Washington Blade, Volume 53, Issue 34, August 26, 2022 by Washington Blade

AUGUST 26, 2022 • VOLUME 53 • ISSUE 34 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM The latest on how to stay safe amid outbreak, PAGES 06 & 12

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04 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • AUGUST 26, 2022 Thank you to our sponsors and partners of the Washington Blade. Community Partners ADDRESS PO Box Washington53352DC 20009 PHONE 202-747-2077 E-MAIL news@washblade.com INTERNET washingtonblade.com PUBLISHED BY Brown Naff Pitts Omnimedia, Inc. PUBLISHER LYNNE J. BROWN lbrown@washblade.com ext. 8075 EDITOREDITORIAL KEVIN NAFF knaff@washblade.com ext. 8088 SR. NEWS REPORTER LOU CHIBBARO JR. lchibbaro@washblade.com ext. 8079 NEWS REPORTER CHRIS JOHNSON cjohnson@washblade.com ext. 8083 REPORTER & INTERNATIONAL NEWS EDITOR MICHAEL K. LAVERS mlavers@washblade.com POP CULTURE REPORTER JOHN PAUL KING PHOTO EDITOR MICHAEL KEY mkey@washblade.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS TINASHE CHINGARANDE, DUNIA ORELLANA, REPORTAR SIN MIEDO, PARKER PURIFOY, PETER ROSENSTEIN, MARK LEE, LATEEFAH WILLIAMS, KATE CLINTON, KATHI WOLFE, ERNESTO VALLE, YARIEL VALDÉS GONZÁLEZ, LYNARE ROBBINS, PHILIP VAN SLOOTEN, KATLEGO K. KOLANYANE-KESUPILE, KAELA ROEDER, TREMENDA NOTA, ALBERTO J. VALENTÍN, MAYKEL GONZÁLEZ VIVERO, ORGULLO LGBT. CO, ESTEBAN GUZMAN CREATIVE DESIGN/PRODUCTION AZERCREATIVE.COM SALES & DIRECTORADMINISTRATIONOFSALES&MARKETING STEPHEN RUTGERS srutgers@washblade.com ext. 8077 SR. ACCT. EXECUTIVE BRIAN PITTS bpitts@washblade.com ext. 8089 ACCT. EXECUTIVE JOE jhickling@washblade.comHICKLING ext. 8094 CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING/ADMINISTRATION PHILLIP G. ROCKSTROH prockstroh@washblade.com ext. 8092 NATIONAL ADVERTISING RIVENDELL MEDIA 212-242-6863; sales@rivendellmedia.com For distribution, contact Lynne Brown at 202-747-2077, ext. 8075. Distributed by MediaPoint, LLC All material in the Washington Blade is protected by federal copyright law and may not be reproduced without the written consent of the Washington Blade. The sexual orientation of advertisers, photographers, writers and cartoonists published herein is neither inferred nor implied. The appearance of names or pictorial representation does not necessarily indicate the sexual orientation of that person or persons. Although the Washington Blade is supported by many fine advertisers, we cannot accept responsibility for claims made by advertisers. Unsolicited editorial material is accepted by the Washington Blade, but the paper cannot take responsibility for its return. The editors reserve the right to accept, reject or edit any submission. A single copy of the Washington Blade is available from authorized distribution points, to any individual within a 50-mile radius of Washington, D.C. Multiple copies are available from the Washington Blade office only. Call for rates. If you are unable to get to a convenient free distribution point, you may receive a 52-week mailed subscription for $195 per year or $5.00 per single issue. Checks or credit card orders can be sent to Phil Rockstroh at prockstroh@ washblade.com. Postmaster: Send address changes to the Washington Blade, PO BOX 53352 Washington, DC 20009. The Washington Blade is published weekly, on Friday, by Brown Naff Pitts Omnimedia, Inc. Individual Subscriptions are $195 per year for 52 issues (only $3.75 per issue mailed to you USPS). Rates for businesses/institutions are $450 per year. Periodical postage paid at Washington, D.C., and additional mailing offices. Editorial positions of the Washington Blade are expressed in editorials and in editors’ notes as determined by the paper’s editors. Other opinions are those of the writers and do not necessarily represent the opinion of the Washington Blade or its staff. To submit a letter or commentary: Letters should be fewer than 400 words; commentaries should be fewer than 750 words. Submissions may be edited for content and length, and must include a name, address and phone number for verification. Send submissions by e-mail to knaff@washblade.com. ©2022 BROWN NAFF PITTS OMNIMEDIA, INC. VOLUME 53 ISSUE 34 Te Only Stack Style Guide v 1 | February 2018

AUGUST 26, 2022 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • 05

Gregg Caren, PHLCVB president and CEO said, “Shei la’s experience is at the key intersection of diversity, equity and inclusion, strategic planning and business develop ment. She has not only the professional expertise to lead the business division, but a strong background in DEI ad vocacy that will continue to ensure PHL Diversity’s efforts are always community focused. Thanks to the work of PHL Diversity, the PHLCVB has been known as a leader in diver sity in the tourism and hospitality industry for more than 30 years. I look forward to the new energy and vision Sheila will bring to the organization.” Upon accepting the posi tion Sheila said, “I look forward to continuing my career of advocating for diversity, equity and inclusion and progress in the great city of Philadelphia by leading PHL Diversity. I look forward to continuing to support the mission of the PHLCVB and PHL Diversity and cannot wait to work with its well-established board and close partners in the city and beyond.”

In its Wednesday, Aug. 17 data release, D.C. Health said there were a total of 350 positive cases of monkeypox in the District of Columbia as of that time. The Aug. 17 data break down for the Current Gender Identity category included these figures:

The latest data release on Wednesday show that out of a total of 405 monkeypox cases in the District of Columbia as of Aug. 24, 11 (2.7 percent) were straight/heterosexual; 172 (42.5 percent) were gay; 0 cases were among lesbians (0.0 percent); 18 (4.4 percent) were bisexual; 1 (0.2 percent were in a category of “other;” and 203 (50.1 percent) were in a category of “unknown.”

DOH officials said the expanded vaccine eligibility crite ria, which they said was aimed at de-stigmatizing the mon keypox virus, will leave in place the other two groups cur rently deemed eligible for the vaccine – sex workers of any sexual orientation or gender and staff workers of any sexual orientation or gender at establishments where sexual activ ity takes place such as bathhouses, saunas, and sex clubs.

• Male, 343 cases—98% • Female, 3 cases – 0.9%

Most recently Alexander-Reid served as senior vice president, business development, at BiasSync, a firm that helps organizations more effectively assess and manage unconscious bias in the work environment. Prior to that she served in Washington, D.C. in Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration as executive director of the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs. She advised the mayor on the imple mentation of discrimination protections and diversity and inclusion policies that supported D.C.’s LGBTQ residents. Prior to that, she worked for the Washington Blade, as Vice President, Strategic Branding and Digital Initiatives; Branding4Change, CEO/Principal; Director of Strategic Engagement, Business Development Manager, Wash ington City Paper. She was founder/CEO, Women in the Life Inc./Women in the Life Magazine/Women in the Life Association. She has been an active volunteer in numer ous political and civic organizations including serving on the Biden/Harris Campaign Policy Committee; adviser to Primetime Health Initiative; and as a board member, Cam paign for All D.C. Families, fighting for marriage equality in DC.

Sheila Alexander-Reid, appointed executive director of PHL Diversity, a key business devel opment division of the PHLCVB. With decades of leader ship experience in diversity, equity, and inclusion, and a champion for marginalized communities, she will oversee PHL Diversity’s efforts to promote Philadelphia as an inclu sive, welcoming destination for meetings and conventions.

In its monkeypox data released on Wednesday, Aug. 24, D.C. Health reported the total cumulative cases in the Dis trict had reached 405. The new data show that 397 or 98 percent of those cases were in males and just 4, or 1.0 per cent, were in females. The data show there were no cases for the group listed as female to male transgender; one case for the category of male to female transgender (0.2 percent); and three cases (.7 percent) for the category of gender nonconforming.

The latest data on D.C. monkeypox cases from all the different categories, including sexual orientation, gender identity, race/ethnicity, and age, can be accessed at the De partment of Health website.

SHEILA ALEXANDER-REID (Courtesy of Zhee Chatmon/Discover PHL)

A DOH spokesperson did not immediately reply to an inquiry from the Washington Blade asking why the agency appeared to have stopped releasing Monkeypox case num bers for men who have sex with men before resuming the release of those numbers. The Blade also did not receive a response to its request for an explanation by DOH on why the category of “unknown” sexual orientation has exceed ed the number of reported cases among gay and bisexual men.Like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, DOH officials have said gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men comprise the overwhelming majority of reported monkeypox cases in D.C. and nationally.

The officials said the new criteria would also expand eligi bility from only D.C. residents to some nonresidents such as individuals who work in the District, students enrolled at Dis trict universities/colleges, and persons “affiliated with D.C. Health Programs that receive health care services in D.C., and 18 years of age or older,” who meet the other criteria such as having multiple sex partners over the previous two weeks.Atthe time it announced the expanded vaccine criteria, D.C. Health began releasing updated monkeypox case numbers every Wednesday at 11 a.m. by categories that included a person’s age, race/ethnicity, the D.C. residential ward where they live, and by the category of “Current Gen der Identity.”

D.C. Health expands eligibility criteria for monkeypox vaccine Agency resumes releasing data on infections after pause

residents and nonresidents can now access the

• Non-Binary, 3 cases – 0.9%

vaccine.

06 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • AUGUST 26, 2022 • LOCAL NEWS Comings & Goings Alexander-Reid joins Philly tourism office

Please share your successes with us at: comingsandgo ings@washblade.comCongratulationsto

By LOU CHIBBARO JR. | lchibbaro@washblade.com D.C. monkeypox

By PETER ROSENSTEIN

The D.C. Depart ment of Health an nounced on Aug. 12 that it has expanded one of its main eligi bility criteria for the monkeypox vaccine from men who have sex with men who have had multiple sex partners during the previous two weeks to all people of any sexu al orientation or gender who have had multiple sex partners within the past two weeks. But in an action that DOH officials did not announce, the agency appeared to have stopped releasing the number and percentage of monkeypox cases for gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men in the week following the vaccination criteria change. In its data release on Wednesday, Aug. 24, DOH resumed releasing data for the category of “Sexual Orientation.” How ever, the newly released data show a dramatic decline in the percentage of cases among gay and bisexual men along with a similarly dramatic increase in the number of cases list ed as “Unknown” regarding the person’s sexual orientation. That change appears to be due to a decision by DOH, which refers to itself as D.C. Health, to allow people filling out an application form for the monkeypox vaccination – as well as those who seek treatment for monkeypox — to no longer disclose their sexual orientation, even though offi cials have made it clear that such information would be kept strictly confidential.

• Transgender Female, 1 case – 0.3% During a July 25 Monkeypox Town Hall sponsored jointly by D.C. Health and the Washington Blade, D.C. Health offi cial Clover Barnes said out of the 172 reported monkeypox cases in D.C. at that time, “over 90 percent of those cases are of men who identify as gay, same-gender loving, or men who have sex with men or bisexual.”

The Current Gender Identity category, during that first week after the vaccine criteria change, included the subcat egories of “Male,” “Female,” “Non-Binary,” and “Transgen der Female.” But the Current Gender Identity category at that time did not include gay, bisexual, or other men who have sex with men.

The Comings & Goings column is about sharing the pro fessional successes of our community. We want to recog nize those landing new jobs, new clients for their business, joining boards of organizations and other achievements.

AUGUST 26, 2022 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • 07

Sacco pointed to other local establishments having speakers or performances outside their venues, at times even extending onto the city’s boardwalk, but not facing the same police response.

Owners of Port 251, a gay-owned bar and restaurant in Rehoboth Beach, Del., are accusing local police of discrimination and harassment, claiming on-duty ofﬁcers regularly sit outside the venue for the duration of its popular drag brunches.

FROM STAFF REPORTS

JACK

The event’s Facebook page announced the cancellation: “Some sad news to share. Due to numerous circumstances, it seems as if our last Drag Volleyball game in Rehoboth has already been played. We are sorry to disappoint you and put an end to this Rehoboth end of summer tradition. Thanks for all of your support throughout theForrestyears.”Park, one of the original players, told the Blade in 2013 that it started with simple and casual pick-up volleyball games on Poodle Beach at the end of the boardwalk in 1988. An older gay man Park only knew as “Mother” owned the net and gave it to Park, the same net they used until it wore out in 2011. All the players — nine on each team — had drag names, which they use with each other throughout the summer. Each team picked a theme for the year and performed sometimes elaborate dance routines during breaks from the game.

Organizers of the annual Labor Day weekend drag volleyball event in Rehoboth Beach, Del., announced the tradition has been canceled. The event pitted two teams of gay guys in drag against each other, which organizers insisted on keeping “just for fun,” drawing thousands of spectators each year. The event celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2013; it was canceled the last two years due to COVID.

“The police officers are apologetic when they arrive,” said Maggio, noting that, despite numerous conversations with clients and local community members, he has not heard of any ongoing noise complaints regarding the performances.ButLt.Jamie Riddle, professional standards unit commander of the Rehoboth Police Department, said that officers are not placed outside of events “unless there is a public safety concern.” Riddle added that the agency has begun to meet with the restaurant’s owners and “proactively investigate the noise associated with the Friday and Sunday performances” — not necessarily in immediate response to a public complaint.Still,Riddle noted that the agency’s response follows a string of noise complaints from the local community received by the city’s dispatch center beginning June 19, as well as a formal complaint filed with the Office of the City Manager on July 21 — a record of complaints that Riddle claims other local businesses with drag performances have not Accordinggenerated.toRiddle, Port 251 is currently being investigated concerning its adherence to two city ordinances: the maximum noise levels ordinance — §189-4 — which limits how much sound an individual or business can emit beyond private property; and the use restrictions ordinance — §270-19 — which prevents live entertainment on dining patios. Maggio noted he believes that the venue is now in compliance with the maximum noise level ordinance.

08 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • AUGUST 26, 2022 • LOCAL NEWS

Rehoboth gay-owned restaurant alleges police harassment Venue cites recurring ofﬁcer visits during drag brunches

Those interested in participating in the walk, making a donation, or learning more can visit aidswalkdelaware.org for more information. WALKER

“AIDS Walk Delaware is more important than ever,” the press release continued. “It is more important for people who have lived with compromised health for a long time. People who have just learned they are HIV-positive. People who love someone who is HIV-positive. People for whom the best and broadest prevention efforts still elude them.”

“Our objective is not enforcement, but rather compliance,” Riddle said. “If our presence is the mechanism needed to achieve compliance then that is our obligation to the Regardless,community.”forPort 251 the ongoing presence of police ofﬁcers “sitting outside for the entire show” during drag events has affected the experience of patrons and performers alike, Sacco added.

By JACK WALKER

Check-in will begin in each park at 9 a.m. with walks beginning at both locations at 10 a.m. Registration for the event is free, and those who raise $30 or more will receive a complimentary commemorative T-shirt. In the press release, John Beckley, director of development and marketing for AIDS Delaware, noted that COVID-19 has disproportionately affected those living with HIV, who might have especially vulnerable immune systems. “Many are struggling with isolation, depression and anxiety,” Buckley said in a statement. “This year, we walk with those folks in our hearts.”

“Patrons feel uncomfortable, some get up and leave,” he explained. “It’s unfortunate because we’re just trying to make a living. But, even more so, the drag queens are just trying to make a living and they’re feeling targeted.”

But Riddle maintained that the nature of the event is “irrelevant” to the agency’s response.

Tony Sacco, an owner of Port 251, said police began to routinely visit the venue during drag performances because of alleged noise complaints, at times measuring the volume of performances from outside and ﬁning the restaurant for violating the city’s noise ordinance.

Rehoboth Beach drag volleyball tradition ends AIDS Walk Delaware to be held in Wilmington, Rehoboth A group shot at one of the previous drag volleyball matches. (Photo courtesy of Brent Minor)

Port 251 in Rehoboth Beach hosts drag shows that are being monitored by local (Washingtonpolice.Bladephoto)

Sacco and Maggio emphasized that the restaurant has worked to comply with the city’s noise ordinance, reducing the volume of its music and directly reaching out to the chief of police and city commissioner, but later received complaints from ofﬁcers over patrons clapping too loudly and drag artists performing on the restaurant’s patio.

“I’m not sure who it’s bothering at 12 o’clock in the afternoon,” Sacco said. “They weren’t coming because of a call at that point.”

This year’s AIDS Walk Delaware will be held Sept. 17 in two locations: Brandywine Park in Wilmington, and Grove Park in Rehoboth Beach. The annual event seeks to promote awareness surrounding HIV and raise money for HIV testing, management, and education programming through theHostedstate. by AIDS Delaware and the Delaware HIV Consortium, AIDS Walk Delaware is the oldest and largest HIV fundraiser in the state, drawing more than 600 attendees in previous years, according to an Aug. 9 press release. The theme of this year’s walk is “Step Up, Step Out: Remove Stigma, Eliminate HIV, Improve Lives.”

Joe Maggio, co-owner, alleged that this response from city police began after the venue received noise complaints in 2020, and continued until the restaurant was no longer considered in violation months later. Maggio also alleged that in 2020 city ofﬁcials criticized the police department’s repeated stationing of ofﬁcers outside the venue, yet, since the start of the summer, the venue has again been confronted with a police presence.

Riddle added that, with the visible presence of officers during the Friday and Sunday performances, the dispatch office has received “no associated noise complaints” from the local community. However, according to Riddle, the first time officers were not present — last Friday — a noise complaint was received.

“The members of our agency serve our residents, businesses, and visitors alike by responding to calls for service and through proactive police work,” Riddle said. “When presented with a concern from a member of our community it is our obligation and duty to thoroughly investigate and assess the concern.”

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Marsha P. Johnson Institute honors, uplifts Black trans lives Elle Moxley on ‘making the full humanity of our existence visible’

MOXLEY: Just several weeks ago, we lost one of the most important freedom fighters and political prisoners of our time — Albert Woodfox, who was held in solitary confinement for 44 years, the longest solitary confinement in U.S. history. I would say that Black August is always an opportunity for people to understand the structural inadequacies that exist not only in prisons, but in the world. It’s real people who are being housed in prisons, and I say real people because the atrocities of life are often happening to the people who are in cages. I think Black Philanthropy Month creates a space for more investments to happen to organizations who are leading the fight against the apartheid and the segregation that certainly exist in America. To celebrate the freedom fighters of our time, we are uplifting Black trans freedom fighters who have given their lives to movement, who have given their lives for others. And that’s happening in and outside of prisons — those who are on the inside of prisons are always still advocating for the people in the communities that they believe in, and we are so grateful and thankful to those folks.

BLADE: It seems like most of the recent news about reproductive rights and trans rights has been dismal. Are there any bright spots on your radar, in terms of legislative progress on these issues?

BLADE: When and why did you found the Marsha P. Johnson Institute?

ELLE MOXLEY: The Marsha P Johnson Institute launched in 2019, and my founding of the organization was in response to the consistent murders that were being reported of Black trans women across the country. I have spent many years working as an organizer and activist, and I saw that there was a gap in social justice spaces — in terms of the solutions that were being generated in response to those murders, but also to the systemic and structural violence that existed around Black trans people and Black people period. The organization was named in honor of Marsha P. Johnson to afﬁrm the movement that Marsha spearheaded and to create a space where the movement of today had a place to live, without disregarding the history of so many that came before.

By CARIS WHITE

ELLE MOXLEY (right) with actress DOMINIQUE JACKSON at the MPJ Institute’s recent event with H&M. (Photo courtesy MPJ Institute)

BLADE: In honor of Black Philanthropy Month and Black August, are there any understudied or underreported causes and freedom ﬁghters that people should be more aware of?

BLADE: The Institute’s Starship Artists Fellowships are set to begin soon — what are your hopes for the new program? MOXLEY: With all of our new programming, it really is our hope that we are changing the culture of global societies — that we are not only making Black trans people visible, but we’re making the full humanity of our existence visible. The artists’ fellowship was created to pay homage to the visionaries that exist in the Black trans community. There’s a Black trans renaissance that certainly is underway, and we want to continue to support that function of movement. A lot of people assume that movement is literally about protesting — and that certainly is a big part of it — but there are other ways that you can resist but also practice your joy. We really want it to mirror that Black trans people are joyful — we have joy, and murder is not the only thing we expect to happen to us. Our artists’ fellowship creates space for artists to imagine a bigger picture, a bigger world, for Black trans futures.

MOXLEY: Anytime a human right is interrupted or taken away, it is such a negative for so many people who are looking for legislation that gives them hope. I will say that I’ve just been hopeful about the future of democracy and of our humanity. I think there are so many activists who have been activated to lead to more generative resolutions around legislation, especially when we think about piecemeal legislation actually being the thing that’s being abolished. That’s the beautiful juxtaposition of what happens when we lose a law — the thing about laws is that they can go away, and they can always return. If we lean into the positive, we have an opportunity to create more than we originally started with. And that’s the thing that gives me so much hope — we can create more foundational legislation that accounts for the human rights of all people and not just a speciﬁc kind. With reproductive justice being at the center of so many of our political conversations, what we are seeing is an expansion of what reproductive justice means and who reproductive justice applies to. And that is what gives me great hope, that we will now be able to account for more than just the abortions of trans men, that we’ll be able to think about the reproductive rights of Black trans women and nonbinary people in ways that we’ve never been able to consider before.

I am an artist myself, so that was also a big part of it. Activism is something that Black trans people often have to choose to survive, and we are mad and angry about our circumstances, but we actually are people who have other dreams and desires outside of just fighting for our lives. Marsha P. Johnson again served as an amazing model for movement — her participation in street art and in theater troupes is a reflection of the joy that so many people find outside of their activism.

10 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • AUGUST 26, 2022 • LOCAL NEWS

Marsha P. Johnson — a towering ﬁgure in the Stonewall Rebellion — would have celebrated her 77th birthday this week. Johnson was an outspoken advocate for gay and trans rights, and the “P” in her name stood for “Pay it no mind” — her response when asked about herIngender.honorof the late activist’s birthday, the Blade sat down with Elle Moxley, founder of the Marsha P. Johnson Institute, to discuss how Johnson’s legacy lives on.

BLADE: Can you tell me about the spirit of Marsh P. Johnson that you see in the Institute? MOXLEY: The ﬁght for equity is something that we see as an evolvement of Marsha’s belief in equality, and we recognize that Marsha was very visible in a movement that did not always reﬂect faces that looked like hers, in terms of what we understood about LGBTQ rights or LGBTQ people. Knowing that Black trans people exist outside of our deaths and outside of our murders is really where we see the evolvement of our work at the Institute, but that evolvement would not even be possible if Marsha had not made herself visible on the front lines of her activism. It is in that regard where we see ourselves very much mirroring a model that she created for the movement, and we have certainly held up the torch and are carrying it forward.

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On one hand, designating monkeypox as a sexually transmitted disease would give the public a clearer idea about the way it’s being transmitted to allay concerns and enable the public to take appropriate precautions. On the other hand, as seen during the height of HIV/AIDS crisis, an emphasis on monkeypox being transmitted among men who have sex with men may have the effect of stigmatizing the community (and the sexual activity) as being responsible for theLoubrieloutbreak.said the issue of whether or not monkeypox should be messaged more as a sexually transmitted disease is “a very good question and also a very big debate around public health, even within the public health sector.”

Asked by the Blade during the call about any consideration on declaring monkey pox a sexually transmitted disease, Daskalakis said it’s “really important that the decision around monkeypox and whether it’s designated happen thoughtfully from the perspec tive of other implications.”

“What’s really important from the perspective of our communication on the ground is that our harm reduction and safer sex guidance really does mention the importance of sexual transmission or the associated transmission of the virus, and also provides guid ance necessary, like reminding people that condoms may have a role — not necessarily the full role — in preventing monkeypox, but also reminds folks that skin-to-skin contact in the context of sex can be really a part of how transmission occurs,” he said.

Demetre Daskalakis, who is the face of the LGBTQ outbreak for the Biden administra tion as deputy coordinator of the White House monkeypox task force, made colorful re marks Friday during a conference call with reporters downplaying the risk of contracting monkeypox through brief contact, quoting a senior policy adviser at the CDC who has studied LGBTA health issues.

Monkeypox spread through sex, not brief skin-to-skin contact: experts officials weigh declaring virus an STD

“I’ll say that we need to provide the real facts to our community that indicates right now that the majority of the cases are sexually transmitted, right?” Loubriel said. “So transmission is not occurring by casual touch, right? That’s what we know as of today … So the majority of the cases [are] by prolonged skin-to-skin contact, and during sex there is a lot of skin-to-skin contact.” As health experts at large are beginning to make a distinction in how the disease is transmitted, the Biden administration has also taken up messaging that downplays the risk of monkeypox transmission through minimal skin-to-skin contact.

By CHRIS JOHNSON cjohnson@washblade.com

Lee, however, praised communications on monkeypox from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, saying the agency has “very useful guidance about promoting equity in monkeypox communication that I actually really like.”

Juan Carlos Loubriel, senior director of community health at the D.C.-based Whit man-Walker Health, was among the health experts making the distinction between the negligible risks of transmitting monkeypox through brief skin-to-skin contact as op posed to sexual activity.

12 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • AUGUST 26, 2022 • NATIONAL NEWS

“I think I’m going to quote my friend Robbie Goldstein that sex involves friction, and friction seems to be how this happens,” Daskalakis said. “So, I think, that from the per spective of events, the real risk at an event is low. Of course, you have to gauge that risk based on what you’re doing, so if there’s a lot of clothes out dancing and friction, that could be a mechanism of transmission, but just brushing by someone, I’ve said this many times before, just brushing by someone is probably low or no risk.”

Monkeypox is being spread via sex and not casual contact, experts say.

“That’s sort of their big picture strategy that I think is actually the right strategy,” Lee concluded. “How well everyone’s implementing it across the country in our messy, some what broken public health system is another question.”

Key points in the guidance, Lee said, is messaging that monkeypox can affect anyone, while going through some of the ways the virus is being transmitted and ways the pub lic can protect itself. The guidance, Lee said, follows the right strategy of articulating a message to the general public, then adding more specific messages about protection against the disease and risk to the communities most vulnerable.

With reported cases of monkeypox in the United States this week reaching 15,505, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control, a number of health experts who spoke to the Blade talked about outright declaring monkeypox a sexually transmitted disease as part of this messaging — although they acknowledge such a label would have pros and cons.

Amid fears monkeypox would spread at an increased rate at the end of summer as gay men gather in close quarters for dance parties and other celebrations, health experts are starting to emphasize that the current outbreak isn’t spreading through minimal skinto-skin contact, such as brushing up against a fellow shirtless dance partner, but rather through sexual activity and overwhelmingly among men who have sex with men.

The messaging is consistent with new studies finding cases of monkeypox are over whelmingly the result of sexual activity. According to a recent report by NBC News, an in creasing amount of scientific evidence — such three studies published in peer-reviewed journals, as well as reports from national, regional, and global health authorities — has indicated “experts may have framed monkeypox’s typical transmission route precisely backward.”“[A]nexpanding cadre of experts has come to believe that sex between men itself — both anal as well as oral intercourse — is likely the main driver of global monkeypox transmission,” the NBC News report says. “The skin contact that comes with sex, these experts say, is probably much less of a risk factor.”

With evidence the monkeypox outbreak is overwhelmingly being transmitted through sexual activity and risks from skin-to-skin contact virtually non-existent, experts say discussion on whether or not to label the virus as a sexually transmitted disease are ongoing and controversial.

“The only reason we cannot say it is just sexually transmitted is because we know as a fact that it can be spread by other various avenues like touching clothing, bedding with an infected person or towels being used by someone with monkeypox, potentially contact with respiratory secretions,” Loubriel add ed. “So that is why it’s probably not been named as a sexually transmitted in fection.”Joseph Lee, a professor of health education at East Carolina University who studies health inequities among LGBTQ people, said there’s “real tension” in finding the right messaging, which he said would strike a balance between be ing factual while not being stigmatic of the marginalized community affected by“Wemonkeypox.seewhen we have messaging that goes to the general public…that messaging about how a particular group is doing worse triggers negative ste reotypes and makes people feel less at risk than they are,” Lee said. “And really importantly, it makes the group at the worst end of that problem feel some times like they’re feeling fatalistic or they can’t do anything to protect themselves. You almost feel like you have to give up and you’re just going to get it anyway because the messaging is so clear, how much it’s impacting your community.”

Health

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Rep. Maloney fends off progressive challenger

STEPHEN GOEPFERT has worked as special assistant and personal aide to President Joe Biden. (Official White House Photo by Cameron Smith)

14 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • AUGUST 26, 2022 • NATIONAL NEWS

As noted in The New York Times, the announcement from the 81-year-old Fauci wasn’t unexpected because he had been hinting for some time he was thinking of stepping down.

The challenge between Maloney and Jones never took place as Jones elected to seek re-election in a different congressional district. Biaggi’s challenge, however, repre sented the progressive voice in the Democratic primary, although voters in the district saw Maloney as the way to go by overwhelmingly giving him the nomination.

CHRIS JOHNSON Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leading epidemiologist who ad vised seven presidents and had a major role in the HIV/ AIDS and COVID epidemics, has confirmed plans to re tire from his role in the U.S. government.

“So long as I’m healthy, which I am, and I’m energetic, which I am, and I’m passionate, which I am, I want to do some things outside of the realm of the federal govern ment,” Dr. Fauci was quoted as saying, reportedly adding he intends to draw on his experience in public health and public service to “hopefully inspire the younger genera tion.”

CHRIS JOHNSON Stephen Goepfert, special assistant and personal aide to President Joe Biden, is slated to join the U.S. Depart ment of Transportation where he will be working on the implementation of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, a spokesperson with the agency told the Blade Tuesday.

At DoT, Goepfert will serve under Transportation Sec retary Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay person con firmed to a cabinet post. CHRISTOPHER KANE

The potential challenge upset progressives, especially as Maloney would be taking that on while being chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Top White House officials including Biden’s Chief of Staff Ron Klain and his longtime confidant and counselor Steve Ricchetti echoed Biden’s praise of Goepfert’s per formance. “I have worked with and seen many body peo ple over the years, Stephen is at the top,” Klain said. “It’s a tough and grueling job, and no one has done it with the competence, kindness, and warmth that he has.”

Rep. SEAN PATRICK MALONEY (D-N.Y.) won his primary this week. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases and now chief medical adviser to President Biden, signaled he plans to retire in December in a statement Monday. Fauci, however, is quoted in the New York Times as say ing he’s “not retiring in the classic sense” but would de vote himself to traveling, writing, and encouraging young people to enter government service.

Maloney, however, isn’t a shoe-in for re-election during a year when Republicans are expected to make gains in the U.S. House. Republicans selected as their nominee Michael Lawler, who currently serves as a member of the New York State Assembly. Cook Political Report ranks the congressional district as “Lean Democratic” in 2022.

Dr. ANTHONY FAUCI plans to retire after more than 50 years of government service. (Washington Blade file photo by Lou Chibbaro Jr.)

White House aide shifts to Buttigieg’s staff

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) one of nine openly gay members of the U.S. House, fended off a challenger Tuesday in New York’s Democratic primary to keep a seat in the U.S. House, a boon for LGBTQ representation even though he has drawn the ire of some progressives in his party.The Associated Press called the primary race for the Democratic nomination to represent New York’s 17th con gressional district in favor of Maloney, who was running against Rep. Alessandra Biaggi (D-N.Y.). Initial results indi cated Maloney easily won against Biaggi, taking 67 per cent of the vote compared to the 33 percent she won. Maloney had risen to greater prominence during the first Trump impeachment of 2019, when he bolstered his reputation for his aggressive questions of witnesses during the congressional hearings. As an out member of Congress, Maloney has taken the lead on LGBTQ issues, most recently introducing legislation that would requirer insurers to cover monkeypox testing at no out-of-pocket cost to the public.

Fauci, a leader in the U.S. government response to the coronavirus pandemic, was seen as a major antagonist of former President Trump’s, who was criticized for down playing the threat of the disease — and even outright ly ing about its danger to the American public. In turn, Fauci drew the ire of conservatives, who blamed him for mak ing Trump look bad and for the lockdown policies they opposed.Thegay community also remembers Fauci for the lead role he took in development of treatment for HIV/AIDS during the height of the epidemic in the 1980s. Although Fauci was once among the targets of protest groups like ACT UP, he later became close friends with now deceased activist Larry Kramer.

While serving in his current position, a role that is often referred to as the president’s “bodyman,” Goepfert has enjoyed virtually unrivaled proximity and access to Biden beginning with his 2020 presidential campaign. As a gay man and longtime member of Biden’s inner circle of trusted advisers, Goepfert is one of the administration’s most powerful LGBTQ officials. An official with the White House provided additional confirmation to the Blade that Goepfert’s forthcoming role at DoT will involve working to implement the infra structure law. The administration has hailed the bill as one of its most significant legislative accomplishments, a historic once-in-a-generation investment to rebuild America’s long-neglected roads, bridges, and rails. The law also involves provisions to fight climate change, as well as the expansion of access to clean water and highspeed internet.

The White House disclosed Goepfert’s planned depar ture, scheduled for the end of this week, with a statement from Biden commending Goepfert’s service as his special assistant and personal aide, where he proved himself “a trusted and loyal confidant who everyone counts on and who always delivers.” White House receptionist Jacob Spreyer will assume the role vacated by Goepfert.

But Maloney, who has a reputation for being a centrist, has also clashed with the progressive wing of the Dem ocratic Party. After redistricting in New York reduced the number of congressional seats, Maloney was initially plan ning to run against Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.), which would have pitted him against a progressive. (Jones is also Black and another openly gay member of the U.S. House).

Fauci confirms plan to retire in December

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Rodman in 2014 traveled to North Korea with a group of former NBA players who played in an exhibition game for leader Kim Jung Un’s Birthday. Rodman has made sev eral other trips to North Korea in recent years, despite the country’s deplorable human rights record.

• While administrating medical examination or treat ment for the homosexual, bisexual and transgen der patients, gender equality and respect must be ensured to avoid discrimination and prejudices against these groups.

MICHAEL K. LAVERS Federal police in Brazil have called for prosecutors to charge President Jair Bolsonaro with incitement for spreading false information about COVID-19. O Globo, a Brazilian newspaper, on Wednesday report ed a Federal Police investigator in a letter to the Federal Supreme Court specifically cited Bolsonaro’s claim that people who receive a COVID-19 vaccine are at increased risk for BolsonaroAIDS. made the comment on Oct. 21, 2021, during a live social media broadcast. Several HIV/AIDS service providers and LGBTQ and intersex activists with whom the Washington Blade spoke in March while reporting from Brazil noted it. O Globo reports Bolsonaro could face up to six months in prison if convicted of incitement. The first round of Brazil’s presidential election will take place on Oct. 2. Bolsonaro — a former Brazilian Army captain who rep resented Rio de Janeiro in the country’s Congress from 1991-2018 — is running against former President President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro has been widely criticized over his rhetoric against LGBTQ and intersex Brazilians, women and oth er underrepresented groups in the country. Bolsonaro has also faced criticism for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and his stance towards people with HIV/AIDS, among other things. Polls indicate Da Silva, who is a member of Brazil’s Work ers’ Party, is ahead of Bolsonaro. The incumbent presi dent has sought to discredit Brazil’s electoral system amid growing concerns that violence could erupt if he does not accept the election results if he loses.

“We’ve also provided very clear guidance to American citizens owing to a number of threats, not the least of which is the threat of wrongful detention, that Americans should not travel to Russia,” he added. “That has been our message to private Americans across the board.”

Rodman on Saturday told NBC News while he was at a D.C. restaurant that he “got permission to go to Russia to help that girl.” “I’m trying to go this week,” said Rodman.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price on Mon day told reporters during a press briefing that Rodman “would not be traveling (to Russia) on behalf of the U.S. government.” A White House source told the Washing ton Blade the administration is “really not thrilled about Rodman and he definitely was not given permission by (the) U.S. to negotiate with Russia over” Brittney Griner ’s release.Secretary of State Antony Blinken has publicly acknowl edged the U.S. has offered Russia a deal to secure the re lease of Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan, another Ameri can citizen who is serving a 16-year prison sentence after his conviction for spying.

“I do believe it is extremely important to create a medi cine to stop this man,” Mariah Rafaela Silva, a transgender woman of indigenous descent who works with the Wash ington-based International Institute on Race, Equality and Human Rights, told the Blade on Thursday after news that federal prosecutors have called for Bolsonaro’s indictment.

A Russian court earlier this month convicted Gri ner — a Phoenix Mercury center and two-time Olympic gold medalist who is a lesbian and married to her wife, Cherelle Griner — of smuggling drugs into the country and sentenced her to nine years in a penal colony. Brit tney Griner’s lawyers have appealed her sentence.

LAVERS 16 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • AUGUST 26, 2022 • INTERNATIONAL NEWS U.S. doesn’t

“The Vietnamese Health Ministry’s recogni tion that sexual orientation and gender iden tity are not illnesses will bring relief to LGBT people and their families across Vietnam,” said Kyle Knight, senior LGBT rights research er at Human Rights Watch, in a press release his organization released on Aug. 18. “LGBT people in Vietnam deserve access to health information and services without discrimina tion, and the Health Ministry’s new directive is a major step in the right direction.” Human Rights Watch in its press release notes Vietnam over the last decade “has made some progress on LGBT rights.”

The U.S. on Monday discouraged former NBA star Dennis Rodman from traveling to Russia in order to help secure Brittney Griner’s release.

• Enhance information propagation and dissemina tion so that the medical doctors, staff and patients at the medical examination and treatment establish ments have a correct understanding about homo sexual, bisexual and transgender persons.

MICHAEL K. LAVERS

The Vietnamese Health Ministry earlier this month an nounced it no longer considers LGBTQ people to be sick. A directive the ministry issued on Aug. 3 directs health care providers “not to consider homosexual, bisexual and transgender (people) an illness.” The directive also con tains the additional four provisions:

American officials have reportedly expressed a willing ness to release Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer who is serving a 25-year prison sentence in the U.S., as part of a prisoner swap. A spokesperson for Russia’s Foreign Min istry has confirmed negotiations between the two coun tries over a potential prisoner swap have begun.

The directive also notes homosexuality can not be “cured.”

• To enhance the works of internal review and inspec tion towards the medical examination and treat ment establishments and practitioners to ensure compliance with the professional codes in medical services according to the law.

Vietnam no longer considers LGBTQ people sick Brazil police call for Bolsonaro to face charges

Jessica Stern, the special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights abroad, visited Vietnam in May.

• Not to interfere nor force treatment upon these groups (of patients) — if any, it must be in the form of psychological assistance and performed only by those who have the knowledge of sexual identity.

MICHAEL K. want Rodman’s help freeing Griner

“We put forward a substantial proposal to Russia to seek the freedom of Paul Whelan and Brittney Griner,” said Price on Monday. “We believe that anything other than negotiating further through the established channel is likely to complicate and hinder those release efforts.”

Acting Vietnamese Health Minister DAO HONG LAN (Photo by Tran Minh/Vietnamese government)

The government in 2013 announced samesex relationships are no longer “forbidden,” but LGBTQ and intersex couples still lack legal recognition.VicePresident Kamala Harris during a meeting with LGBTQ and intersex activists in Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital, last August noted the Health Ministry “helped craft the draft — and draft — the transgender rights law” that took effect in 2017. The State Department’s 2021 hu man rights report people “who have undergone reassign ment surgery the right to register their new status,” but a bill “to implement this was pending as of year’s end.”

DENNIS RODMAN (Screenshot courtesy of YouTube/NBA)

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Norton: Introduce a bill to get the RFK site for D.C. now!

Mendelson should stop ﬁghting over details that can be addressed later

Time for Norton to propose that legislation again in thisThereCongress.areother issues impacting D.C. that the upcoming mid-term elections, and who controls Congress, could impact. The Washington Post did a piece on some of those, including whether D.C. could create a legal recreational marijuana industry, take back control of the parole system, and control the D.C. National Guard. Clearly there is even more at stake in the long run should Republicans take back Congress and then the presidency in 2024. Many people forget D.C. doesn’t have full control of its budget or legislation. Congress has the right to review any law the D.C. Council passes and to review our budget. They could easily impact whether abortion stays legal and safe in D.C. So if we can’t get the tough stuff settled, then let’s at least work now to get the easier stuff like the ability to purchase the RFK site done. I understand Mendelson didn’t want to deal with this during his primary as he thought people might misconstrue his approval of an open-ended Norton bill as his approving of the Commanders. Well Phil, you won your primary, and we all know your position, so stop standing in the way of progress. Just think, no matter what we use that site for it will provide thousands of jobs, and the chance for huge tracts of parkland, affordable housing, and recreational facilities. More retail in an area of the city that needs it. Phil, this is what you are obstructing. You don’t want that as part of your legacy. So Phil, move off your high horse and tell Del. Norton to go ahead and introduce the same bill she did in 2019. Leave the ﬁghts for use of the site to the right time and that isn’t now. You and the mayor can debate this later and if you have the votes on the Council your view will win out. If you don’t, then maybe you are on the wrong side ofthis.Del.

18 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • AUGUST 26, 2022 • VIEWPOINT is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist. He writes regularly for the Blade. ROSENSTEINPETER

The time has come — it’s actually past time — for Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton to introduce a bill in this Congress to get the RFK site for the District. The bill needs to be introduced without any restrictions for its use. It is time for Council Chair Phil Mendelson, and some other Council members, to get over themselves and stop asking for restrictions on the use of the site before we have it. The use of the site should be decided by the people of the District once we have control of it. The current fight between Mendelson and some Council members, and the mayor, is whether to add a restriction to the bill to ensure the site can’t be used for the Commanders’ football team. Mendelson objects to Dan Snyder as owner. But that fight is simply a distraction at this time and of no value. Whether we want the Commanders or not, or we end up with another stadium or not, should be debated after we control the land. No one knows who will even own the Commanders by the time the deal between the District and the federal government for the RFK site could beThecomplete.bottom line is nothing will go on that site after we have it without the Council’s approval. They would have to pass any budget for whatever will go on the site. So having a fight over that now is ridiculous and Mendelson knows it. His demands are standing in the way of the District gaining control of an incredibly important piece of land.Itwas reported in 2019 “The District’s non-voting delegate in the House of Representatives, Eleanor Holmes Norton, has formally proposed legislation that would have the federal government sell the 190-acre Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium site to D.C., which could then redevelop the land as it sees fit. Under Norton’s bill, the land would be sold exclusively to D.C. at “fair market value.” Local leaders have for years eyed the site. It is located along the Anacostia River and is one of the last large, undeveloped areas in the city, with no current concrete plans for its future use besides some new recreational fields, an indoor sports facility, a market hall, a few pedestrian bridges, and a memorial to Kennedy. These uses would far from fill the entire 190 acres, and many residents say they support transforming that tract into new housing, retail, and parks.”

BRANDON

The governor’s attacks on LGBTQ people are coming from every angle. In dragging his signature Don’t Say LGBTQ Law over the finish line, DeSantis twisted his legislative minions in knots, publicly haranguing anyone who dared defy him. He took aim at Disney, one of the globe’s most recognizable brands, decimating a local government to drive his point home. He bullied the Agency for Health Care Administration into withdrawing Medicaid funding for gender-affirming care, plunging tens of thousands of transgender Floridians into uncertainty in the comingHisweeks.Department of Education told school districts to ignore Title IX protections for LGBTQ students, warning (falsely) that offering protection from discrimination to those young people could put districts in legal jeopardy. And he used the Department of Business and Professional Regulation to target an LGBTQ-owned small business, threatening to destroy them for daring to host drag brunch on Sundays.DeSantis is so drunk on ego that he is weaponizing any agency he can get his hands on against a population fighting to keep its head above water. His office led a surge in the term “groomer” being hurled across the country, his now former press secretary trafficking in the trope during a desperation Twitter rant. The strategy is straightforward: disparage and dehumanize LGBTQ people to score polling points with the base and justify cruel policies aimed at erasing us. Curriculum censorship. Book banning. Government dictating what medical care someone can access, the haircuts they can sport, the clothes they can wear. If that sounds like an authoritarian nightmare, it is. But it’s not just a Florida or Texas nightmare, it’s a crisis encircling the windpipe of the nation, threatening to suffocate us all. What DeSantis has unlocked in Florida – the weaponization of every government apparatus against his constituents to lock up his grip on power – isn’t an end game. It’s a trial run. There is nothing he would relish more than the chance to use the U.S. Department of Education to rip protections from transgender students in every corner of the country. Right wing extremists look to DeSantis for the roadmap to an authoritarian America not just because they want to emulate his policy success; but because they want to see him at the helm. Your eyes are not deceiving you. And yes, it’s heavy and overwhelming. That is by design. The DeSantis Doctrine is one ripped from the teachings of Donald Trump and put on political steroids: create a tempest so chaotic and all-consuming that it feels inevitable. Our community is no stranger to attacks like these. For centuries, our presence has been hyper-sexualized, demonized, and used to stoke fear in those around us. We dare to imagine a world where people are celebrated exactly as they are. And for that – we have long been political targets. But that means we are also no stranger to what must come next. Throughout history, with our backs against the wall, we’ve won by telling our stories, living our truth, and demanding equality. This moment requires us to find that strength once again. It requires us to make November’s elections a referendum on hate, refusing to let it fester and consume the country. LGBTQ people are under assault in America, a cancerous barrage being led by DeSantis. Our job now is to stop its people under cancerous barrage led by DeSantis

Infatuated with the idea of being president, drunk on potential power

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LGBTQspread.

is press secretary of Equality Florida, the largest statewide LGBTQ rights organization. J.

VIEWPOINT • AUGUST 26, 2022 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • 19

ORLANDO – No, your eyes are not deceiving you. LGBTQ people in America are under assault. Right-wing radicals, in their quest to dismantle democracy and install Christian Nationalist rule, are (once again) breathlessly obsessed with scapegoating LGBTQ people, using our existence as a political lightning rod. As a result, every day has become more treacherous for the community than the last. Make no mistake, their tactics are not new. Transgender and nonbinary people, as they often have been, are squarely in the crosshairs. Their existence is debated, their humanity called into question. They are told when and where to use the bathroom, when and where their names will be respected, when and where they are safe to walk — when and where society will allow them to be.

Ron DeSantis cares about Ron DeSantis. He is infatuated with the idea of being President, drunk on the potential of his power. And, as a result, is willing to do anything — and step on anyone – to score another Fox News chyron and rake in a few more six ﬁgure donations.

And while the onslaught is happening all over the country, many of those desperate to see LGBTQ people relegated to second-class citizenship are looking to Florida, under the reckless leadership of Governor Ron DeSantis, for their cues. It should be said: DeSantis does not care. He does not care about Floridians, the state’s economy, or the constitutionality of his extremist policies. And he certainly does not care about the health and wellbeing of the populations he crushes along the way.

Remember Ricky Shiffer who was shot and killed after he tried to shoot up an Ohio FBI ofﬁce? He was outraged that the FBI searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. He urged people to arm themselves and join him. Did you know hatred of LGBTQ people is one of the reasons he supported Trump? Read this tweet, in an account deleted after his attack: “We need to be ready for war against the communists who chemically nueter [sic] prebuscent [sic] children and call it gender transitioning, not bellyache about the arguments of 30 years ago. Save ammunition.”

Large majorities of Americans say they support LGBTQ equality. Large majorities of Americans say they believe our nation should stand for freedom and liberty for all, including for marginalized people. Large majorities of Americans support women’s reproductive freedom, support taking steps to lift up Black people, and support immigrant rights. Large majorities of Americans want to live in a diverse, pluralistic society where everyone is free to pursue happiness and live in peace.

I wrote this column from the perspective of a queer person, but my Lebanese-American doctor friend could have written something similar from his immigrant perspective. My writer friend Allison Gaines could have written from the perspective of a Black woman.Weshare a common fear: that politically and religiously conservative white men are working as hard as they can to sow fear of the Other for personal power and privilege. Men like Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, and many more are plying the demagogue’s trade.

Jacob and Christian are also canaries.

According to Alexandra Martinez writing in Prism, anti-LGBTQ arson and frequent street attacks in New York City have left queer people this summer living with a gnawing feeling of unease. It’s not just New York City. She notes that 2021 was the deadliest year on record for LGBTQ people in the U.S., and that violence rates are surging higher in 2022.

Christian and his family earlier this month and learned that he often puts up with anti-gay slurs shouted at him in the street by random strangers.

They’re a gay couple who were attacked while standing at the end of Christian’s driveway in a suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah in July. A group of young men in a car spotted them hugging. They jumped out, yelling, “We don’t like gay people in our street.” Christian tried to defend Jacob from violence by stepping in front of him. He ended up on the ground, beaten so badly he landed in the hospital diagnosed with brain swelling.Iinterviewed

Responding to J.P.’s 911 call, EMS rushed Chuck to the hospital where he was treated for a broken thumb and underwent surgery for a jaw broken in two places. According to the Blade, another gay couple was attacked in D.C. under similar unprovoked circumstances on Aug. 7, chased down by random strangers who objected to them holding hands, then called them “monkeypox faggots,” knocking them to the ground, brutally punching and kicking them.

Chuck Johnson, J.P. Singh, Chad Sanford, Jacob Metcalf, Christian Peacock, and a score of nurses and doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital already know. They’ve been the targets of extreme violence in the past few weeks, directed by people using hatred of the Other to prop up their own privilege and power.

Leaders are spouting hate, seeking to establish or maintain minority rule, and historians are warning President Biden that they may very well succeed.

I opened this article by writing about the historians who told President Biden that we’re at a place we haven’t been since the 1860s. In the same meeting, they made a more frightening comparison. They warned the president we’re at a very similar place to where Germany found itself in the 1930s when a demagogue took power by demonizing the Jews. They say a war like the one that destroyed Europe could repeat itself soon, only with the U.S. in the driver’s seat. We worry the rest of you don’t see and hear the hatred directed against us. We worry that you’re too complacent. We don’t think you appreciate the gravity of the crisis facing our nation. We fear apathy will let the the Republican Party seize Congress and state governments this November, unleashing a process that could cement minority rule for Extremistsgenerations.intheRepublican Party are already quietly taking over state election ofﬁces, something the Washington Post warned about last November. Will Democratic voter turnout this November be overwhelming? Will it be enough to stop the assault on our teetering Democracy? Only you can help make that happen. Will you? (The preceding article was previously published by Prism & Pen– Amplifying LGBTQ voices through the art of storytelling and is republished by permission.)

JAMES FINN is a columnist for the Los Angeles Blade, a former Air Force intelligence analyst, and alumnus of Queer Nation and ACT UP. Reach him at jamesﬁnnwrites@gmail.com.

But ﬁrst, let’s meet some canaries. Chuck Johnson and J.P. Singh recently told the Washington Blade a group of young men spotted them holding hands steps away from their D.C. home. As the couple was returning from an evening out, the group shouted that they were “faggots” and punched them both. The couple ran, but the men chased them down. They knocked Chuck to the ground, punching and kicking him.

Libs of Tiktok is the tip of the iceberg on Twitter, where attacks against LGBTQ people are constant background noise, and where community standards meant to prohibit slurs and attacks are rarely enforced. Caraballo asks in her tweet thread, “When will Twitter do something about [Libs of TikTok] and their ability to rile up massive harassment campaigns against their targets? Last time it was Nazis at pride and drag events. This time it’s threatening pediatricians.” According to a new study released on Aug. 10 by the Human Rights Campaign and the Center for Countering Digital Hate, “discriminatory and inﬂammatory “grooming” content surge by over 400% across social media platforms” in response to Florida’s Don’t Say Gay law.

Did you read about the group of staid U.S. historians who just met privately with President Biden to warn him that U.S. democracy is teetering? They told him we’re closer to civil war and authoritarian rule than at any point in history since the 1860s. Guess who knew that already? Queer people. Black people. Immigrants. Women. Politicians on the right are using us as punching bags, and violence is breaking out everywhere.It’snotinour imaginations, and I’ll show you the data in just a minute to back that up. Then I’ll explain what that has to do with the breakdown of democracy.

20 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • AUGUST 26, 2022 • VIEWPOINT

Over the past week, nurses and doctors in Boston have received a barrage of hateful phone calls and text messages, including at least one bomb threat, inspired by anti-LGBTQ extremist Chaya Raichik of Brooklyn who tweets as Libs of Tiktok. Raichik objects to parents choosing gender-afﬁrming care for transgender teens, and she objects to medical providers delivering that care. She used Twitter to unleash an army of Proud Boys and other haters. Slate reporter and Harvard Law instructor Alejandra Caraballo tweeted this: “In the last 5 days, Libs of Tiktok has tweeted and retweeted 14 posts about Boston Children’s Hospital. As a result, BCH providers are being inundated in death threats and harassing calls and emails. It’s now affecting their services. This is stochastic terrorism, fullWhenstop.”I saw the tweet, I called a friend of mine who practices internal medicine at a different Boston hospital. As I asked him for a comment, he reminded me that we watched the 2016 election returns together at a bar in Detroit. “I won’t say I told you so,” he said. “But I told you so.” I remembered how fearful he became the night Donald Trump was elected. “I’m from Lebanon,” he reminded me, “and my last name broadcasts ‘Arab’ loud and clear. Trump is going to make my life hell, and since you’re a gay man, you’d better be as worried as I am.”

LGBTQ people: Canaries in a violent coal mine We continue to be targets of politically inspired attacks

According to Christopher Kane writing in the Los Angeles Blade, major social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter are doing almost nothing to counter growing waves of anti-LGBTQ hate speech on their platforms. Both platforms claim their rules prohibit users from calling LGBTQ people pedophiles or groomers, but neither platform routinely removes such slurs, not even when users report the slurs.

kp.org/pridemedical/masCelebratingdiversity, supporting the community, and sharing our pride.

At Kaiser Permanente, the region’s leading health system,1 we’ve always supported the LGBTQ+ community. From inclusive, compassionate care provided by physicians knowledgeable about LGBTQ+ health issues to a welcoming and safe environment, you’ll always get care that makes you feel like you belong.

AUGUST 26, 2022 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • 21

Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of the Mid-Atlantic States, Inc.2101 E. Jefferson St. Rockville, MD 208522022BD0702 MAS 6/3/22-12/31/23

1In the survey Best Health Insurance Companies for 2021 by Insure.com, Kaiser Permanente as a national enterprise is rated #1 overall among 15 companies. In the NCQA Commercial Health Plan Ratings 2021, our commercial plan is rated 5 out of 5, the highest rating in MD, VA, and DC. The 2019 Commission on Cancer, a program of the American College of Surgeons, granted Three-Year Accreditation with Commendation to the Kaiser Permanente cancer care program (extended through 2022). The Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group is the largest multispecialty medical group in the Washington, DC, and Baltimore areas and exclusively treats Kaiser Permanente members. Permanente doctors are recognized as Top Doctors in Northern Virginia Magazine (2022), Washingtonian magazine (2021), and Baltimore magazine (2021). According to NCQA’s Quality Compass® 2021, we’re rated 5 out of 5 in 29 measures, including: controlling blood pressure (heart disease), blood pressure control (140/90) (diabetes), glucose control, colorectal screening, breast cancer screening, cervical cancer screening, childhood immunizations, prenatal check-ups, and postpartum care. Quality Compass is a registered trademark of the NCQA.

22 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • AUGUST 26, 2022 LEFT PAGE Summer’s not over yet! Now is the time to Live Your Beach Life. Trust the #1 Real Estate Sales Team in Coastal DE to make it happen.

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Standouts for me were the loungy, uptempo-yet-chill vibe of the “Underground Club Mix” of “Erotica” (straight from the vintage “Erotica” maxi), the “PSB Maxi Mix Edit” of “Sorry,” (until now, a promo-only mix), the “Eddie Amador Club 5 Edit” of “Give it 2 Me,” (vintage, but never commercially available until now) and “Avicii’s UMF Mix” of “Girl Gone Wild,” which features a spidery instrumental motif that could almost work as a fugal theme. As a whole, however, there are a few impediments to the way this all goes down, especially if you listen straight through. A few tracks — e.g. the “Sasha Ultra Violet Mix Edit” of “Ray of Light” with its sputtery beat pattern or the loungy, uber-chill vibe of the “Bob Sinclar Space Funk Edit” of “4 Minutes” (this edit of which was only ever previously released on a 12” vinyl picture disc) — give needed contrast to the mostly unrelenting 4/4 beat patterns.

It also moves a lot faster through her catalogue than you might guess. Since classics like “Papa Don’t Preach” and La Isla Bonita” were not No. 1 dance hits, we get to “Like a Prayer” and “Vogue” barely halfway through disc one.When a non-Madonna-penned single pops up — Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” (from “Evita”) or Don McLean’s “American Pie” (from “The Next Best Thing”), they jump out as markedly better examples of songcraft than just about anything Madonna ever came up with herself. Going straight from “Pie” to “Music,” one of M’s most lyrically insipid compositions ever to my ear, is especially painful. For sure, there are dozens of pop masterpieces here, but the covers tend to accentuate the froth on cuts like “Turn Up the Radio” or “Jump.” On the brighter side, however, the vocals sound stronger and sweeter than I recalled. Yeah, they’re likely auto-tuned and otherwise studio sweetened, but there were several passages — “Nothing Really Matters,” “Keep it Together,” “Deeper and Deeper” — when it’s clear Madonna is a better studio singer than she ever gets credit for. Booklets, too, are thorough and nicely done with detailed track info and pics of all her single artwork. While there are 50 tracks here, the math is a bit fuzzy. “Angel,” which charted jointly with its ﬂip side “Into the Groove,” is absent as is “Causing a Commotion,” which had a vinyl Record Store Day release back in April, though it’s annoying it’s not here. Because “You Can Dance” topped the chart as an entire album and the Britney duet “Me Against the Music” was not from a Madonna project, there’s a little wiggle room numerically in how this set was curated.

24 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • AUGUST 26, 2022 Madonna, though she has as many hit compilations as one would expect from an artist of her vintage and stature, has always seemed wary of looking back or indulging much degree of nostalgia about her career. As polarizing as her later albums sometimes are, one could never accuse her of cashing in, as so many veteran acts do, on tour after tour of the same old set list designed to hit all the obvious musical marks, please the most tepid of fans and make easy millions. But she has almost swung too far the other way. Hits sometimes have felt grudgingly performed at her live shows of the last, oh, 20 years or so, and have, at times, been so radically re-crafted — an approach that can be thrilling when it works, no doubt — the spirit of the original track has been sometimes painfully undercut.

New release gathers 50 of her dance chart-toppers spanning 5 decades

An all-vinyl edition of Madonna’s new remix collection ‘Finally Enough Love,’ sold out quickly, but the release is still available in several other formats, physical and (Photodigital.courtesyWarner/Rhino)

Madonna’s new remix album ‘Finally Enough Love’ collects vintage mixes of her many hits, but often in slightly different versions from what has previously been commercially available. (Photo courtesy Warner/Rhino)

And while the DJs are all obviously talented and at times quite creative, by the middle of disc two, one starts wondering if a wiz/nerd with access to the stems could have almost come up with something just as good on a Yamaha Clavinova or the like. Almost.

Tons of other remixes here are just slight variations of mixes we’ve heard before. I haven’t been following these releases like a hawk in recent years, but if you collected these in any capacity over the years, there will likely be a fresh balance of familiar and unfamiliar motifs and passages sprinkled throughout.Mostofthe remixes retain the bulk of the lyrics from the album versions and are tight edits (no 10-minute percussion solos). The earlier cuts on disc one are the least radical, a non-surprise considering remixing trends of the ’80s. And while many of these mixes are heretofore unreleased, they are nearly all vintage or, where tweaked, retain the spirit of their album counterparts. There’s no radical thumpa-thumpa version of “Everybody” or “Material Girl,” for example; disc three, containing the newest material, is by far the most pounding/rave-inﬂuenced.

‘Finally,’ a proper Madonna remix collection

This collection is not, as one might guess, a collection of the “Shep’s ‘Spressin’ Himself Re-remix” of “Express Yourself” from the “Justify My Love” maxi (also home to the “Bye — and there certainly are folks like that in the Madonnaverse — your experience won’t fore. I haven’t been following these releases like a hawk in recent years, but if you collected these in any capac-

By JOEY DiGUGLIELMO

All that to say, it’s fun to see Our Lady of the Remix — for whom in popdom is more deserving of that title? — look back so sumptuously with the Aug. 19 release of “Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones,” ( out of four) a new 50-track remix collection available digitally, in a three-disc CD set and a sold-out six-LP vinyl edition, as well as “Finally Enough Love,” a 16-track version on single CD, double vinyl and digitally. The releases are the first since it was announced last summer that Madonna was returning to her original label, Warner Records, in a new deal that would include a series of deluxe catalogue reissues. It celebrates her record-shattering span of 50 No. 1 hits on the Billboard U.S. Dance Songs Club chart, starting with “Holiday”/“Lucky Star” (only “Holiday” is here, though) in 1983 and culminating with “I Don’t Search I Find” in early 2020 from her 2019 album “Madame X.” The collection’s title is taken from that track. For context, those trailing her record of 50 No. 1 hits on that chart are Rihanna (33), Beyonce (22), Janet (20) and Katy Perry (19); Madonna’s record here is the most number ones by an artist/band on any Billboard chart ever. It’s also especially nice to see since remixes have been so essential to Madonna’s career. The only time she ever released anything remotely akin to this before was either very early (1987’s “You Can Dance” remix album) or oddly random (the 2003 EP “Remixed & Revisited”). This collection is not, as one might guess, a collection of her all-time greatest remixes or even necessarily the versions of the songs that charted. Gen. Xers who gobbled up her maxi singles all through the ’90s and beyond will find their stash, if retained, are still the only sources (not counting unofficial YouTube postings) for classics such as the “Shep’s ‘Spressin’ Himself Re-remix” of “Express Yourself” from the “Justify My Love” maxi (also home to the deliciously weird “The Beast Within Mix”), the “Waiting” remix (a non-single) from the “Rain” maxi or any of the varied delights (e.g. “Madonna Gets Hardcore”) on the import “Bye Bye Baby” maxi. Even if you’re a completist of the highest order — and there certainly are folks like that in the Madonnaverse — your experience won’t be sullied or buoyed much by the mixes included or excluded.

But after a while, especially on discs two and three, it all starts sounding like little more than “Hooked on Madonna,” of the famous “Hooked on Classics” series from the ’80s, which set classical themes to dance beats. Of course, some of that is to be expected given the nature of the release, but as an actual experience, it’s occasionally tedious.

AUGUST 26, 2022 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • 25

Tuesday, August 30 Showtime at Legacy will be at 8:30 p.m. at Legacy DC. This is an opportunity for DMV creatives to have a once-amonth headlining feature in the store. This month’s featured artist is Noochie, who will perform with Legacy DC’s house band ‘The Experience Band’, do Q&As with the audience, and also take pictures in the photo booth with event attendees. This event is free and details are available on Eventbrite.

“Sunday Vibes! LGBTQ+ Inclusive Outdoor Event!” will be at 2 p.m. at Dirty Habit. DJs Eletrox and Jai Syncere will be playing top 40, Afrobeats, reggaeton, house remixes, throwbacks and more. Tickets are free and can be accessed on Eventbrite.

Virtual Yoga Class with Jesse Z. will be at 12 p.m. online. This is a free weekly class focusing on yoga, breathwork, and meditation. You can RSVP for this event on the DC Center’s website.

Thursday, September 01

DC Spaghetti on the Beach Live will be at 7 p.m. at Hamilton’s Bar & Grill. Comics Angel Morla and Mark Mensh will host an open mic on the Hill a short walk from the Capitol, The National Mall and Union Station. This event is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.

Wednesday, August 31

Trans Support Group will be Friday at 7 p.m. on Zoom.

Black Lesbian Support Group will be at 11 a.m. at the DC Center for the LGBT Community. This is a peer-led support group devoted to the joys and challenges of being a Black lesbian. For more information, email supportdesk@ thedccenter.org.

Center Aging Monthly Lunch and Yoga will be at 12 p.m. at the Reeves Center. This event is in partnership with the DC Department of Aging and Community Living. For more information, email adamheller@thedccenter.org.

Underground Comedy at Hotbed Comedy Club will be at 8 p.m. at Hotbed. This fast-paced show will feature rapid-fire sets from 10-15 comics. Seating is first come, first served. Standing room available once seats are filled. This event is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.

Friday, August 26

Women in their Twenties and Thirties will be at 8 p.m. on Zoom. This is a social discussion group for queer women in the Washington, D.C. area and a great way to make new friends and meet other queer women in a fun and friendly setting. For more information, email supportdesk@thedccenter.org.

Monday, August 29 Center Aging Coffee Drop-In will be at 10 a.m. at the DC Center for the LGBT Community and online on Zoom. LGBT Older Adults — and friends — are invited to enjoy friendly conversations and to discuss any issues you might be dealing with. For more information, visit the Center Aging’s Facebook or Twitter. Not Another Drag Show will be at 8 p.m. at Dupont Italian Kitchen. Logan Stone will host the event along with a rotating cast of other DMV performers. Tickets are free and can be accessed on Eventbrite.

API Queer Support Group will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This support group is co-sponsored by Asian Paciﬁc Islander Queer Society DC and Asian Queers United for Action. For more information, email supportdesk@thedccenter.org.

OUT & ABOUT

Saturday, August 27

DC Karaoke Happy Hour will be at 7 p.m. at Harlot DC. Guests will get to choose from a selection of 30,000 songs while enjoying happy hour food and drink specials. This event is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.

26 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • AUGUST 26, 2022 CALENDAR | By TINASHE CHINGARANDE

Peace Corps group to host comedy show Grassroots Comedy will partner with Returned Peace Corps Volunteers of Washington, D.C. to host “Super Spectacular Comedy Show for Cultural Understanding” on Wednesday, Aug. 31 at 7:30 p.m. at Kramers.Theevent will have a hilarious lineup of some of the funniest comedians in the region with a thing or two to say about cultural understanding. Tickets start at $15 and can be purchased on Eventbrite.

Trans Support Group will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This group is intended to provide emotionally and physically safe space for transgender people and those who may be questioning their gender identity or expression to join together in community and learn from one another. For more details, email supportdesk@thedccenter.org.

The DC Center’s Food Pantry Program will be held all day at the DC Center for the LGBT Community. To be fair with who is receiving boxes, the program is moving to a lottery system. People will be informed on Wednesday at 5 p.m. if they are picked to receive a produce box. No proof of residency or income is required. For more information, email supportdesk@thedccenter.org or call 202-682-2245.

Sunday, August 28 Go Gay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Coffee & Conversation” at 12 p.m. at As You Are. This event is for those looking to make more friends in the LGBTQ+ community and some new faces after two years of the pandemic. This event is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.

Queer-centric open-stage org to host talent show Domingo’s Got Talent will host “Domingo’s Got Talent Presents: Family Values” on Sunday, Aug. 28 at 7 p.m. at DC9 Nightclub. This event will feature performances by drag families Casa Sin Miedo, Brat Haus, and Haus of Dommé. There will also be live music, comedy, drag, family therapy, and performance art. There will be no cover and attendees are encouraged to tip the performers both virtually and by using the event’s cash tip receptacles. More event details are available on Facebook.

AUGUST 26, 2022 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • 27 Do you identify as a member of the LGBTQ+Questions?community? arosenblatt@medicine.bsd.uchicago.eduStudyPI:AdenaRosenblatt,MDPhDPleasecontactus:773-702-7696 We invite you to fill a 5-7 minute anonymous online survey about full body skin exams ScantheQRcodeorvisit: https://redcap.link/fbse1 OurstudyaimstounderstandhowLGBTQ+individualsexperiencefull-bodyskinexamsandhowtheseexamscanbeimproved.Participationisvoluntary,andparticipantsmustbeatleast18yearsold. Participantscanbeenteredintoaraffleto wina$50Amazongiftcardupon completionofthesurvey.

Little things mean a lot. A tiny kiss, a love note written on a scrap of paper, you know how you cherish those things. If you can keep them in your pocket, on a keychain, or tucked in a satchel, all the better because importance isn’t measured by volume. Little things mean a lot, and in the new book “From Gay to Z” by Justin Elizabeth Sayre, they all add up perfectly.

You’ll find notable performers from then and now in this book; for instance, do you know who Wayland Flowers was, and his sidekick, Madame? If so, you’ll enjoy the en try for Liberace, too – and if you’re not, then read about Lil Nas X, Billy Porter, Brandi Carlisle, Freddie Mercury, and dozens of LGBTQ allies and “icons.”You’ll also find entries about notable LGBTQ-owned newspapers, as well as au thors, playwrights, movies and moviemakers.

New book reviews LGBTQ life, from Wayland Flowers to Lil Nas

By TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER

‘From Gay Justin Elizabeth

to Z: A Queer Compendium’ By

28 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • AUGUST 26, 2022

In the introduction for “From Gay to Z,” author Justin Elizabeth Sayres says that there was no way “of boiling down the entirety of queer culture into one book.” It’s true: just page through and you’ll likely spot AWOL en tries almost immediately (What? No Danica Roem? No Bettie Page?). No worries: you’ll also instantly see some thing else that Sayres promises: lighthearted humor.

There’s so much goodness packed between the covers of “From Gay to Z” that you almost don’t know where to start. Be conventional, and begin with “A” or take a chance and flip open the book at random. There’s something interesting, either way. Sayres goes pretty far back into gay history for the entries chosen, but there’s plenty for a modern reader, or for someone who’s recently out, or who badly needs a brush-up on history. Each entry is quick to read, too, so no commitment is required. Even so, this book is like a bag of potato chips: you can’t help but dip into “From Gay to Z” until it’s gone. Little things mean a lot but in this case, they mean great big fun.

For most of your life, you’ve been fed a steady diet of history, but what do you know about gay history, pop cul ture, and stand-out activists? Everything you don’t know about your GayBCs is in tiny entries in this book. Take, for instance, drag, or a method of performance that Sayre thinks “queer people have always participated in.” Drag is performance, but it’s also campy theater, “em powerment,” and “a chance to... get to be the person you always wanted to be.” Check out this entry, and the one forInRuPaul.yourGayBCs are places to meet, dance, play, vaca tion, and a lot of New York and San Francisco hotspots, both current and otherwise. “So much of New York is gone,” says Sayre, and some are immortalized here. And by the way, do you speak Polari? Inside this book, you’ll read about trailblazers like Christine Jorgensen, controversy-makers like Robert Mapplethorpe and Chelsea Manning, activists like Marsha P. Johnson, and the male We’wha of the Zuni tribe, who lived as “female-bodied people.”

Sayre c.2022, Chronicle Books | $24.95 | 312 pages BOOKS Gorgeous Greek Revival on the Eastern Shore of Maryland! Gorgeous Greek Revival on the Eastern Shore of Maryland! This big and beautiful home sits on an intown 1.44 acre lot. This amazing homes interior features are grand and exciting. The homes features a rare, vintage carriage house. The home has a pool and scads of details. Visit the website https://mls.truplace.com/property/1146/113073/ or call Martha Suss @410-310-4856 for a tour of this magniﬁcent gem. 206 S 5TH AVENUE, DENTON, MD 21629 US MARTHA WITTE SUSS, ASSOCIATE BROKER Easton, St. Michaels, Cambridge and Denton, Maryland Come Join us in the Land of Pleasant Living - The Eastern Shore of Maryland Cell: 410-310-4856 | Ofﬁce: 410-770- 3600 https://www.longandfoster.com/MarthaWitteSuss

An entertaining history lesson in ‘From Gay to Z’

AUGUST 26, 2022 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • 29 Washington,3333galatheatre.org202-234-7174@teatrogala14thStNWDC20010 Masks & proof of vaccination or recent negative COVID test requiredByPaco Gámez Based on text by J. López Silva and C. Fernández Shaw, with music by Ruperto Chapí Directed by José Luis Arellano Music Direction by David Peralto In this popular zarzuela (akin to an operetta), brimming with secret desires and jealousies, an outspoken woman delights in exposing social hypocrisies. A battle of the sexes with unforgettable music! SEPT 8 - OCT 2 In Spanish with English surtitles One block north from Columbia Heights Metro station

One of these is the LGBTQIA+ Trailblazer of the Year Award, bestowed “for creating art that inspires empathy, truth and equity,” given this year to actor-comedian Jerrod Carmichael – who used his HBO comedy special “Rothaniel” as a platform to come out as queer earlier this year.

BEST TV DOCUMENTARY OR DOCUMENTARY SERIES: “The Andy Warhol Diaries”

By JOHN PAUL KING

BEST TV MUSICAL PERFORMANCE: Beyoncé, “Be Alive,” 94th Academy Awards

The winner for BEST LGBTQ TV SHOW is no surprise, either. “Heartstopper,” the infectiously sweet webcomic based import from Netflix about a teen romance between two gay schoolboys in the UK, met with almost universal acclaim from audiences and reviewers when it premiered earlier this year, and its win in this category seem almost a “no-brainer.”Thoughthe

MELANIE LYNSKEY won a Dorian Award for Best Lead Drama Performance.

BEST CURRENT AFFAIRS PROGRAM: “Ziwe” BEST ANIMATED SHOW: “Bob’s Burgers” BEST REALITY SHOW: “RuPaul’s Drag Race” MOST VISUALLY STRIKING TV SHOW: “Euphoria”

30 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • AUGUST 26, 2022

There are a lot of awards given out in the entertainment industry, but until very recent ly, none of them were chosen from a queer perspective. Then came the Dorian Awards.

LGBTQ critics honor year’s best TV with Dorian Awards

The Dorians, like other awards bodies, reward excellence in the usual categories, though it does not split its acting awards by gender, opting instead to honor only a single performance in each of the various divisions – lead and supporting, comedy and drama, etc. However, they also offer some honorary awards that stand out as significant and unique from the typical “lifetime achievement” style prizes.

Jennifer Coolidge, ‘Heartstopper’ among winners

awarded Best Supporting Performance for her loopy turn in “The White Lotus.” As for the competitive categories, there were a few surprises. The Best TV Drama award went to Showtime’s “Yellowjackets,” a small-town drama that won GALECA crit ics’ hearts with its dark, decades-spanning mystery involving a plane crash and featuring a cast of complex female characters – several of which are queer. The Dorian voters’ love, which also resulted in a Best Lead Drama Performance win for series star Melanie Lynskey, might bode well for the show’s chances at the upcoming Emmy Awards, where it’s nominated in several of the major drama categories. The winner for Best TV Comedy was less of a surprise, though some eyebrows might raise over the unseating of “Hacks,” an LGBTQ-favorite show that was a major champi on at many of last year’s TV awards, including the Dorians. But “Abbot Elementary,” star-creator Quinta Brunson’s pointedly hilarious sitcom about a devoted teacher at an underfunded Philadelphia grade school has accumulated a lot of buzz this year from critics and fans alike, and it’s likely to pull a repeat of this “upset” at other awards cere monies down the road.

GALECA doesn’t just exist to give out awards, however. The group places heavy fo cus on advocating for better pay, access, and respect for its members, along with all undervalued pop culture journalists who continue to struggle against the kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” inclusion that still takes place behind the scenes in Hollywood, where –despite improvements on the sets and on our screens – homophobia still maintains a lingeringResistancehold.is futile, however. Last week (Aug. 17), GALECA announced the winners of its 14th Annual Dorian TV Awards, quipping in its statement that “the ‘gay agenda’ is out to force its will on God-fearing freedom lovers” once more – a suitable nod to the pointed wit of Oscar Wilde, for whose literary creation Dorian Gray the awards are named in his honor.

GALECA Executive Director John Griffiths said of the comedi an’s bold move in a statement: “Rothaniel Jerrod Carmichael… [came out] with the sort of self-effacing wit, vulnerability and observational humor that would make his heroes Richard Pryor and George Carlin proud. [He] has no doubt helped a lot of people turn a page.”Another one-of-a-kind award was added to the Dorians this year: the TV Icon Award (streamlined from its originally proposed name, the “You Deserve an Award Award”). As a surprise twist for its inaugural presentation, this one ended up as a tie. Honored was Christine Baranski, the beloved theater veteran who has become a queer fan favorite for her aloof and deceptively imperious roles in television shows like “Cybill,” “The Good Wife,” “The Good Fight” and HBO’s current period drama “The Gilded Age”; she shared the prize with comedic actress Cassandra Peterson – better known as her alter ego, horror hostess “Elvira, Mistress of the Dark” – who in 2021 surprised fans (and gained le gions more) by revealing she had been in a long-term relationship with a female partner for the past two decades. There’s also a category for the Campiest TV Show (because there should be), which this year went to Peacock’s “Girls5Eva,” as well as the “Wilde Wit” Award, which is given “to a performer, writer or commentator whose observations both challenge and amuse,” and this year went to the much-adored Jennifer Coolidge – who was also

The 14th Annual Doran Film Awards nominees will be revealed in January 2023.

The Dorians are the brainchild of GALECA, the Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Crit ics, which was formed in 2009 as the Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics’ Association (hence the acronym now used as their moniker), a volunteer professional organization currently comprised of 360 queer professional film and TV journalists who work in print, TV, and radio/podcasting for noteworthy outlets in countries from the U.S. and Canada to the UK and Australia, and others in between. Covering both mainstream and LGBTQ content, the awards are intended as a reminder to (as their mission statement puts it) “bullies, bigots, and LGBTQIA+ communities’ at-risk youth that the world loves the Q+ eye on entertainment.” Since 2018, the Dorians have been split into two divisions, one each for film and television, which are awarded separately approximately six months apart.

The Dorians are decided democratically; GALECA members submit their three top picks for the year in each category, which are tallied to determine the nominees, then vote for the final winners by ballot. There are no perks, no swag bags, no paid travel to exotic locations – just a bunch of queer writers and critics making it all happen out of their love for film and television. Not very Hollywood, maybe, but the winners are always sure to reflect a wider and more diverse perspective than most of the glitzier and high er-profile awards – and this year’s honorees, chosen from cable, streaming, and broad cast television which premiered during the 2021-22 season, are no exception.

BEST TV MOVIE OR MINISERIES category included much-lauded com petitors like Hulu’s “Dopesick” and “The Dropout,” HBO’s queer-spirited powerhouse “The White Lotus” still came out on top, presumably not just for that notorious rimming scene.For BEST NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE TV SHOW, Korea’s ingenious and violent “Squid Game,” another Netflix import, continued its juggernaut victory lap by taking yet anotherFinally,win.inanother unique Dorian category, BEST UNSUNG TV SHOW went to “The Other Two,” HBO Max’s hilarious but under-seen pop culture satire about two 20-some thing siblings trying to achieve stardom by riding on the coat tails of their YouTube-fa mous teenage brother. The rest of the winners are listed below.

AUGUST 26, 2022 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • 31

$2,500.

“Mercury Pictures Presents” is operatic in scope. Though much of the action occurs at the Mercury Pictures studio (which could go bankrupt at any moment), the story morphs from LA to Sicily to Utah (where a model of a German village is created).

New book puts kibosh on

“If you want the war to look real on screen, you’ll have to fake it,” he adds. Marra, 38, isn’t faking it. “Mercury Pictures Presents” more than lives up to the promise of “The Tsar of Love and Techno” and “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena,” his earlier award-winning work. It’s a fab read. sentimentality of WWII acclaimed writer Anthony Marra KATHI WOLFE ‘Mercury Pictures By Anthony Marra c.2022, is Maximum deposit $1,000,000. Deposit must originate from a

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As in real life, tragedy and comedy intermingle in the novel. A Sicilian photographer escapes Italy (using someone else’s name). Prisoners in Italy live under deplorable conditions. The U.S. may be “the land of the free.” But because she’s emigrated from Italy, a country with which America is at war, Maria and her family must register as aliens. They’re not allowed to travel more than ﬁve miles from their homes.

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Just as you begin to wonder how much pain you can take, the mood shifts. Eddie talks with Bela Lugosi about the miseries of Tinsel Town. Hollywood only wants to cast Eddie in demeaning “Asian” parts. Lugosi complains that only one postage stamp has been made with his image. His rival Boris Karloff “has two stamps,” he says. Mercury Pictures studio gets a momentary boost, when it, like other Hollywood studios, is called upon to make propaganda films for the War effort. But there’s a problem when the Army brass expects Mercury’s filmmakers to film the propaganda in actual combat. “A filmmaker needs multiple takes to get the right shot” on a studio sound stage, Artie says, “The idea that you’re going to send a couple guys into a foxhole with a camera and expect to compete with Hollywood just isn’t feasible.”

“Mercury Pictures Presents,” a new novel by acclaimed writer Anthony Marra, brings the grit and pain embedded in the fabled days of yesteryear, close to home. I’ll bet that when the news brings you down, you, like me, watch Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in “Casablanca.” Or, maybe, Bette Davis in “Watch on the Rhine,” where Sara (Davis) supports her anti-fascist husband Kurt (Paul Lukas).Old Hollywood movies set in World War II are our comfort food. It was good back then, we think, watching Victor Laszlo and Ilsa. The U.S. fought to rescue the world from fascism, and its citizens basked in freedom. If “Mercuryonly. Pictures Presents” puts the kibosh on our sentimental illusions. The novel is set in Los Angeles just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Much of it takes place at Mercury Pictures, a B-picture Hollywood studio. Maria Lagana, a young Italian woman, works for Artie Feldman, head of the studio. In many ways, Feldman would ﬁt in well in a Marx Brothers movie or a funny TV sit-com. He’s a gruff, bald, sometimes crude, Jewish guy who names and displays his toupees. But a heart of gold and moral scruples are intertwined with this slapstick.Artieand his brother Ned (with whom he doesn’t get along) came to America in the 1910s. They owned a movie theater named the “Titanic.” As you’ve likely guessed it didn’t do well. Still, they landed in Hollywood.

32 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • AUGUST 26, 2022

Maria, Artie’s right hand, emigrated with her mother in the 1930s from Italy to the U.S. to escape Mussolini. When she was young in Italy her father, a defense lawyer, took her on Sundays to see American movies. (They preferred Hollywood ﬂicks over church.) But these care-free excursions ended when her dad was arrested for defending anti-fascists. Maria lives with her mom in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of LA where her elderly, commanding, but loving, always wearing black, Italian great-aunts live. Maria’s boyfriend is Eddie Lu, a Chinese American actor, who would love to have roles in ﬁlms of Shakespeare’s plays. Maria is overwrought with worry and guilt about her father. He’s imprisoned in “exile” in Italy. Her dad’s letters to her don’t make sense. Because, like her correspondence to him, they’re bowdlerized by government censors.

AUGUST 26, 2022 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • 33 September 2, 3, & 4 Only!

2022

The organization held a fundraiser for for was held at Beach Bar and Miss AGLA were honored and the new and Miss AGLA were crowned. Miss Northern Va. LGBTQ organization holds scholarship fundraiser

its scholarship program

on Sunday, August 14. The “pandemic royalty” Mr.

34 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • AUGUST 26, 2022

2020-2021

Northern Virginia LGBTQ

Mr.

Mr. &

AGLA

(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)

Freddie’s

AGLA

Arlington Public High School students

AUGUST 26, 2022 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • 35

36 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • AUGUST 26, 2022 • BUSINESS

As we welcome in the cooler temps, we want to make sure we don’t welcome in any unwanted pests that find our warmer homes so comfy. It’s always a good idea to perform a deep clean, or hire someone, in order to miti gate the likelihood pests will be incited to come into your home and make themselves comfortable. This last tip isn’t exactly a seasonal tip – but rather a post-summer tip. Prepare yourself for the busy holiday seasons ahead that fall and winter bring. Be mindful that while you may have a family there are some people in this world that are not as fortunate as you. Lead with kindness and remember to treat others with the kindness you’d like to receive.

TIPFIVE: PERFORMADEEPCLEAN

By JUSTIN NOBLE

Inspect your exterior windows and doors to ensure that there are no holes or spaces where warm air can escape when you have the heat on. We should all be a bit more environmentally friendly and just as you are saving the turtles by now using straws, you should also try to use less electricity and fossil fuels – as such helping to ensure your home is air tight will not only aid the environment but it will also cut down on your energy bills, which will afford you a clearer conscience and more drinks at Trade.

TIPFOUR: COVERORREMOVEPATIOFURNITURE

It’s always a good idea to ensure that your batteries are set and that your smoke detectors are operational. I would also recommend ensuring that any CO2 detectors are also in tip top shape.

We are fortunate here in the D.C. metro area to have a reasonably mild fall season, so in many cases there’s no need to cover your patio furniture until it gets a little closer to December, but I always recommend locating any covers and ensuring they are still in good shape, no rips etc. to allow time for procuring any replacements if needed.

It’s hot now, but fall is coming so start preparing your home.

JUSTIN NOBLE is a Realtor with Sotheby’s international Realty licensed in D.C., Maryland, and Delaware for your DMV and Delaware Beach needs. Specializing in first-time homebuyers, development and new construction as well as estate sales, Justin is a well-versed agent, highly regarded, and provides white glove service at every price point. Reach him at 202-503-4243, Justin.Noble@SothebysRealty.com or BurnsandNoble.com.

It is always a good rule of thumb to have your HVAC system serviced around the change of weather/seasons. Call your local service provider to ensure you are on their books before it’s snowing. If you have window A/C units make sure that you either cover them up or remove them from the windows. This is a great time to have the window A/C units serviced, clean out the filters, wipe them down, and ensure they are prepped and ready for next year be fore you put them away. If you have radiators, it’s always recommended that you clear some space around them to reduce anything from getting too spicy and causing issues. One last item of note - you should change your air filter more than once a season, so let’s just make sure it’s a new filter. Work smarter not harder — you can easily set a reminder for every month to change out your filter or use an auto replenishment service (will not mention any names) to send you new filters as a reminder to change them.

Tips for preparing your home for fall Check windows, A/C units, and more as cool weather arrives

It looks like fall season is upon us, judging by all the pumpkin spice everywhere. I was just walking through HomeGoods and went down the ‘fall aisles,’ which made me think, similar to how we ready our homes for the spring/summer season, we must prepare our homes for the fall/winter months as well. Here are a few tips to pre pare your home for the fall season and into winter.

TIPONE: CHECKTHOSELEAKS!

TIPTWO: HVACSERVICE

TIPTHREE: TESTSMOKEDETECTORS

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Compass is a licensed real estate brokerage that abides by Equal Housing Opportunity laws. Information is compiled from sources deemed reliable but is not guaranteed. Compass is licensed as Compass Real Estate in DC and as Compass in Virginia and Maryland.

Spruce Up Your Home this Summer

AUGUST 26, 2022 • WASHINGTONBLADE.COM • 39

Here’s a checklist of helpful ideas to help you get started: Clean out your grill. Turn on the grill at max temperature, close the hood, and allow the grill to stay on for 15 minutes. Scrub the grill to get rid of excess burnt residue. For extra stubborn grease, dip a half lemon in salt and rub it onto the areas. This will effectively scour and degrease your grill so it’s ready for a summer full of new, delicious recipes. heavy comforter for a cooler material like bamboo or linen to help beat the DMV heat.

Beautify your outdoor space. Add your favorite summer vegetable plants to a garden space, pull out any weeds and summer blooming plants include daylilies, black-eyed susans, 1 3 4 2 M: 202.262.7762 O: Washington,202.386.6330DC 20005

Clean and dry your outdoor furniture. As barbeque season approaches, it’s time to freshen up your outdoor cushions and wipe down any furniture so it’s free from pollen. Get the patio furniture looking new again and ready for hosting!

We’re all excited for summer festivities, outdoor gatherings with friends and family, or simply lounging in the sun, but how do you begin to prepare your home for making the most out of summer?

Michael Moore Realtor®Over29Years of Experience Licensed in DC, MD, VA