News
DNC chair discouraged support for ENDA directive: sources
Wasserman Schultz’s office calls allegation a ‘bald-faced lie’
DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz is among those who haven’t articulated support for an ENDA executive order. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
A gay Democratic activist claims that Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) has discouraged House members from asking President Obama to take administrative action to protect LGBT workers, an assertion her office calls a “bald-faced lie.”
Paul Yandura, political director for gay philanthropist Jonathan Lewis, made the allegation when speaking with the Washington Blade from his home in West Virginia on Thursday regarding a 2013 missive that was circulated among House members by Reps. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Lois Capps (D-Calif.).
“I was told personally by two members that she was tamping down on public calls for the president to make good on his promise — this was last year when the issue was really getting hot,” Yandura said. “She is most likely doing the same still.”
Yandura’s allegation comes as lawmakers — led by the LGBT Equality Caucus and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) — are circulating a new missive among members of Congress calling on Obama to sign an executive order barring federal contractors from engaging in anti-LGBT workplace discrimination.
Two sources familiar with the 2013 letter told the Washington Blade that Wasserman Schultz discouraged members of Congress from signing it, but Yandura was the only source willing to go on the record. The other source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Wasserman Schultz, who represents Florida’s 23rd congressional district in the U.S. House, dissuaded Democrats from signing the letter in private conversations on the House floor.
Although these sources said Wasserman Schultz may be engaging in the same tactic for the letter currently being circulated, no one has made the same claim to the Blade about the upcoming letter. As the Blade reported this week, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) has already pledged to sign it.
Yandura said he wouldn’t disclose the names of the House members who told him Wasserman Schultz was discouraging support for the 2013 letter because he didn’t want to “rat them out.”
“I’m sure she’ll come with something that sounds like a good excuse, but it’s about time,” Yandura said. “It’s time that she not only signs it, but tells people that they should publicly, and that it’s OK and that there’s no pressure not to sign it.”
Mara Sloan, a Wasserman Schultz spokesperson, disputed the allegations made by Yandura, saying any assertion that she discouraged members from signing the letter “is a bald-faced lie.”
“The congresswoman believes the most effective way to ensure equal rights for LGBT Americans in the workplace is through passing comprehensive non-discrimination legislation,” Sloan said. “The congresswoman regularly speaks to the administration about issues important to the LGBT community, and will continue to be a fierce advocate for full equality.”
Sloan didn’t immediately respond to a follow-up email about whether that response means Wasserman Schultz won’t sign the group letter currently being circulated among House members calling for the LGBT executive order. The response is along the lines of responses to requests for comment about the order by the White House, which consistently redirects attention to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.
Despite her record of support for the LGBT community, Wasserman Schultz has never explicitly called on Obama to sign an executive order barring LGBT discrimination among federal contractors. Asked about the issue in January by The Huffington Post, Wasserman Schultz said she supports the idea of Obama using his executive authority in “as broad a way as he can to ensure that we can move this country forward.”
Yandura said he thinks Wasserman Schultz refuses to express support for the executive order and has discouraged House members from speaking out in favor of it for political reasons.
“I think she doesn’t want to embarrass the president, and still doesn’t want to embarrass the president, because it is an embarrassment that he still hasn’t done it,” Yandura said. “We’re now coming down to the end of the second term, and if they don’t get moving on it, it’ll never even get implemented.”
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has refused to bring ENDA to the floor for a vote; the Senate passed a version last year.
Yandura said he heard from House members about Wasserman Schultz because he was part of the effort to gather signatures for the 2013 letter. It ultimately was signed by 110 House Democrats. A separate letter to the same effect was signed by 37 Senate Democrats.
At the time, Yandura said he didn’t speak to the media about what he heard, but urged other groups working on the letter — Freedom to Work and most likely GetEQUAL — to address the situation with Wasserman Schultz. Freedom to Work didn’t immediately respond to a request to comment.
Heather Cronk, managing director for GetEQUAL, said she couldn’t corroborate allegations that Wasserman Schultz was actively discouraging House members from signing the letter.
“I actually can’t corroborate that,” Cronk said. “I’ve heard that she wasn’t a fan of the Executive Order, but I don’t have any evidence that she actively worked against it.”
Fred Sainz, vice president of communications for the Human Rights Campaign, said he hasn’t heard anything about Wasserman Schultz discouraging members from the signing the letter, even though his group was active in gathering signatures.
Yandura said he didn’t contact HRC about about Wasserman Schultz “probably because I don’t see them as good accountability enforcers for the president or Dems.”
The offices of Capps and Pallone, who were responsible for gathering signatures for the House letter, didn’t immediately respond with information about whether they had heard anything about Wasserman Schultz discouraging support for it.
Yandura has a history of making inflammatory statements against the DNC for not undertaking sufficient efforts on behalf on LGBT rights. In 2004, he landed his partner Donald Hitchcock, then the DNC’s LGBT liaison, in hot water by publicly asserting that the Democratic Party wasn’t doing enough to combat the multitude of anti-gay marriage amendments on the ballot that year.
Yandura’s boss has contributed to LGBT organizations such as Freedom to Work and GetEQUAL. Last year, Lewis announced that he would no longer donate to the Democratic Party after Senate Democrats excluded same-sex bi-national couples from immigration reform legislation (which was later remedied by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision against the Defense of Marriage Act) and President Obama’s decision to continue to withhold an executive order barring LGBT discrimination.
Invoking the assertion from LGBT advocates that the executive order is a 2008 campaign promise from then-candidate Obama, Yandura said the best way to convince Obama to pen his name to the directive is increased pressure.
“I think that if the pressure could get built again, we might be able to shame him into doing it,” Yandura said. “We’ve waited for him to do the right thing. Now, I don’t know what it will take other than what it took to get him to do other things — and that is causing a shitstorm, getting up in his face and demanding it get done.”
Poland
Polish court rules country must recognize same-sex marriages from EU states
Poland ‘must comply with European Union law’
Poland’s Supreme Administrative Court on March 20 ruled the country must recognize same-sex marriages legally performed in other European Union states.
The EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg last November ruled in favor of a same-sex couple who challenged Poland’s refusal to recognize their German marriage.
The couple, who lives in Poland, brought their case to Polish courts in 2019. The Supreme Administrative Court referred it to the EU Court of Justice.
“Today’s ruling by the Supreme Administrative Court clearly demonstrates that Poland, as a member state of the European Union, must comply with European Union law,” said Przemek Walas, advocacy manager for the Campaign Against Homophobia, a Polish LGBTQ advocacy group, in a statement. “The Supreme Administrative Court rightly upheld the interpretation of the Court in Luxembourg and indicated that the only way to implement this ruling is to allow the transcription of a foreign marriage certificate.”
“This ruling is a significant step towards marital equality, but certainly not sufficient,” added Walas.
Ireland, Portugal, Spain, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Austria, Slovenia, Malta, Greece, Sweden, Finland, and Estonia are the EU countries that have extended full marriage rights to same-sex couples. Poland — along with Romania, Bulgaria, and Slovakia — are the four EU countries with no legal recognition of same-sex couples.
District of Columbia
Capital Stonewall Democrats 50th anniversary gala draws ‘sold out’ crowd
D.C. elected officials, mayoral candidates praise LGBTQ Democratic group
A sold-out crowd of 186 people, including D.C. elected officials and candidates running for D.C. mayor, turned out Friday, March 20, for the Capital Stonewall Democrats 50th anniversary celebration.
Among those attending the event, held at the Pepco Edison Place Gallery building next to the city’s Chinatown neighborhood, were seven D.C. Council members and four Democratic candidates running for mayor.
But at the request of Capital Stonewall Democrats leaders, the Council members, most of whom are running for re-election, and mayoral contenders did not give campaign speeches. Instead, they mingled with the crowd and focused on the accomplishments of the LGBTQ Democratic group over the past 50 years, with some presenting the group’s special “honor” awards to about a dozen prominent LGBTQ Democratic activists.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who was initially expected to attend the event, did not attend.
The mayoral candidates attending included D.C. Council member Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4) and former At-Large Council member Kenyan McDuffie, an independent turned Democrat, who are considered the leading mayoral contenders in the city’s June 16 Democratic Primary. Both have strong, longtime records of support for LGBTQ rights issues.
The other two mayoral candidates attending the event were Gary Goodweather, a real estate manager, and Rini Sampath, a cybersecurity consultant. Sampath told the Washington Blade she self-identifies as queer. Both have expressed strong support on LGBTQ-related issues.
The D.C. Council members attending the event included Lewis George; Council Chair Phil Mendelson (D-At-Large); Anita Bonds (D-At-Large); Robert White (D-At-Large); Matt Frumin (D-Ward 3); Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5), the Council’s only gay member; and Charles Allen (D-Ward 6).
“Tonight we celebrate not just 50 years of history but 50 years of showing up,” Howard Garrett, Capital Stonewall Democrats immediate past president, told the gathering in opening remarks. “Showing up when it was easy, showing up when it wasn’t popular,” he said, adding, “This work only continues if we continue to show up.”
He noted that the deadline for joining the organization in time to be eligible to vote on its endorsement of candidates running in D.C.’s 2026 election was midnight that night. He urged attendees who were not members to go to two tables at the event to join.
The group’s current president, Stevie McCarty, thanked the group’s longtime members who he said played a key role in what he called its historic work in building political support for the D.C. LGBTQ community. Among those he thanked was Paul Kuntzler, 84, one of the group’s founding members in January 1976, when it was initially named the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club.
Members voted to rename the group the Capital Stonewall Democrats in 2021.
Among the LGBTQ advocates who were honored at the event was Rayceen Pendarvis, the longtime host of a D.C. LGBTQ online interview show that included interviews of candidates for public office. Pendarvis also served as emcee for the Capital Stonewall Democrats 50th anniversary event.
“Thank you everyone in this room who has done the work to make this world a better place,” Pendarvis said in opening remarks. “To all our prestigious activists in the room, all of our amazing politicians in the room who are doing the work, we love you and we honor you.”
Among the honorees in addition to Pendarvis was Malcolm Kenyatta, the Democratic National Committee’s vice chair who became the first openly LGBTQ person of color to win election to the Pennsylvania General Assembly in 2018.
Other honorees included Parker; Earl Fowlkes, founder of the International Federation of Black Prides; Vita Rangel, a transgender woman who serves as deputy director of the D.C. Mayor’s Office of Talent and Appointments; Heidi Ellis, director of the D.C. LGBTQ Budget Coalition; and Philip Pannell, longtime LGBTQ Democratic activist, Ward 8 civic leader, and longtime Capital Stonewall Democrats member.
The 50th anniversary event included an open bar and refreshments and entertainment by three drag performers.
The Washington Blade on Wednesday spoke with Max Polonsky, a queer American who lives in Israel, about the Iran war and its impact on the country.
“It’s been tiring,” Polonsky told the Blade during a telephone interview from his home in Jaffa, an ancient port city with a large Arab population that is now part of Tel Aviv.
Polonsky grew up in Cherry Hill, N.J. He lived in D.C. for eight years before he moved to Israel in March 2022.
Israel and the U.S. on Feb. 28 launched airstrikes against Iran.
One of them killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran in response launched missiles and drones against Israel and other countries that include Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, and Cyprus.
An Iranian missile on March 1 killed nine people and injured 27 others in Beit Shemesh, an Israeli town that is roughly 20 miles west of Jerusalem. Shrapnel from an Iranian missile that struck a hair salon in Beit Awa, a Palestinian town in the West Bank, on Wednesday killed four women and injured more than a dozen others.
An Iranian drone that hit a command center in Kuwait on March 1 killed six U.S. soldiers: Sgt. Declan Coady, Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor, Capt. Cody Khork, Sgt. 1st Class Noah Tietjens, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan, and Maj. Jeffrey O’Brien. Another American servicemember, Sgt. Benjamin Pennington, died on March 8, a week after Iranian drones and missiles targeted the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
Iranian drones and missiles have damaged hotels, airports, oil refineries, and other civilian and energy infrastructure in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, and elsewhere. Israel on Wednesday attacked Iran’s South Pars natural gas field in the Persian Gulf.
The Associated Press notes roughly 20 percent of the world’s crude oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz that connects the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Gas prices in the U.S. and around the world continue to increase because the war has essentially closed the strategic waterway to ship traffic.
The war also left hundreds of thousands of people who were traveling in the Middle East stranded.
The Blade on March 6 spoke with Mario, who had stopped in his native Lebanon while traveling from the U.S. to India for work.
Mario was about to board a flight at Rafic Hariri International Airport in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, on Feb. 28 when the war began and authorities closed the country’s airspace. Mario is now back in the U.S.
Polonsky told the Blade there were “alarms all day … sometimes multiple alarms an hour, sometimes every hour, every two hours” on Feb. 28.
Israel’s Home Front Command typically issues warnings about 10 minutes ahead of an anticipated Iranian missile attack. Sirens then sound 90 seconds before an expected strike.
People in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and in other cities in central Israel have 90 seconds to seek shelter if a rocket or missile is fired from Lebanon or the Gaza Strip. (Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Shia militant group in Lebanon that Israel and the U.S. have designated a terrorist organization, launched rockets at the Jewish State after Khamenei’s death. Israel, in turn, continues to carry out airstrikes against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon. Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023, killed upwards of 1,200 people when they launched a surprise attack against Israel from the Gaza Strip.) People who live close to Lebanon and Gaza have 15 seconds to seek shelter.
Polonsky has a safe room — known as a “mamad” — in his apartment. Polonsky also uses it as his home office and a second bedroom.
He told the Blade the alerts in recent days have become less frequent.
“We’ll get maybe a handful of alarms during the day, maybe some at night,” said Polonsky.
Israel on June 12, 2025, launched airstrikes against Iran that targeted the country’s nuclear and military facilities. The subsequent war, which lasted 12 days, prompted the cancellation of Tel Aviv’s annual Pride parade. An Iranian missile destroyed Mash Central, the city’s last gay bar.
Iran on Oct. 1, 2024, launched upwards of 200 ballistic missiles at Israel. This reporter arrived in Israel three days later to cover the first anniversary of Oct. 7 and the impact the subsequent war in the Gaza Strip had on LGBTQ Israelis and Palestinians.
‘Iranian regime was bad’
Polonsky admitted he doesn’t “know what to think” about the latest war against Iran.
“I don’t know what I think about the war,” he said. “Ultimately what happens is just not in my personal control: whatever Donald Trump, [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, the ayatollah, whoever is running Iran are going to organize and launch attacks and reach any deals is not anything I personally have any control over, so I try to just kind of let that aspect of it go as I’m living my life.”
Polonsky told the Blade he understands “there are very serious questions about how” the war started, and Congress’s role in it.
“Those are serious and valid, important questions,” he said. “And at the same time, the Iranian regime was bad.”
Polonsky noted Iran has supported and funded Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthi rebels in Yemen, and other groups “who were attacking Israel.” Polonsky added the Iranian government has “terribly oppressed their people.”
Iran is among the handful of countries in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain punishable by death.
Reports indicate Iranian authorities killed upwards of 30,000 people during anti-government protests that began late last year. Sources with whom the Blade spoke said LGBTQ Iranians are among those who participated in the demonstrations.
“I’m not sad to see them pressured,” said Polonsky, referring to the Iranian regime.
He also described Khamenei as “a bad guy.”
“Him not being there is better,” said Polonsky.
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