Washington Blade, Volume 54, Issue 08, February 24, 2023

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The Kennedy Center Millennium Stage | Washington DC | March 4, 2023 | 6pm

Featuring Rebekah Lau’ren, Spirit McIntyre and Like Water Curated by Be Steadwell

Powerful Black, queer musicians from the DMV share their take on love songs in this round-robin style show. In alignment with Roadwork’s 45-year long mission of nurturing coalition building, SISTERFIRE LOVE SONGS honors the DMV’s enduring Black arts activists who center love across movements and generations. In a world consumed with politics, what does it mean for Black queer artists to invite us to talk about love?

Roadwork is multiracial coalition of LGBTQ, social justice, and anti racist arts activists in Washington DC. From its inception in 1982, Roadwork’s Sisterfire Festival showcased an array of artists with an emphasis on women of color, performers like Sweet Honey in the Rock and other musical activists who tackled social justice issues both local and global. The Sisterfire Festival remains a cross generational celebration of resistance, coalition, and emancipatory imagination, creativity, and performance in the arts.

Ana Reyes confirmed as first LGBTQ federal judge in D.C.

Eleanor Holmes Norton nominated Williams and Connolly partner

By LOU CHIBBARO JR. | lchibbaro@washblade.com

The U.S. Senate on Feb. 15 voted 51-47 to confirm President Joe Biden’s nomination of D.C. attorney Ana C. Reyes to become what D.C. Congressional Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton announced will be the first Latina woman and the first openly LGBTQ person to serve as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Norton noted that Biden accepted her recommendation to nominate Reyes for the judgeship position in Norton’s role as D.C.’s congressional representative, similar to the role that presidents have historically given U.S. senators in recommending judicial nominees from their home states.

“Ana Reyes has the intelligence, temperament, and integrity to be an excellent federal judge,” Norton said in a statement. “She will also bring much-needed diversity to the federal bench. I look forward to her service.”

D.C.’s

Reyes is a partner at the D.C.-based internationally recognized law firm Williams and Connolly, where she has worked on a wide range of legal issues “ranging from foreign immunity to international contract disputes to patent enforcement,” according to biographical information on her on the Williams and Connolly website.

“Besides this work, for more than a decade Ana has devoted significant time to her pro bono representations of asylum seekers and refugee organizations, including numerous appellate matters for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and impact litigation for Human Rights First,” the law firm’s write-up says.

The write-up says she was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, and grew up in Louisville, Ky. It says she received her bachelor’s degree from Kentucky’s Transylvania University in 1996

first LGBTQ bookstore since 2009 opens

Little District Books opened last June in Barracks Row

By LOU CHIBBARO JR. | lchibbaro@washblade.com

LGBTQ book lovers have said they were thrilled when Little District Books opened its doors last June in the Barracks Row section of Capitol Hill to become the first D.C. LGBTQ bookstore since 2009, when D.C.’s famed Lambda Rising LGBTQ bookstore closed its doors.

Located at 737 8th St., S.E., across the street from the U.S. Marine Barracks, Little District Books describes itself on its website as a “queer-owned Washington, D.C.-based independent bookstore that celebrates LGBTQ+ authors and stories.”

The store’s website statement adds, “We are a proud part of a neighborhood that has been a haven for the LGBTQ+ community

over the last 50+ years.”

The statement refers to the fact that the 5-block stretch of 8th Street, S.E., where Little District Books is now located has been the home to nearly a dozen gay bars and clubs since the early 1970s. Only one is currently operating — As You Are — the LGBTQ café and dance bar located two blocks from the new bookstore at 500 8th St., S.E.

D.C. attorney Patrick Kern, the owner of Little District Books, said he decided to open the bookstore after working as a federal government lawyer for the past 10 years or so. He said his family has long operated a retail tea business in Cincinnati, a short distance from where he was born and raised in Fort

Comings & Goings

Ronté

By PETER ROSENSTEIN

The Comings & Goings column is about sharing the professional successes of our community. We want to recognize those landing new jobs, new clients for their business, joining boards of organizations and other achievements. Please share your successes with us at: comingsandgoings@washblade.com.

The Comings & Goings column also invites LGBTQ college students to share their successes with us. If you have been elected to a student government position, gotten an exciting internship, or are graduating and beginning your career with a great job, let us know so we can share your success.

Congratulations to Ronté Pierce who joined GMCW as director of the Seasons of Love Ensemble. Seasons of Love is a 15-member outreach ensemble of the GMCW, with the mission to celebrate and promote social justice advocacy through soulful music that inspires, strengthens, and unites our community. Ronté said “I’m excited to lead such a talented and fun ensemble

whose diversity is represented in its members and repertoire. The ensemble’s versatility in performing R&B, gospel, pop and other genres is truly amazing. I’m excited for the opportunity to contribute to the development of artistic, community and outreach programming with Thea Kano, GMCW’s Artistic Director.”

Ronté brings over 33 years of singing, performing and directing experience with faith-based, community, academic and choral vocal ensembles; as well as experience with musical theater and opera to his position as the director of the Seasons of Love Ensemble. Ronté currently serves as one of three music teachers at Jackson-Reed High School in D.C., where he directs a successful choir program.

Ronté has his Bachelor of Arts in Music from North Carolina Central University in Durham, N.C.; master’s in music, Boston University and Education Specialist degree from Grand Canyon University.

Congratulations also to Lucas Fox Schle-

and her law degree from Harvard Law School in 2000. She also received a master’s degree in International Public Policy with distinction from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, the law firm’s write up says.

Reyes’ Senate confirmation came nine months after Biden submitted her nomination in May 2022. Senate records show Biden resubmitted her nomination in January after it expired at the end of the last Congress.

LGBT authors about non-LGBT topics. And then I have LGBT stories that are written by non-LGBT people as well,” he said.

Wright, Ky., which is a Cincinnati suburb.

“I had been looking to do a thing that was my own,” Kern said. “I kind of narrowed it down to a bookstore and ended up narrowing it down even more to a queer bookstore,” Kern told the Washington Blade. He added, “I spent probably a year trying to learn enough about the book industry to feel comfortable doing this.”

At the time he opened the store he began with about 1,200 mostly hardcover and paperback books and currently has about 2,600 books with the goal of carrying about 3,000 different titles, Kern said.

“We have books by LGBT authors about LGBT topics,” he said. “We have books by

The titles cover a wide variety of topics and stories, both fiction and nonfiction, according to Kern. Among the titles available at the store is the current bestseller “Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington” by gay journalist and author James Kirchick.

Kern said his store has and will continue to also host events that include talks by authors and book signings. The next such event is scheduled for March 9, when author W. Jake Newsome will talk about his book, “Pink Triangle Legacies: Coming Out in The Shadow of the Holocaust.”

The store is also the organizer of four book clubs that meet at the store to discuss a wide variety of mostly LGBTQ related books, both fiction and nonfiction, Kern said.

usener on his new position as a lecturer at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. Lucas said “I’m thrilled at the opportunity to teach graduate students at Georgetown in a first-of-its-kind course on the history, political science and public policy that undergirds the relationship between the national security state and LGBTQIA+ Americans. Translating my research and lived experience in national security into scholarship to be shared widely fills me with immense pride.”

Lucas also announced the formation of an advisory board, a body of senior national security and foreign policy practitioners, and other subject matter experts and luminaries, to enhance and further the mission of Out in National Security (ONS), the non-profit he began and currently serves as CEO. The first two members of this new and growing body are Brian Hale and Jesse Salazar. Out in National Security, is a non-profit professional and advocacy association with more than 2000 members. Lucas helped place

more than two dozen LGBTQIA+ presidential appointees at the highest level across the government. He previously served with QOMPLX in Reston, Va., as Director of Public Policy. Prior to that he served in the Department of Defense in D.C. as speechwriter to the Secretary of Defense. Lucas is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, 2021-2026; sponsor of the Naval Academy LGBT Spectrum Club; and was a Security Fellow for Truman National Security Project, Class of 2019.

Lucas has his B.A. in History and International Affairs from Wesleyan University and an M.A., Middle East Studies from the University of Chicago.

ANA REYES

(Photo courtesy of Williams and Connolly, LLP)

RONTÉ PIERCELUCAS FOX SCHLEUSENER

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Proud Boys target Silver Spring drag queen story hour

Volunteers blocked far-right group members from entering bookstore

By LOU CHIBBARO JR. | lchibbaro@washblade.com

Montgomery County police say they dispersed members of the far-right group Proud Boys and others confronting them on Feb. 18 outside the Loyalty Bookstore in Silver Spring after members of the group staged a protest against a Drag Story Hour held at the bookstore.

D.C. drag performer Charlemagne Chateau was hosting the drag queen story hour, an event held in recent years in libraries and bookstores across the country in which a drag queen reads from children’s books to groups of children accompanied by their parents.

Photos and videos posted on social media show Proud Boys members wearing masks and holding signs outside the bookstore. NBC Washington reported that one of the signs said, “Proud Boys love children. Proud Boys hate pedophiles. Leave kids alone.”

According to NBC Washington, a separate group that provides support for drag

queen story hour events called the Parasol Patrol was present during the protest and some of its members were kicked and had their feet stomped by the Proud Boys members. One of the Parasol Patrol members was punched in the face by a Proud Boys member, the TV news station reported.

In a Twitter posting on Feb. 19, Loyalty Bookstore praised the Parasol Patrol members for preventing the Proud Boys from disrupting the drag book reading event.

“Yesterday afternoon Loyalty came under attack from hate groups who tried to force their way into our store during Drag Queen Story Hour with physical violence,” the bookstore’s posting says. “The incredible @ parasolpatrol and the [Montgomery County] chapter of @Drag Story Hour did wonders to not only push back and hold the safe space, but to keep cheering and singing joyfully in the face of hate speech and disgusting threats,” the bookstore’s posting continues.

“Because of their efforts the children in-

side the store got to enjoy doing Hokey Pokey, hearing beautiful books read aloud,” the posting says.

In response to a request for comment by the Washington Blade, a spokesperson for Montgomery County police said police were not notified in advance that the drag queen story hour was taking place.

The spokesperson, Shiera Goff, said officers were dispatched to the bookstore about 1:05 p.m. on Saturday and observed a “confrontation between the two groups,” in referring to the Proud Boys and the Parasol Patrol.

“Police were called and dispersed the crowd,” she told the Blade in an email message. “No one was arrested and no reports of injuries.”

In a separate Twitter posting, Montgomery County Councilmember Kristin Mink (D-District 5) praised efforts to defend the event.

“Proud Boys showed up in Silver Spring

Md. man charged with targeting men he met on Tinder

Rodney J. Richardson charged with rape, kidnapping, robbery

By LOU CHIBBARO JR. | lchibbaro@washblade.com

Prince George’s County, Md., police announced on Feb. 16 they have charged a 26-year-old man with multiple criminal offenses, including raping one male victim, and carjacking another male victim after meeting the two men on a dating app and luring them to locations where he attacked and robbed them.

A statement released by police says the suspect, Rodney J. Richardson of Brandywine, Md., has been charged with rape, kidnapping, handgun offenses, armed robbery and multiple additional charges in connection with his encounter with two adult males he met on the dating app that NBC Washington identified as Tinder.

The TV station said it obtained charging documents filed in the Maryland District Court for Prince George’s County in Upper Marlboro.

“On February 12, 2023, detectives were notified of a sexual assault that occurred

on February 10, 2023, in Brandywine,” the police statement says. “The preliminary investigation revealed Richardson met the victim, an adult male, on a popular dating app. The two agreed to meet in Brandywine,” the statement continues.

“During that encounter, Richardson raped the victim at gunpoint,” it says. “In addition, he drove the victim to the victim’s bank and forced him to take out money.”

In the second case, the police statement says Richardson met the victim on the dating app and arranged for the two to meet in person, after which he carjacked the victim at gunpoint. The statement says the Prince George’s County Police Department’s Carjacking Interdiction Unit identified and charged Richardson with armed carjacking after conducting a “thorough investigation.”

The statement doesn’t say how police ultimately identified and located Richardson, but it calls on anyone who has information

about Richardson to call the department’s Sexual Assault Unit detectives at 301-7724908.

In obtaining court documents for the case, NBC Washington reporter Aimee Cho provided details in her broadcast report on Feb. 16 that police did not include in their statement. She reported that police said Richardson invited one of the two victims to his own house on a date, where he raped him at gunpoint and demanded his phone, ID and Social Security number.

Cho’s news report says Richardson forced the victim to stay in a car trunk all night, threatened to kill him and his family, and drove him the next morning to the victim’s bank and made him withdraw $4,500 before eventually letting him go.

Concerning the carjacking incident with the second victim, which police say occurred on Feb. 2, NBC Washington reports that Richardson, after meeting the victim on the

and got violent today, trying to scare away families and children attending Drag Story Hour at Loyalty Books,” Mink said in her post. “But the community held a wall of safety and support. The kids had a great time and were none the wiser,” she wrote. “We will never back down.”

In a brief Facebook posting, drag performer Chateau said the Proud Boys confrontation was “not the kind of attention I wanted,” adding, “Thank you to the Parasol Patrol for keeping me and the families who were at the event safe.”

Tinder app, arranged for the two to drive to a dirt road, where he robbed him at gunpoint of his phone, wallet and car. Cho reported that Richardson also took the victim’s crutches, which he needed to walk, “leaving him stranded in the freezing cold.”

An off-duty police officer driving by saw the victim crawling on his hands and knees, NBC Washington reports, and immediately called for help.

Online court records show that police and prosecutors have charged Richardson with a total of 15 criminal offenses. He is being held without bond and is scheduled to appear in court for a preliminary hearing on March 15.

Va. Senate committee kills final two anti-transgender bills

House subcommittee tables marriage amendment repeal resolution

BY STAFF REPORTS

The Virginia Senate Education and Health Committee on Feb. 16 killed two anti-transgender bills.

The committee rejected state Del. Karen Greenhalgh (R-Virginia Beach)’s House Bill 1387 that would have banned transgender athletes from school teams that correspond with their gender identity and state Del. Dave LaRock (R-Loudoun County)’s House Bill 2432 that would have required school

personnel to out trans students to their parents.

Both bills passed in the Republican-controlled Virginia House of Delegates last week.

Equality Virginia in an email to supporters notes all 12 anti-trans bills that were introduced during this legislative session have died. (Democrats control the state Senate.)

“We are celebrating this win today, and

we hope that you can also take a few moments to celebrate what this outcome means for you and your loved ones,” said Equality Virginia. “The mere introduction of these bills has inflicted harm on our community, and transgender and nonbinary youth specifically. We should not have to spend time fighting for our humanity to be recognized, for our experiences to be considered, or for children to be protected.

Building celebration and joy into the work is vital to our wellbeing and to our ability to advocate and still feel whole.”

The Republican-controlled Virginia House of Delegates Amendments and Other Matters Subcommittee on Feb. 17 voted 4-1 to table state Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria)’s resolution that sought to repeal a state constitutional amendment that defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

RODNEY J. RICHARDSON

(Photo courtesy of Prince George’s County Police Department)

The Loyalty Bookstore in Silver Spring, Md., on Feb. 18, 2023, hosted a drag queen story hour. (Photo courtesy of Loyalty Bookstore/Twitter)

Republicans introduce bill to ban transgender servicemembers

White House condemned Rubio, Banks measure

By CHRISTOPHER KANE | ckane@washblade.com

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and U.S. Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) introduced a proposal on Feb. 16 to ban Americans who have a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria from serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.

The lawmakers’ “Ensuring Military Readiness Act” would go further than the transgender military ban enacted in 2017 under former President Donald Trump that was revoked by President Joe Biden just five days after his inauguration in January 2021.

For example, according to a press release from Rubio’s office announcing the legislation, the measure “adds more stringent requirements and revamps the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS) to ensure all service members’ gender markers match their biological sex.”

Rubio and Banks characterized the Biden administration’s revocation of the Trump era ban as, respectively, a move that “turned our military into a woke social experiment” and a “purely political” decision grounded in “far left ideology.”

Republican U.S. Sens. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), Ted Budd (N.C.), Tommy Tuberville (Ala.) and Mike Braun (Ind.) are the original cosponsors for the bill, which has been endorsed by a coalition of right-wing organizations including the Family Research Council, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated a hate group.

Spokespeople for Rubio and Banks did not immediately respond to questions about whether efforts would be better spent helping service members and their families with real challenges like housing affordability and food insecurity, or whether they could provide evidence that Biden’s reversal of

the Trump-era ban negatively impacted the readiness or performance of the U.S. Armed Services.

The White House shared an exclusive statement to the Washington Blade:

“There are a lot of things Marco Rubio could be working on for the American people, including:

• Keeping Americans safe from gun violence with common sense gun legislation

• Lowering prescription drug prices for America’s seniors, including a universal insulin cap

• Protecting and strengthening Medicare and Social Security for America’s seniors.

But at a time when recruiting is a critical priority for our military, Sen. Rubio is instead focusing on blocking patriotic transgender Americans who would die for the United States of America from serving our country. That says a lot more about his priorities than it does about the brave transgender Americans willing to fight and die for our country.”

As Rubio and Banks announced their proposed ban, a group of bipartisan group lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee led by U.S. Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) reintroduced a bill that would aid service members and their families who are experiencing hunger and food insecurity.

Duckworth, a decorated combat veteran, responded to her Republican colleagues’ bill in a statement shared with the Blade.

“This proposed ban — like Donald Trump’s transgender military ban before it — is as heartless as it is damaging to our military readiness,” she said.

“If you are willing to sacrifice for our country in uniform and you can do the job, you should have that opportunity — no matter your gender identity or sexual orientation,” Duckworth said. “Our military is the strongest in the world not in spite of its diversity, but because of it.”

She added, “I’m focused on doing more to ensure our nation is developing the talented, healthy recruits we need to meet our goals, not prevent Americans who are willing and able to serve their country in uniform.”

Other members of Congress and LGBTQ groups have come out against the Republicans’ new proposed trans military ban.

“I oppose this bill,” Democratic U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine (Va.) told the Blade in an emailed statement. “I serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee and see no reason for the military to discriminate against transgender Americans,” the senator wrote.

In 2017, Kaine urged then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to halt the implementa-

David Cicilline announces resignation from Congress Openly gay R.I. Democrat to lead philanthropic foundation

By CHRISTOPHER KANE | ckane@washblade.com

U.S. Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) will step down from Congress on June 1 to become CEO of the Rhode Island Foundation, the largest nonprofit in the state, the congressman announced on Tuesday.

The move bookends 28 years in public service for Cicilline, who was elected to Rhode Island’s House of Representatives in 1995 before becoming mayor of Providence — making history as the first openly gay mayor of a state capital — in 2003, and then representing Rhode Island’s 1st Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2010.

The 61-year-old’s announcement likely came as a surprise to many in Washington: Cicilline, now serving his seventh term, was favored to continue winning reelection for his seat in Congress, where he has distinguished himself to such an extent that he is often described as one of his party’s rising stars.

A member of House Democratic leader-

ship who was elected to chair the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee from 2019-2021, Cicilline serves as a senior member of the powerful House Foreign Affairs and the House Judiciary Committees and was distinguished as one of the nine Democrats selected in 2021 by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to manage the chamber’s second impeachment of former President Donald Trump.

In Rhode Island, Cicilline’s departure will trigger an off-year special election for his replacement. While it is unclear when the state’s governor, Dan McKee (D), will schedule the ballot, two lawmakers have announced plans to explore whether to run: State Sen. Meghan Kallman, a progressive Democrat, and Central Falls Mayor Maria Rivera.

“For more than a decade, the people of Rhode Island entrusted me with a sacred duty to represent them in Congress, and it is a responsibility I put my heart and soul into

every day to make life better for the residents and families of our state,” Cicilline said in a statement.

“The chance to lead the Rhode Island Foundation was unexpected, but it is an extraordinary opportunity to have an even more direct and meaningful impact on the lives of residents of our state.”

The Rhode Island Foundation is one of the state’s biggest philanthropic organizations. With an endowment exceeding $1.3 billion, the group funds a variety of initiatives addressing issues like housing shortages and opioid addiction, often in coordination with the state government. Last week, the foundation announced plans to distribute nearly $110,000 to support Black community services.

“The same energy and commitment I brought to elected office, I will now bring as CEO of the Rhode Island Foundation,” Cicilline said in his statement, “advancing their mission to ensure all Rhode Islanders can

tion of Trump’s trans military ban in a letter co-authored by Democratic U.S. Sens. Mark Warner (Va.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) that was signed by 42 of their colleagues in the chamber from both parties.

“Banning transgender people from the military is wrong and discriminatory, and it violates our national values by denying people the ability to serve simply because of who they are,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, in a statement to the Blade.

“Transgender Americans, just like anyone else in this country, should be judged on whether or not they can get the job done, no more, no less,” he said. “This legislation continues the harmful political attacks against our community that try to push us out of places where we live, learn and work.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) addressed the GOP senators’ proposal for a new ban on transgender troops in a tweet published Friday afternoon: “President Biden stood up and undid this ridiculous MAGA Trump ban,” the senator wrote. “Whether trans or otherwise, if you’re qualified you should be permitted to serve. We honor everyone willing to risk their lives to serve our country.”

The Congressional Equality Caucus also responded to Rubio and Banks’s proposal on Twitter, writing: “Just two months into the new Congress, anti-LGBTQI+ Republicans are going after our troops. Our trans servicemembers support our country’s military readiness and national security. This bill would effectively bar trans servicemembers from serving openly.”

achieve economic security, access quality, affordable healthcare and attain the education and training that will set them on a path to prosperity.”

Dr. G. Alan Kurose, chair of the foundation’s board of directors, said in a statement: “Congressman Cicilline’s career-long fight for equity and equality at the local, national and international level, and his deep relationships within Rhode Island’s communities of color are two of the many factors that led us to this decision.”

U.S. Sen. MARCO RUBIO (R-Fla.) (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

U.S. Rep. DAVID CICILLINE (D-R.I.) (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Jimmy Carter enters hospice care

Former president was early gay rights supporter

By BRODY LEVESQUE

Former President Jimmy Carter has elected to receive hospice at his home in Plains, Ga., according to an announcement from the Carter Center in Atlanta on Feb. 18. The 98-year-old former president, who has been in ill health recently and hospitalized several times, decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family.

The Carter Center said that the former president had elected to decline additional medical intervention and that he has the full support of his family and his medical team.

The former president’s grandson, former Georgia state Sen. Jason Carter tweeted: “I saw both of my grandparents yesterday. They are at peace and — as always — their home is full of love. Thank you all for your kind words”

Carter became the oldest living former U.S. chief executive after the death at age 94 of former President George H.W. Bush on Nov. 30, 2018. He was diagnosed with cancer in August 2015 — melanoma that had spread to his liver and brain — but was later declared cancer-free. In 2019, he also suffered a black eye in a fall and was later hospitalized with a fractured pelvis due to a separate fall.

Carter’s 76-year-long marriage makes him the longest-married U.S. president on record.

The 39th president of the U.S., he served from 1977-1981. After leaving office in 1982, he and his wife Rosalynn founded the Carter Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of people around the globe. The former president was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his life-long advocacy for human rights.

The announcement by the Nobel Committee stated that the committee decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2002 to Carter, “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”

MODEST BEGINNINGS

Born Oct. 1, 1924, at the Wise Sanitarium [hospital] in his hometown of Plains, Ga., where he was raised on his parent’s peanut farm, Carter’s decades of public service commenced after his graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946 and he began his service as a submariner.

Carter left naval service after the death of his father in 1953 taking over the Carter family business in what was then a segregated Georgia with sharp lines between Blacks and Whites. He was an early supporter of the nascent civil rights movement and became an activist within the Democratic Party, a leading voice of change to end racial segregation.

First elected to office in 1963, Carter served as a state senator until 1967. In 1970 he successfully ran for governor, winning the office and then going on to serve until 1975. Like most progressive Democrats of the era,

Carter was appalled by U.S. foreign policy in Vietnam and then by the scandal of Watergate that took down the Republican administration of President Richard Nixon leading to the president’s resignation in August 1974.

Previous to the Watergate scandal in 1972, Carter was selected to lead as chair of the Democratic Governor’s Campaign Committee. This position gave him access to key Democrats nationwide, and the major Democratic gains in the first post-Watergate election allowed Carter to raise his visibility nationally.

PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

Although a relative unknown outside of Georgia and within the leadership of the Democratic Party, Carter was able to parlay voter fatigue and the public’s response to the twin nightmares of Vietnam and Watergate, that had shattered public confidence in government into setting up his run against incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford.

Robert A. Strong, professor of politics at Washington and Lee University and a visiting fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center noted: [In the 1976 presidential race] Americans gravitated toward leaders who were outside the Washington sphere. Answering the nation’s need, Carter’s slogan was “A Leader, For A Change.” Nine other Democrats were seeking the nomination in 1976, most of them better known than Carter.

EARLY SUPPORT OF GAY RIGHTS

During a campaign stop on May 21, 1976, Carter was giving a fundraising campaign speech at the Hilton hotel in San Francisco when he met local gay rights activist Harvey Milk. The moment was caught by famed San Francisco-based gay photographer Donald C. Eckert as Carter shook Milk’s hand.

According to Jimmy Carter Presidential Library researcher Dale Dancis, Eckert, speculated that “Carter and his aides had no idea who Harvey was at the time. (Milk) had scraped together the $100 or so for the fund-raising dinner so he could meet Carter.”

The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library has a recording of Carter’s speech from that night, which doesn’t mention gay rights. However, Carter spoke out in support of gay rights at the news conference he held just before the fund raiser, saying he would sign New York Democratic Congresswoman Bella Abzug’s Equality Act amendment to the 1964 Civil Rights Act if it reached his desk. “I will certainly sign it, because I don’t think it’s right to single out homosexuals for special abuse or special harassment,” he said.

In the outcome of the 1976 presidential election, Carter narrowly defeated Ford, in part due to the latter’s pardoning of his predecessor president Nixon, but also as the inflation rate in 1976 topped 5.76 percent and the American economy had significantly slowed.

Strong wrote: “The election was very close. Ford’s strategy was to try to win five of eight elector-rich states: California, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas. He won four, but not five. Carter won with an interesting coalition of the entire Old South (excepting conservative Virginia) and northern industrial powers such as New York and Pennsylvania.”

Carter later factored into a gay rights campaign by Milk, when, as an elected city supervisor for the Castro (District 5) in San Francisco in 1978, wrote the president asking for his support in defeating ballot Proposition 6, which would have banned gay and lesbian individuals from working in the California public school systems as teachers or staff.

Proposition 6, was also known as the Briggs Initiative — named after Republican state Sen. John Briggs who had authored the legislation. In his letter Milk stressed that he hoped that the president would oppose the Briggs Initiative and “take a leadership role in defending the rights of gay people.”

A couple of days before sending the letter Milk expressed his frustration over what he perceived as inaction by the Carter White House on gay rights in a speech he gave on June 28, 1978, that later was known as the “Hope Speech.” Milk targeted Briggs and Florida resident and anti-gay activist Anita Bryant for her national Save Our Children campaign which labeled gay and lesbian Americans as deviants.

“… There are some 15 to 20 million lesbians and gay men in this country listening and listening very carefully. Jimmy Carter, when are you going to talk about their rights?” Milk told the crowd in front of San Francisco City Hall that bright June morning.

In his letter to Carter after the speech Milk wrote: “In it, [Milk’s speech] I called upon you to take a leadership role in defending the rights of gay people. As the president of a nation which includes 15-20 million lesbians and gay men, your leadership is vital and necessary.”

CAMP DAVID ACCORDS AND THE PUSH FOR PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Carter’s presidency saw the creation of two new federal cabinet-level roles — the Departments of Energy and Education. Carter also focused efforts on bringing peace to the troubled regions in the Middle East.

The Camp David Accords, signed by Carter, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in September 1978, established a framework for a historic peace treaty concluded between Israel and Egypt the next spring in March 1979.

Carter along with his Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, pursued intensive negotiations with Arab and Israeli leaders, hoping to reconvene the Geneva Conference, which had been established in December 1973 to seek an end to the Arab-Israeli dispute after de-

cades of bloody and costly conflict.

His presidency however would be marred by a series of events that critics would charge showed Carter’s inability to govern effectively as well as manage the massive and somewhat unwieldy Federal government. 1979 proved to be challenging to Carter as he was confronted by the oil crisis brought about by the revolution in Iran that toppled Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and installed a fundamentalist Islamic regime, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, the Nicaraguan revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Ultimately it was the revolution in Iran and the take-over of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, and the hostage-taking of 52 U.S. diplomats and citizens by militant Iranian college students and youths supported by the government of Ayatollah Khomeini, that proved to leave a negative impact on Carter’s chances for reelection.

THE CAMPAIGN & ELECTION OF 1980

Writing about that campaign, Strong noted: “Three days after the embassy takeover in Iran, Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. Incumbents rarely face a challenge from within their own party, but Kennedy was encouraged by Carter’s weak poll ratings. When told of the Kennedy challenge, Carter snapped to a congressman, who later spoke to reporters: “I’ll whip his ass.” Kennedy came close to defeating Carter as the party split into two wings.”

In the fall of 1980 Republican nominee former California Gov. Ronald Reagan won in an electoral landslide. Many political observers an historians believe that Carter’s record in office despite his successes with Middle East negotiations for peace belied the fact that he was a below-average president.

The final straw in dooming his chances for a second term for his presidency some historians said was that in addition to his seeming inability to gain the release of the American hostages held in Tehran, the final debate between the president and Reagan capped what would become his defeat at the polls.

Former President JIMMY CARTER (Photo by Kathclick via Bigstock)

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Anglican churches in Africa criticize Church of England’s blessings of same-sex couples

Uganda, Kenya denominations consider breaking with mother church

By SAM KISIKA

The Church of England’s decision to allow clergy to bless same-sex marriages has angered the Anglican churches of Uganda and Kenya to the point that they are considering a total disassociation with it.

The Kenya and Uganda churches are now looking upon a conservative Anglican breakaway group — the Global Anglican Future Conference (Gafcon) — to which they also belong to give them direction on their association with their mother Church of England in April. Anglican Church of Uganda Archbishop Stephen Kaziimba revealed this while condemning the General Synod of the Church of England, its top governing body, for, in his words, embracing sin by recognizing homosexuality against God’s word.

hundred and fifty bishops, clearly and lay people voted for it, while 181 opposed it and 10 abstained.

The meeting took place in London.

“The Church of Uganda has more than 200 members traveling to Kigali in April,” Kaziimba said. “We shall pray, sit together and discern the mind of Christ for the way forward. We need the wisdom of Solomon to know how to faithfully respond to the crisis at hand.”

Kaziimba through his press statement in response to the Church of England’s decision demands it to abandon the Anglican Communion and form a Canterbury Communion with other liberal Anglican churches that include the Episcopal Church in the U.S. and others in Brazil, Scotland and Canada.

All country Anglican churches have the freedom of conducting their affairs independently.

The Anglican Church of Uganda started to distance itself from the fellowship of the Church of England when the Episcopal Church in 2003 consecrated now retired New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson, who is openly gay. The Archbishop of Canterbury refused to take any disciplinary action against the Episcopal Church, which led to Gafcon’s emergence in 2008.

Kaziimba accuses the Church of England of departing from the Anglican faith and turning into “false teachers” by condoning same-sex marriages, while noting the Bible only recognizes marriage as between a man and a woman.

The Anglican Church of Kenya Archbishop Jackson Ole Sapit also criticized the Church of England’s decision of blessing gay couples as “devious.”

He noted the liberal Anglican churches have lost all theological and doctrinal legitimacy and have resorted to using their political dominance to secularize the church by normalizing all manner of sin.

“It is ridiculous that the Church of England affirms to remain faithful to the traditional teachings of marriage, yet it has sanctioned the so-called prayers of love to be used in its churches to bless unions between persons of the same sex,” Sapit said.

He warned what he described as political and secular correctness that exists in liberal Anglican churches only seeks to undermine the true Gospel, thereby rendering them irrelevant after losing their church identity.

Sapit maintained the Anglican Church of Kenya recognizes marriage as the union between a “man and a woman, monogamous and heterosexual.” He added that any deviation from this Godly union is sinful and unacceptable.

“If there are people who are not called to marriage and are faithful followers of Christ, let them embrace celibacy, and live a life obedient to the teachings of the bible as they so profess to believe in,” Sapit said.

Gafcon’s 4th conference will begin in Kigali, Rwanda, on April 17. More than 1,000 people, who include “Bible-believing” archbishops, bishops and Anglicans from across the world are expected to attend.

The General Synod, which comprises hundreds of elected members who meet at least two times a year, on Feb. 9 supported the proposal for priests to bless gay couples. Two

Archbishop Foley Beach, who chairs Gafcon, in a statement also criticized the Church of England and called for Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby’s resignation for breaking his vows to forbid “all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God’s word” in the church.

“This decision by the Church of England raises questions regarding the relationship of Anglican Provinces around the world with the Church of England and the continued role of the Archbishop of Canterbury,” Beach stated.

He noted that “we shall have more to say and do about these matters” in the Kigali conference.

Kenya and Uganda criminalize consensual same-sex sexual relations. The churches have been at the forefront of supporting these laws.

For instance, Kaziimba on Feb. 13 challenged Ugandan lawmakers not to relent in the fight against homosexuality in order to protect the country’s morality.

His comments come against the backdrop of plans to introduce a new bill in the Ugandan Parliament that seeks to further curtail homosexuality by criminalizing LGBTQ and intersex organizations and activities in the country. Uganda’s NGO Bureau, which monitors NGOs that operate in the country, last month recommended a new law that “prohibits the promotion of LGBTQ activities in the country.”

Spanish lawmakers approve landmark transgender rights bill Anyone over 16 can legally change gender without medical intervention

By MICHAEL K. LAVERS | mlavers@washblade.com

Spanish lawmakers on Feb. 16 gave their final approval to a bill that would allow people who are at least 16-years-old to legally change their gender without medical intervention.

Deutsche Welle reported 191 Spanish MPs voted for the measure, while 60 opposed it and 91 abstained.

Trans people in Spain previously needed to prove a doctor had diagnosed them with gender dysphoria and show evidence they had undergone hormone therapy for at least two years in order to legally change their gender. A minor who wanted to legally change their gender needed to obtain a judge’s approval.

The bill that Spanish MPs approved applies to anyone who is at least 16-years-old.

Teenagers who are 14- or 15-years-old can seek to legally change their gender with approval from a parent or legal guardian. A judge still needs to approve requests from 12or 13-year-olds.

Deutsche Welle reported the bill also bans so-called conversion therapy and includes provisions to address discrimination based on gender identity in employment,

education and housing.

“This law recognizes the right of trans people to self-determine their gender identity, it depathologizes trans people,” said Equalities Minister Irene Moreno before the vote. “Trans people are not sick people, they are just people.”

Four Spanish LGBTQ and intersex rights groups — FELGTBI+ (the State Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transgender People, Bisexuals, Intersexuals and More), Chrysallis, the Association of Families of Transgender Children and Youth and Fundación Triángulo — in a statement celebrated the bill’s passage.

“It is fundamental that what is reflected in the law makes us one of the countries with the most advanced legislation in terms of LGTBI+ rights,” said FELGTBI+ President Urge Sangil. “This translates into real rights.”

The statement adds the bill’s passage is “only the first step to stop hate towards the LGTBI+ community and hate speech.”

Westminster Abbey, Church of England

(Photo by jiawangkun/Bigstock)

Spanish Parliament (Photo by adamico/Bigstock)

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Anna Sharyhina, co-founder of the Sphere Women’s Association, a group that promotes LGBTQ and intersex rights in Ukraine, on Sept. 25, 2022, led a Pride march in a subway station in Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city that is less than 30 miles from the Russian border in eastern Ukraine.

Kharkiv Pride took place during the Ukrainian military’s counteroffensive against Russian troops in Kharkiv Oblast. Sphere Fundraising Manager Ruslana Hnatchenko on Tuesday told the Washington Blade during a Zoom interview the subway was the only safe place for the event to happen, but she said it was “very important for us to have it in Ukraine and have it in Kharkiv.”

“Kharkiv carries a significance of being at the frontline and it is so close to Russia,” said Hnatchenko. “It was great to have it there.”

Friday marks one year since Russia launched its war against Ukraine.

Dmitry Shapoval, a gay man with HIV from Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and Anastasiia Baraniuk and her partner, Yulia Mulyukina, who were living together from Dniptro, a city on the Dnieper River in central Ukraine, are among the millions of people who have left Ukraine over the last year.

Hnatchenko was in Budapest, Hungary, studying for her master’s degree when the war began, and she spoke with the Blade from there. She visited her family over the Christmas holidays, but they met in Lviv, a city in western Ukraine that is close to the country’s border with Poland, because it was safer than Kharkiv.

“It was unsafe for me to come to Kharkiv,” said Hnatchenko. “It would be better for everyone to meet in the west.”

A Russian airstrike on March 1, 2022, killed Elvira Schemur, a 21-year-old law school student who was a volunteer for Kharkiv Pride and Kyiv Pride. Schemur was volunteering inside Kharkiv’s regional administration building when she was killed.

Hnatchenko said activists in Kherson, a city that Ukrainian forces liberated last November, told her Russian soldiers “were aware of where people from vulnerable groups (LGBTQ and intersex people and Roma people) lived.” Hnatchenko told the Blade people who identified as LGBTQ, intersex or nonbinary did not go outside during the occupation because they were afraid of being forcibly conscripted, attacked or sexually assaulted.

“A lot of LGBT people just tried not to go outside ... and obviously not to expose anything about their identity,” she said.

Hnatchenko also told the Blade women and girls in Kherson tried to dress in a “non-attractive way” in order “to make themselves look ugly, so the troops would take less interest in them.”

‘WE HELP OUR SOLDIERS’

Activists and advocacy groups remain defiant. They also continue to support LGBTQ and intersex Ukrainians who remain inside the country and servicemembers.

Hnatchenko said Sphere has provided humanitarian assistance and psychological support to more than 1,500 people.

Outright International, RFSL (the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Rights), Hivos and private donors inside Ukraine and elsewhere have donated funds that have allowed Sphere to purchase generators, clothes and blankets that it has distributed to Kharkiv’s LGBTQ and intersex residents during blackouts that Russia’s attacks against Ukrainian infrastructure has caused.

The U.S. Agency for International Development and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief over the last year have delivered millions of doses of antiretroviral drugs for Ukrainians with HIV/AIDS. Then-Kyiv Pride Executive Director Lenny Emson last month during a photo exhibit at Ukraine House in D.C. that highlighted Ukrainian LGBTQ and intersex servicemembers noted the organization continues to purchase basic supplies for them.

“We buy shoes. We buy underwear. We buy socks. We buy heaters,” said Emson. “We help our soldiers.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy over the last year has indicated his support of LGBTQ and intersex rights.

Zelenskyy last summer said he supports a civil partnerships law for same-sex couples.

Ukrainian lawmakers late last year unanimously approved a media regulation bill that will ban hate speech and incitement based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The measure passed days before Zelenskyy, a former actor and comedian, met with President Joe Biden at the White House and addressed Congress.

Zelenskyy last month made a broad reference to LGBTQ and intersex rights in a virtual Golden Globes appearance. Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova during the Jan. 26 event in D.C. applauded Kyiv Pride and other LGBTQ and intersex rights groups in her country.

“Thank you for everything you do in Kyiv, and thank you for everything that you do in order to fight the discrimination that still is somewhere in Ukraine,” said Markarova. “Not everything is perfect yet, but you know, I think we are moving in the right direction. And we together will not only fight the external enemy, but also will see equality.”

Biden on Feb. 20 met with Zelenskyy in Kyiv. Hnatchenko told the Blade she thinks Zelenskyy “does believe in human rights.”

“Maybe he’s not a full-blown ally, yet, but I think he believes in human rights,” she said, while noting she was sharing her personal thoughts about Zelenskyy. “He’s not only doing that because of the pressure from partners, but there’s pressure from within Ukraine to not do that.”

Hnatchenko further acknowledged conservative politicians, prominent figures within the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox Churches and many Ukrainians themselves remain opposed to LGBTQ and intersex rights.

“He (Zelenskyy) is kind of between a rock and a hard place in that sense, but I believe that human rights in Ukraine will overcome, especially after our victory,” said Hnatchenko. “We will make progress.”

Helen Globa, co-founder of Tergo, a support group for parents and friends of LGBTQ and intersex Ukrainians, on March 2, 2022, left her apartment in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha. She lived in New York with her son, Bogdan Globa, and his husband until she returned to Ukraine last August.

Helen Globa, like Hnatchenko, acknowledged many Ukrainians remain opposed to LGBTQ and intersex rights, but she said Zelenskyy’s support of civil unions for samesex couples and LGBTQ and intersex Ukrainians in the country’s armed forces are two tangible results of activists’ work in the country. Helen Globa also said one of the reasons she decided to return to Ukraine was to continue her support of these efforts.

“I love Ukraine and my life, my activities,” she told the Blade on Wednesday. “I do believe in our victory and further opportunities to finish my LGBTQ human rights activities by pushing our government to adopt same-sex partnership and marriages.”

Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, a transgender woman from Las Vegas who enlisted in the Ukrainian military after she covered the war, echoed Helen Globa.

“This act of war by Putin has set in motion a timely and irreversible civil rights movement in Ukraine, one that has been extraordinarily beneficial to the LGBTQ community,” Ashton-Cirillo told the Blade on Tuesday from the frontlines where she is fighting with the 209th Battalion of the 113th Brigade in the Donbas. “From hundreds of openly queer men and women serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine to President Zelenskyy’s positive statement about civil partnerships and human rights as applied to the community, what Putin has done has allowed freedom to bloom in Ukraine.”

‘I

Ukraine’ Country’s activists remain defiant as they mark war’s first anniversary

MICHAEL K. LAVERS

ANNA SHARYHINA, co-founder of the Sphere Women’s Association, center, leads a Pride march in a subway station in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Sept. 25, 2022. (Photo courtesy of Sphere Women’s Association)

HELEN GLOBA, co-founder of Tergo, a support group for parents and friends of LGBTQ and intersex Ukrainians, speaks at a rally for LGBTQ and intersex Ukrainians on April 3, 2022. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

4.25%APY* CD SPECIAL

PETER ROSENSTEIN

is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist. He writes regularly for the Blade.

Republicans are a mess: Praise the Lord

Democrats must unite to win in 2024

In some ways it is so gratifying to see what a mess the current Republican Party, or Party of Trump, is in. It will be up to the few rational Republicans, seems there are very few left, to clean up the mess if they want a party they can call their own in in the future.

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That being said, as a Democrat, my hope is they won’t get around to cleaning it up until after the 2024 elections. Clearly, when you turn your party over to misfits like Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) whose own family thinks he is nuts, Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.); you get the mess you have today. Add to that those crazies in leadership like Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), and chaos ensues. These are people with one goal, to disrupt the process. Yet they have no idea what they want to replace it with. They want headlines, no matter what. They want to destroy American democracy as we know it today, but don’t understand they wouldn’t survive the chaos that would follow.

U.S. Rep. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-Ga.) (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Now Democrats have their own crazies in Congress, but there is a difference. Democratic crazies do have a platform, much of which is good. They just don’t really understand how to get it done within the parameters of the government. They don’t like to accept to make progress you have to work incrementally. They haven’t accepted the founders of the country set up a government requiring compromise to get what they want done. So, they often appear to be working against their own best interests. But they are not out to create chaos in the country; they are not out to bring down our democracy.

I have been a Democrat all my life only rarely voting for a Republican. When I did, I almost always ended up being disappointed. I even helped a Republican candidate for mayor in D.C. develop their platform, only to find they weren’t willing to put in the hard work to win. I do have some close Republican friends who I meet with regularly. We manage to share a meal, talk about and debate the issues, and do what should be the norm; agree to disagree, but respectfully.

I once wrote an open letter to Ivanka Trump, hoping she may be a stabilizing influence on her insane father. Clearly, like other times I put my faith in a Republican, that didn’t work out very well. It has become clear no one could have brought any sense of decency to Trump who was more of a sexist, racist, homophobic pig than any of us who had met him years earlier in New York ever suspected.

That brings me back to the Republican Party and why it being a mess could be great for Democrats in 2024. It is clear about 30-35 percent of the party still support Trump. How that is possible is amazing, but it is fact. What that does is make it clear to any rational Republican office holder, or candidate, they need that 35 percent of their party to win elections. What we saw in 2022 is rational Republicans lost primaries to Trumpers, and then Trumpers lost to Democrats in the general election. We need those Trumpers to win a few more primaries, especially in states where Democratic senators are up for election. A few more Herschel Walkers and Mehmet Oz’s need to win their Republican primaries.

So, as we begin the 2024 election cycle it will be crucial for Democrats, including our farleft wing, to unite if we are to win. Let’s not piss away money on races we can’t win, and let’s not give primary challenges to candidates who can. Let’s develop a platform which focuses on the voters we need to win. Let’s talk about jobs, education opportunities, climate change and healthcare. We can also talk about a woman’s right to control her own body, civil rights, LGBTQ+ rights and fighting for our democracy; those issues worked in 2022.

There will be some benchmark races in 2023 including a judicial race in Wisconsin, the state Senate races in Virginia and legislative races in New Jersey. The results will give us an understanding of whether we are on the right track for 2024. All those races are winnable. Virginia is purple and Wisconsin is purple and schizophrenic, considering they elected both Sens Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson.

If we do this right, and Republicans continue to be a mess, Democrats will win.

Reprinted from February 16, 2023 Falls Church News-Press

J. LESTER FEDER

is Outright’s Senior Fellow for Emergency Research. He researches the situation of LGBTIQ people in significant crises. He is a journalist and photographer who has reported in more than 40 countries, whose work has appeared in outlets including Rolling Stone, the New York Times and Vanity Fair. From 2013-2020, Lester was a senior world correspondent at BuzzFeed News, where he pioneered a first-of-its-kind international LGBTQ rights beat. Lester was named Journalist of the Year in 2015 by NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists and received a GLAAD Media Award in 2016. Lester holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an M.A. from the Columbia Journalism School.

Taliban persecution against LGBTIQ Afghans heightens

Extremist group regained control of country in 2021

When Pari, a 48-year-old gay man in Afghanistan, was beaten and forced into sex by Taliban officials, his body was so badly bruised that he told his family he had been in a car crash.

Pari had tried to lay low after the Taliban captured control of Afghanistan on Aug. 15, 2021. He is a 48-year-old gay man who worked at a health clinic before the Taliban’s return to power, providing services to men who have sex with men. The clinic shut its doors and laid off its staff as the Taliban retook power, worried that some of its former clients would report their work to the Taliban. They were right to worry. A few weeks into Taliban rule, fighters showed up to the empty building and beat the security guards.

But the immediate months after the Taliban’s return to power was not the worst time for Pari and many other lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) Afghans. Nine months later, Pari was identified on the street by a group of Taliban who appeared to know who he was. “You are ‘izak’ and promote gay sex,” they said, using a local homophobic slur. Taliban members beat him and detained him at a checkpoint, demanding the names of his former clients.

Eighteen months after the Taliban takeover, the lives of LGBTIQ Afghans are increasingly in danger. A new Outright report demonstrates the scale and scope of violence against LGBTIQ people, who live in complete insecurity as Taliban persecution becomes increasingly systematic. In the early days after the Taliban takeover, Outright found that most threats and violence came from family members or in chance encounters with Taliban when queer people were spotted based on their appearance or identified when checkpoint guards searched their cell phones. Premeditated targeting was rare.

But Afghanistan’s de facto rulers have stepped up their persecution of LGBTIQ people over the last year.  In December, Afghanistan’s Supreme Court announced individuals had been punished for homosexuality in Kabul, and public floggings for homosexuality have also been reported in other parts of the country.

Outright’s documentation suggests that much of the targeting by state agents primarily affects queer men and trans women so far. In one case, a gay activist was found dead outside a police station; a medical examiner found evidence of sexual assault, according to a family member. In another, a trans woman arrived for a dancing gig at a party to discover it was a trap, and she was handed over to Taliban officers.

For queer women and trans men, family members remain a primary source of danger, especially male relatives. One trans man we interviewed was savagely beaten by his uncle who then threatened to hand him over to the Taliban. An intersex woman who’d entered into an arranged marriage reported being beaten by her husband and forced to sleep in a cowshed. He, too, threatened to hand her over to the Taliban.

Violence against LGBTIQ people runs counter to Afghanistan’s obligations under international law and could quite possibly constitute crimes against humanity. The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) stated in December that Taliban officials could be prosecuted for  “gender persecution” for targeting LGBTIQ people. (Afghanistan is under the ICC’s jurisdiction, having  signed onto the treaty authorizing the court in 2003.)

But the international community is doing far too little to protect queer Afghans, or to ensure that their persecutors are brought to justice. It’s almost impossible for queer Afghans to flee to safety. Foreign governments have provided far fewer visas to persecuted Afghans than are needed, and the process of resettlement requires refugees to spend months in Pakistan and other countries where LGBTIQ people are criminalized. Rainbow Railroad, an organization that help LGBTIQ refugees get to safety, has received requests for assistance from nearly 4,000 queer Afghans since August 2021. By the end of 2022, only 247 had managed to reach safe countries.

While many continue to try to leave, most queer Afghans cannot or don’t want to leave Afghanistan. They fall under the protection mandate of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). But UNAMA has not made any public statements regarding LGBTIQ Afghans’ human rights and safety, even omitting reference to such abuses against LGBTIQ people in a  human rights report issued in July 2022.

Creating safe space for queer people to connect with UNAMA and other international organizations will require a long process of trust building with the community in a country where being LGBTIQ is so stigmatized. Afghanistan is so dangerous for LGBTIQ people that many fear leaving their homes; the idea of outing themselves to an international agency is terrifying, especially if it requires the involvement of an Afghan interpreter who may share widely held anti-LGBTIQ attitudes.

But the U.N. tasked UNAMA to protect all Afghans when it was created in 2002, and UNAMA must find ways to fulfill that obligation, including by recruiting staff trusted by LGBTIQ people and beginning the crucial work of documenting violence against a deeply marginalized community.

For now, Pari has nowhere to turn for help. He ultimately escaped Taliban detention after agreeing to have sex with a man in exchange for his freedom. He thought about leaving Afghanistan, and secured a passport. But even if he could find a way out, he doesn’t want to abandon his children. To survive, he does everything possible to avoid leaving the house.

Stories like Pari’s are far too common in the Taliban’s Afghanistan. They will only grow more common unless the international community takes action. And with no safe way for most LGBTIQ Afghans to report these abuses, their stories may never be known at all.

(Illustration courtesy of Outright International)

Republican states target drag performers

Bills seek to restrict shows, label venues as ‘adult-oriented businesses’

By KAELA ROEDER

A number of bills targeting drag performers are popping up in majority-Republican states across the nation.

At least 14 states have introduced bills that would restrict drag queens from performing in public spaces and in venues viewable by minors. Some of the proposed legislation would require venues that host drag events to register as “adult-oriented businesses.”

These bills are the latest legislative attempts targeting LGBTQ rights, particularly transgender rights. Other proposed legislation across the country includes access to gender-affi rming health care and banning kids from being able to play gender-affi rming sports.

Shawn Stokes, a drag queen who performs as Akasha Royale and is based in St. Louis, said he’s “embarrassed” these bills have been introduced in his home state and across the country.

“We have plenty of other things to do. We have a failing educational system,” he said. “We are just wasting a lot of time.”

In Missouri, legislators are considering several bills, including one described as changing “the defi nition of a sexually oriented business to include any nightclub or bar that provides drag performances.” Another bill would classify “male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest” as adult cabaret performances. Performances on public property or viewed by minors could result in a misdemeanor punishable by jail time and a hefty fi ne.

Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has endorsed a similar bill in her state.

In Tennessee, a bill would classify “male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest” as adult cabaret performances and would ban performances on public property. Shows would also be banned where minors could be present.

A rural county in Tennessee has already approved regulations on drag performances — the Giles County Agri-Park Board Committee passed a slew of restrictions in early January, including banning “male or female impersonators” from the park, the Tennessean reported.

Steven Raimo, a Nashville-based drag queen who performs as Veronica Electronika, said legislators are trying to “eliminate the art of drag.”

“They want to put fear in entertainers,” Raimo said. Raimo predicts venues will stop hosting drag performers because of the risk of retribution.

“One of the restaurants that I do our brunch and bingo show has big glass windows that look onto a public street,” he said. “I could potentially be arrested in violation of this law because anybody of any age could walk past the windows and see the show.”

Raimo added he would be much more careful in choosing where he performs because of the ambiguity of the bill as it stands.

And it’s likely the bill will pass in Tennessee, according to Kathy Sinback, the executive director of American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee. The Tennessee Senate passed the bill Feb. 9, and the state House of

Representatives also has a companion bill in motion that would require drag performers to obtain a permit.

“It is moving so quickly,” Sinback said. “These [anti-drag bills] are their top priorities this session.”

Bills could target trans people

Because of the vagueness of the bills and classifying drag performers as “male or female impersonators,” advocates fear this proposed legislation could attack transgender people.

“This is in fact a transphobic bill, even more so than it is a drag-phobic bill,” Raimo said. It’s a very important piece of this story that I don’t want to be lost.”

Trans people in Tennessee could be viewed as “male or female impersonators” by law enforcement because people cannot change the gender marker on their birth certifi cate, Raimo said.

“So if someone’s singing karaoke in the bar, and they do a little twerking, maybe that’s harmful to minors all of a sudden. It can be interpreted so broadly,” Sinback said.

‘It’s 100 percent fearmongering’

The Arizona Senate is considering legislation that would prohibit federal or state funds from being allocated to places where drag shows are hosted. Another bill, similar to those in Tennessee and Missouri, would classify drag as “adult cabaret performances,” and would ban shows on public property.

It’s unlikely the bills will be passed into law in Arizona given Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs is in power,

according to Richard Stevens, a Phoenix-based drag queen who performs as Barbra Seville. But still, “even if it’s not made into law, damage has been done,” he said.

“Their mission in a lot of ways is accomplished,” Stevens explained. “They’ve now connected grooming and pedophilia and attacks on children to drag. People who weren’t thinking about drag a year ago are now paranoid of drag.”

Stevens was once friends with Kari Lake, a Republican who continues to claim she won last November’s Arizona’s gubernatorial election. Stevens subsequently became a vocal Lake critic after she criticized drag queens and claimed they are “grooming” children.

The classifi cation of drag performances as “sexual” is also an archaic perspective, Stokes said.

“This narrative that drag queens are predators or groomers is absolutely false,” Stokes said. “Going to a drag show with your kid in a public place is no different than taking your 12-year-old kid to a PG-13 movie.”

“It’s 100 percent fearmongering. It’s demonization,” Stevens said.

This is a common thread in anti-LGBTQ rhetoric — the false narrative that all LGBTQ people are out to get children, said Misty Eyez, the director of the women’s program and transgender services, and the manager of LGBTQ competency training at SunServe, an LGBTQ services organization based in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

“It’s not a new story that LGBTQ individuals are stereotyped as … a threat to traditional values or morality,” she said.

STEVEN RAIMO (Photo courtesy of Steven Raimo)

RICHARD STEVENS (Photo courtesy of Richard Stevens)

Rivalry and revenge. Whispered accusations. And a true heart driven to madness.

OTELLO

MDLO returns to Strathmore with the fourth production in its 2022–2023 Season of Verdi, Otello. A passionate retelling of Shakespeare’s great tragedy of jealousy, deception, and murder, Verdi’s fiery score penetrates the darkest reaches of the soul, from the heart-stopping crash of the storm at the opera’s opening to Otello’s tortured descent into murderous madness. Bravura singing, tremendous scenes for the MDLO Chorus, and a brilliant, thriller-paced adaptation of Shakesepeare’s text make Otello an edge-of-your-seat must-see.

GREGORY KUNDE

Otello

“Passionate, beautiful... clear, strong, focused tone...genuine nobility”

(The New York Times)

MARK DELAVAN

Iago

“Half-divine, halfhuman voice” (Wall Street Journal)

ELENI CALENOS

Desdemona

“A performance for the ages” (Opera News)

PHILIPPE AUGUIN

Conductor

“A strong, ardent and often meltingly beautiful reading of the score”

(The Washington Post)

Pre-performance discussion with legendary star SHERRILL MILNES

Friday, March 3 at 6:15 pm

Sunday, March 5 at 12:45 pm

Friday, March 3 at 7:30 pm | Sunday, March 5 at 2:00 pm

THE MUSIC CENTER AT STRATHMORE TICKETS & INFORMATION AT www.MDLO.org

CALENDAR |

Friday,

February 24

Center Aging Monthly Yoga and Lunch will be at 12 p.m. at the DC Center for the LGBT Community. Lunch will be held in the climate-controlled atrium at the Reeves Center. For more information, contact Adam at adamheller@thedccenter.org

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

Women in Their Twenties and Thirties will meet at 8 p.m. on Zoom. This event is a social discussion group for queer women in the D.C. area and a great way to make new friends and meet other queer women in a fun and friendly setting. For meeting updates join WiTT’s closed Facebook group.

Saturday, February 25

Virtual Yoga Class with Charles M. will be at 12 p.m. online. This is a weekly class focusing on yoga, breathwork and meditation. Guests are encouraged to RSVP on the DC Center’s website, providing your name, email address, and zip code, along with any questions you may have. A link to the event will be sent at 6 p.m. the day before.

Black Lesbian Support Group will be at 11 a.m. on Zoom. This is a peer-led support group devoted to the joys and challenges of being a Black lesbian. Guests do not need to be a member of the Beta Kappa Chapter or the Beta Phi Omega Sorority in order to join, but they should identify as a lesbian or are questioning that aspect of their identity. For more details, email supportdesk@ thedccenter.org

By TINASHE CHINGARANDE

Sunday, February 26

GoGay DC will be hosting “LGBTQ+ Coffee and Conversation” at 12 p.m. at As You Are. This event is for those looking to meet new faces in the LGBTQ community. This event is free and more details are available on Eventbrite

GoGay DC will be hosting “LGBTQ+ Dinner and Conversation” at 6 p.m. at Federico Ristorante Italiano. This event is for those looking to meet new faces in the LGBTQ community. This event is for those who want to mingle with fabulous LGBTQ folk and allies and meet new people from all over the world. For more details, visit Eventbrite.

Monday, February 27

Center Aging Monday Coffee and Conversation will be at 10 a.m. 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 Queer Book Club will be at 6:30 p.m. on Zoom. The book to read for this meeting is “The Honeys” by Ryan La Sala. For more information, email supportdesk@thedccenter.org

Tuesday, February 28

Genderqueer DC will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This is a support group for people who identify outside of the gender binary, whether bigender, agender, genderfluid, or just not 100 percent cis. For more information, visit www.genderqueerdc.org or Facebook.

OUT & ABOUT

Congressional Chorus to perform cabaret

The Congressional Chorus will perform “Sing, Sing, Swing” on Friday, Feb. 24 at 7 p.m. at THEARC Theater.

Guests will be transported back to the golden age of jazz as the chorus performs some of America’s most beloved standards, including “It Don’t Mean a Thing,” “Stormy Weather” and “How High the Moon,” along with lesser known gems.

There will be a live band and brass section featuring some of D.C.’s finest jazz players, scat solos, solo ballads, tap dance, and fully choreographed pieces. Tickets are available on the chorus’ website.

Wednesday, March 01

Job Club will be at 6 p.m. on Zoom. This is a weekly job support program to help job entrants and seekers, including the long-term unemployed, improve self-confidence, motivation, resilience and productivity for effective job searches and networking — allowing participants to move away from being merely “applicants” toward being “candidates.” For more information, email centercareers@thedccenter.org or visit www.thedccenter.org/ careers.

Comedy and Cocktails - Open Mic Wednesdays will be at 7:30 p.m. at Pure Lounge. This event is an open mic featuring comedians from the DMV. There will be drinking games, free prizes and music by DJ K-OZ. Admission is free and more details are available on Eventbrite

Thursday, March 02

The DC Center’s Fresh Produce Program will be held all day at the DC Center. To be more 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.

API Queer Support Group will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This is a support group for the Asian and Pacific Islander queer community. For more information, email supportdesk@thedccenter.org.

National Art Gallery to spotlight LGBTQ films

The National Gallery of Art will present a film series called “Burning Illusions: British Film and Thatcherism” that will run until Saturday, May 27.

The series will run adjacent to “This is Britain,” a photography exhibition focused on the changes in British society in the ‘70s and ‘80s. The gallery will also show four titles surrounding the UK’s Section 28 on March 5 — “Section 28: Spoken Histories and Queer Defiance.”

For more details, visit the gallery’s website.

A lasting legacy

‘Poetry into Song’ at National Presbyterian Church on March 5

By PATRICK FOLLIARD

After 10 years as a singer and board member with Washington Master Chorale, Diane Kresh decided to end her tenure. But before leaving, she wanted to express her gratitude by gifting the group with something truly beautiful.

The result is composer David Conte’s “The Unknown Sea” a commissioned chorale piece based on the texts of famed American poet Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979). Originally the piece was slated to end the chorale’s 10th season in 2020, but because the pandemic had other plans, it’s now debuting as part of WMC’s “Poetry into Song” on March 5 at the National Presbyterian Church.

The idea, Kresh explains, was to create a legacy project, a gift to the chorale from her for many years of making music with a special group of people including WMC artistic director and dear friend Thomas Colohan. Also, Kresh wanted to include a salute to Bishop, whose detailed yet non-confessional style she greatly admires.

Kresh’s affinity with Bishop is partly based on similarities, both gay and feminists. Also, Kresh, who enjoyed a long career at the Library of Congress, appreciates that Bishop spent a brief stint as a consultant of poetry at the library many in 1949. But mostly, Kresh loves the work of women writers, and that’s something she wants to celebrate.

Bishop knew great success, friendship and romantic love, but her early years were marked by tragedy. She was a baby when her father died, and just a few years later her mother was permanently institutionalized with mental illness. For a time, Bishop lived happily with her maternal grandparents in Nova Scotia and then her father’s wealthy parents spirited her off to New England. She graduated from Vassar in 1934.

Using inherited private income, Bishop travelled broadly and frequently. Evident from her life and work is a search for home and an interest in coasts. She lived in Brazil for some time.

When Kresh’s commission was still just a thought, she

and Colohan reached out to Conte, a prolific San Francisco-based composer who has written 150 works of which 40 involved the words of poets, both living and dead. Kresh wanted twenty minutes of music based on Bishop’s words with a mezzo soprano solo built in.

Initially Conte, who is gay, wasn’t sure if he was the right man for the job. He knew of Bishop’s poetry but not well. But the deeper he dove the more excited he became. And he had no objections to Kresh’s requests, so they moved ahead.

For his new choral orchestral work, Conte draws on Bishop’s “One Art,” a widely admired poem that’s at once deeply personal yet a throwback to tradition and reserve.

“It’s about losing keys, a house, and finally losing a loved one. Increasingly, the losses become more intense,” he says. “The tone of the poem is so interesting, a quiet but confident acceptance of loss as a part of life, wry and humorous and brave all at the same time. It took me a while to penetrate the personality that’s in the poetry.”

The commissioned work is an amalgam of queer talent. When a gay composer sets the words of a gay poet, there’s no question of shared experience. Conte says “While we have more freedom than Bishop experienced, there’s still a shared oppression, feeling like an outsider, having to discover identity because yours is inexact.”

For both artistic and practical reasons, WMC is pairing “The Unknown Sea” with Ralph Vaughan Williams’s cantata, “Dona Nobis Pacem,” based on work by gay poet Walt Whitman and texts from the Hebrew Bible and Latin Mass, re-orchestrated by British composer and conductor Jonathan Rathbone.

Both Kresh and Conte will be in attendance for this long-anticipated premiere.

“I’m excited, but a little sad I won’t be singing,” says Kresh. “It’s a sometimes bright, sometimes elegiac piece that has legs; I hope other groups and audiences will experience the same kind of joy that we’ve had making it.”

into

Song”

Washington Master Chorale | March 5 at 5 p.m. National Presbyterian Church | 4101 Nebraska Ave., N.W. | $40-60 | Washingtonmasterchorale.org

DIANE KRESH

(Photo courtesy of Jeanine Finch)

“Poetry

Goldin doc captures both ‘Beauty’ and ‘Bloodshed’ Laura Poitras produced and directed Oscar-nominated documentary

By JOHN PAUL KING

As the yearly Hollywood awards cycle heads into its final weeks before culminating with the Oscars on March 12, most of the public attention is — as always — focused on the movies in the so-called “major” categories, while the ones in the others are, if not completely overlooked, placed lower on the priority list for film fans looking to catch up on all the nominees before the big night.

As the shrewdest fans know, of course, some of the best filmmaking often goes unsung because it happens in the kind of films that win awards in categories deemed irrelevant by most of the people in the mainstream. Unfortunately, that description most frequently seems to apply to documentaries — and this year, a standout among the crop of potential Oscar winners comes from within that eternally underappreciated genre.

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature, producer/director Laura Poitras’ “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” is a movie that tells two stories. In part, it’s a chronicle of the remarkable personal history of photographer and artist Nan Goldin, who rose to prominence in the “respectable” art world through the images that she took of herself and her friends — often in candidly intimate situations — in the post-Stonewall queer underground of ‘70s and ‘80s lower Manhattan; told in Goldin’s voice and through her own vast archive of images, it charts her life and career from emotionally traumatic childhood to esteemed artist, while reminding us that she was as much a participant in the heady lifestyle she documented as she was a witness.

While Goldin’s life and career would be more than ample as the singular focus of a documentary, though, Poitras’ movie has an even bigger purpose in mind. In service of that goal, it interweaves its subject’s personal narrative around the saga of P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) — an organization she founded in 2017 after revealing she was in recovery from an addiction to prescribed opioids which almost led to her death from an overdose of fentanyl — and its high-profile protest campaign against the Sackler family, a billionaire pharmaceutical dynasty known internationally for its generous art patronage, who through its company Purdue Pharma were principle architects of America’s staggering opioid crisis. Moving back and forth between these two threads throughout the film, Poitras frames Goldin’s struggle to hold the Sacklers accountable within the context of the formative life experiences that shaped her into an activist, while making sure to give her subject due acknowledgment for the then-shocking celebration of queer life and sexuality in her work at a time when such things were still seen through the cold filter of anthropological distance or simply being denounced outright for violating social taboos.

As to that, many viewers will undoubtedly be drawn to “Bloodshed” by the prospect of revisiting the fabled era of Goldin’s early heyday through her up-close-and-personal pictures and footage, and they will not be disappointed. The film includes plenty of both, illuminated by the artist as she recounts the memories behind them; it offers poignant glimpses at a few future icons and fallen stars (lost-but-not-forgotten queer icons from her circle, like Cookie Mueller and David Wojnarowicz, are among those lovingly profiled by Goldin as she narrates her reminiscences), gives us an inside look at a seminal time and place in counterculture history, tantalizes us with provocative images of a sexually liberated lifestyle and throws us into the front lines of AIDS activism and the political battle over government funding of the NEA.

For those more interested in direct biography, there is also copious material on Gol-

din’s personal life. These sequences cover her memories of a dysfunctional childhood growing up with an older sister who would later die by suicide, her delinquent youth in and out of foster homes, her battery at the hands of a jealous lover, the horror of watching her community ravaged by AIDS while the rest of the world stood by and watched, and the crushing devastation of her opioid addiction.

Yet while these various parts of Goldin’s story may carry weight of their own, “Bloodshed” ultimately transfers it all into its saga about her effort to exact palpable retribution against the Sacklers — something her position as a world-renowned artist made her uniquely situated to do. Following her organization through a series of brilliantly orchestrated actions in which — borrowing a page from ACT UP — they staged dramatic protests at museums who had taken donations from the disgraced philanthropic dynasty, the movie deploys footage from these events to capture the raw sense of danger experienced within them with the kind of thrilling immediacy unachievable through journalistic observation or dramatic recreation. It’s this Robin Hood-esque story of taking back from the rich and amoral that drives Poitras’ movie and gives it an emotional structure, making it more than just another profile of an influential artist.

That doesn’t mean it relegates Goldin’s work as a photographer into the background. On the contrary, the bulk of the imagery we see comes from Goldin herself; even the footage of the protests was shot by P.A.I.N. for documentary purposes before Poitras had even become involved. Still, the filmmaker deserves full credit for assembling these photos and home movies into a finished product, and while it’s clear that “Bloodshed” is the result of intense collaboration between documentarian and subject, it’s also clear that her understanding of the material and her nuance in presenting it are essential elements in creating the cumulative power — and the surprising sense of urgency.

As for her subject, Goldin’s importance as both an artist and as activist come across plainly, but those were never in doubt. The film’s biggest surprise, perhaps, is the compassion visible at the heart of her activism, manifesting through her desire to use the privilege and influence her art has given her to help balance the scales between the powerful elite and the marginalized masses they exploit — a compassion reflected even in the revelation of her former life as a sex worker, which she discusses publicly for the first time here out of solidarity with other sex workers and to help reduce the stigma around sex work.

While juggling two separate-but-complementary stories might come at the risk of a disjointed focus, “Bloodshed,” thanks to Poitras’ seemingly symbiotic alignment with her subject’s aesthetic and sympathies, manages to weave its dual threads together in a way which not only makes sense, but uses them in concert to convey a fiercely radical worldview — one which resonates deeply in a contemporary social environment not too different from the one in which Goldin and her fellow sexual “outlaws” were flaunting their defiance of repressive, bigoted cultural norms not just in their work but in their everyday lives. Now, as then, a younger generation confronted with unbridled corporate greed and widening economic inequity, not to mention a conservative strategy of reverse cultural engineering through backlash and legislation, has been triggered to reevaluate its priorities.

It’s not surprising. After all, as Goldin says in the film, “When you think of the profit off people’s pain, you can only be furious about it.”

(Photo courtesy of NEON)

Everyone has a story and this one’s fascinating

‘Waterfalls, The Moon and Sensible Shoes’ follows one lesbian life

By TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER

Everybody has a story.

The experiences might be similar, but never the same. One person can relate their experiences, someone else can share, and a third person had totally a different viewpoint, even if they were all in the same place at the same time. In “Waterfalls, The Moon and Sensible Shoes” by Jill P. Strachan, you’ll read about “One Lesbian Life.”

For most of her life, Strachan was a child of the world: Her father was a diplomat, and she spent most of her childhood in Pakistan, playing with the children of other diplomats, embassy staff, and workers. Strachan says they “amused themselves” with games they made up, and she liked to write in her diary.

When she was almost 12 years old, she was sent to a boarding school in Virginia, and while it was fun at first, “the shine of being on my own wore off within one month,” she says. Getting along with teachers was not easy; “loneliness, difference, and angst” were also issues she had to tackle. She joined the basketball team, learning to her chagrin that the rules of play stateside were different for boys and for girls.

Other things were different, too: She began dating boys and suffering heartbreak from it – until college, when a younger, “vibrant,” outspoken, brave and brassy girl asked Strachan if she’d ever “’thought about being a Lesbian.”

Strachan says she “sensed danger” and waived

the girl away, but by 1974, the two of them were in a relationship that they had to keep hidden, furtively sneaking in and out of one another’s rooms to avoid detection.

“What we were doing was illegal and we, ourselves, were illegal for loving each other,” says Strachan. “To be together, we were forced to be clandestine, but this hardly diminished our individual desires.”

Everybody has a story.

Stepping back six decades or more, author Jill P. Strachan tells hers, through diary entries, letters, and notes. Anecdotal memories also feature strongly in “Waterfalls, The Moon and Sensible Shoes,” giving readers a large sense of what it was like for one woman to come to terms with her sexuality at a time when societal acceptance was nil.

While readers may struggle with the non-linear telling of this life story, Strachan entertains with her tales of travel and of meeting people who would impact her life. She writes of the men and women she loved, including men she helplessly watched die of AIDS; she also writes of the activists she knew, and of the partner she loves now.

“Waterfalls, The Moon and Sensible Shoes” is a widespread book that may be a challenge to follow but Strachan’s experiences can’t be missed. Find this book, because everyone has a story and this one’s fascinating.

UPCOMING PERFORMANCES

Chloé Arnold’s Syncopated Ladies LIVE!

Saturday, Feb. 25 at 8 p.m. The viral tap dance phenomenon

Virginia Opera

LA TRAVIATA

Composed by Giuseppe Verdi

Saturday, Mar. 11 at 8 p.m.

Sunday, Mar. 12 at 2 p.m. The spellbinding tour de force

KODO

One Earth Tour 2023: Tsuzumi

Saturday, Mar. 18 at 8 p.m.

Masters of the ancient art of Japanese taiko drumming

‘Waterfalls,

CIRQUE FLIP FABRIQUE

Muse

By Jill P. Strachan c.2021 | $12 | 225 pages

Friday, Mar. 31 at 8 p.m.

Saturday, Apr. 1 at 2 p.m.

Breathtaking artistry and athleticism

The Moon and Sensible Shoes’

Located on the Fairfax campus of George Mason University. For information on health and safety protocols, visit

CHLOÉ ARNOLD’S SYNCOPATED LADIES LIVE!

Mardi Gras Parade Celebration held at The Wharf

The Wharf DC held a Mardi Gras parade along the pedestrianized Wharf Street on Saturday, Feb. 18. Marching contingents included the all-women Afro-Brazilian band Batalá Washington and Cheer DC. The Ladies of LURe and the Washington Blade joined drag performer Sasha Adams in throwing out beads to promote the upcoming Pride on the Pier in June.

(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)

Real live real estate: Leverage in the current market Higher mortgage

rates is one consideration

By JUSTIN NOBLE

With this unseasonably warm weather we are currently experiencing — the spring real estate market surely has sprung! As I mentioned in an earlier article — historically the spring market here in the DMV metro area blooms around Super Bowl Sunday and onward into the summer. This market change brings fresh new inventory into the market. That is ... until this year. Because why would the few years post-pandemic be easy, right?!

I held an open house this weekend which ordinarily I would have written off as a slower open with maybe one or two nosey neighbors popping their heads in to see how their neighbor lives. That, however, was not what happened. This open house was flooded with guests checking out the unit, common spaces, speaking with neighbors, asking about offers in hand, inspections, etc. I have sold units in this same condo building previously and the open house traffic, even at this same time of year pre-pandemic ... did not experience this amount of traffic.

Two trending questions that I received were:

1. What is the current market like? and

2. My current lease isn’t up for another three+ months. Am I beginning my search too early?!

WHAT IS THE CURRENT MARKET LIKE:

First of all — we all know that mortgage rates are up compared to the unreasonably low rates we had during the pandemic. These rates were INSANE! While we are still seeing mortgage rates fluctuate — the issue here is the lack of inventory. I personally always had a “5-year plan” with my condo in D.C. The plan was to buy a condo, live in it for about five years, then sell it and move to a larger home. That plan was working out … until I refinanced to a very low rate and now I would be silly to sell my current condo. Now I’ll hold onto my “5year plan” condo which I will rent out and buy something else.

Usually we see a seller list their property in order to buy another property, however due to the extremely low interest rates in the years past, we are seeing homeowners hold onto those properties as an investment and so there is not a 1-for-1 trade of property any

longer. This is causing a massive shortage in available inventory in an already low inventory marketplace here in the DMV. So while rates are a huge ruler in what we see in the market — it is not the only fact to consider.

MY CURRENT LEASE ISN’T UP FOR ANOTHER THREE-PLUS MONTHS. AM I BEGINNING MY SEARCH TOO EARLY?!

Absolutely not. This, however, depends on a lot! Are you an impulsive person or do you take your time and consider all of the variables in addition to mercury retrograde, the color of the sky and the earth’s gravitational pull? Depending on your purchasing style this might also count into your buying time frame. But I digress — the reason I was being asked that question was due to the fact that with a lease you’re locked into that lease term stipulated on the contract so it’s not like if you have four months left on your lease and you find a house tomorrow that you can just buy it and move out of your rental and leave the landlord high and dry.

HOWEVER, thinking creatively there are ways to align your timing a little better with your lease end time and when you are moving into your newly purchased condo. The market has shifted, buyers are able to offer a bit below asking on properties, buyers are able to ask for home inspections and appraisals and buyers are also able to ask for credits. These credits have no stipulations regarding what you spend that money on. As such, you can ask for a “seller credit” in the amount of those three months of rent that you are responsible for, this would allow you to pay your current lease through its term, purchase your dream home, and even give you a bit more flexibility regarding your move-in timeframe if you wanted to paint or redo the flooring of your new place. There are tons of ways to think creatively in this current market.

Taking the time to invest in meeting a real estate agent that will work for you in this ever-changing marketplace is vital. It’s important to be a creative thinker in addition to a relentless negotiator.

JUSTIN NOBLE

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