District of Columbia
‘Talking Trans History’ explores lives of D.C. advocates
Rainbow History Project holds first panel for city-funded Trans History Initiative
Longtime D.C. transgender rights advocates Earline Budd and Gabrielle ‘Gibby’ Thomas gave personal accounts of their transition as transgender women and their work as trans rights advocates Tuesday night, Jan. 24, at a “Talking Trans History” panel discussion organized by D.C.’s Rainbow History Project.
Joining them as a panelist was Rayceen Pendarvis, the acclaimed local event host, public speaker, and LGBTQ community advocate. Pendarvis, among other things, told of being nurtured and taught by dynamic transgender women who proudly affirmed their identity not only as trans people but productive citizens in the community at large.
Vincent Slatt, Rainbow History Project’s director of archiving, served as moderator of the panel discussion. He told the audience of about 25 people who gathered at the Southwest Branch of the D.C. Public Library that the event was the first of many such panels planned by the project’s recently launched Trans History Initiative.
Slatt noted that Rainbow History Project received a $15,000 grant for fiscal year 2023 from the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs to conduct the Trans History Initiative. The initiative plans to “better integrate the often-under-represented histories of trans people into our programming,” according to a RHP statement.
Budd, 64, who has been a trans-identified activist since the 1970s, became involved in the 1980s with supporting people with HIV/AIDS before founding the D.C. organizations Trans Health Empowerment and Empowering the Transgender Community (ETC), for which she currently serves as executive director. She has received numerous awards for her work in support of the trans community and her self-proclaimed role as “the advocate” for the trans and LGBTQ community.
In her remarks at the panel discussion, Budd told of her childhood upbringing in a religious family where, like many trans people, her parents didn’t approve of her early identity as a girl.
“I want to say that around eight or nine my mother found me to be different,” Budd said. “The difference was she would lay my clothes out, my sister’s clothes and my clothes for us to go to school. And when I would come downstairs, I would always have on my sister’s clothes,” Budd told the gathering.
“And she would say why do you have on your sister’s clothes?” Budd continued. “I said mommy, it fits. No, it does not, you’re a boy,” Budd quoted her mother as responding. “And let me tell you, that went on and on and on,” said Budd, who told how she eventually parted ways with her parents and left the house to embark on her role as one of D.C.’s leading trans advocates.
Among her many endeavors was successful discrimination complaints, including one against a D.C. skating rink and another against the D.C. Jail for discrimination based on gender identity. Budd told how she won in both cases, with strong backing from the D.C. Office of Human Rights.
Pendarvis, among other things, spoke about how an association with trans women as a young adult helped to shape Pendarvis’s longstanding and award-winning role as co-founder of Team Rayceen Productions, including 10 years as leading host of “The Ask Rayceen Show,” which highlighted topics promoting the LGBTQ and trans community in D.C.
Similar to Budd, Pendarvis has received numerous awards and honors, including recognition from the D.C. City Council, for work as a host and speaker at LGBTQ-related festivals, fundraisers and other events.
“As an activist and host, I have been blessed to do many things,” Pendarvis told the panel discussion gathering. “For many who do not quite know how to identify or ask me to identify, first of all, I’m a human being,” Pendarvis said. “I am a father of five and a mother of many.”
Pendarvis added, “I’m a human being first and foremost, a child of God. And my trans sisters uplifted me first, embraced me first. I came out in a community where our transgender sisters were always on the front line.”
Thomas, 65, told the panel session she is a native of North Brentwood, Md., located just outside D.C., but D.C. became her home since shortly after finishing high school. She began her work in the LGBTQ community in 1989 as a caregiver for people with HIV. She has since worked for the local organizations Us Helping Us, Transgender Health Empowerment, and Terrific, Inc. She currently works for Damien Ministries and its “Trans Specific” programming called Shugg’s Place that, among other things, focuses on providing services for transgender older adults.
She told of her growing up as one of seven children in a family whose mother and father, she said ‘were very loving.” But like other trans kids, Thomas said her parents were uncomfortable over her desire to identify as a girl. A more understanding next door neighbor allowed Thomas to spend time in her house as Thomas helped with household errands.
“I would go to the store and things like that for her,” Thomas said. “But what’s most important, I could dress as I wanted to in her house. She would give me dresses that I could wear. And I could go up there and put on my dresses and watch TV,” Thomas continued. “And then I would get to take my dress off and go home because mom and daddy wasn’t standing for that.”
At around the age of 10, Thomas said, she was aware of current events and observed that her father was a strong supporter and admirer of Martin Luther King Jr. and his civil rights leadership. “I said you can march with Martin Luther King for everybody else’s rights but you are going to deny me mine,” she recalled telling her father.
Thomas said she initially began patronizing D.C. gay bars after befriending gay men from her high school. A short time later, after realizing that the gay scene was not who she was, she discovered the then D.C. gay drag bars Louis’ and The Rogue and had a chance to meet “people like me.” But she said someone she met at one of those two bars introduced her to the then D.C. Black gay bar called the Brass Rail, where transgender women hung out.
“And I said, oh my God, I am home. This is heaven,” Thomas told the panel gathering. “When I came to the Brass Rail I felt like I was home” as a trans person, Thomas said. “I met so many terrific people.”
She went on to tell about the trials and tribulations of fully transitioning as a trans woman and her growth as a transgender activist with a career dedicated to supporting the trans and LGBTQ community.
Japer Bowles, director of the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs, spoke briefly at the start of the Talking Trans History panel discussion. He said the mayor’s office was excited to be supporting the Rainbow History Project’s newly launched Trans History Initiative.
“I’m really, really excited to work for a mayor who not only is fighting for things for our community, but truly funding these opportunities,” Bowles said. “This is about you and our trans communities. So, I’m here to listen.”
Slatt also announced at the panel session that Rainbow History Project has a paid job opening for one or more positions to help run the city funded Trans History Initiative. He said information about the job opening for people interested in applying can be obtained through RHP’s website. He said a video recording of the panel session would be posted on the website in a week or two.
District of Columbia
U.S. Attorney’s Office drops hate crime charge in anti-gay assault
Case remains under investigation and ‘further charges’ could come
D.C. police announced on Feb. 9 that they had arrested two days earlier on Feb. 7 a Germantown, Md., man on a charge of simple assault with a hate crime designation after the man allegedly assaulted a gay man at 14th and Q Streets, N.W., while using “homophobic slurs.”
But D.C. Superior Court records show that prosecutors with the Office of the U.S. Attorney for D.C., which prosecutes D.C. violent crime cases, charged the arrested man only with simple assault without a hate crime designation.
In response to a request by the Washington Blade for the reason why the hate crime designation was dropped, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office provided this response: “We continue to investigate this matter and make no mistake: should the evidence call for further charges, we will not hesitate to charge them.”
In a statement announcing the arrest in this case, D.C. police stated, “On Saturday, February 7, 2026, at approximately 7:45 p.m. the victim and suspect were in the 1500 block of 14th Street, Northwest. The suspect requested a ‘high five’ from the victim. The victim declined and continued walking,” the statement says.
“The suspect assaulted the victim and used homophobic slurs,” the police statement continues. “The suspect was apprehended by responding officers.”
It adds that 26-year-old Dean Edmundson of Germantown, Md. “was arrested and charged with Simple Assault (Hate/Bias).” The statement also adds, “A designation as a hate crime by MPD does not mean that prosecutors will prosecute it as a hate crime.”
Under D.C.’s Bias Related Crime Act of 1989, penalties for crimes motivated by prejudice against individuals based on race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, and homelessness can be enhanced by a court upon conviction by one and a half times greater than the penalty of the underlying crime.
Prosecutors in the past both in D.C. and other states have said they sometimes decide not to include a hate crime designation in assault cases if they don’t think the evidence is sufficient to obtain a conviction by a jury. In some instances, prosecutors have said they were concerned that a skeptical jury might decide to find a defendant not guilty of the underlying assault charge if they did not believe a motive of hate was involved.
A more detailed arrest affidavit filed by D.C. police in Superior Court appears to support the charge of a hate crime designation.
“The victim stated that they refused to High-Five Defendant Edmondson, which, upon that happening, Defendant Edmondson started walking behind both the victim and witness, calling the victim, “bald, ugly, and gay,” the arrest affidavit states.
“The victim stated that upon being called that, Defendant Edmundson pushed the victim with both hands, shoving them, causing the victim to feel the force of the push,” the affidavit continues. “The victim stated that they felt offended and that they were also gay,” it says.
District of Columbia
Capital Pride wins anti-stalking order against local activist
Darren Pasha claims action is linked to his criticism of Pride organizers
A D.C. Superior Court judge on Feb. 6 partially approved an anti-stalking order against a local LGBTQ activist requested last October by the Capital Pride Alliance, the D.C.-based LGBTQ group that organizes the city’s annual Pride events.
The ruling by Judge Robert D. Okun requires former Capital Pride volunteer Darren Pasha to stay at least 100 feet away from Capital Pride’s staff, board members, and volunteers until the time of a follow up court hearing he scheduled for April 17.
In his ruling at the Feb. 6 hearing, which was virtual rather than held in-person at the courthouse, Okun said he had changed the distance that Capital Pride had requested for the stay-away, anti-stalking order from 200 yards to 100 feet. The court records show that the judge also denied a motion filed earlier by Pasha, who did not attend the hearing, to “quash” the Capital Pride civil case against him.
Pasha told the Washington Blade he suffered an injury and damaged his mobile phone by falling off his scooter on the city’s snow-covered streets that prevented him from calling in to join the Feb. 6 court hearing.
In his own court filings without retaining an attorney, Pasha has strongly denied the stalking related allegations against him by Capital Pride, saying “no credible or admissible evidence has been provided” to show he engaged in any wrongdoing.
The Capital Pride complaint initially filed in court on Oct. 27, 2025, includes an 18-page legal brief outlining its allegations against Pasha and an additional 167-page addendum of “supporting exhibits” that includes multiple statements by witnesses whose names are blacked out.
“Over the past year, Defendant Darren Pasha (“DSP”) has engaged in a sustained, and escalating course of conduct directed at CPA, including repeated and unwanted contact, harassment, intimidation, threats, manipulation, and coercive behavior targeting CPA staff, board members, volunteers, and affiliates,” the Capital Pride complaint states.
In his initial 16-page response to the complaint, Pasha says the Capital Pride complaint appears to be a form of retaliation against him for a dispute he has had with the organization and its then president, Ashley Smith, last year.
“It is evident that the document is replete with false, misleading, and unsubstantiated assertions,” he said of the complaint.
Smith, who has since resigned from his role as board president, did not respond to a request by the Blade for comment at the time the Capital Pride court complaint was filed against Pasha.
Capital Pride Executive Director Ryan Bos and the attorney representing the group in its legal action against Pasha, Nick Harrison, did not immediately respond to a Blade request for comment on the judge’s Feb. 6 ruling.
District of Columbia
D.C. pays $500,000 to settle lawsuit brought by gay Corrections Dept. employee
Alleged years of verbal harassment, slurs, intimidation
The D.C. government on Feb. 5 agreed to pay $500,000 to a gay D.C. Department of Corrections officer as a settlement to a lawsuit the officer filed in 2021 alleging he was subjected to years of discrimination at his job because of his sexual orientation, according to a statement released by the American Civil Liberties Union of D.C.
The statement says the lawsuit, filed on behalf of Sgt. Deon Jones by the ACLU of D.C. and the law firm WilmerHale, alleged that the Department of Corrections, including supervisors and co-workers, “subjected Sgt. Jones to discrimination, retaliation, and a hostile work environment because of his identity as a gay man, in violation of the D.C. Human Rights Act.”
Daniel Gleick, a spokesperson for D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, said the mayor’s office would have no comment on the lawsuit settlement. A spokesperson for the Office of the D.C. Attorney General, which represents the city against lawsuits, said the office has a longstanding policy of not commenting on litigation like the Deon Jones lawsuit.
Bowser and her high-level D.C. government appointees, including Japer Bowles, director of the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs, have spoken out against LGBTQ-related discrimination.
“Jones, now a 28-year veteran of the Department and nearing retirement, faced years of verbal abuse and harassment from coworkers and incarcerated people alike, including anti-gay slurs, threats, and degrading treatment,” the ACLU’s statement says.
“The prolonged mistreatment took a severe toll on Jones’s mental health, and he experienced depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and 15 anxiety attacks in 2021 alone,” it says.
“For years, I showed up to do my job with professionalism and pride, only to be targeted because of who I am,” Jones says in the ACLU statement. “This settlement affirms that my pain mattered – and that creating hostile workplaces has real consequences,” he said.
He added, “For anyone who is LGBTQ or living with a disability and facing workplace discrimination or retaliation, know this: you are not powerless. You have rights. And when you stand up, you can achieve justice.”
The settlement agreement, a link to which the ACLU provided in its statement announcing the settlement, states that plaintiff Jones agrees, among other things, that “neither the Parties’ agreement, nor the District’s offer to settle the case, shall in any way be construed as an admission by the District that it or any of its current or former employees, acted wrongfully with respect to Plaintiff or any other person, or that Plaintiff has any rights.”
Scott Michelman, the D.C. ACLU’s legal director said that type of disclaimer is typical for parties that agree to settle a lawsuit like this.
“But actions speak louder than words,” he told the Blade. “The fact that they are paying our client a half million dollars for the pervasive and really brutal harassment that he suffered on the basis of his identity for years is much more telling than their disclaimer itself,” he said.
The settlement agreement also says Jones would be required, as a condition for accepting the agreement, to resign permanently from his job at the Department of Corrections. ACLU spokesperson Andy Hoover said Jones has been on administrative leave since March 2022. Jones couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
“This is really something that makes sense on both sides,” Michelman said of the resignation requirements. “The environment had become so toxic the way he had been treated on multiple levels made it difficult to see how he could return to work there.”
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