a&e features

Blind and queer and finding community

A look at the unique struggles, triumphs of the visually impaired

Published

6 years ago

September 25, 2020

**Gabriel Lopez Kafati** and **Anthony Corona** (Photo courtesy the couple)

If you ask Gabriel Lopez Kafati, 43, if he’s out, he’ll tell you about his tattoos. One, above his shoulder, is a rainbow-colored equality sign. The tattoo on his right leg is the word “aequalitas” (the Latin word for “equality.”). In another tattoo, his first name is in Braille. “On my lower back, there’s a heart with an error,” he said in a phone interview, “the rest is best left to your imagination.”

Lopez Kafati is one of the members of the LGBTQ community who are queer and blind or visually impaired. There have always been people who are LGBTQ and blind. Yet, in telephone interviews, they told the Blade, they often feel “unseen” in the queer community.

(This reporter is queer and visually impaired.)

Twenty years ago, Blind Friends of Lesbians and Gays (BFLAG), became an affiliate of the American Council of the Blind (ACB), an advocacy group. In 2009, BFLAG’s name was changed to Blind LGBT Pride International (BPI).

Here are the stories of some of the people who have found their tribe in BPI.

BPI’s vice president, Leah Gardner, 44, who is lesbian and blind, lives in the Bay Area in California. “I grew up in a conservative part of New Hampshire,” Gardner said in a phone interview. “I came out as lesbian to my friends when I was 17.”

But, she didn’t come out about being blind until after she graduated from college. “I was mainstreamed in school,” she said, “I didn’t know a lot of other blind kids growing up.”

Gardner’s attitude began to change when she took a self-defense class and became friends with some of the other blind students. She went to her first ACB convention with them.

At the convention, there was a meeting of a group of LGBTQ blind people. They had the same dating woes and fears that Gardner had. “I was in a room with other queer blind people! I’d come home.”

People in the queer community are happy to see blind people as friends, but not as sexual, she said.

The Internet and social media have helped blind people connect to the LGBTQ community, Gardner said. But, “there’s still a chasm in terms of romance!”

Sarah Chung, 31, who’s queer and visually impaired, graduated from Adler University with a master’s degree in counseling in 2019. She was set to compete in judo in the Paralympics in Tokyo this summer. But, because of COVID-19, the Paralympics was canceled. Due to the pandemic, she hasn’t been able to find a job in counseling.

“It’s not easy,” says Chung, who uses a screen magnifier and “voice over” to read the screen on her phone, “employment’s so important.”

As a child of Korean parents, Chung found a hero in Margaret Cho. Chung, who identifies as non-binary came out recently to her Mom. Before that, she’d reached out to Asian-American, Pacific Islander Pride organizations. “They were incredibly helpful,” Chung said, “I’d no idea there were other queer Asian-Americans.”

Being queer and visually impaired made her feel somewhat alone. But, Chung said, “a friend invited me to join BPI.”

Since then, she’s met other LGBTQ blind people on BPI’s podcast “Pride Connection.” “It was great to meet folks from all over the nation,” Chung said.

How the queer community reacts to your being blind depends on the time, place and who you’re with, she said. Chung finds that LGBTQ bars can be disorienting if you’re blind. Because you can’t see non-verbal interactions or hear what people say over loud music.

“In bars, I’ll text my friends,” Chung said, “some view that as being uninterested. But, I’m doing that to get more information [about the surroundings and the people who are there]. To see through the eyes of my friends.”

Over the years, BPI has advocated on behalf of queer, blind people. The group urged the Library of Congress’s National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled to add an LGBTQ+ category to “talking books.” (The category was added to the Library’s main catalog in 2019 and appeared on BAARD, the program’s mobile app last summer.)

Blind people are vulnerable during the pandemic, BPI president Lopez Kafati said. If you’re blind, you can’t drive to get a COVID-19 test. If you’re visually impaired, you’ll need assistance if you go to get groceries.

To help blind people tell the media their pandemic stories, BPI developed Storytelling Camp. “We’re training them to make their points effectively,” Lopez Kafati said.

But BPI isn’t all work. It’s also for socializing and, sometimes, for romance.

Anthony Corona and Lopez Kafati met at a BPI mixer at ACB’s convention in 2019. The two have been together ever since.

Lopez Kafati, 43, was born in Honduras. He knew he was gay when he was in his mid 20s, but wasn’t fully out until he was 32. Lopez Kafati went to law school and worked as an attorney. But he began losing his vision from retinitis pigmentosa, a progressive eye disease. “I was convinced that I was the only person who was blind and gay in the world,” Lopez Kafati said.

He Googled “blind and gay.” “And BPI popped up,” he said. “It was life changing to find others who shared my experience.”

He came to the United States to enter rehab in Miami so he could learn to travel, work, and live independently as a blind person. Lopez Kafati earned an MBA from Barry University, and in 2015 he became a U.S. citizen. Today, he manages accommodations for students with disabilities at Miami Dade College.

“Often, gay people know so little about blindness,” Lopez Kafati said. “They think we can’t have sex!”

Gay men communicate so much non-verbally – through a wink or a nod – and he can’t see to respond. This makes Lopez Kafati feel excluded from the gay community.

“Gay friends almost make me feel like I’m charity,” he said, “like I have a gay blind friend who I help shopping. Not like, here’s a guy I want to date.”

When he went to his first ACB convention in 2012 and met other queer, blind people in the BPI suite, Lopez Kafati said to himself, “I’m home!”

Corona, 45, worked for the Associated Press for 10 years – on its East Coast arts and culture desk and later as an editor in its entertainment bureau. In 2011, he was in a white rafting accident. In March 16, he lost his vision 20 days after he contracted shingles. He was devastated by his loss. “I had to go through grief,” he said in a phone interview, “I’d enjoyed journalism. My life was good. Honey, I wasn’t lonely on any night!”

There were days when he didn’t want to live. Corona didn’t think there were other gay, blind men out there. He sought counseling. His love of life came back when he went to guide dog school and got Boaty, his guide dog. “He was born to guide!” Corona said.

Like others interviewed by the Blade, Corona says that many in the queer community don’t want to date blind people. Once, as an experiment, he went on a dating app. “When I didn’t disclose my blindness, I got hit up many times within an hour,” he said, “when I disclosed, I was lucky to get hit up even once in a day.”

Sometimes things, even sad things, happen for a reason, Corona said. On March 24, 2016, his vision was completely lost. On the same day, his father died. For three years, he spent every March 24 sobbing. But that changed after he and Lopez Kafati became a couple. “Gabriel’s birthday is March 24,” Corona said. “Now, I’m sad on the anniversary of the worst day of my life. But I’m happy because I’m celebrating the birthday of the love of my life!”

‘I was convinced that I was the only person who was blind and gay in the world,’ said **Gabriel Lopez Kafati**.

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New book celebrates 1970s dance music icons

‘A Night at the Disco’ features interviews with Donna Summer, Debbie Harry, more

Published

4 days ago

April 9, 2026

Staff reports

Christian John Wikane will appear at book signing events in D.C. and Baltimore next week.

If you’re a fan of 1970s-era dance music, don’t miss the irresistible new book by Christian John Wikane and Alice Harris, “A Night at the Disco,” which revisits more than 90 interviews conducted with some of the biggest names in pop culture.

“A Night at the Disco” (ACC Art Books) was published on March 24, and distributed by Simon & Schuster. It celebrates more than 100 artists who sparked a phenomenon in dance music from 1970-1979 and features excerpts from interviews with everyone from Donna Summer to Debbie Harry.

Lost City Books (2467 18th St., N.W.) will welcome author Christian John Wikane for a book signing and conversation about “A Night at the Disco” on Thursday, April 16 at 6 p.m. Details at lostcitybookstore.com. Bird in Hand Coffee & Books in Baltimore (11 E. 33rd St.) )will also host a Q&A with the author on Wednesday, April 15 at 6 p.m. Details at theivybookshop.com.

Below is an excerpt from “A Night at the Disco.”

“I’ll let in anyone who looks like they’ll make things fun.” Steve Rubell is guiding a New York Times reporter through Studio 54 as resident DJ Richie Kaczor dazzles the crowd with records by CHIC, Odyssey, and T-Connection. “Disco, that’s where the happy people go,” The Trammps sing as dancers spin and twirl underneath tubes of flashing lights. Seven months since Rubell and co-owner Ian Schrager opened Studio 54 in April 1977, it’s welcomed untold numbers of “happy people” … at least those lucky enough to pass through the doors.

“We were part of the chosen few,” says André De Shields, who immortalized the title role in The Wiz on Broadway at the time. “We could show up at Studio 54 and the doorman at the velvet stanchion would look over everyone and point to us from The Wiz to come in, that kind of thing.” As the lead vocalist in the GRAMMY-nominated Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band, whose debut modernized big band sophistication for the discothèques, Cory Daye had carte blanche in the club. “The energy was like a New Year’s Eve party every night,” she says. “I would go up to the mezzanine and watch the mechanical light pillars go up and down, metallic confetti falling from the ceiling, the spoon and the moon. I was so fascinated and enamored by it.

“When a certain song came on, the people would just rush to the dance floor. There was no contact dancing — the hustle was pretty much on its way out — but it was just an amazing experience to see all the cultures together. It was a fusion of cultures, which described my life and my band, so I was right at home there.”

“Studio 54 was the place,” adds Linda Clifford. “Crazy parties. If you could think it, you would see it. It was like a circus. Just an amazing place to be. I worked 54 so many times. It was like a second home to me. The people there treated me so well. The crowd always seemed to enjoy my show. I always had a good time with them. That was the most important thing: making sure that they had fun.”

Well before Studio 54 opened, disco had become a business juggernaut. “A four billion dollar market and still growing,” Billboard announced in February 1977, with dance music offering more variety than ever. “There is no longer a single, readily identifiable disco beat, but a kaleidoscope of sounds that are melodic and danceable,” Tom Moulton told the magazine. In the clubs, records by veteran artists like Stevie Wonder and the Bee Gees were mixed in with a range of new acts like Grace Jones, Boney M., and The Ritchie Family, while everyone from ABBA to Marvin Gaye scored number one pop hits with songs that had club-centric storylines.

Beyond the charts, disco itself remained as idiosyncratic as ever, especially on several productions by Laurin Rinder and W. Michael Lewis, whose studio creations, El Coco (“Let’s Get It Together,” “Cocomotion”) and Le Pamplemousse (“Le Spank”), joined their own “Lust” from Seven Deadly Sins (1977) among the most tantalizing releases on AVI Records. Rinder & Lewis also produced acts for the newly hatched Butterfly Records in Los Angeles, where Saint Tropez (“On a Rien à Perdre”) and Tuxedo Junction (“Moonlight Serenade”) reflected the duo’s high gloss sound, spanning everything from European sophistication to a more literal translation of the ’40s sensibilities popularized by Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band.

12-inch singles had also grown as the preferred format to approximate the club music experience at home. Nearly a year after Atlantic Records introduced its series of promotional 12-inch singles for DJs, New York-based Salsoul Records released the industry’s first commercially available 12-inch single, “Ten Percent” by Double Exposure, in May 1976. A year later, T.K. Records was the first label to certify a gold record for a 12-inch single when Peter Brown’s “Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me” tallied one million sales.— Christian John Wikane

(From “A Night at the Disco” by Alice Harris & Christian John Wikane. Published by ACC Art Books.)

The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.

a&e features

Award-winning D.C. chef reaching new culinary heights

Anthony Jones of Marcus DC competing on ‘Top Chef’

Published

2 weeks ago

April 2, 2026

Evan Caplan

Anthony Jones (Photo by Joshua Foo)

In Anthony Jones’s kitchen, all sorts of flags fly, including his own. Executive chef at award-winning restaurant Marcus DC, Jones has reached culinary heights (James Beard Award semifinalist for Emerging Chef, anyone?), yet he’s just getting started.

Briefly stepping away from his award-winning station, Jones took a moment under a different set of lights. Recently, he temporarily gave up his post at the restaurant for a starring small-screen slot on the latest season of “Top Chef,” which debuted in March. (The show airs weekly on Bravo and Peacock).

Before his strategic slice-and-dice competition, however, Jones, who identifies as gay, draws from his deep DMV roots. In the years before “Top Chef” and the top chef spot at Marcus, he was born and raised in Sunderland, Md., in southern Maryland, near the Chesapeake.

Early memories were steeped in afternoons on boats with his dad bonding over fishing, and wandering the garden of his great-grandparents spread with fresh vegetables and a few hogs. “It was Southern, old-school ethics and upbringing,” he said. “Family and food went hand in hand.” Weekends meant grabbing bushels of crabs, dad and grandma would cook and crack them. Family members would host fish fries for extra cash. In this seafood-heavy youth, Jones managed time to sneak in episodes of the “OG” Japanese “Iron Chef” show, which helped inspire him to pursue a career in the kitchen.

Jones moved to D.C. after graduating from college, ending up at lauded Restaurant Eve, and met famed chef Marcus Samuelson, who brought him to Miami to be part of the opening team for Red Rooster Overtown. After three years, Jones moved back to D.C., where he ran Dirty Habit, reinventing and reimagining the menu, integrating West African flavors and ingredients.

Samuelson, however, wouldn’t let a talent like Jones stay away for too long. Pulling Jones back into his orbit, Samuelson elevated Jones to help him open his namesake restaurant Marcus DC, which has been named a top-five restaurant by the Washington Post. Since then, Jones has been nominated as a semifinalist for the RAMMYs Rising Culinary Star in 2026 and won the Eater DC’s Rising Chef award in 2025.

Samuelson’s Marcus is a tour de force interpreting the Black Diaspora on the plate, from the American South to West Africa, along with his signature “Swedopian” touches. Yet it’s Jones who has deeply informed the plate, elevating his own story to date. Marcus DC is primarily a seafood restaurant, which serves Jones well.

“Where I’m from is seafood heavy, and as I’ve progressed in my career, I’ve moved away from meat.” Veggies and fish are hero dishes. His own dish, Mel’s Crab Rice, was not only lauded by the Washington Post, but is framed by his youth carrying home the crustaceans from Mel’s crab truck. It’s a bowl of Carolina rice, layered with pickled okra, uni béarnaise, and crab. Jones also points to a dish on the opening menu, rockfish and brassica, paying respect to a landmark D.C. institution, Ben’s Chili Bowl. Jones reverse engineered a favorite bowl of chili that’s seafood instead of meat forward, leveraging octopus and rockfish along with different riffs of cauliflower: showing his intellectual, creative, and cultural sides.

While “Top Chef” is showing Jones’s spotlight side, he also lets his identity show at work. “In the kitchen, I make sure we’re inclusive. We don’t tolerate discrimination. Everyone that’s here should feel confident to express themselves. There are so many different flags in the kitchen.”

Jones says that he didn’t fully express his gay identity until fairly recently. He felt reluctant coming out to certain family members, “you’re scared to tell them about being different,” he says, and while that anxiety ate at him, “I’m lucky and fortunate to have unconditional love and that weight off my shoulders.”

Today, “I’m me all the time, Monday to Sunday. I’m honest with people, and my staff is honest with me.”

“Being a chef is hard,” he says, “and being a chef of color is even more difficult.”

Yet his LGBTQ identity is a juggling act, he says. “I need to keep that balance, because once someone finds out something about you, their opinion can change, whether you want it or not.”

Being on a whole season of TV cooking competition, however, might mean millions more might have an opinion of him (Jones has appeared on TV already, on an episode of “Chopped”). To prepare, he says, “I’ve just kept a level head. It’s just an honor to be on top chef with amazing people happy to be there.”

Plus, this season is set in the Carolinas, and Jones attended Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, N.C. “It’s a full story of my life, now a monumental moment for me.”

Jones also recently was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award. “JBF has been a north star, a dream for so long. I always had this goal on my wall.”

Being at the top spot at Marcus DC, making waves through his accolades, and cooking on Bravo means that Jones is highly visible. “I think that if someone has a similar background to me, and can see our story, trajectory, and success, they can have more ability to be themselves. This is my goal.”

Back at Marcus, Jones has plenty up his chef’s white’s sleeves. A new spring menu is in the works. He’ll be launching a new tasting menu “dining experience,” he says, and has plans to work on more events and collaborations with chefs and friends to bring in new talent and share the culinary wealth.

a&e features

Introducing the Torchbearers Awards honoring queer, trans women and nonbinary people

Meet the Legends and Illuminators lighting new paths

Published

3 weeks ago

March 26, 2026

Staff reports

The Torchbearers Awards are more than recognition—they are a continuation of legacy. They honor the quiet architects of progress in our community: those who organize, advocate, build, and protect, often without fanfare but always with purpose. Rooted in a belief in intentional recognition, this honor names those who carry our movements forward—those who make room for others, who remind us that change is both generational and generative. In a time marked by uncertainty and challenge, these leaders push forward with courage, clarity, and an unwavering commitment to expanding opportunity and equity.

This year’s honorees reflect the full breadth of our community, spanning generations, backgrounds, identities, and industries. From Legends, with decades of leadership and having created pathways for others, to Illuminators, who are lighting new paths with creativity and innovation, each Torchbearer represents the power of intergenerational leadership and the strength found in our diversity. They are organizers, advocates, artists, policy leaders, healers, and changemakers whose lived experiences shape a shared vision for equity and liberation.

This award is our love letter to queer and trans women and nonbinary people who carry the flame when it would be easier to let it dim. To those who consistently show up, who use their voice and visibility and stand firm, often without recognition, so that others may live more freely and fully. The Torchbearers Awards celebrates not just what has been done, but the enduring spirit, responsibility, and collective care that ensure the work continues, and that the flame is always passed forward.

Co-Creators of the Torchbearers Awards: Shannon Alston, June Crenshaw, Heidi Ellis

Torchbearers Awards Advisory Board: Aditi Hardikar, Lesley Bryant, Jasmine Wilson-Bryant, Stephen Rutgers

ILLUMINATOR AWARDEES

Representative Sharice Davids (she/her), (D, KS-03)
— U.S. House of Representatives
Greisa Martinez Rosas (she/her/ella)
— Executive Director, United We Dream
Paola Ramos (she/her)
— Journalist & Correspondent
Meagan A. Fitzgerald (she/her)
— Journalist & Correspondent
Jessica L. Lewis (she/her)
— Founder / Producer, Play Play DC
Savannah Wade (she/her)
— Founder, OAR Agency
Suhad Babaa (she/her)
— Filmmaker/ Former Executive Director of Just Vision
Ashlee Davis (she/her)
— Global Head of Inclusive Outcomes, Ancestry
Jazmine Hughes (she/her)
— Journalist and Former Editor at New York Times Magazine
Queen Adesuyi (they/she)
— Policy Advisor & Organizer, ReFrame Health & Justice
Michele Rayner, Esq. (she/her)
— Civil Rights Attorney, State Representative (Florida House of Representatives)
Gaby Vincent (she/her)
— Sports/Cultural Commentator and Community Leader
Jenny Nguyen (she/her)
— Founder & Owner, The Sports Bra
Denice Frohman (she/her)
— Independent Artist, Poet / Performer
Vida Rangel (she/her)
— Founder, Our Trans Capital
Roxanne Anderson (they/them)
— Executive Director, Our Space
Ann Marie Gothard (she/her)
— Co-Founder & President, Pride Live (Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center)
Diana Rodriquez (she/her)
— Co-Founder & CEO, Pride Live (Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center)
Wendi Cooper (she/her)
— Founder / Executive Director, Transcending Women
Toya Matthews (she/her)
— City of San Antonio, Texas
Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones (she/her)
— Sports/Cultural Commentator and Community Leader
Charity Blackwell (she/her)
— Poet, LGBTQ Advocate & Community Leader
Wilhelmina Indermaur (she/her)
— Director of Communications, Tyler Clementi Foundation
Em Chadwick (she/her)
— CMO, For Them & Autostraddle
Kylo Freeman (they/he)
— CEO, For Them & Autostraddle

LEGEND AWARDEES

Sheila Alexander-Reid (she/her)
— Executive Director, PHL Diversity, Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau
Cassandra Cantave Burton (she/her)
— Interim Director of Thought Leadership & Senior Research Advisor, AARP
leigh h. mosley (she/her)
— Photographer / Educator, PhotoFlo Photography
Jenn M. Jackson, PhD (they/them)
— Assistant Professor of Political Science; Author & Columnist, Syracuse University
Jordyn White (she/her)
— COO, Washington Prodigy / VP of Leadership Development & Research, HRC Foundation
AJ Hikes (they/them)
— Deputy Executive Director, ACLU
RaeShanda Lias (she/her)
— Digital Creator, RL Lockhart
Donna Payne-Hardy (she/her)
— Educator, EEO Specialist, Founder of NBJC, Former Leader at the Human Rights Campaign
Courtney R. Snowden (she/her)
— Principal, Blueprint Strategy Group
Gaye Adegbalola (she/her)
— Musician & Activist, Musician / Inductee of the Blues Hall of Fame
Cheryl A. Head (she/her)
— Independent Author, Novelist (Crime Fiction)
Letitia Gomez (she/her)
— The American LGBTQ+ Museum, Board Chair
Lynne Brown (she/her)
— Publisher, Washington Blade
Shay Franco-Clausen (She/Her/Ella/Queen)
— Political Strategist and Organizer
Melissa L. Bradley (she/her)
— Founder & Managing Partner, New Majority Ventures
Meghann Burke (she/her)
— Executive Director, NWSL Players Association
Victoria Kirby York, MPA (she/they)
— Director of Public Policy & Programs, National Black Justice Collective
Joli Angel Robinson (she/her)
— CEO, Center on Halsted
Jeannine Frisby LaRue (she/her)
— CEO, Moxie Strategies
Alice Wu (she/her)
— Film Director (Saving Face, The Half of It) / Screenwriter
Storme Webber (she/her)
— Interdisciplinary Artist / Educator, University of Washington
Kim Stone
— CEO of the Washington Spirit, Washington Spirit
Mickalene Thomas
— American Visual Artist, Mickalene Thomas Studio
Erika Lorshbough (any/they/she)
— Executive Director, interACT
J. Gia Loving (she/ella)
— Co-Executive Director, GSA Network