Blade editor warns of challenges ahead in new book

Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard had been dead for 21 years at that point.

“Cult!” Naff and I exclaimed in unison as he told me the story.

As editor of the Washington Blade, Naff is an established invitee to the journalistic event of each season: The White ouse Correspondents ssociation Dinner. e writes about his dates he has taken each year from the heavenly udith ight to the disastrous athy riffin . The latter made a point to scream expletives at Trump administration officials in attendance.

While aff could appreciate the sentiment, riffin left D.C. the next day, while he, the in-town professional, had to face all of her targets.

Laverne Cox was also a standout date. She accompanied Naff the night after Caitlyn Jenner’s televised coming out interview aired. “If one more reporter asks me about fucking Caitlyn Jenner, I’m going to lose it,” Naff reports Co confiding. is story about averne Co was not so much about Jenner, however, but reads like something out of “Oceans 8.” ow We Won covers the arc of B history over two crucial decades and hits on topics from bullying of youth, the “ex-gay” movement, the military, religion, police, and, of course, marriage equality. Besides his adventures with cults chasing him down, A-lister dates and angry governors, Naff also shares poignant emotional moments of his own. aff is one of those pioneers. fter an adult life fighting for LGBTQ people to exercise the right to marry our loves in a fully public, accepting way, challenging all who might deny a same-sex couple service, Naff had a life-changing revelation that made him choose to walk away from a huge wedding event for himself.

Unlike the movie, Naff’s evening did not feature a planned jewel heist, nor were Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett anywhere in sight, but it did feature a pricey borrowed diamond bracelet that went missing off of Cox’s wrist. She feared the jeweler would accuse her of theft. The dilemma ultimately had one of the most famous transgender actresses of all time, and the editor of the nation’s oldest LGBTQ publication frantically crawling under banquet tables surrounded by the Washington elite and press corps.

Co finally found the bauble at a.m., deep at the bottom of her purse.

One came in shocking fashion when he arrived to the Washington Blade offices one morning to find two men from the Blade’s then-parent company. They were there to shut the place down after a Chapter bankruptcy filing. aff retreated to his office, scrambling to think out the next move. The Blade staff resolved to not give up and successfully put out a slim newssheet for a few months until they could recover the Blade’s assets from the bankruptcy court and keep the legacy alive.

One of the great ironies of the LGBTQ movement is that many people who have fought for progress are not the ones who live to enjoy all the gains. They win the battles but leave the new world for others to fully enjoy.

Months before his own wedding, he was in a serious automobile accident. e called his fianc and pitched the idea of a small ceremony on the beach, followed by a gay cruise together around Asia. “Something happens when you are faced with a life-or-death kind of moment. It changes what’s important. It changes your perspective,” he tells me.

Naff started out his writing career as a 10-year-old writing to the Washington Post as a pissed-off Baltimore Orioles fan protesting the Major League Baseball strike of 1981. “I am STILL a pissed off Baltimore Orioles fan,” he says. From day one, he found his knack for observation and his gift for pointed communication. Those are the same qualities he brings to his participation in, and presentation of, our B historic trek to e uality victory.

In ow We Won, he tells an unvarnished story, as he saw it, as he wrote about it, and continues to tell it, at the helm of the Washington Blade. He tells of the rightwing figures he confronted and continues to confront. e thinks of the term “outing” as an archaic term. Today, it is simply “truth-telling” of those in the public eye. As much as the title of his book implies a “win” and completion, I am confident that the -year-old pissed-off Baltimore Orioles fan within is not done.

Naff’s subtitle, after all, is “And How Our Enemies Could Take it All Away.”

A post-war recap for Kevin Naff might have been best e pressed by the fictional r. Incredible when he said, “No matter how many times you save the world, it always manages to get back in eopardy again. Sometimes I ust want it to stay saved!”

As homophobic, transphobic Republican legislation sweeps the country, it is clear, we are not done and a new chapter in the war has begun. t the end of he Incredibles,” continuing the allegory, after a family of progressives have saved the world, a huge noisy crew disrupts it symbolic of the wave . ut pops the nder- iner who declares, Behold, he nder- iner I am always beneath you, but NOTHING is beneath me! (As it seems so for the GOP.) I hereby declare war on peace and happiness Soon all will tremble before me

The music swells, and the family of authentic-selves look at each other with a smirk, opening their shirts to reveal that they are Incredibles. They know that this time, like last time, they will not be defeated.

So stands Kevin Naff, looking back and looking forward, with his band of Incredibles, LGBTQ journalists worldwide, and the rest of us, ready to fight the fight again.

As we prepare for the new battles ahead, the principles of ow We Won will be our tools for ultimate victory be visible, be assertive, confront lies and injustice, reinvent, rebirth and in the end, hold our personal loves sacred.

Kevin Naff and Mr. Incredible would stand for nothing less. Neither should you.