District of Columbia
Hundreds shut out of Cherry circuit party at Howard Theatre
Organizers apologize, promise refunds
Cherry Fund, the D.C.-based nonprofit organization that has raised money for HIV/AIDS, mental health, and LGBTQ organizations over the past 25 years through its annual weekend circuit party events, issued an apology this week for the abrupt cancellation of one of its events and a decision by the Howard Theatre to stop admitting people to a separate Cherry event at that location on grounds of overcrowding.
The Saturday night, April 9, event at the Howard Theatre, called FLAWLESS, was considered one of the main dance party events of the Cherry 2022 weekend, with prominent DJs, entertainers and more than 1,000 people from the D.C. area and other parts of the country in attendance.
āThe Cherry Fund wants to apologize for the experience to our valued patrons received over this past weekend during our 25th Anniversary Benefit Weekend,ā a statement released by the Cherry Fund on Tuesday says. āCherry is now beginning the process of issuing refunds to the patrons for the cancelled Evolution event and Flawless event to those who were not permitted to enter the venue,ā the statement says.
Allen Sexton, the Cherry Fund president, told the Washington Blade Howard Theatre officials stopped admitting people into the theater after claiming the buildingās legal capacity limit of 1,242 people had been reached. But Sexton said Cherry Fundās all-volunteer staff have carefully looked through the ticket sales records and determined the total number of tickets sold for the event was 1,178. He said the numbers show that the event was not overbooked.
Sexton said theater staff members told him they never took a full count of the number of people inside the theater on the night of the event. Instead, according to Sexton, one of the theater managers told him, āI can just look at the floor and tellā how many people are present.
People waiting to get into the theater reported on social media that as many as 300 or more people were forced to wait in line outside the theater in cold outdoor temperatures with the hope of getting in. According to social media reports, including on Facebook, many of those waiting on two lines went home after D.C. police officers on duty told them the theater was filled to capacity and few if any more people would be allowed inside.
D.C. police spokesperson Brianna Burch told the Blade members of the department’s LGBTQ Liaison Unit were on duty at the Howard Theatre event.
“To ensure the security and safety of all patrons, MPD members notified patrons that the event was at capacity,” Burch said. “It is my understanding that eventually patrons who were waiting outside were let into the event.”
Howard Theatre did not respond to a request from the Blade for comment on the question of whether they incorrectly estimated the number of people at the theater as suggested by Sexton. Sexton, however, said it was possible that some of the people waiting to get into the theater did not have tickets and were hoping to be able to purchase tickets at the door.
He said a separate event scheduled for late Friday night, April 8, through the early morning hours of Saturday, April 9, until around 9 a.m. had to be cancelled when the cityās Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration denied an application by Decades nightclub on Connecticut Avenue, N.W. near Dupont Circle to extend its operating hours through the early morning hours to serve as host for the dance party event, called EVOLUTION.
The legally required closing time for most D.C. bars and nightclubs is 3 a.m. on weekends, although Decadesā weekend closing time is 4 a.m.
An ABRA spokesperson told the Blade the application for the extended operating hours was submitted by Sexton rather than by one of the owners of Decades nightclub as required under ABRA regulations. The spokesperson, Jared Powell, said ABRA emailed the Decades manager, Joe Aguila, on March 3 to inform him the application could not be accepted unless one of the owners signed their name on the required document.
āABRA received no response to the email notification,ā Powell said. Powell noted that under ABRA rules, the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, which meets once a week on Wednesdays, must give final approval of a āsubstantial changeā in operating hours for clubs licensed to sell alcoholic beverages.
Powell said that on Thursday, April 7, one day after the ABC Boardās last meeting before the Cherry events were scheduled to begin on April 7, the Decadesā manager came to the ABRA office to inquire about the status of the application. He said one day later, on April 8, Sexton came to the ABRA office asking about the application.
āBoth parties were advised that they missed the required application window for timely ABC Board consideration,ā Powell told the Blade in an email.
Sexton disputes this claim, saying he believes the Decades owner provided the required signed application in time for the ABC Board meeting on Wednesday morning, April 6, possibly through an email attachment.
According to Sexton, the negative fallout from the canceled dance party event on Friday night-Saturday early morning and the Howard Theatreās refusal to admit patrons to the Saturday night FLAWLESS main event cast a negative light on an otherwise successful weekend, with eight other events taking place as scheduled.
āWe are sorry,ā says the Cherry Fund statement released on April 12. āIn hindsight, we could have gone about producing this weekend in a more efficient manner. We did not and we are to blame,ā it says.
āWe will begin to investigate the details of failures within our own organization, as well as the shortcomings of venues,ā the statement continues. āWe will release additional details as they become available.ā
The Cherry Fund website describes its annual Cherry weekend events as āone of the longest all volunteer non-profit LGBTQIA Dance Music Festivalsā that it says has donated more than $1.3 million in āgrants and support benefiting mental health and HIV/AIDS service organizations in the D.C. metropolitan region and beyond.ā
In its statement released on April 12, Cherry Fund says its decision to refund the money for ticket sales for the cancelled event and the ticket holders unable to attend the Howard Theatre event āwill most likely result in our inability to give money back to the HIV/AIDS and mental health community organizations in 2022.ā
The statement adds, āWe are in the process of working with TicketLeap to start the refund process. Please send your refund request to [email protected]. Refunds will be processed to only the individuals that purchased their tickets that were issued to them on the TicketLeap platform. All refund requests must be submitted by April 30, 2022.ā Ā
District of Columbia
Meet Jay Jones: Howardās first trans student body president
āBe the advocate that the child in you needed mostā
Jay Jones was born to a conservative Christian family where she said being gay was not socially acceptable. This year, she was named Howard University Student Associationās first transgender president.
When Jones was younger, she enjoyed activities that are traditionally āfeminine.ā She said she has always had a higher-pitched voice, talked with her hands and preferred playing inside with Barbie dolls.
Jones came out as gay in eighth grade to her sister who said, āGirl, I been knew.ā
āI think that was very much a turning point year for me because it was a year where I kind of knew how I was feeling,ā Jones explained. āThere were emotions I felt ever since I was younger, but I never could put verbiage or language to it,ā she said.
That same year, Jones was elected as the first student body president of her middle school. She said that is where her leadership journey began and that year was pivotal in her life.
When Jones won her first campaign as HUSA vice president, she was feeling unsure about her gender identity after she was asked which pronouns she wanted to use.
āI said āI donāt really know because I don’t feel comfortable using he/him pronouns because I don’t think that expresses who I am as a person,ā but at that time, I don’t think I was to the point where āshe/herā was necessary,ā she said.
Outside of student government, she was part of a traditionally all-male organization at Howard, Men of George Washington Carver Incorporated. There, she said she always felt like the sister to all of her brothers.
āI remember I would cringe sometimes when they would call me brother,ā she said.
Even though she felt like she aligned with she/her pronouns she said she was āscaredā of what it could mean for her moving forward.
She knew that her given pronouns were not a reflection of who she was but wasnāt sure what to do about it. She was talking with Eshe Ukweli, a trans journalism student who asked Jones a simple question that clarified everything.
āāIf you were to have kids or if your brother or your sister or someone around you was to have kids, what do you imagine them calling you?ā and I realized, it was always āmom,ā it was always āsister,ā and it was always āaunt,āā she said.
Jones still looks to Ukweli as a mentor who provides her with wisdom and guidance regularly.
āShe knows what it’s like to do hormones, she understands what it’s like to be in a place of leadership and to be in a place of transition,ā she said. āThere is no amount of research, no amount of information, no amount of anything that you can take in, that could ever equate to that.ā
In 2023, Jonesās junior year, Howard University was named the No. 1 most inclusive Historically Black College or University for LGBTQ-identifying students by BestColleges.
Howard has a storied past with the queer community. In the 1970s, Howard hosted the first National Third World Lesbian and Gay Conference, according to a 1979 Hilltop archive. However, multiple articles in the ā90s highlighted homophobia on Howardās campus.
ā’There is the feeling … that by coming out there will be a stigma on you,” said bisexual Howard student, Zeal Harris in a 1997 Hilltop interview.
As a result, multiple LGBTQ advocacy organizations were created on Howardās campus to combat those stigmas.
Clubs like The Bisexual, Lesbian, and Gay Organization of Students At Howard (BLAGOSAH) and the Coalition of Activist Students Celebrating The Acceptance of Diversity and Equality (CASCADE) were formed by Howard University students looking to create a safer campus for queer students.
However, Jones didnāt know much about this community when she was entering Howard. She recognized Howard as the HBCU that produced leaders in the Black community, like Thurgood Marshall, Toni Morrison, and Andrew Young.
āThis university has something about turning people into trailblazers, turning people into award-winning attorneys, turning people into change makers,ā she said. āI think that was one of my main reasons why I wanted to come here, I wanted to be a part of a group of people who were going to change the world.ā
So, as she entered her junior year at Howard, she set out to begin her journey to changing the world by changing her school.
This school year she ran for HUSA president, the highest governing position on Howardās campus. She said that this was the hardest campaign she has ever run at Howard and that she warned her team the night before election result announcements that she would start weeping if their names were called.
āDuring the midst of that campaign season, I was in an internal kind of battle with members of my family not accepting me, not embracing me, calling me things like āembarrassmentā and not understanding the full height of what I was trying to do and who I was becoming,ā she said.
Jones said the experience was mentally draining and a grueling process but that she leaned on her religion to help her see the light at the end of the tunnel.
āI’m a very devout Christian and for me, I was like, āIt was nothing but God that got me through, it was nothing but God that got me through this,āā she said. āIf people knew what I went through you would be falling on your knees and weeping too.ā
Jones said that in high school she had to really work through her relationship with God because she was raised in a church that said gay people were going to hell. So, when she came out as a trans woman she had to re-evaluate the relationship she worked so hard to create with God, again.
She reflected and realized that God didnāt use the perfect people in the Bible but that he works through everyone.
āSo if God can use all of those people, what is there to say that God can’t use the queer? What is it to say that God can’t use trans people,ā she said.
After she graduates next year, Jones hopes to work in campaign strategy. She said the ālesser of two evilsā conversation isnāt working anymore for Gen-Zers and wants to pioneer new ways for young voters to engage with politics.
āReally working on engaging and mobilizing young voters on how to understand and utilize their power, especially as it relates to Black and Brown people,ā she said.
When she became vice president of HUSA last year she said she did it for for all the little Black queer children down South who haven’t gotten their chance to dance in the sun yet.
āIf there was anyone ever coming in who’s trans, the No. 1 piece of advice that I can give you is, be the role model that the inner child in you needed most, be the advocate that the child in you needed most,ā she said āAnd most importantly, be the woman that the child saw in you but was too scared to be.
District of Columbia
GLAA announces ratings for D.C. Council candidates
Janeese Lewis George, Robert White, Nate Fleming receive highest marks
GLAA D.C., formerly known as the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington, announced on May 13 that it has awarded its highest ratings for D.C. Council candidates running in the cityās June 4 primary election to incumbent Council members Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4) and Robert White (D-At-Large) and to Ward 7 Democratic candidate Nate Fleming.
On a rating scale of +10, the highest possible rating, to -10, the lowest rating, GLAA awarded ratings of +9.5 to Lewis George, + 9 to Robert White, and +8.5 to Fleming.
Fleming is one of 10 candidates running in the Democratic primary for the Ward 7 Council seat, which is being vacated by incumbent Council member and former D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray, who is not running for re-election. In addition to Fleming, GLAA issued ratings for seven other Ward 7 Democratic contenders who, like Fleming, returned a required GLAA candidate questionnaire.
The remaining two Ward 7 candidates were not rated under a GLAA policy adopted this year of not rating candidates that did not return the questionnaire, the responses to which GLAA uses to determine its ratings, according to GLAA President Tyrone Hanley. A statement accompanying the GLAA ratings shows that it rated 13 D.C. Council candidates ā all Democrats — out of a total of 18 Council candidates on the June 4 primary ballot.
Ballot information released by the D.C. Board of Elections shows that only one Republican candidate and one Statehood Green Party candidate is running this year for a D.C. Council seat. GOP activist Nate Derenge is running for the Ward 8 seat held by incumbent Democrat Trayon White and Statehood Green Party candidate Darryl Moch is running for the At-Large Council seat held by Robert White.
GLAA shows in its ratings statement that neither Trayon White nor Derenge nor Moch returned the questionnaire, preventing them from being rated. However, one of two Democratic candidates running against Tryon White in the primary ā Salim Aldofo ā did return the questionnaire and received a rating of +5.5. The other Democratic candidate, Rahman Branch, did not return the questionnaire and was not rated. Trayon White has been a supporter on LGBTQ issues while serving on the Council.
GLAA President Hanley said GLAA this year decided to limit its ratings to candidates of all political parties running for D.C. Council seats. In addition to candidates running for an At-Large Council seat and Council seats in Wards 4, 7, and 8, the June 4 primary ballot includes candidates running for the D.C. Congressional Delegate seat, the Shadow U.S. House seat, and the Shadow U.S. Senate seat. GLAA chose not to issue ratings for those races, according to Hanley. He said during mayoral election years, GLAA rates all candidates for mayor.
The Capital Stonewall Democrats, D.Cās largest local LGBTQ political organization, was scheduled to release its endorsements of D.C. Council candidates and candidates for all other local D.C. races, including Congressional Delegate and Senate and House āshadowā races, at a May 21 endorsement event. The Blade will report on those endorsements in an upcoming story.
Like in all past years beginning in the early 1970s when GLAA began rating candidates in local D.C elections, the group has not rated federal candidates, including those running for U.S. president. Thus, it issued no rating this year for President Joe Biden and two lesser-known Democratic challengers appearing on the D.C. presidential primary ballot on June 4 ā Marianne Williamson and Armando Perez-Serrato.
In the At-Large Council race, GLAA gave Robert Whiteās sole Democratic challenger, Rodney Red Grant, who returned the questionnaire, a rating of +3.5.
āThe ratings are based solely on the issues and may not be interpreted as endorsements,ā GLAA says in its statement accompanying the ratings. The statement says the ratings are based on the candidatesā response to the questionnaire, the questions for which GLAA says reflect the groupās positions on a wide range of issues as stated in a document it calls āA Loving Community: GLAA Policy Brief 2024.ā It sends a link to that document to all candidates to whom it sends them the questionnaire and urges the candidate to seek out the brief āfor guidance and clarificationā in responding to the questions. GLAA says the ratings are also based on the candidatesā record on the issues GLAA deems of importance, including LGBTQ issues.
Like its questionnaire in recent years, this yearās nine-question questionnaire asks the candidates whether they would support mostly non-LGBTQ specific issues supported by GLAA, some of which are controversial. One of the questions asks the candidates, āDo you support enacting legislation to decriminalize sex work for adults, including the selling and purchasing of sex and third-party involvement not involving fraud, violence, and coercion?ā
Another question asks if the candidates would support decriminalizing illegal drug use by supporting āremoving the criminal penalties for drug possession for personal use and increasing investments in health services.ā Other questions ask whether candidates would address āconcentrated wealth in the District by raising revenue through taxing the most wealthy residents,ā would they support funding for āharm reduction and overdose prevention services to save lives,ā and would they support a Green New Deal for Housing bill pending before the D.C. Council that would āSocialize Our Housingā to address putting in place city subsidized housing for those in need.
One of the questions that might be considered LGBTQ specific asks whether candidates would support sufficient funding for the D.C. Office of Human Rights to ensure the office has enough staff members to adequately enforce the cityās nondiscrimination laws and to end a discrimination case backlog that the office sometimes encounters.
Some activists have criticized GLAA for not including more LGBTQ-specific questions in its questionnaire. Others have defended the questionnaire on grounds that D.C. long ago has passed a full range of LGBTQ supportive laws and most if not, all serious candidates running in D.C. for public office for the past 20 years or more have expressed strong support for LGBTQ equality. They argue that LGBTQ voters, while weighing the depth of support candidates have on LGBTQ issues, most of the time base their vote on a candidateās record and position on non-LGBTQ issues when all candidates in a specific race are LGBTQ supportive.
Hanley told the Washington Blade GLAA believes the current questionnaire addresses the issues of importance to the largest number of LGBTQ D.C. residents.
āMy response is that we care about whatever issues are impacting queer and trans people,ā Hanley said. āWe canāt isolate the challenges we are experiencing as queer and trans people to things that are specifically related to our identity as queer and trans people because they are all interconnected,ā he said.
āSo, how will I tell a Black trans woman we care about her not being discriminated against at her job for being trans, for being Black, or for being a woman, but we donāt care that she doesnāt have housing? Hanley asked. āTo me, that seems like a very inhumane way of thinking about human beings because we are whole human beings,ā he said, some of whom, he added, face a wide range of issues such as homelessness, drug issues, and āstruggling to make ends meet.ā
The GLAA statement that accompanies its ratings, which is posted on its website, includes links to each of the candidatesā questionnaire responses as well as an explanation of why it gave its specific rating to each of the candidates. In its explanation section GLAA says all the candidates expressed overall support for the LGBTQ community and expressed support for the concerns related to the issues raised by the questions even if they were not at this time ready to back some of the issues like decriminalization of sex work.
Following are the GLAA ratings given to 12 Democratic D.C. Council candidates and one āunknownā candidate that Hanley says submitted their questionnaire but did not reveal their identity on the questionnaire:
DC Council At-Large
Robert White: +9
Rodney Red Grant: +3.5
DC Council Ward 4
Janeese Lewis George: +9.5
DC Council Ward 7
Ebony-Rose Thompson: +4.5
Ebony Payne: +5
Kelvin Brown: +2.5
Nate Fleming: +8.5
Roscoe Grant Jr.: +3.5
Veda Rasheed: +5
Villareal VJ Johnson II: +4
Wendell Felder: +2
DC Council Ward 8
Salim Aldofo: +5.5
Unknown: +2
The full GLAA ratings, a breakdown of the ratings based on a GLAA rating criteria, the candidate questionnaire response, and GLAAās explanation for each of its candidate ratings can be accessed at the GLAA website.
District of Columbia
D.C. bill to study trans deaths faces opposition from LGBTQ advocates
Measure calls for creating Medical Examiner committee to identify trends
In a little-noticed development, D.C. Council member Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) introduced a bill in September 2023 calling for creating a special committee within the D.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to determine and study trends related to the cause of death of transgender and āgender diverseā people in the District of Columbia.
The bill is called the Transgender and Gender Diverse Mortality and Fatality Review Committee Establishment Act. Among other things, it mandates that the medical examinerās office through the newly created committee āidentify and characterize the scope and nature of transgender and gender-diverse mortalities and fatalities, to describe and record any trends, data, or patterns that are observed surrounding transgender and gender-diverse mortalities and fatalities.ā
In a development that some observers say caught Pinto off guard, officials with two prominent D.C. LGBTQ supportive organizations ā the Whitman Walker Institute and the LGBTQ youth advocacy group SMYAL ā expressed strong opposition to the bill in testimony submitted in April as a follow-up to a Council hearing on the bill conducted by Pinto on March 21.
Among other things, the officials ā Benjamin Brooks, Whitman-Walker Instituteās Associate Director of Policy and Education; and Erin Whelan, SMYALās executive director, said the committee to be created by the bill to identify trans people who die would be an invasion of their and their familiesā privacy. The two said the funds needed to pay for identifying whether someone who dies is transgender should be used instead for other endeavors, including supporting trans people in need, and protecting their rights.
The hearing record for the Councilās Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, which Pinto chairs and which conducted the hearing, shows that Brooks and Whelan were among four witnesses that testified against the bill. Six witnesses, including officials with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and Medical Society of the District of Columbia, testified in support of the bill.
Also testifying in support of the bill with suggested revisions was Vincent Slatt, who serves as chair of the D.C. Advisory Neighborhood Commission Rainbow Caucus.
Jenna Beebe-Aryee, Supervisory Fatality Review Program Manager for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, testified that the bill would be āremarkably challengingā for that office and its partnering city agencies to carry out, including what she said would be a difficult process of identifying whether someone who has died is transgender or gender diverse. But she did not state that her office and the Office of the Mayor outright oppose the bill.
The bill has remained in Pintoās committee since the time of the hearing, with no indication from Pinto of what her plans are for going forward with the bill, including whether she plans to make revisions and if or when she may plan to bring the bill to the full Council for a vote.
Victoria Casarrubias, Pintoās communications director, told the Blade last week that Pintoās office had no immediate comment on Pintoās plans for the bill.
The 17-page bill, according to its introductory summary page, would also ācreate a strategic framework for improving transgender and gender-diverse health outcomes for racial and ethnic minorities in the District,ā and to ārecommend training to improve the identification, investigation, and prevention of transgender and gender-diverse fatalities, and to make publicly available an annual report of its findings, recommendations, and steps taken to evaluate implementation of past recommendations.ā
The bill authorizes the D.C. mayor to appoint the members of the newly created medical examinerās committee and requires that members include representatives of six D.C. government agencies, including the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner; the departments of Health; Behavioral Health; Health Care Finance; Human Services; and the Mayorās Office of LGBTQ Affairs.
It calls on the Office of LGBTQ Affairs to provide support to other city agencies in developing procedures for identifying transgender people who the agencies have provided services for and who have died.
It also requires the mayor to name as committee members representatives of organizations providing health care and services for the transgender community as well as a social worker specializing in transgender related issues and a college or university representative āconducting research in transgender and gender-diverse mortality trends or fatality prevention.ā
Seven other members of the 13-member D.C. Council signed on as co-introducers of the bill. They include Council members Robert White (D-At-Large), Anita Bonds (D-At-Large), Christina Henderson (I-At Large), Matthew Frumin (D-Ward 3), Janese Lewis George (D-Ward 4), Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), and Vincent Gray (D-Ward 7).
Spokespersons for Gray and Bonds told the Blade the two Council members continue to support the bill and would consider any revisions that those who have expressed concern about the bill might suggest.
āThe establishment of this committee will continue the Districtās leading role in LGBTQIA+ advocacy and legislation,ā Pinto states in a letter accompanying her introduction of the bill. āThe Committee will be the first entity of its kind in the United States,ā according to her letter.
Pinto cites in her letter studies and national data showing that deaths of trans people are disproportionately higher due to a variety of causes, including illness compared to cisgender people in the United States. āTrans women in particular are disproportionately vulnerable to the aforementioned risks, as well as to violence and murder, with one in four trans women likely to be victimized by a hate-related crime,ā Pinto said in her letter.
āAlthough data are limited, some studies suggest that transgender people are ātwice as likely to die as cisgender peopleā due to āheart disease, lung cancer, HIV-related illness and suicide,ā with trans women being ātwo times as likely to die compared to cis men and āthree times as likelyā compared to cis women,ā Pinto states in her letter.
In their testimony against the bill, Brooks of Whitman Walker and Whalen of SMYAL said the problems they believe the bill will bring about outweigh the benefits that Pinto says it will provide for the trans community.
āIt is improper for the District government to be investigating and determining someoneās gender identity,ā Brooks said in his testimony. āThis would require District agencies to coordinate investigations into deeply personal characteristics of many people,ā he said. āThis invasion of privacy is a poor use of the governmentās time and energy.ā
Brooks stated that the city has existing policies and requirements designed to find ways to improve the lives of transgender and gender diverse residents. He pointed to the LGBTQ Health Data Collection Amendment Act of 2018, which requires the Department of Health to produce a comprehensive report on the health and health disparities faced by the D.C. LGBTQ community. According to Brooks, the Department of Health has not released such a report since 2017.
āWe strongly recommend that rather than proposing to spend precious time and scarce resources on a novel and invasive committee, the District should put those resources towards fulfilling existing data collection and reporting obligations,ā Brooks states in his testimony.
Whelan of SMYAL expressed similar concerns in her testimony. āTransgender and Gender-Diverse (TGD) people do not need yet another violation of their privacy and exposure to more questions and interrogation for them to provide the reasons for the incredible amount of violence and loss the transgender and gender-diverse community faces,ā Whelen says in her testimony.
āWhat we do need are solutions on how to address the underlying causes of anti-transgender violence, in addition to the barriers that prevent transgender and gender-diverse communities from accessing and maintaining safe and stable housing, and accessing affirming mental health resources,ā Whelan adds in her testimony. āWhat we as a community need is diligent action in a positive direction to actually address the lack of resources, services, and violence towards this community.ā
Supporters of the bill might point out that it includes strongly worded language calling for keeping personal information about transgender and gender-diverse people who die confidential and calls for criminal penalties for anyone who violates the confidentiality provision by disclosing the information, including whether a deceased person identified as transgender.
Brooks said strong grounds exist for not enacting the bill despite its privacy provision.
āThe collection of sensitive information, particularly for decedents who cannot advocate for their own right to privacy, always raises the potential for inappropriate disclosure regardless of potential penalties,ā he said. āThe threat of criminal prosecution can be a deterrent to the intentional inappropriate sharing of private information; however, it may not stop accidental or inadvertent disclosure,ā he said.
Slattās testimony calls for six specific suggested revisions in the bill pertaining to ways the newly created medical examiner committee would obtain information about trans people who die, including the suggestion that the Mayorās Office of LGBTQ Affairs become involved in identifying trans people who pass away and be given one or more additional staff members to help support its increased responsibilities under the legislation.
āMembers of the ANC Rainbow Caucus have discussed this proposed bill and find that it is a remarkable and historic step towards addressing trans and gender-diverse mortalities and fatalities,ā Slatt says in his testimony.
āAt a time when trans and gender-diverse people are under attack by municipalities across the nation, the District of Columbia is setting an example on how to create not just a culture of inclusion, but also a culture of belonging for trans residents,ā he stated.
-
South America4 days ago
Peruvian government classifies transgender people as mentally ill
-
Autos2 days ago
Seductive sport-utes: Buick Evista, Subaru Outback
-
District of Columbia4 days ago
Meet Jay Jones: Howardās first trans student body president
-
a&e features4 days ago
Whatās new at Rehoboth Beach for summer 2024