights advocates protesting openly. “I was impressed at how things changed when I was gone. I felt like there was a lot of freedom in the air.
He supported the opposition Yabloko party ahead of the December 2011 parliamentary elections. Budny became a member of a St. Petersburg election commission where he educated the public about voting rights, counted votes and confirmed the final results before submitting them to the authorities.
The party did not gain any seats in the Russian Duma.
Budny subsequently filed four complaints against those he felt falsified St. Petersburg election results.
“Due to the high-profile nature of my position, I was under immense scrutiny,” he told the Blade. “To my distress, I discovered election fraud and publicly exposed it (video footage, etc.) on my blog, on television and in newspapers.”
Election officials removed economist Grigory Yavlinsky, whom Yabloko nominated as its presidential candidate, from the ballot less than two months before Russians went to the polls again in March 2012.
Budny said any optimism that had remained “all ended very quickly” when Putin succeeded now Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev during Russia’s presidential election that took place in March 2012.
Being outed at hospital ‘terrifying’
A bill St. Petersburg Legislative Assemblyman Vitaly Milonov introduced that sought to ban gay propaganda in the city became law in September 2012. A Russian law that requires non-governmental organizations that receive funding from outside the country to register as “foreign agents” took effect two months later.
Budny had been a resident at St. Petersburg’s largest hospital when the city’s law that bans gay propaganda to minors took effect in September 2012. He said a university student who worked part-time at a gay bar began working at the facility where people with HIV, Hepatitis C and other infectious diseases receive treatment on the same day the statute came into force.
Budny said other residents and their supervisors began making “derogatory and horrible jokes” against his colleague because he was “very feminine by Russian standards.”
“If I come out or if they ever find out I’m gay at my job, this would happen to me,” Budny told the Blade. “It was terrifying.”
Budny said the residents and the physicians who supervised them soon began to harass his colleague to his face. They also mistreated their patients, including an 18-year-old dancer with HIV who contracted meningitis.
“’You should be working; you’re getting all these horrible diseases,’” one of the doctors told the patient, according to Budny. “He was dying from AIDS.”
Budny said the hospital fired his colleague in December 2012 after he took sick time. He told the Blade the residents and physicians’ response was “the faggot got kicked out.”
Budny told the Blade they started “painting me with the same brush” because someone had seen the two men having lunch together and “being friendly.”
“That hate campaign started against me,” said Budny. “I had to make up a girlfriend story. It was just a really bad story.”
Budny told the Blade the St. Petersburg gay propaganda law made it illegal for him and other hospital staff to talk about LGBT topics with any patient who was younger than 18. These include anal sex and other risk factors associated with contracting HIV.
“Do I violate the Hippocratic oath or do I violate the propaganda law,” said Budny. “Either way I should be making compromises on my professional level or on my legal level. I can’t focus on my professional growth under this condition.”
Anti-gay attacks in St. Petersburg
Budny said he has been attacked three times since 2009 because of his sexual orientation.
He told the Blade more than half a dozen men whom he described as “skinheads” tried to choke him with a thick metal chain while he and his then-boyfriend walked through a theater district near St. Petersburg’s largest park.
Budny said the second incident took place after he and his then-boyfriend from Malaysia left Central Station, a gay club in St. Petersburg. Its owners also operate a gay bar in Moscow outside of which two men opened fire last November.
Budny told the Blade the third attack took place “just out of nowhere” last year as he walked home from a St. Petersburg Metro station late at night. Budny, who is Jewish, said two skinheads called him a “faggot” and used anti-Semitic slurs during the attack.
He said his assailants punched him in the face and broke his nose before he ran into a nearby restaurant.
Skinheads are among those who frequently joined Milonov at anti-gay rallies in St. Petersburg. Budny filed a complaint with city prosecutors late last year that urges them to investigate the lawmaker for voter fraud.
Budny told the Blade that his supervisor told him after he completed his residency in January 2013 that hospital administrators didn’t “want to see me anymore.” He noted the 2012 presidential election results showed nearly everyone at the hospital backed Putin, even though Budny said some of his colleagues said they never even voted.
“I found it out too late unfortunately and realized my hospital officials really, really hate me for exposing the election fraud in my own precinct,” he told the Blade. “I realized what can I do if this will be happening in every clinic that I go to. I want to be a physician I don’t want to quit.”
Mother: Stay in U.S. because of propaganda law
He received a student visa and arrived in the U.S. less than three weeks before Putin last June signed a bill that sought to ban gay propaganda to minors into law.
Budny currently lives near Union Station in D.C. as he studies at Kaplan University near Dupont Circle to secure the necessary credentials to apply for a residency program. His roommate introduced him to his boyfriend shortly after he arrived in the nation’s capital.
Budny told the Blade he speaks with his mother, although she remains uncomfortable with his sexual orientation. He has not spoken with his father since he kicked him out of the family apartment in 2007.
Budny said his mother has told him to stay in the U.S. because of Russia’s gay propaganda law.
“She is afraid for the safety of my younger brother and all of us,” said Budny.
He said authorities last month conducted what he described as an emergency inspection on the St. Petersburg children’s clinic he and his mother opened more than a decade ago.
Budny told the Blade the officials wanted to investigate the building’s electrical and plumbing systems, the windows and whether the first-floor of the apartment building in which the facility is located had been properly zoned. He said local officials in 2009 allowed the clinic to move into the building.
“They are attacking us by basically saying we are starting a clinic in an apartment building,” said Budny. “My mother is sure that this happened right after I filed my complaint against [Milonov].”
Budny told the Blade a D.C. lawyer has begun working on his asylum case. He expects she will formally file his petition with the U.S. government in the coming weeks.
“Right now I realize there is no way back,” said Budny, discussing Russia’s gay propaganda law. “They’re not going to repeal it. It’s going to be reinforced.”
U.S. Federal Courts
Renee Good’s family files two federal lawsuits
ICE officer killed lesbian mother of three in Minneapolis in January
The family of lesbian woman who a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement killed in Minneapolis in January have filed two federal lawsuits.
The Associated Press notes Renee Good’s partner, Becca Good, and her brother, Brent Ganger, in the lawsuits accuse the Trump-Vance administration and ICE officer Jonathan Ross of “unjustified and excessive use of force.”
Renee Good was a 37-year-old mother of three.
Ross on Jan. 7 shot and killed her in Minneapolis.
The shooting took place during the Trump-Vance administration’s so-called Operation Metro Surge that targeted Somalis and other immigrant groups in Minneapolis. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents on Jan. 24 shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse who worked for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, in Minneapolis.
Both shooting sparked outrage across the U.S. and around the world.
“Every morning, she is my first thought. I think about how the kids are growing up without their mama, and how I will grow old without the love of my life. I think about how we should have had 40 more years together. But I also think about what she would have wanted after all of this,” said Becca Good in a statement the Human Rights Campaign released after she and her partner’s family announced the lawsuits.
“As we have tried to navigate our own massive loss, I am also devastated by how many other lives have been destroyed in this darkest of times. So many other families are dealing with the loss of their loved ones; to everyone who has had to witness it — the pain of this moment extends far beyond our family,” added Becca Good. “What happened to us should never happen to any family. No child should grow up without a parent because of it. No one should lose their sister or their daughter. No one should have to live without their soulmate. Accountability — real accountability — is the only way to make sure that no other family has to go through what we have.”
HRC President Kelley Robinson in her own statement said the Good family “is one of our own — and today, the Human Rights Campaign joins them in demanding justice.”
“It has been eight months and 24 days since Renee was shot and killed by an ICE agent, and the United States government has failed to take responsibility for its actions,” said Robinson. “Her partner, Becca, and brother Brent, have made the brave and bold decision to hold the government accountable, and we stand with them. Like every person murdered by ICE, Renee should be alive today. The Goods were robbed of what every American family deserves: to be together.”
Federal Government
988 restores crisis services for LGBTQ youth
The lifesaving 988 call-in number to help people experiencing mental health crises or suicidal thoughts has once again restored its specialized services for LGBTQ youth.
The lifeline, which used to have the option to “press 3” to be directly sent to specialized services for LGBTQ youth facing mental health crises or suicidal thoughts, was returned on Wednesday following an over-year-long battle with the Trump-Vance administration, which removed the service in May 2025.
The Press 3 option rolled out as a pilot program in 2022 through a government contract with the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ people.
Then, in June 2025, the federal government announced that the lifeline would be eliminated within a month. By July 2025, 988 Lifeline’s “Press 3” services were terminated.
Openly gay U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) helped lead Congress in reversing the removal of the lifesaving resource from American phones. As a member of the Senatw Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee, she started the process of securing $535 million for 988 — a $15 million increase — as well as dedicated funding for LGBTQ youth specialized services.
Then, in September 2025, Baldwin, along with U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), introduced bipartisan legislation in the Senate, the 988 LGBTQ+ Youth Access Act, to codify the 988 Lifeline’s specialized services for LGBTQ young people.
At the same time, U.S. Rep Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) introduced the legislation in the House of Representatives alongside U.S. Reps. Michael Lawler (R-N.Y.) Sharice Davids (D-Kan.) Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Seth Moulton (D-Mass.)
The Senate passed Baldwin’s bipartisan funding bill in January 2026, funding the Department of Health and Human Services with explicit language mandating the return of 988’s LGBTQ youth specialized services.
In February 2026, Congress passed legislation mandating that the previously eliminated “Press 3” specialized services be restored and funded with $33,100,000 — but it was unclear if the Press 3 option would still be allowed under current executive orders, namely Executive Order 14168, or “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”
Despite the securing of federal funding for the Press 3 resource, the battle to get the 988 LGBTQ+ Youth Access Act through Congress is ongoing — and would provide codafied protection from this removal ever happening again.
According to data on the Trevor Project’s website, LGBTQ young people are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers.
Baldwin’s office touts the immense help the lifeline provides to LGBTQ people in their moments of greatest need. The press release on the reinstatement of Press 3 highlighted the continued demand for the service:
“The volume of calls, texts, and chats 15 percent higher than a year earlier and nearly 50 percent higher than two years ago. Since the lifeline launched, it has received over 27 million contacts, including over 18 million calls, 4 million texts, and 3 million chats.”
Advocates for LGBTQ rights and mental health awareness have agreed with the increasing numbers and hailed the return as a win for everyone.
“Suicide and mental health struggles touch every community across our state, and that’s why creating the 988 crisis lifeline to make sure help is there for everyone is one of my proudest accomplishments,” said Baldwin said in a statement. “But, last year, the Trump administration decided to make these real struggles a political football and ripped away the specialized line that helped LGBTQ children. This was a deliberate choice. The Trump administration chose to put children’s lives on the line to score some political points.
“I’ve fought tooth and nail to restore this lifesaving resource. When I realized the Trump administration was not going to do it on their own, I wrote it into federal law to require them to restore the Press 3 option,” the Wisconsin senator said. “This lifesaving resource never should have gone away in the first place, but I am glad the lifesaving support Press 3 provides is once again there for people who need it.”
“I’m proud that we secured the funding to restore this lifesaving LGBTQ+ crisis line and successfully pressured the Trump administration to bring the program back,” Krishnamoorthi said. “When an LGBTQ+ young person reaches out for help in a moment of crisis, they deserve to reach a counselor trained to understand and support them. This program should never have been taken away, and now we need to make sure it stays available for every young person who needs it. I’m grateful to the Trevor Project, NAMI Chicago, Equality Illinois, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and all the advocates and young people who worked alongside us to bring these services back.”
Jaymes Black, CEO of The Trevor Project who works with the SAMHSA, in their press three operations celebrated the return of the resource.
“We are grateful to see that the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline’s ‘Press 3’ specialized services for LGBTQ+ youth have been restored. Resuming this national resource will be critical in addressing the public health crisis of suicide among LGBTQ+ young people, and supporting the estimated more than 1.8 million LGBTQ+ youth who seriously consider attempting suicide in the U.S. each year,” Black said via a statement. “We are thankful for the large coalition of bipartisan lawmakers, mental health advocates, allies, and supporters who fought tirelessly for this restoration. We will monitor the launch and usage of these important services to ensure all LGBTQ+ youth are supported with clinically best standards.”
If you or someone you know needs mental health resources and support, please call, text, or chat with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline or visit 988lifeline.org for 24/7 access to free and confidential services. Trans Lifeline, designed for transgender or gender-nonconforming people, can be reached at (877) 565-8860. The lifeline also provides resources to help with other crises, such as domestic violence situations. The Trevor Project Lifeline, for LGBTQ+ youth (ages 24 and younger), can be reached at (866) 488-7386. Users can also access chat services at TheTrevorProject.org/Help or text START to 678678.
California
Calif. governor signs 6 pro-LGBTQ bills, vetoes 1
Gavin Newsom rejected measure he claimed is legislative overreach
Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed and vetoed a slew of bills into state law. Among them were seven pertaining to California’s LGBTQ community. Newsom signed six while vetoing one. His actions drew applause and scorn from advocacy groups in the state.
The six signed bills:
Assembly Bill 1775 allows transgender veterans, who were banned from service last year by the Trump-Vance administration, to access housing assistance, use California’s discharge upgrade assistance program, and get support for gaining employment.
Assembly Bill 1930 strengthens privacy protections for healthcare patients and providers by creating clear guidelines for California agencies, individuals, and corporations to respond to out-of-state subpoena requests relating to abortion or gender-affirming care. This includes a requirement to contact the California Attorney General at least seven days prior to responding to the subpoena or providing legal documents. This should add additional protection to those residing in California from investigations in states where abortion or gender-affirming care has more restrictions.
Senate Bill 934 targets conversion therapy in California and increases the amount of time a patient has to bring a medical malpractice lawsuit against a provider for attempting to change the patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The bill takes aim at the widely debunked practice that treats queerness as a mental disorder that could be cured through psychotherapeutic methods. Conversion therapy has been illegal in California since 2012; however, a recent Supreme Court decision threw the ban into question, prompting lawmakers to write this new bill that legally defines it as medical malpractice.
Senate Bill 1023 expands access to PrEP, a medication that protects people from contracting HIV. The bill requires insurers to cover the drug through the medical benefit and the pharmacy benefit pathways, allowing for more providers to give patients PrEP.
Senate Bill 1114 strengthens privacy protections for voluntary self-identification data about sexual orientation and gender identity. The bill limits when California government agencies can share this data and bars it from being disclosed outside of the state government, with few exceptions.
Senate Bill 1328 expands support for LGBTQ students and staff in California colleges. The bill requires any institution of higher education to designate an employee at any campus, satellite campus, branch campus, or outreach center to support the needs of LGBTQ individuals.
Equality California, the largest statewide LGBTQ civil rights group in the country, commended the governor for his support of legislation that protects and supports the queer community amid escalating threats, attacks, and rollbacks from the federal government.
Executive Director Tony Hoang said in a written statement, “California is once again demonstrating that when LGBTQ+ people are targeted, our state will respond with action,” adding, “We are grateful to Gov. Newsom for signing these measures.”
The vetoed bill:
Assembly Bill 2164 would have banned California from extraditing anyone residing in California for providing abortions or gender-affirming care in another state. Newsom vetoed this bill despite agreeing with its principles, claiming in a written statement that “extradition is an exclusively executive function” and that he did not want to limit the “executive authority of an incoming governor.”
This bill was created in response to Louisiana’s attempt to extradite a California physician for allegedly sending abortion pills in the mail to a Louisiana woman. Newsom responded forcefully to the extradition request, publicly denying it and stating, “We will not allow extremist politicians from other states to reach into California and try to punish doctors based on allegations that they provided reproductive health care services.”
In a written statement responding to the veto, Lizzy Hinkley, the legal director of the bill’s lead sponsor, Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, criticized Newsom, stating, “[the] outgoing governor’s principled stance is cold comfort to Californians living and working in the real world post-Dobbs. A high-brow, academic justification for refusing to codify legal protections only reveals an ignorance for the lived reality of patients and providers — and does nothing to help them.”
Annapolis Pride arrives this weekend
Calendar: October 2-8
Renee Good’s family files two federal lawsuits
House Democrats urge White House to confront Turkish government over anti-LGBTQ crackdown
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