Local
Wendy Rieger to retire from NBC4
Long-time anchor champions LGBTQ rights
Long-time NBC4 anchor Wendy Rieger on Dec. 10 announced she will retire after 33 years with the television station.
Rieger in an email to colleagues said her last day will be on Dec. 21, which coincides with the Winter Solstice.
“There is an elegance to the universe if you let it reveal itself,” she wrote. “As a Celtic Pagan, the 21st of December is a high holiday. The Solstice. When I saw two years ago that my contract would be ending on 12/21/2021, there was a perfection to those numbers. It felt like a good time to pull a fresh page from the stack and start writing a new story. Then COVID, and COVID and COVID and the whirl of events that have kept everything swirling around the room these past years.”
She talked about her pending retirement with co-anchor Jim Handly later that day.
“At a certain point, as I used to say to some of my dates, how can I miss you if you won’t leave,” said Rieger as Handly began to laugh. “There’s a certain point where we need new chapters in our lives and we can’t get too attached to something that we’ve done, that we know, that’s become second nature, no matter how much we love it.”
Rieger, who is originally from Norfolk, Va., joined NBC4 in 1988 as a general assignment reporter. She began to anchor the station’s weekend evening newscasts in 1996 and the 5 p.m. broadcasts in 2001.
“When I was here 33 years ago, this was the Land of the Giants in that Jim Vance was here. George Michael was here. Bob Ryan,” Rieger told the Washington Blade on Monday during a telephone interview from NBC4’s Northwest D.C. studios. “You sat on the set with those three and it was like working in a redwood forest, and that was the Era of the Giants.”
Rieger throughout her career has championed the LGBTQ community.
She participated in a number of D.C. AIDS Rides and emceed several SMYAL Fall Brunches.
Rieger in 2017 made a cameo in the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington’s adaptation of the musical “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” The Blade in 2015 named Rieger “Best Local TV Personality” for that year’s “Best of Gay D.C.” issue, which featured a cover photo of Rieger straddling a drag queen as she applied lipstick.
Rieger joked that “people at work said we would have liked to have had a heads up that you were going to be straddling the guy.”
“I said, well that was my idea,” she told the Blade. “And when they said they weren’t going to care and I said, you know, in this business, especially dealing with TV news and an organization, they said, you always ask for forgiveness, not permission. They’re never going to give it to you. I said, let’s just do it if we like it.”
Rieger credited Patrick Bruyere, a long-time volunteer for LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS service organizations who passed away from cancer in 2017, with introducing her to the LGBTQ community in D.C.
She said that Bruyere in 1999 asked her to host a fundraiser for One in Ten, a group that once ran the Reel Affirmations LGBTQ film festival, at the Lincoln Theater.
“I said, ‘I’d be glad to do that,'” told Rieger, recalling the conversation she had with Bruyere. “But you know, I’m just Wendy Rieger, I just anchor the news, you know. Don’t you have someone bigger? And he said, he actually said this, ‘I need a straight person because no one’s going to listen to us.’ And I said, ‘Are you kidding me?'”
“I saw so many people in the gay community moving into neighborhoods and using this vast creative spirit to renovate. And this renaissance that was happening all throughout our city, it was because of gay creativity,” Rieger told the Blade, referring back to her reaction to the lack of support that the One in Ten fundraiser had received.
“I was stunned that this was still going on. This bullshit was still going on. This crap is still going on,” she said.
Rieger said discrimination cannot “occur anywhere.”
“Enough with this shit,” she said. “I’m so tired of bigotry and ignorance. It is exhausting. It is just exhausting. I’m just sick of it.”
Rieger also expressed her gratitude to her LGBTQ viewers who “let me into your family.”
“That meant so much to me because now I had a tribe,” she said. “My ancestors, when they came over from various parts of Europe, we just didn’t do anything, but become sort of, you know, WASPs in suburbia, What the fuck is that? I’m sorry. What the fuck is that? It’s just like something my mother would say; we were just colorless, odorless and sexless.”
“You guys really gave me something to attach to and a kind of family to belong to,” added Rieger. “I still feel like I have a community simply because my gay friends are just so warm. And I’m sorry, y’all are still the most fun people around ever, ever, ever.”
Rieger diagnosed with brain cancer in June
Rieger had open heart surgery in October 2020. She announced her retirement less than six months after doctors diagnosed her with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.
“I knew there was something in my head,” Rieger told the Blade. “So, I was an advocate for myself in the bitchiest way, and I got into an MRI really fast.”
A friend referred Rieger to the Hillman Cancer Center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Her doctor, Pascal Zinn, removed the tumor within 10 days of having the MRI that found it. Rieger underwent radiation for six weeks and is now participating in a cancer vaccine trial at Duke University.
“It says on my file, life expectancy 14 months,” she said. “Odds are meant to be defied and she said the people who survive this the most are the ones that say fuck you to this cancer and they go live their lives and there’s nothing wrong with them.”
Rieger last month married Dan Buckley, a retired NBC4 cameraman who worked at the station for 37 years, at their home in Rappahannock County, Va.
Rieger during the Dec. 10 broadcast joked her husband is “having coffee and toast and taking walks while I’m coming to work” and she wants to “go hang out with him and do other things.” Rieger also hinted that she would like to learn how to play the cello or even the tuba.
She said she and her husband have yet to decide whether they will live full-time at their home in Rappahannock County or at their apartment in Chevy Chase. Rieger told the Blade that her husband’s parents are originally from Ireland, and he would like to travel there on the Queen Mary 2.
“Sometimes you have to get off the trail to see the trail, and so that’s what we’re going to let ourselves do,” said Rieger.
Maryland
Md. Commission on LGBTQIA+ Affairs released updated student recommendations
LGBTQ students report higher rates of bullying, suicide
The Maryland Commission on LGBTQIA+ Affairs has released updated recommendations on how the state’s schools can support LGBTQ students.
The updated 16-page document outlines eight “actionable recommendations” for Maryland schools, supplemented with data and links to additional resources. The recommendations are:
- Developing and passing a uniform statewide and comprehensive policy aimed at protecting “transgender, nonbinary, and gender expansive students” against discrimination. The recommendation lists minimum requirements for the policy to address: name, pronoun usage, and restroom access.
- Requiring all educators to receive training about the specific needs of LGBTQ students, by trained facilitators. The training’s “core competencies” include instruction on terminology, data, and support for students.
- Implementing LGBTQ-inclusive curricula and preventing book bans. The report highlights a “comprehensive sexual education curriculum” as specifically important in the overall education curriculum. It also states the curriculum will “provide all students with life-saving information about how to protect themselves and others in sexual and romantic situations.”
- Establishing Gender Sexuality Alliances “at all schools and in all grade levels.” This recommendation includes measures on how to adequately establish effective GSAs, such as campaign advertising, and official state resources that outline how to establish and maintain a GSA.
- Providing resources to students’ family members and supporters. This recommendation proposes partnering with local education agencies to provide “culturally responsive, LGBTQIA+ affirming family engagement initiatives.”
- Collecting statewide data on LGBTQ youth. The data on Maryland’s LGBTQ youth population is sparse and non-exhaustive, and this recommendation seeks to collect information to inform policy and programming across the state for LGBTQ youth.
- Hiring a full-time team at the Maryland Department of Education that focuses on LGBTQ student achievement. These employees would have specific duties that include “advising on local and state, and federal policy” as well as developing the LGBTQ curriculum, and organizing the data and family resources.
- Promoting and ensuring awareness of the 2024 guidelines to support LGBTQ students.
The commission has 21 members, with elections every year, and open volunteer positions. It was created in 2021 and amended in 2023 to add more members.
The Governor’s Office of Communication says the commission’s goal is “to serve LGBTQIA+ Marylanders by galvanizing community voices, researching and addressing challenges, and advocating for policies to advance equity and inclusion.”
The commission is tasked with coming up with yearly recommendations. This year’s aim “to ensure that every child can learn in a safe, inclusive, and supportive environment.”
The Human Rights Campaign’s most recent report on LGBTQ youth revealed that 46.1 percent of LGBTQ youth felt unsafe in some school settings. Those numbers are higher for transgender students, with 54.9 percent of them saying they feel unsafe in school.
Maryland’s High School Youth Risk Behavior Survey reveals a disparity in mental health issues and concerns among students who identify as LGBTQ, compared to those who are heterosexual. LGBTQ students report higher rates of bullying, feelings of hopelessness, and suicidal thoughts. Nearly 36 percent of LGBTQ students report they have a suicide plan, and 26.7 percent of respondents say they have attempted to die by suicide.
The commission’s recommendations seek to combat the mental health crisis among the state’s LGBTQ students. They are also a call for local and state governments to work towards implementing them.
Virginia
Va. lawmakers consider partial restoration of Ryan White funds
State Department of Health in 2025 cut $20 million from Part B program
The Virginia General Assembly is considering the partial restoration of HIV funding that the state’s Department of Health cut last year.
The Department of Health in 2025 cut $20 million — or 67 percent of total funding — from the Ryan White Part B program.
The funding cuts started with the Trump-Vance administration passing budget cuts to federal HIV screening and protection programs. Rebate issues between the Virginia Department of Health and the company that provides HIV medications began.
Advocates say the funding cuts have disproportionately impacted lower-income people.
The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, a federal program started in 1990, provides medical services, public education, and essential services. Part B offers 21 services, seven of which remained funded after the budget cuts.
Equality Virginia notes “in 2025, a 67 percent reduction severely destabilized HIV services across the commonwealth.”
Virginia lawmakers have approved two bills — House Bill 30 and Senate Bill 30 — that would partially restore the funding. The Ryan White cuts remain a concern among community members.
Both chambers of the General Assembly must review their proposed changes before lawmakers can adopt the bills.
“While these amendments aren’t a full restoration of what community-based organizations lost, this marks a critical step toward stabilizing care for thousands of Virginians living with HIV,” said Equality Virginia Executive Director Narissa Rahaman. “Equality Virginia plans to continue their contact with lawmakers and delegates through the conference and up until the passing of the budget.”
“We appreciate lawmakers from both sides of the aisle who recognized the urgency of this moment and will work to ensure funding remains in the final version signed by the governor,” added Rahaman.
District of Columbia
D.C. Black Pride theme, performers announced at ‘Speakeasy’
Durand Bernarr to headline 2026 programming
The Center for Black Equity held its 2026 DC Black Pride Theme Reveal event at Union Stage on Monday. The evening, a “Speakeasy Happy Hour,” was hosted by Anthony Oakes and featured performances by Lolita Leopard and Keith Angelo. The Center for Black Equity organizes DC Black Pride.
Kenya Hutton, Center for Black Equity president and CEO, spoke following the performances by Leopard and Angelo. Hutton announced this year’s theme for DC Black Pride: “New Black Renaissance.”
Performers for 2026 DC Black Pride were announced to be Bang Garcon, Be Steadwell, Jay Columbus, Bennu Byrd, Rue Pratt and Akeem Woods.
Singer-songwriter Durand Bernarr was announced as the headliner for the 2026 festivities. Bernerr gave brief remarks through a video played on the screen at the stage.
DC Black Pride is scheduled for May 22-25. For more information on DC Black Pride, visit dcblackpride.org.
13 HIV/AIDS activists arrested on Capitol Hill
PHOTOS: Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade
An undeclared war of distraction by the felon
Talarico beats Crockett in Texas primary
35 years after ‘Truth or Dare,’ Slam is still dancing
Out actor Kevin Cahoon on starring role in ‘Chez Joey’
PHOTOS: Pride Reveal
Love or fear flying you’ll devour ‘Why Fly’
Arlington LGBTQ bar Freddie’s celebrates 25th anniversary
