Washington Blade, Volume 54, Issue 43, October 27, 2023

(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)

Inside the D.C. resource for those fighting addiction, PAGE 06

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VOLUME 54 ISSUE 43 ADDRESS PO Box 53352 Washington DC 20009 PHONE 202-747-2077 E-MAIL news@washblade.com INTERNET washingtonblade.com PUBLISHED BY Brown Naff Pitts Omnimedia, Inc. PUBLISHER LYNNE J. BROWN lbrown@washblade.com ext. 8075 EDITORIAL EDITOR KEVIN NAFF knaff@washblade.com ext. 8088 SR. NEWS REPORTER LOU CHIBBARO JR. lchibbaro@washblade.com ext. 8079 WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT CHRIS KANE ckane@washblade.com extg 8083 INTERNATIONAL NEWS EDITOR MICHAEL K. LAVERS mlavers@washblade.com ext. 8093 POP CULTURE REPORTER JOHN PAUL KING PHOTO EDITOR MICHAEL KEY mkey@washblade.com ext 8084 CONTRIBUTING WRITERS DANIEL ITAI, EDICIÓN CIENTONCE, QUORUM, WDG, STEPHANIE MONDRAGÓN, ISAAC AMEND , TINASHE CHINGARANDE, DUNIA ORELLANA, REPORTAR SIN MIEDO, PARKER PURIFOY, PETER ROSENSTEIN, MARK LEE, LATEEFAH WILLIAMS, KATE CLINTON, KATHI WOLFE, ERNESTO VALLE, YARIEL VALDÉS GONZÁLEZ, LYNARE ROBBINS, PHILIP VAN SLOOTEN, KATLEGO K. KOLANYANE-KESUPILE, KAELA ROEDER, TREMENDA NOTA, ALBERTO J. VALENTÍN, MAYKEL GONZÁLEZ VIVERO, ORGULLO LGBT. CO, ESTEBAN GUZMAN, ANDRÉS I. JOVÉ RODRÍGUEZ, WINTER HAWK, ISABELLE KRAVIS, CAL BENN CREATIVE DESIGN/PRODUCTION AZERCREATIVE.COM SALES & ADMINISTRATION DIRECTOR OF SALES & MARKETING STEPHEN RUTGERS srutgers@washblade.com ext. 8077 SR. ACCT. EXECUTIVE BRIAN PITTS bpitts@washblade.com ext. 8089 CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING/ADMINISTRATION PHILLIP G. ROCKSTROH prockstroh@washblade.com ext. 8092 NATIONAL ADVERTISING RIVENDELL MEDIA 212-242-6863; sales@rivendellmedia.com For distribution, contact Lynne Brown at 202-747-2077, ext. 8075.

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Recovery at the Triangle Club

Coming together as a group to fight a common addiction

By CJ HIGGINS

On Sunday, between the Dupont Italian Kitchen, where the tables are filled with the boozy brunches of the kickball gays, and Mikko, where a young couple is celebrating their anniversary with some Champagne, the door to a row-house opens, and all at once, a crowd pours forth onto the stairs. Only the stairs keep on filling. These folks aren’t leaving. They’ve only left the building to come to the stairs, just to chat. It’s as though 100 people all decided to go for a smoke out front, all at the same time.

But if you ask them why they’re there, you’ll get only the vaguest of answers. “We’re just coming from a meeting,” one will say. “It’s a clubhouse,” says another.

There are good reasons for this vagueness. The Triangle Club is a center for queer folk to attend recovery meetings: Overeaters Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous, Crystal Meth Anonymous, Sexual Compulsives Anonymous. It’s part of the very mission of these groups to protect the privacy of their members. But these groups also want those in the queer community who need the support to know that they’re there. And so the folks at the Triangle Club were kind enough to welcome the Blade into their space for a few meetings, to see how things worked and shed some light on what they’re all about.

(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)

The Club had its kickoff meeting in 1988, during the AIDS crisis. Churches weren’t particularly enthusiastic about hosting gay recovery meetings in their back rooms.

And so the Club sought to provide a safe place for those meetings to take place. At the time of the club’s founding, it was estimated that gays and lesbians were twice as likely to report problems with alcohol abuse than heterosexuals. One would hope that things might have changed in the intervening years. But according to a government report released this summer, that figure has barely improved. (The government report did not collect any statistics on transgender people.)

Of course there is no single reason queer people develop problems with drugs and alcohol. But one in particular struck me, especially as a reason I heard coming from a lot of the younger folk at the Triangle Club. “I thought meth was a prerequisite for going out,” said one.

“I thought that’s what you did.” Another said, “I drank to find community. And then I drank to numb myself when I didn’t find it in the gay community.” Again and again, I heard stories about turning to drugs and alcohol as a way of finding connection, and as a way of coping with the failure to find connection.

And so while I heard a lot of gratitude for the role the

meetings at the Triangle Club played in people’s recovery, I also heard a lot of gratitude for the community of the Triangle Club itself. It wasn’t just that the Club helped people turn away from an unhealthy way of solving their problems. It’s that it gave them what they were really looking for in the first place: a community they could call their own.

Improbably, as I left a meeting of Crystal Meth Anonymous, I found myself wishing to be an addict in recovery. To have a place to share things that would go unsaid among friends and family, let alone therapists. To take part, week after week, in one another’s mission for a more fulfilling life. To be present for the absolute raucousness, as when one gentleman described living on meth as “wearing a fur coat into a swimming pool,” and then “turning the wave-machine on.” To hear the applause that only someone four days sober could receive. But what kind of destructive, life-threatening wish was I making? I couldn’t possibly be serious.

Many of us in the queer community are exhausted by drinking, if not drugging, our way into it. That exhaustion might not rise to the level of addiction, but this has the perverse consequence of not driving us to seek alternative forms of belonging. One of the men I interviewed kept talking of the “sober community,” and my ears perked up. Perhaps there was a broader community of folks, of which those in recovery were only a part, that wasn’t centered around substance use.

“The sober community absolutely extends beyond the Triangle Club,” he told me. “There are a bunch of other gay meetings that go on.” This wasn’t exactly what I hoped to hear. What a sorry state we’re in, I couldn’t help but feel that to be part of the sober community was to be in recovery. As though the community of substance use were so mandatory that it had to drive you to your own personal edge in order for you to find community in sobriety.

The Triangle Club should not be overly romanticized, and they’d be the first to tell you. People talked of trying to find fellowship at the club in the past, and not necessarily succeed(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key) ing. Being one of two Black people in the room, only for the other to drop out of the program. Or of the demands of service, dragging yourself out late Friday night to chair a meeting, or sponsoring someone for the first time and being scared that you aren’t the right one to advise them. But I think it’s a testament to the space that these things could be said in the space. The meetings aren’t a place of mandatory optimism, but honest experience. And what good is a meeting for sharing honest experience if you can’t share your negative experiences too?

I had hoped, as part of this feature, to attend a meeting of Sexual Compulsives Anonymous. The two meetings I appealed to were kind enough to hold a vote on whether they would open their doors—but in the end they opted to remain private. One gentleman from the meetings vol-

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If you need help with an addiction, the Triangle Club offers an array of meetings and resources. Visit triangleclub.org for a full list of meetings.

(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)

unteered to share a little of what these meetings were all about. Recovery meetings in general depend on coming together as a group to fight a common addiction. But “S” meetings, as the gentleman described them, can’t take “coming together” lightly, nor a “common addiction” lightly.

To begin with, sexual addiction is not as straightforwardly defined as addiction to drugs or alcohol. What sobriety is for one person is not what sobriety is for another. One person might be trying to curtail a masturbation habit. But for others? “That simply isn’t an option,” the gentleman said. And unlike recovery meetings for substances, which can ban substances from the room, the same can’t as easily be said for “S” meetings. We’re sexual beings, and so inevitably, to bring yourself into a room is to bring sexuality along with it. The recovery meetings at the Triangle Club usually end with the group joining hands to say the serenity prayer. But this can’t be a given at “S” meetings, where joining hands might be violating someone’s boundary.

With the pandemic waning, most recovery meetings have slowly started to transition away from video format back to in-person. But “S” meetings have been more reluctant to do so, and most have stuck with a hybrid format. One veteran of Al-Anon voiced his relief at coming back to the rooms. “You can’t hug a square!” I suspect that’s the very reason “S” meetings have been slow to return.

Part of my disappointment in not at(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key) tending the “S” meetings was how central they seemed to be to a queer recovery organization. Substance abuse might disproportionately affect the queer community, but it is the addicts who are queer, not the addictions. If the addiction is to love or sex, however, the addiction itself is inextricably queer. Aren’t the “S” meetings the heart, in a sense, of the Triangle Club? But a conversation with a gentleman from Alcoholics Anonymous had me rethinking this. “[Accepting you’re an alcoholic,] it’s similar to coming out as gay,” he said. “There are people out there who view it as a moral failing, but it’s just part of who I am.”

The experience of coming out is so central to being queer. How could coming out as an addict have nothing whatsoever to do with it? The same story of a newfound, authentic life was as common to the folks at the Triangle Club as it would be to anyone who comes out as queer.

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Whitman-Walker 50th Anniversary Gala set for Nov. 9 ‘Fabulous Cocktail’ event hopes to raise $550,000 for patient care, research

By LOU CHIBBARO JR.

Whitman-Walker, which describes itself as a leader in LGBTQ health, research, education, and policy with special expertise in HIV care, announced it will host its 50th Anniversary Gala on Thursday, Nov. 9, at the Salamander DC Hotel.

“We’re thrilled that the 50th Anniversary Gala will be an opportunity to celebrate and honor the legacy of Whitman-Walker, our mission, and the many ways that with the help of donors, volunteers, partners, and patients we have been Rooted in Community,” said Abby Paige Fenton, executive director of the Whitman-Walker Foundation, in a statement.

“Funds raised at the gala will support our mission, our care services and our research programs,” Fenton said in the statement.

The statement says the event will run from 6-10 p.m. and feature special guests Tim Gunn, author, critic, and TV personality; celebrity DJ Tryfe; “and a few other guest surprises.” Among other things, the event will include “cocktails, great food, surprises, storytelling, live auction and music,” according to the statement.

The Salamander DC is located at 1330 Maryland Ave., S.W. The statement adds that the event’s goal is to raise $550,000 to support Whitman-Walker’s care and research programming.

“Within the nation’s capital area, Whitman-Walker provides stigma-free care to anyone who walks through their doors,” the statement continues. “Just last month, they opened the Max Robinson Center in Southeast Washington, D.C., a brandnew state-of-the-art building on the campus of Saint Elizabeths East in the Congress Heights neighborhood, transforming healthcare and community research in the District of Columbia.”

Tickets for the Gala event begin at $500 for individual attendees. Gala organizers are seeking corporate sponsors for the event at levels ranging from $5,000 to $10,000, $25,000, and $50,000.

“Whitman-Walker envisions a society where all people are seen for who they are, treated with dignity and respect, and afforded equal opportunity to health and wellbeing,” the statement says. “Through care, advocacy, research, and education,

TIM GUNN will help Whitman-Walker celebrate 50 years on Nov. 9.

(Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

the organization strives to ensure that all persons can live healthy and love openly and to feel true equality and inclusion in all aspects of their lives.”

Ticket purchasing and sponsorship information can be accessed here: https://www.whitman-walker.org/50th-anniversary-gala/

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Trans woman dead after being assaulted, hit by car on U Street D.C. police list death as homicide, seek help in identifying suspects

By LOU CHIBBARO JR.

D.C. police are seeking help from the public in identifying one or more suspects they say assaulted a transgender woman shortly after 4 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 14, that prompted the woman to enter the path of a vehicle in the 900 block of U Street, N.W., that fatally struck her.

A’NEE ROBERSON (Johnson) died Oct. 14.

(Photo via Facebook)

olice identified the victim as -year-old ’nee oberson of orthwest D.C. police statement did not identify oberson as being transgender, but D.C. transgender rights advocate arline udd said officials with the department’s LG T Liaison nit informed her and others that oberson was trans. t was also reported that oberson sometimes used the last name ohnson.

The police statement, released on ct. , says the driver of the vehicle that struck oberson stayed on the scene, and an initial investigation “determined the victim ended up in the roadway due to the assault.”

The statement adds, The ffice of the Chief Medical Examiner conducted an autopsy and ruled the cause of death to be multiple blunt force injuries and the manner of death a homicide.” police ublic ncident eport says the death was classified as an act of second-degree murder and that the incident took place outside ellie’s ports ar at 900 U St., N.W. Police have not said why the assault may have taken place at that location since ellie’s, an LG T bar, like all bars in that area, closes at a.m. on weekends and 2 a.m. on weekdays.

n aturday, ctober , , at appro imately a.m., Third District officers were flagged down in front of the 900 block of U Street for a person down in the roadway, the D.C. police statement says. fficers were advised the victim was assaulted and then struck by a vehicle, the statement continues. The victim was transported to a local hospital where she later died.”

“Detectives are working to identify the suspects who assaulted oberson resulting in her death, the statement says.

The statement neither identifies the driver of the vehicle nor states whether the driver has been charged with a vehicle related offense. t says the Metropolitan olice Department currently offers a reward of up to $25,000 to anyone who provides information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for each homicide committed in D.C. The statement says anyone with information about this case is asked to call police at 202-272-9099. n anonymous tip can also be sent to police to the department’s T T Line by sending a te t message to 50411, the statement says.

Now Open! Limani Brings Upscale, Authentic Greek Cuisine To The Wharf

Premiere waterfront dining has arrived in Washington, DC. This month Limani Restaurant opened its doors on The Wharf, bringing an elevated dining experience unlike anything DC has seen before. Serving upscale, authentic Greek cuisine over breathtaking views of the water, Limani all but guarantees an unforgettable meal.

is available to purchase separately. There is no fryer in the kitchen, and not a single dish contains butter. Limani stays true to the Mediterranean diet with each plate they prepare, and diners can taste the difference.

(Photo by Austin Reeves)

(Photo by Austin Reeves)

(Photo by Austin Reeves)

You might recognize some of Limani’s classic Mezze dishes, but the flavor of each is wholly unique. The restaurant adds a refined, modern flair to traditional Greek specialities.

True to the Mediterranean dining experience, the appetizer and entree dishes are designed to be shared among family and friends. This style of service sets Limani apart from other DC restaurants, but the unique flavors steal the show.

Limani serves only healthy, quality ingredients. Fish is flown in from the Mediterranean and never frozen, while produce is locally sourced. They cook every dish with extra virgin, cold-pressed olive oil imported from Greece, which

Some of Limani’s most famous dishes include the zucchini and eggplant chips, pan-fried calamari, signature grilled octopus, whole roasted fish, shrimp saganaki, and spiny lobster. The restaurant also offers a wide array of vegetarian options, including moussaka, to accommodate a range of dietary needs.

Of course, no meal at Limani is complete without dessert. Limani’s popular dessert plates round out an evening of memorable dishes. We recommend the baklava and Loukoumades, a Greek donut cooked in olive oil.

The delicious plates might be the star, but Limani’s ambiance is just as breathtaking. Limani brings a new level of elegance to DC’s dining scene with its flagship location on The Wharf. The unique flavors and presentation of each PAID ADVERTISING

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dish allow for an elegant evening, heightened by the waterfront views surrounding the restaurant.

Limani’s restaurant and rooftop bar offer panoramic views on all three levels, with the largest full-service terrace on The Wharf. Meanwhile, the thoughtfully designed interior sets the tone for a sophisticated evening that transports you to the Mediterranean.

The restaurant features floor-to-ceiling windows and a meticulous design that provides an intimate, sophisticated atmosphere. The decor includes a bar made from marble flown in from Greece, the same type of stone used in classical Greek monuments dating back to the fifth century. The resulting dining experience provides a calm, intimate atmosphere in the heart of the bustling Wharf.

No matter the occasion, Limani is the restaurant of choice for an unmatched dining experience. Discover the DC’s newest waterfront destination by reserving a table at Limani.

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National Hockey League reverses ban on Pride support Decision follows complaints by pro-LGBTQ fans, players

By LOU CHIBBARO JR. | lchibbaro@washblade.com

The National Hockey League confirmed in a short statement on its website on Oct. 24 that it has reversed a decision earlier this month to prohibit its players from placing tape on their hockey sticks representing social causes, including rainbow-colored Pride tape in support of the LGBTQ community.

The reversal by the NHL came after a groundswell of opposition surfaced opposing the ban from a wide range of LGBTQ and LGBTQ supportive sports organizations as well as from some NHL team hockey players. The national LGBTQ advocacy organization GLAAD was among the organizations speaking out against the Pride tape ban.

“After consultation with the NHL Players’ Association and the NHL Player Inclusion Coalition, Players will now have the option to voluntarily represent social causes with their stick tape throughout the season,” the NHL said in its statement.

A Washington Capitals player uses Pride tape during warmups at Hockey is for Everyone night in D.C. (Washington Capitals YouTube screenshot)

The LGBTQ sports publication Outsports, which was the first to break the story about the NHL ban on the Pride tape and other cause-oriented tape displays used

by NHL players, has pointed out that the use of the tape has always been a voluntary decision by the players.

At the time it adopted the ban on Pride tape and tape denoting other social causes, the NHL said it was responding to concerns raised by some players who objected to what they believed was the appearance that they were supporting causes they did not support. Some

said they objected to the Pride tape on religious grounds.

Several sports publications, including Hooked On Hockey Magazine and Daily Hockey Dose, reported that Washington Capitals star player Alex Ovechkin was among a small number of Russian players who raised objections to the display of Pride tape. Ovechkin was also reportedly among the players who objected to players wearing Pride-colored jerseys during practice sessions.

Hooked On Hockey reports that some of the Russian players, who have family members living in Russia, were fearful that their family members could be persecuted, and the players might be detained if they visit their families in Russia under the anti-gay laws adopted under the authoritarian rule of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Earlier this year, the NHL also adopted a policy banning players from wearing the rainbow-colored Pride jerseys during warm-up sessions on the ice. The Pride jerseys were never worn during games.

The NHL did not object to teams continuing to have the Pride jerseys made and sold, with players autographing the jerseys. Some teams have sold the jerseys in auctions to raise money for LGBTQ charities.

Outsports editor and publisher Cyd Zeigler said the NHL’s decision to ban the Pride tape was completely unjustified, calling it “the most stifling, anti-LGBTQ policy any pro sports league in North America has ever issued.”

Zeigler told the Blade the policy was unjustified, among other things, because the players were the ones who decided whether to place the Pride tape on their hockey sticks.

“No one ever complained that someone didn’t do it,” Zeigler said. “So, this is the league just overreacting to a handful of Russian players who didn’t like it,” he said prior to the NHL decision to reverse the policy. “I think that’s what happened. They kowtowed to Vladimir Putin and to the Russians.”

The NHL said from the start that the ban on Pride jerseys and Pride tape would not change its policy of supporting NHL teams that have been holding annual Pride Night Out games in support of the LGBTQ community. All 32 NHL teams, including the Washington Capitals, have hosted Pride Nights or “Hockey is for Everyone” nights in recent years.

Other media reports had surfaced that several players on different teams had indicated plans to defy the now-rescinded NHL policy by displaying Pride tape on their sticks in upcoming games, a development that would place the NHL in the difficult position of deciding

whether to penalize those players with a fine or possible suspension from playing.

CBS News reports that Travis Dermott, a player on the Arizona Coyotes hockey team, became the first player to defy the NHL policy banning Pride tape on Oct. 21 when he placed the tape on the shaft of his stick in his team’s game against the Anaheim Ducks.

In response to a question from the Washington Blade submitted prior to the NHL’s decision to reverse its ban on Pride tape, a spokesperson for the Washington Capitals did not say whether the Capitals would comply with the Pride tape ban or penalize their players for defying the ban. But the spokesperson, Sergey Kocharov, said the Capitals remain strongly supportive of the LGBTQ community.

“The Capitals stand proudly with and support the LGBTQ+ community,” he said in his statement. “We strive to create and cultivate an inclusive atmosphere for all our players, staff, and fans and are committed to fostering an environment that welcomes all,” he said.

“Although all players are free to decide on their level of involvement and engagement on Pride Night, and their efforts may vary from season to season, our commitment in this space won’t waiver,” his statement continues. “Everyone is treated with respect and dignity regardless of their sexual orientation or identity, and we will continue to advocate for full LGBTQ+ equality.”

In recent years, the Capitals have entered a small Capitals float in the D.C. Capital Pride Parade. Miguel Ayala, president of Team DC, the local LGBTQ sports organization that helps organize Pride Night Out events with D.C. professional sports teams, said the Capitals have scheduled the next Pride Night Out at the Capitals for March 20.

Ayala told the Blade that while Team DC was disappointed over the NHL decision to ban Pride tape and Pride jerseys, the organization planned to continue to work with the Nationals on the Pride Night Out event.

“The NHL has listened to its loyal fans, hardworking team players, and trusted community members and made the decision to reverse the unnecessary and hurtful policy that banned support of Pride and LGBTQ people,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of the LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD in an Oct. 24 statement.

“The NHL has been a longtime supporter of a number of community causes and inclusion, and this decision is reflective of its values which align with the majority of those who follow hockey,” Ellis said.

Laphonza Butler won’t run to keep U.S. Senate seat

U.S. Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.), who was appointed just days ago by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to fill the Senate seat left vacant by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s death, announced late last week that she would not run for a full Senate term in 2024.

Butler said in the statement she made the decision after considering “what kind of life I want to have, what kind of service I want to offer and what kind of voice I want to bring forward.”

“Knowing you can win a campaign doesn’t always mean

you should run a campaign. I know this will be a surprise to many because traditionally we don’t see those who have power let it go,” Butler added. “It may not be the decision people expected but it’s the right one for me.”

California’s 2024 Senate race already has a crowded field that includes Democratic Reps. Barbara Lee of Oakland, Katie Porter of Irvine and Adam Schiff of Burbank.

Former Dodgers Major League Baseball star Steve Garvey, a Republican, also recently said he’s running.

The New York Times reported that in an interview with

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the Times, Butler said that she intended to be “the loudest, proudest champion of California” in the 383 days remaining in her term in office, but that she had realized “this is not the greatest use of my voice.”

The former EMILY’s List president and labor leader who is a Black lesbian, Butler has never been elected to office and was appointed by Newsom helping him to fulfill his promise to name a Black woman to complete Feinstein’s term.

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PFLAG claims mistreatment by Rick Scott, Ted Cruz staffers Other Republican lawmakers treated activists well

By CHRISTOPHER KANE | ckane@washblade.com

Participants in PFLAG’s Lobby Day who on Oct. 19 met with congressional offices of members representing their states and districts, said they were mistreated by aides for U.S. Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), neither of whom were present at the time.

By contrast, staff for other members, including other Republicans who include U.S. Reps. Aaron Bean (R-Fla.) and Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas) and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) were positive, affirming and respectful, they told the Washington Blade on Oct. 20 after the opening plenary of PFLAG’s National Convention.

Cindy Hill-Nobles, president of PFLAG of Jacksonville (Fla.) said “I have never been so incensed” as when an aide in Scott’s office openly smirked while she recounted how her son once contemplated suicide because he was bullied so extensively after coming out as gay in fourth grade.

She said the staffer accused her of “trying to put porn in the hands of children” after she told him about the “banned books club” she had formed with a local church in hopes that greater access to stories with LGBTQ characters and narratives might deter bullying and potentially spare other children and families from the pain hers had survived.

These were not the only “instances where some very nasty things were said” by Scott’s aide, who was “combative” and “degrading, in a lot of ways, to the group of us that were there,” Hill-Nobles recalled. She added it seemed that the staffer, as he tapped his pen on a blank notepad, “wasn’t looking to get anything out of the meeting except for us out of his office.”

Scott’s Communications Director McKinley Lewis, who was not in attendance, addressed Hill-Nobles’s account of the meeting in an emailed statement to the Blade, writing: “Our office prides itself on meeting and speaking with all Floridians and hearing about the issues that matter most to them. This is just one of the reasons why Senator Rick Scott’s team was recognized by the Congressional Management Foundation with a Democracy Award for the best constituent services in Congress. The allegations made here are not true. We have full confidence that our staff conducted this nearly hour-long meeting with the utmost professionalism and respect.”

Ginger Chun, a board member of PFLAG of San Antonio and mother of a transgender young adult, recalled “really awkward and uncomfortable” conversations with Cruz’s staff — one of whom, she said, insisted on debating with her in a combative manner about the availability of healthcare interventions for trans youth.

Rather than a parley over public policy, the mutually agreed upon focus of and purpose for their meeting was for representatives from PFLAG “to go in and tell your story and let them hear what’s important to you,” Chun said.

“And that’s really not the reception that we got.”

A spokesperson for Cruz said, “PFLAG came to our office lobbying against restrictions on taxpayer funding for puberty blockers and so-called sex-change surgery, including for children. PFLAG also wants biological men competing in women’s sports.”

The emailed statement continues, “Like most Texans, Senator Cruz vigorously opposes these radical positions and will always stand against adults being allowed to permanently destroy the natural bodily functions of children and undermining the integrity of girls’ sports.”

PFLAG Advocacy, Policy and Partnerships Director Diego Miguel Sanchez said, “we know that when everyone goes home, there will be incidents at a grocery store or school parking lot or somewhere where people are combative.”

However, he said, “in the confines of an office where the promise is to serve” one’s constituents, this behavior constitutes “an absolute betrayal of the obligation of serving in Congress” and that of anyone who serves as “an emissary for those elected officials.”

Once serving as Capitol Hill’s first openly trans senior legislative staffer as senior policy adviser to former U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), Sanchez on Oct. 20 said he will speak with the chiefs of staff in each office where PFLAG Lobby Day participants were mistreated.

From left, Sens. RICK SCOTT (R-Fla.) and TED CRUZ (R-Texas) (Blade photos by Michael Key)

The lawmakers “deserve to know that either they were misrepresented, underrepresented, or need to do a little education for the people they’re choosing to meet with their constituents,” he said.

Laura McGinnis, senior manager of press and public relations for PFLAG, told the Blade this year’s Lobby Day brought 146 attendees from 30 states and D.C. who participated in 108 meetings with members of Congress from both chambers. PFLAG has not yet gathered information and feedback about all of them, she said.

Because the organization’s conventions are held biennially and in different locations, the most recent Lobby Day came during PFLAG’s last National Convention in D.C. in 2013, McGinnis said.

“PFLAG does participate in lobby day events organized by movement partners,” she added, “for example, PFLAG parents, families, and allies attended a lobby day for the Equality Act organized by Freedom for All Americans during the last Congress, with SAGE right before the pandemic lockdown, and HRC’s earlier this year.”

Sanchez noted PFLAG has a unique approach to advocacy, arranging meetings on Capitol Hill in which constituents are told to discuss “their lives and their families and experiences; their fears, their hopes and their dreams.”

They leave hard copies of bills that they — and PFLAG — consider “really pertinent right now,” but this is secondary to the purpose of relaying personal stories about their lived experiences, he said.

Scott’s office aside, Hill-Nobles said her interactions with staff for other Republican members of the Florida delegation were professional and respectful.

For example, when an aide in Bean’s office asked

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questions about her son, she said it was clear that they “seemed to honestly care how he was, how his mental health was and how he managed to get through school.”

Differences of opinion were handled respectfully by Bean’s staff, Hill-Nobles said, noting cases where they relayed their opposition to the Equality Act and support for policies in schools and athletics organizations that prohibit trans students from using restrooms or competing on teams that align with their gender identity.

These arguments were consistent with “what we were expecting [and] what I was expecting,” she said, “again, it was a respectful conversation; it was not demeaning.”

Hill-Nobles added that during a “drop-in” to U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)’s office, where “we quickly went in and gave our information,” the Florida senator’s “front desk aides were perfectly polite and kind.”

Trans college student Levi Fiedler, who has served as an intern for PFLAG, the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute, the ACLU, and in the office of U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids (D-Kan.), agreed only to speak on the record with the Blade about positive experiences he had on the Hill during PFLAG’s Lobby Day. Among them was the meeting with Cornyn’s staff, where Fiedler recalled having a “better conversation” than some he has had “with people who are on our side,” adding the experience was a testament to how “respect and kindness and love are not party-specific.”

Chun, who was also in attendance, agreed. “Cornyn’s office was amazing,” she said.

Even though they expressed opposition to policies that would require the collection of data on anti-LGBTQ bullying, the senator’s staff listened closely to their remarks about “how important it is to protect kids, regardless of who and what they are and what they’re perceived to be,’ Fiedler said.

His highest praise, though, was reserved for “one of the most kind and compassionate people,” an aide in Van Duyne’s office who asked “very open follow-up questions about the bills that we referenced,” and then “follow up questions about our experiences.”

The congresswoman’s staffer “genuinely wanted to hear our stories” to learn about “what our backgrounds were, what our families were like,” Fiedler said. It was “one of the sweetest and kindest conversations I’ve ever had about my experiences” as a trans person, he said.

With an article in June, the American Psychological Association noted the “overwhelming” consensus of research showing that anti-LGBTQ bills and laws, “which target access to health care, sports participation and school policies, have resulted in heightened levels of anxiety, depression and suicide risk among the transgender community.”

LGBTQ advocates, particularly those who work with members of the community in crisis, say these bills cause dramatic spikes in self-harm behaviors and suicides regardless of whether they are signed into law or come from local, state, or federal legislators.

Recent months have seen a flurry of anti-LGBTQ policies proposed by Republicans serving in Congress.

House Republicans nearly caused funding for the federal government to lapse at the end of last month by insisting on extreme, partisan — and, in all 12 cases, anti-LGBTQ — amendments to the chamber’s must-pass appropriations bills which, with the GOP members’ “poison pills,” were doomed to languish in the U.S. Senate.

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Zak Malamed on his bid for George Santos’s seat

“common sense.”

Zak Malamed, a Democrat runTime reported in May that ning for the House seat of emSuozzi, a declared candidate in battled U.S. Rep. George Santos the race, is “said to be among the (R-N.Y.), spoke with the Washingparty’s favorites for retaking the ton Blade on Monday about his seat.” candidacy in what is expected to Eight months ahead of the Dembe one of the most consequential ocratic primary, where he is slated and closely watched congressioto face off against five other hopenal races of 2024. fuls, including a member of the “My hometown congressional Nassau County Legislature and district will make the difference a former New York state senator, between whether Republicans or Malamed said he has “out-raised Democrats control the House,” in the entire field.” turn determining the fate of legThis includes the lone Republiislative protections for the LGBTQ can challenger who has entered community and solutions to tackle the race as well as Santos, whose crises like gun violence and the reelection campaign recently had scarcity of affordable housing, he to refund more to its donors than it said.

ZAK MALAMED, Democratic candidate for New York’s 3rd Congressional District had collected in contributions.

It is not enough, however, just (Photo courtesy Zak for Congress) Running the only campaign that to elect Democrats at a time that is not even partially self-funded, calls for a new generation of leadMalamed has also raised more than any candidate from ership, Malamed said, including for his would-be coneither party vying to unseat the other three GOP incumstituents whose elected representatives have included bents whose House districts include Long Island: U.S. “complacent” members of Congress from his own parReps. Nick LaLota, Anthony D’Esposito and Andrew ty.

Garbarino.

Prior to Santos, New York’s 3rd Congressional District Malamed is a founder of The Next 50, a group that was represented by Tom Suozzi, a Democrat who last has helped elect multiple LGBTQ candidates across the year defended Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, calling country, along with other high-profile Democrats like the measure prohibiting classroom discussion of sexMaryland Gov. Wes Moore and U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin ual orientation and gender identity “reasonable” and

(D-Mich.)

“If we take anything constructive away from George Santos being elected to represent this district in Congress, it’s that this district was unequivocally looking for something new — just not someone who lied about being Jewish, lied about having relatives who survived the Holocaust, and lied about starting a nonprofit,” he said.

In the months following Santos’s election in 2022, his constituents would learn their congressman had also fabricated an astonishing number of other details about his life and career, along with the news that he was under investigation by multiple law enforcement agencies for alleged financial crimes.

On Oct. 10, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York charged Santos with a 23-count criminal indictment for conspiracy, wire fraud, false statements, falsification of records, aggravated identity theft and credit card fraud.

Ninety-four percent of Jewish voters in Santos’ district said they wanted him to resign according to a Newsday/Sienna College poll in January, which came after news reports revealed Santos’s claims of being “a proud Jew” with grandparents who fled Europe during World War II were bogus.

“The irony of those components of his story is that it’s actually my story, and it’s a big reason why I chose to step up and run, which has only become of greater consequence in this moment when the Jewish people in particular are under great threat in this country,” Malamed said.

CHRISTOPHER KANE

House Republicans defend book bans in hearing

Rep. Aaron Bean (R-Fla.) defended book bans that have disproportionately targeted works with LGBTQ characters and content during a hearing of the U.S. House Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education Subcommittee last week.

The congressman raised objections to the Biden-Harris administration’s appointment last month of gay nonprofit leader and former Obama administration official Matt Nosanchuk to review the practice of pulling books from school libraries.

Responding to the remarks from Bean, who said the “book ban czar” would “potentially penalize” local school boards “for simply reviewing books,” a U.S. Department of Education spokesperson said in a statement to the Washington Blade: “Across the country, communities are seeing a rise in efforts to ban books – efforts that are often designed to empty libraries and classrooms of literature about LGBTQI+ people, people of color, people of faith, key historical events and more. These efforts are a threat to student’s rights and freedoms. To address this issue, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) brought on Deputy Assistant Secretary Matt Nosanchuk, whose portfolio will include serving as the Department’s coordinator on responding to book bans, among other topics and responsibilities.”

A witness called by the Democratic members of the subcommittee, Jonathan Friedman, director of free expression and education programs at PEN America, said that the range of restrictions and bans happening across the country today is “wildly unprecedented.”

“We’ve been doing this work on and off for about 100 years,” he said, and there is now a “movement to en-

courage people to censor ideas” despite First Amendment jurisprudence on these matters, much of which comes from cases that were decided a half century ago.

U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.), the Democratic ranking member of the subcommittee, said that despite her Republican colleagues’ assurances months earlier that they were not interested in addressing book bans, “Now, today, the majority is holding a hearing specifically about what books should or should not be allowed in school libraries.”

“And I’ll note that this is the U.S. Congress, not a school board meeting,” she said.

Republicans have defended book bans by arguing parents must be able to exercise their right to determine which materials their children can access, but Bonamici said “parental rights” is a pretext used by MAGA politicians to enact censorship laws that are coordinated by a “well-funded, vocal minority of parents and conservative organizations pushing their own personal agenda on others.”

“We can all agree that books in school libraries should be age appropriate,” she said, “And we all used to agree that the federal government should not dictate school curricula or what books are in school libraries.”

The congresswoman’s opening remarks came after Bean addressed some titles, by name, that he found objectionable, including Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer: A Memoir” and “Lawn Boy,” a semi-autobiographical coming of age novel by Jonathan Evison.

According to the American Library Association, last year these books were respectively the first and seventh most banned and challenged, both for their inclusion

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of LGBTQ and sexually explicit content. The works, both critically acclaimed, are not intended for readers of all ages.

Objections raised by conservatives to these two books are not out of step with how proponents of book bans tend to focus on materials addressing matters of race, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Bonamici highlighted research by PEN America, which found that “41 percent of banned content focuses on LGBTQI+ themes, protagonists or characters,” while “40 percent focuses on characters of color.”

Meanwhile, “At least seven states have passed draconian laws in the past two years subjecting school librarians to years of imprisonment and fines for providing books deemed to be explicit, obscene, or harmful,” the congresswoman noted.

Book bans are unpopular. A 2022 poll by the ALA found seven in 10 Americans are opposed to the practice. Representatives from the organization, who were in attendance on Thursday, participated in another hearing on Wednesday addressing book bans, which was convened by Interfaith Alliance and included U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.).

In a statement to the Washington Blade, ALA President Emily Drabinski responded to the exchanges between lawmakers and witnesses during Thursday’s hearing: “ALA wholeheartedly agrees with today’s witnesses, who when asked by Rep. Suzanne Bonamici whether they believe diverse perspectives and materials are essential to any library, all responded with a resounding yes,” Drabinski said.

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Progressive communities have a Palestine problem; supporting Israel is not the answer

War between Israel and Hamas leaves thousands dead

I have been in tears and terrified for the safety of my blind mother, paralyzed father and two siblings in the Gaza Strip for days now.

I have been watching horrific Israeli violence defying humanity while being fully supported by the U.S. — liberals and conservatives alike — with the stated intent of destroying the lives of more than two million people, including my family and loved ones. This intent and the magnitude of the destruction and loss of life make a textbook example of genocide, defined as: Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: • Killing members of the group; • Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; • Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; • Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; • Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

On top of the horror of it all, I have watched dehumanizing misinformation about people in the Gaza Strip being spread like wildfire, only to be debunked and proven false. This includes misinformation spread on social media by several LGBTQ individuals in my social circles here in the District — I thought we were friends, until I saw their Instagram posts cheering on Israel’s violence and the threat it poses to my family.

How could they be so quick to judge? How could they be so quick to throw their progressive values out the window and embrace mass murder of women, men and babies — civilians from all walks of life? What goes through their mind when they consciously choose to propagate the wicked and indiscriminate murder of people so casually?

These and a million other questions have been racing through my mind.

Unlike those morally bankrupt people who are using the tragedy unfolding in the region for fleeting validation and personal gain on social media, those of us most impacted by what’s happening are not playing political football and “gotcha” with the lives of our loved ones. We know and recognize that no one in their right mind would relish this violence. In fact, besides the tragic loss of human life, the other tragedy is that this entire situation was preventable, easily and peacefully preventable. Anyone who has been paying attention to the reality of Israel’s brutal military occupation of Palestine — specifically its years1 8 • WA SHIN GTO N BLADE.COM • OCTOBER 27 , 2 0 2 3 • V I E WP O I NT

long siege of the Gaza Strip — knows this.

Yet, here we are, at a bloody juncture because of choices made over the course of decades, including the choices of successive administrations here in the U.S. to support and turn a blind eye to Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights and the apartheid regime it imposes on Palestine.

Sadly, though perhaps unsurprisingly, this context is absent from the content dehumanizing Palestinians that many LGBTQ individuals are thoughtlessly sharing on social media.

Worse yet, is the knee-jerk reaction of some LGTBQ people to grossly generalize and reduce the tragedy we are witnessing to plainly stupid points such as: Israel has Tel Aviv Pride.

Hamas hates gays. I, therefore, stand with Israel. Points like this makes no sense.

Homophobia in the Gaza Strip, and Palestine generally, is a problem, just like it is a problem in many parts of the U.S. and many countries around the world. It is not a Hamas problem. Meanwhile, the cause of how and why we got to this horrific violence is squarely an Israeli problem: The brutal military occupation and apartheid regime. Just because Israel hosts an annual Pride parade, it does not mean Israel is a haven for LGBTQ people — certainly not for LGBTQ Palestinians, and certainly not when the Israeli government’s own laws regarding LGBTQ matters is mixed at best.

LGBTQ posts standing with Israel based on believing in freedom, equality and dignity miss the mark and fail to make any sense when the same freedom, equality, and dignity are not consistently applied and extended to human beings everywhere, including Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Freedom, equality and dignity are indivisible human rights — they cannot be upheld and protected willy-nilly, unless the intent is to discriminate and dehumanize.

So, if you are reading this and have shared content supporting Israel and stripping Palestinians of their humanity, which can very well harm my family, I ask that you stop and remember, at the end of the day, as LGBTQ people, we know what it’s like to feel unsafe in our own skin, to be stripped of our humanity for no other reason than existing as we are.

That’s what Palestinians like me and my family are experiencing now and have been enduring for years and years.

If you cannot find it in your heart to simply stop and think before blindly signing up for genocide with an “I stand with Israel” post, your hatred, ignorance and unwillingness are part of the problem that got us to this horrific violence to begin with.

BYPO PHOENIX

is a D.C. native and organizer and artist.

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A poet’s response to Israel-Palestine conflict

Compelled to seek words of peace It is excruciatingly late And I need to sleep But I also need to write I need to process Dissecting this confluence of emotion Living in a moment of historic proportions Flirting with the precipice of barbarism An apocalyptic age of mass destruction I am torn between worlds Deluged by diametrically opposed positions Out of alignment with much of my recovery family Yet unable to remain passive Compelled to seek words of peace This is Israel’s 9-11 Perhaps worse in guttaral ferocity And I worry that we have learned nothing 9-11 was horrifying Rationalizing two wars of conquest Hundreds of thousands of casualties Billions in military spending Justified by our collective pain Revenge is an age old social instinct Rendered exponentially dangerous and vicious Revenge amplified by our contemporary military arsenals I hold fast to principle Believing all life to be sacred Refusing to see either side as dis-

posable Honoring both the Palestinian and Israeli dead Our movement for liberation is at an impasse Denouncing Zionism is not a strategy Being right is less important than being in relationship To reach our goal To achieve a secular state Demands new alliances Divorcing Antisemitism from Anti-Zionism Envisioning a collective solution A fusion of polyvalent collective aspirations I pray for my friends who stand with Israel I pray that their hearts open Hearing the wails of Palestinian suffering Seeing our common humanity

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This is a moment of catastrophe Demanding a new humanism Demanding the dismantling of empire I pray by my fire I pray that the horror is minimized I pray for a spiritual and political awakening This is a catastrophe in a cradle of civilization I pray that it is not a cradle of our destruction

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Keep your promise to protect each other.

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Through his innovative literacy efforts to inspire kids to read, Papriz has created the ‘I Love to Read’ and ‘First-Ever Book Signings’ through his ‘CarewTube’ video series.

Banning books: The greatest scheme to get kids to read again

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Don’t touch that hot stove! Don’t pull the dog’s tail! Don’t say bad words! Tell a kid that they can’t do something and what’s the normal response? Do it. Why? Because your parents, the commanders of your universe, told you not to not to do it (which is the simultaneous birthplace of both your curiosity and independence). Don’t they remember being a kid — and that delicious wanting to know what’s on the other side of “Don’t?”

One of my greatest joys as an author is to inspire kids to read. Books were my curiosity creators and my independence days, dreaming up entire universes of imagination and possibility, all within this hand-held, human-made wonder.

But being told “Don’t read that book.” Or better yet, ban it. Huh? Why? You — the book banners of the world— have now unleashed one of the oldest unintentional human marketing schemes since the dawn of kids. The “Don’t.” You have done the one thing you can’t do to kids — make something mysterious or forbidden.

And now they want to read the book you have banned. I’m sure this was not your intention but, nonetheless, you have unleashed the good intentions behind the power of “Don’t.” Because if the book you’re banning contains forbidden or mysterious information that adults don’t want you to read, it must be worth reading. Taboo sells.

So, to all book banners, thank you.

Banning books? The Greatest Marketing Scheme to get Kids to Read Books Again ...

Book banners: You are now in the marketing business. Your motto should be, “Books your parents don’t want you to read.” Brilliant. That will seal the deal. Why did “1984” become a bestseller again? Because it was banned again.

And all those obscure books you’re ferreting out to ban? Now you’re really helping to put them on the map, and even making them bestsellers again. Some are books that maybe a few kids might have read, if at all. Now kids — and parents — want to read them because you say not to read them. Brilliant marketing and marvelous adult logic.

The 10-Million Pound Elephant in the Room is the Internet. If you’re scared of the books in the library, you should be horrified at the Internet. You think that banning books about identity, sexuality, racism, slavery, or finger painting is going to stop a kid from wanting to know — if they want to know more? Nope. Now they can turn to your worst nightmare — the Internet. Because most likely what they’ll encounter on the web is absolutely everything you don’t want them to see or hear in the most graphic ways you can and can’t imagine. If nature abhors a vacuum, then curiosity abhors knowledge that’s locked up.

By banning a book, you are choosing to decide my own — and everyone else’s — reading destiny. Freedom is not about taking one’s choice away. It’s about allowing more choices. It’s trusting us to figure it out all on our very own. And the liberty to choose what to read — or not.

Taking away a book that’s offensive offends me. Books are easy to bully. You can find anything in any book you want to be offended by and that’s the ultimate slippery slope of book banning. Heck, you can even be offended by “The Cat in the Hat” or “Winnie the Pooh” if you’re so inclined. But fundamentally when you ban a book, you take away my freedom to be offended by something I may want to read — or not. And A D V E R T that’s I S I Noffensive.

G PROOF What are we teaching our kids? Fear. Fear is what we teach our kids when we don’t want them to know. Banning books is about banning knowledge. And when we don’t trust them with knowledge, we lose our ability — and respect to talk. Because fear loves secrecy. It thrives on lack of communication — the worst thing you can do with kids who are trying to figure out the world. It’s so much better to talk with them about ideas that they’re curious about because they’ll find out anyway — and maybe not in a ADVERTISER SIGNATURE responsible, mature By signing this proof you are agreeing to your contract obligations with the way. washington blade newspaper. This includes but is not limited to placement, payment and insertion schedule.

What should we teach our kids? Trust. Let’s trust our kids to explore. To be curious.

And give them the freedom to be curious. That’s the most powerful form of liberty for kids.

Our job as parents is to teach our kids where knowledge fits into their world. How to question it and how to use it — or not use it. The freedom to learn, to question, to comprehend, to converse, and to do it over and over again is one of the greatest legacies that books continue to give the world, and nobody can take that liberty and legacy away from us.

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2 0 • WA SHIN GTO N BLADE.COM • OCTOBER 27 , 2 0 2 3 • V I E WP O I NT

PETER ROSENSTEIN

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

Republicans keep kissing Trump’s ass: May they all get an STD GOP in self-destruct mode just as the world needs Congress to act

We are watching as the Republican Party self-destructs. While I love the sight, I fear for the nation. The overwhelming number of MAGAs among them all do their best to be seen and heard kissing Trump’s ass. My hope is they all end up with STDs from the effort.

The House of Representatives can’t function because it can’t elect a Speaker.

Trump’s candidate, “Gym” Jordan (R-Ohio), has shown he can’t even count votes. He predicted he may lose about six votes on a first ballot, instead losing 20; and by the third ballot lost 25. Then in the caucus he got only 86 votes wanting him to continue his quest to be Speaker. So the Jordan nomination is finished. The problem for Republicans is they have no one they can agree on who can win 217 votes. According to the New York Times, 10 members of the caucus have thrown their hat into the ring.

Seems eight of them are election deniers, aka Trumpers. As I write this Republicans are again headed home for a long weekend with no nominee in sight, and no real plan for what to do. This is like a sick joke they are foisting on the American people.

I thanked God for those saying no to Jordan. But so many of those casting no votes are just as bad, only in different ways. I wonder how many who voted for him, actually thought about the fact that were he elected Speaker, he would be second in line to the presidency after the vice president. That thought is enough to make most decent people cringe. It sure scared the hell out of me.

As Republicans in Congress screw around we are facing a world in turmoil. They refuse to do anything about it. We have a Republican senator, Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), holding up 300 military promotions, including those for top positions, in a world in which our military is needed. House Republicans are in such turmoil they can’t pass a budget, or put bills on the floor for votes on Ukraine and Israel aid, and border protection; things even their own caucus favors. I believe what they are doing, or not doing, will eventually lead to Democrats taking over the House, keeping the Senate, and winning the White House in 2024. But we have 14 months until a new Congress is sworn in, and we will have to suffer with their shenanigans until then.

There are some options, but none very plausible at the moment. One thing they could do is grant the temporary speaker, Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), the authority to bring bills to the floor for votes. If they have any brains, they will do that while they fight over a candidate for Speaker they can agree on. He could bring bills on Ukraine, Israel, and an extension of the budget agreement to keep the government open, to the floor. They would pass with Democratic votes. Another option is for five sane Republicans, if there are still five left, to join Democrats and vote for Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), for Speaker. I will not hold my breath for that option. Another scenario is Democrats could help elect a Republican Speaker, or vote for McHenry, with enough guarantees of the votes they want to see happen brought to the floor, and equal representation on committees. Again, I just don’t see that happening. So, the Republican stalemate will continue, and the American people will suffer the consequences.

Meanwhile the world continues to move forward. The fight in Ukraine goes on and Israel is trying to determine the best way to respond to the terrorism perpetrated on their people by Hamas. Because of Hamas the Palestinian people in Gaza continue to suffer. Thankfully we have a president who is standing strong and representing us to the world. President Biden has done an amazing job of dealing with these situations and continues to do so.

He has now submitted a $105 billion request to Congress that includes funds for Ukraine, Israel, humanitarian aid for Gaza, and funds to keep our own border safer.

Things a majority of the American people support, and a majority of the members of Congress also support. We can only hope that may spur Republicans in Congress to act. Unfortunately, they keep demonstrating they put their own interests above those of the people. They seem to be saying “the people be damned.” A very sad state of affairs for the nation.

10th Anniversary

HIP HOP TO HEALTH

Step to the Beat of Quality, Affordable Health Insurance

THE BOWSER ADMINISTRATION

invites you to Open Enrollment Community Day Kick-off & Health Fair SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2023 11:00 AM – 3:30 PM

MLK Jr. MEMORIAL LIBRARY 901 G Street, NW Onsite enrollment, FREE health screenings, local entertainment, healthy cooking and wellness demos, Hip Hop freestyle dance exercise, children’s activities, giveaways and more Refreshments by Ben’s Chili Bowl

Celebrating...

10th Anniversary of DC Health Link 50th Anniversary of Hip Hop and its impact on the health and well-being of families and communities

OPEN ENROLLMENT PERIOD November 1 - January 31

V I E WP O I NT • O CTO B E R 2 7 , 2 0 2 3 • WA S H I N GTO N B L A D E.CO M • 2 1

Robert Bartko distinctly remembers the first time he listened to Wham! at his friend’s house during his freshman year of high school. Bartko knocked on his friend’s door, and the friend opened the door, excitingly holding up the “Make It Big” record. Bartko looked exactly like George Michael.

They went up to his friend’s bedroom, where there was a state-of-the-art stereo system. And when the needle hit the record, Bartko was captivated.

“It was a really magical moment for me,” Bartko said in an interview with the Washington Blade. “I instantly fell in love with his voice.”

All these years later, Bartko has made a career out of his love for Michael as a tribute artist and impersonator.

And Bartko’s live show, “George Michael Reborn,” is coming to D.C. on Nov. 3 at Hook Hall.

The live show formerly materialized in 2019, but Bartko has been paying tribute to Michael since his Wham! discovery back in high school. Bartko’s classmates would often tell him about the uncanny resemblance between him and Michael. Bartko was in the drama club, and the likeness would be especially clear when Bartko performed.

Bartko’s first show of “George Michael Reborn,” which was at the House of Blues Anaheim, sold out. Back then, it was called “Careless Whisper.” But he was inspired to change the title after audience members told him it was almost “creepy” how Bartko captured Michael’s mannerisms, voice, and dance moves. So Bartko changed the name.

‘George Michael Reborn’ comes to D.C. Tribute artist talks pop star’s legacy and their uncanny resemblance

By KAELA ROEDER

ROBERT BARTKO as George Michael (Photo credit Taylor Brooks)

(Photo credit Taylor Brooks)

“It took off from there,” Bartko said.

For Bartko, tributing George Michael is more than a job — it’s a calling. The career chose him, he said. Michael died unexpectedly on Christmas Day in 2016. In many ways, Michael’s music saved Bartko’s life and gave him meaning.

“It’s almost like I get to carry this banner, like I get to carry the baton for a time,” Bartko said. “It just gives me a purpose and a push knowing there’s people out there that you can bring joy to and I have a purpose in bringing joy to them through this music.”

Bartko was able to see Michael live twice, both times with the same friend who showed Bartko that Wham! record back in high school. They went to The Faith Tour at the Miami Orange Bowl in 1988 when Bartko was 18.

Bartko was even picked up and thrown around in the crowd, because people were obsessed with his similarity to Michael. It’s one of Bartko’s favorite memories.

Bartko will perform hits like “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” and the show’s original namesake, “Careless Whisper.” He’ll also perform “Outside,” a song that satirized Michael’s arrest for cruising in the late ‘90s. Bartko

(Photo credit Taylor Brooks)

performs “Outside,” complete with a cop outfit.

“His music has poured so much into me just in terms of how to move forward in life, his bravery and coming out and everything has been so inspiring to me,” Bartko said.

Bartko’s goal is to capture every aspect of Michael in the show — including what Michael stood for throughout his life.

“I don’t leave any stone unturned when it comes to any facet of his career,” Bartko said.

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This is Bartko’s second time performing in D.C. and the first public show he’s putting on here. During the 90-minute show, he hopes people have fun and reminisce.

“I hope that they just they just feel that special magic again,” Bartko said. “Of better days gone by.”

Michael will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Nov. 3.

To get more information about Bartko’s show and to buy tickets, visit georgemichaelreborn.com.

World Premiere!

STORIES FROM HOME

By Yvonne Montoya & Co. (Arizona)

Untold stories of Latinos in the American Southwest celebrate their resilience and Sephardic, Mexican and Native roots through the transformative power of dance.

Oct 28 & 29, 2023 Saturday 8 pm & Sunday 2 pm

GET $20 TICKETS Use code DANCE online

One block north of Columbia Heights Metro station galatheatre.org | 202-234-7174 | 3333 14th St NW, WDC 20010 All performances are mask-optional. Proof of vaccination not required

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2 4 • WA SHIN GTO N BLADE.COM • OCTOBER 27 , 2 0 2 3

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CALENDAR

By TINASHE CHINGARANDE

Friday, October 27 “Center Aging Monthly Luncheon with Yoga” 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@thedccenter.org.

Women in their Twenties and Thirties will be at 8 p.m. on Zoom. This is a social discussion group for queer women in the Washington, D.C. area. For more information, join WiTT’s closed Facebook group.

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 in community and learn from one another. For more information, email supportdesk@thedccenter.org.

Saturday, October 28

Halloween arrives next Tuesday with assorted events around the city.

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. For more information, email supportdesk@thedccenter.org.

Go Gay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Brunch” at 11 a.m. at Freddie’s Beach Bar & Restaurant. Guests are encouraged to come enjoy brunch with other LGBTQ+ folk.. Admission is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.

GoGay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Halloween Party” at 4 p.m. at Freddie’s Beach Bar & Restaurant. Guests can come mingle with LGBTQ folk and allies. Halloween costumes are encouraged but casual beach attire is fine. Tickets are free and more details are available on Eventbrite.

Sunday, October 29

Wednesday, November 01

Go Gay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Dinner & Conversation” at 6 p.m. at Federico Ristorante Italiano. This event will be an evening of Italian-style dining and conversation with other LGBTQ+ folk on the enclosed front patio. Admission is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.

SADBrunch will host “HallowQueen Drag Brunch” at 2:30 p.m. at THRoWSocial. Guests are encouraged to grab friends and family, and Halloween costumes for spooky drag brunch where five fabulous queens will take to the stage to perform in a sassy, extravagant and fantabulous event. Tickets start at $25 and can be purchased on Eventbrite.

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.

Monday, October 30 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.

Tuesday, October 31 The D.C. Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs will host “LGBTQIA+ Halloween Silver Soiree” at 4 p.m. at 655 New York Ave., N.W. The event will celebrate D.C.’s LGBTQ seniors with an afternoon of music, games, a karaoke competition, and community. Guests should bring their best costume and get ready to have some fun. Admission is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.

Thursday, November 02 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 co-sponsored by APIQS (Asian Pacific Islander Queer Society DC) and AQUA (Asian Queers United for Action). For more information, email supportdesk@thedccenter.org.

Virtual Yoga Class with Charles M. will be at 12 p.m. online. This is a weekly class focusing on yoga, breath work, 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.

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OUT & ABOUT Dupont Underground celebrates women artists of Oaxaca Dupont Underground and MaCMo COllective will team up to host an exhibit, “Mágica Muerte” that opens on Saturday, Oct. 28.

“Mágica Muerte” captures the Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) holiday in detailed engravings and paintings by 23 women artists, to understand and appreciate the depth of Oaxaca’s spiritual tradition, while closing the persisting economic and opportunity gaps that disproportionately affect female artists in Mexico.

The exhibition’s engravings and paintings also blend intricate patterns, colors, and symbolism to tell individual stories, weaving together the artists’ personal experience with Mexican culture and spirituality.

To purchase tickets, visit Dupont Underground’s website.

Want to learn more about the Israel-Palestine conflict?

The Claudia Jones School for Political Education will host “Dismantling Pinkwashing” on Saturday, Oct. 28 at 2 p.m. at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library.

This event will address and deconstruct propaganda that justifies the occupation of Palestine through appeals to gay rights.

Admission is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.

THEATER

Out actor brings skill, charm to ‘Ragtime’ role Jake Loewenthal tackles fourth show in three years at Signature

By PATRICK FOLLIARD When out actor Jake Loewenthal and his law student partner left New York for D.C., a permanent move wasn’t in the cards. Now, three years later, they have no plans to depart.

Washington’s theater scene has embraced Loewenthal in unanticipated ways, he says.

New in town, during the darker days of COVID, he found work and community quickly and remains busy ever since.

Currently, he’s playing Mother’s Younger Brother in Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens Tony Award-winning musical “Ragtime,” his fourth show in three years at Signature Theatre in Arlington.

Adapted by gay playwright Terrance McNally from E.L. Doctorow’s same-titled novel, “Ragtime” intertwines the stories of three American families in turn of the 20th century New York. It involves fictional as well as historical characters like scandal-soaked showgirl Evelyn Nesbit, famed architect Stanford White, progressive lesbian Emma Goldman, and others.

As Mother’s Younger Brother, a withdrawn man who lives with his sister’s family in suburban New York, Loewenthal finds elements of his own queer journey in the character.

He says, “For me, it’s impossible not to, especially when I’m in a rehearsal room filled with a lot of gay people.”

Moving forward he’d like to explore his queer identity on stage by playing unambiguously gay characters, including taking a whack at a role in something like “Love! Valor!

Compassion!” It’s always harder to play what’s closer to yourself, he adds.

Before tackling the part of Mother’s Younger Brother, Loewenthal, 34, was already fond and familiar with the show. As a kid in West Hartford, Conn., he was cast in a middle school production of “Titanic,” which was performed on a borrowed space, the set of “Ragtime” at nearby University of Hartford. Instantly, the eighth grader became smitten with the musical, catching every college performance and soon becoming verily obsessed with the show’s cast recording.

Signature’s production boasts more than 30 actors and 16 musicians. The score, says Loewenthal, is special because it covers many different styles of the era ranging from immigrant inspired tunes to Harlem ragtime; it’s like 10 musicals in one.

Working with Signature’s artistic director Matthew Gardiner, the talented tenor who earned his MFA at Brown Trinity has marvelously been able to act in what he considers some of his favorite and most personally formative musicals including (in addition to

JAKE LOEWENTHAL (Photo by Eric Tronolone)

Mother’s Younger Brother in “Ragtime”) aspiring documentary filmmaker Mark Cohen in “RENT,” the smooth-talking salesman in “She Loves Me,” and as the Baker in Sondheim’s fracture fairytale “Into the Woods”, an absolute bucket list experience for Loewenthal.

“Being directed by Matthew at Signature is a pleasure,” says Loewenthal. “We have a similar frame of reference. It’s like we were the same type of gay child. And he’s able to connect with each cast member and let them understand what he needs.”

Gardiner returns the compliment. He considers Loewenthal among his favorite actors to work with, noting he never fails to come into the room without having assembled ideas and thoughts about a character.

In D.C., Loewenthal has also flexed his nonmusical muscles at Shakespeare Theatre Company playing George Gibbs in Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” and more recently as Albany in “King Lear,” a stirring production memorably starring Patrick Page in the title role.

Brimming with ability and charm, he’s also a quick study. He recently filled in at the last moment to play Cliff in “Cabaret” at Barrington Stage Company in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. He says, “it was the scariest and most rewarding thing I have ever done. It’s also when I learned that I thrive on fear.”

At home in D.C.’s Truxton Circle neighborhood, his life revolves around theater and law. “My partner’s law school friends are totally unaware of theater in town. So, at dinner parties, it’s my job to spread the D.C. theater gospel as well as move conversation away from mergers and acquisitions to ‘The Sound of Music.’”

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FILM

A master triumphs with career-topping ‘Flower Moon’ Scorsese cements his auteur status with true-crime historical thriller

By JOHN PAUL KING When an artist stays both relevant and revered for a period of half a century or more, it’s hardly going out on a limb to suggest they know how to work a crowd.

After all, as the late Stephen Sondheim once lyrically observed, “art isn’t easy, any way you look at it.”

That might seem like a cynical way of framing things, but in a world where free-or-nearly-free content abounds, it puts an unvarnished sense of reality on the situation. The commercial viability of art, perhaps more than ever, has become entwined with the “mood of the moment”, and only an artist with the necessary savvy to recognize – and play to – that ever-metamorphosizing fancy of the public imagination has any chance of staying in the game.

For reasons that should be obvious, there’s no art form in which this is truer than cinema; expensive, collaborative, and arguably more reliant than any other medium on the favor of the mainstream populace, the immediacy inherent in its very nature demands that it cater to the interests of its day.

This is why, with “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Martin Scorsese has finally cemented the auteur status that seemed to elude him after his heyday as one of the seminal directors of the 1970s “New Hollywood” movement, because – whether by accident or intent – the iconic filmmaker has managed to capture the divided zeitgeist of an entire national identity with a story from a distant chapter of history.

Though early masterpieces like “Mean Streets,” “Taxi Driver,” and “Raging Bull” under his belt established his reputation, later reassertions of his particular genius (“Goodfellas,” “Gangs of New York,” “The Wolf of Wall Street) and the belated affirmation of an Oscar win for “The Departed” – while they may have ensured his position as an icon and elder statesman of his craft – never seemed to thrill with the kind of here-and-now urgency that turned those early works into the “mustsee” cornerstones of popular culture they almost instantly became. With his latest film, however, the director has returned, full-strength, with a work that feels thrillingly in sync with the pulse of the American present, even though it takes place close to a century ago.

“Flower Moon,” adapted for the screen by Scorsese and Eric Roth from David Gann’s 2017 non-fiction book of the same name, tells the true-crime story of a series of murders within Oklahoma’s indigenous Osage community in the 1920s, after the discovery of oil on their reservation made the once-impoverished tribe title-holders to an economic boom that gave them the wealth and power to withstand the tide of white incursion fueled by the imperative of “Manifest Destiny.” Our point-of-entry to the saga is Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), a WWI veteran who comes to the Osage nation to work for his uncle, Bill “King” Hale (Robert DeNiro), a wealthy white businessman who has established himself as a friend to the local tribal community. Encouraged by his uncle to pursue a romance with prominent Osage heiress Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), he finds himself enmeshed within a wide-reaching “good ol’ boy” conspiracy to siphon the tribe’s wealth. Compromising his better instincts, he becomes a willing participant in the scheme, until an agent from the newly formed FBI (Jesse Plemons) shows up to find

ROBERT DENIRO and LEONARDO DICAPRIO in ‘Killers of the Flower Moon.’

out why so many Osage people have been turning up dead under mysterious and un-investigated circumstances. With his own future – and freedom – in the balance, he is forced to confront the conflict between the tenuous loyalty of his blood kinship with “Uncle King” and the genuine love he feels for Mollie and her people even as he has helped to facilitate their extinction.

We won’t tell you how it all plays out, though the true-life events behind the fictionalized narrative were a matter of public record long before the book on which it was based was ever published, but we’re willing to lay our finger on why it strikes such a contemporary nerve. In this story about a little-known historical incident, America’s long-broiling relationship with racism is brought front-and-center in a way that is as impossible to deny as its ostensible protagonist’s culpability in the plot to rob his own wife of her birthright.

Like the tragedy of Tulsa’s “Black Wall Street,” another until-recently-unknown act of historic racial violence (pointedly referenced within Scorsese’s film) designed expressly to erase an entire community in punishment for its own prosperity, the serial murder of perhaps untold numbers of Osage tribespeople by opportunists bent on usurping their good fortune speaks volumes about the collective guilt still bubbling under the denial perpetrated by so many generations of white Americans.

This, no doubt, is why countless conservative commentators might dismiss “Killers of the Flower Moon” as “woke” propaganda, or why aloof critical tastemakers could be tempted to express outrage over its perceived “appropriation” of themes more rightly addressed by a filmmaker who, understandably if not quite fairly, might be branded by some as just another old white liberal elitist trying to “appropriate” a story more deservedly told by someone with a more authentic cultural connection to the victims of the crimes he presumes to document.

Make no mistake about it, though, Scorsese’s mov-

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ie easily rises above the posturing of such limited responses to cut through all that sentimentalized blackand-whiteness and get past the ideological constructs behind them. More than smart, it’s wise enough to turn the same understanding of the pathology of corruption, the same mechanisms that informed his earlier masterworks about the world of organized crime and those who become twisted by it, to the service of a come-to-Jesus confrontation between proclaimed American “values” and the reality of the heartbreak and carnage hidden behind the ideals they profess to embrace. As he has done so many times in the past, Scorsese makes his monsters human, lets us empathize, even identify with them, and helps us to see the closely lived reality that allows them to justify the allowances – dare we say the cognitive dissonance? – required to help them believe they are only doing what comes naturally.

In the end, it’s clear that there’s a real and objective truth being presented here about justice, power, and responsibility; thanks to the mastery of a great American filmmaker, with the help of a stellar cast delivering career-highlight performances (as well as long-time collaborators like editor Thelma Schoonmaker and musical supervisor Robbie Robertson, who passed away two months before the film’s release), it’s also clear that what we call “truth” is often dependent on the things we are all-too-easily persuaded to believe, and has more to do with our own appetites than we like to admit. That makes “Killers of the Flower Moon” more than just a timely commentary on systemic racism, strategically configured around Native American history rather than the politically charged subject of Black American experience, but a statement about the lies we all tell ourselves to achieve and maintain the lives we desire – even at the expense of others.

If you can think of a better summation for the moral quandaries of life in 21st century America, we’d love to hear it.

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Celebrating 28 Years of service to my clients and my community!

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703.622.5984 janet@janetpricehomes.com janetpricehomes.com 109 S Pitt Street, Alexandria, VA 22314 Equal Housing Opportunity

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BOOKS

Graphic novel ‘Smahtguy’ offers timely bio of Barney Frank Cartoonist Eric Orner makes policy suspenseful

By KATHI WOLFE When he was in high school, gay cartoonist Eric Orner, who makes his graphic novel debut with “Smahtguy: The Life and Times of Barney Frank,” didn’t like the food in the school cafeteria. “The principal was always talking about how good we had it,” Orner told the Blade in a recent interview.

“But the food was deep fried – inedible,” Orner added, “even for us [teens].”

To protest the food, Orner called it out with humor in the comic strip he drew for the school newspaper. “Having this platform to express yourself subversively and sarcastically to authority,” Orner said, “gave me a buzz.”

Like a hound born to hunt, Orner has always loved to draw. A proclivity for subverting the powers that be with humor has been etched in his veins from birth.

“Drawing is what I love to do,” said Orner, who is in his 50s, “It’s been that way since I was a kid.”

If there’s a problem, Orner will sit for an hour and draw. “I’ve been most brave – most outspoken when I’m drawing.”

Orner’s drawing and respect for outspokenness are in splendid form in his graphic novel “Smahtguy,” a biography of queer icon Barney Frank.

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As the House (at this writing), repeatedly fails to elect a Speaker, nothing could be more timely than “Smahtguy.”

Frank, who came out as gay in the Boston Globe in 1987, was a Democratic member of the House of Representatives from Massachusetts from 1981 to 2013.

When you hear “bio of a queer and political icon,” you might well think: boring, musty, wonky tome. But you needn’t worry.

“Smahtguy” is a page-turner about Frank, a politician who disliked politics, but loved policy. Orner, in this bio, does the nearly impossible: he makes policy suspenseful.

Orner makes you want to know how Frank used wonkiness in issues from housing to banking to help people.

Equally important, Orner makes you see and care about Frank’s personal life – from his background and family, to his coming out to his periods of loneliness to his marriage to Jim, his longtime partner.

“Publishers Weekly,” in a starred review, called “Smahtguy,” “an astute, richly detailed profile” of Frank.

Orner jokes that he has “dual citizenship.” He has roots in two cities – Chicago and Boston.

He was born and grew up in Chicago.

“My Dad’s family is in Chicago,” Orner said, “My Mom’s family is in Massachusetts.”

Orner, who lives now in New York and spends time with his partner in upstate New York, is acclaimed for his groundbreaking comic strip “The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green.”

The strip, first published in 1989, ran in 100 papers (gay press and about 25 alternative weeklies). “The Blade was the second paper to run it,” Orner said.

“The work of the gay press was so important to who we became as a people,” Orner said, “I’m Jewish. The Yiddish press was so important to Jewish people at the turn of the last century.”

In 1989, before “Queer as Folk,” “Modern Family,” let alone “Fire Island” or “Bros,” there was nothing like it. Except Alison Bechdel’s trailblazing comic strip “Dykes to Watch Out For,” which ran from 1983 to 2008.

Back then, you didn’t see drawings and stories about queer people in comic strips.

Especially, narratives of LGBTQ people dating, being out, dealing with break-ups, coping with AIDS, working – living ordinary lives.

Ethan was a good, but not a fabulous, guy. He wasn’t a hunky athlete or movie star. Break-ups more than picture-perfect romances were his lot. You saw yourself when you read “The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green,” which was made into a movie of the same name in 2005.

Orner didn’t come out early in his life. “I

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knew early,” he said, “but the Midwest is a little more conservative.”

There was the Stonewall Uprising. But that wasn’t part of the culture at his high school. “My high school was so conformist,” Orner said, “it could have been the 1950s.”

After high school, Orner moved to Boston where he went to college and law school. “I’ve lived in Boston, New York, D.C., and Los Angeles,” he said, “but I’ve never lived as an adult gay person in Chicago.”

Orner’s father, now deceased, was a straight guy who revered Hugh Hefner and Sean Connery. “One of the most important cultural icons,” Orner said, “when my Dad was in his prime in the 1960s, was Playboy.”

At first, Orner’s father just couldn’t conceive of the fact that he had a gay son.

“But, my Dad was a contrarian,” Orner said, “weirdly, he was the sort of person who likes to upset the apple cart.”

If there was a rule that could be broken, he’d want to break it, Orner added.

“My Dad could not get his head around my being gay,” Orner said, “until my first Ethan Green book [a collection of his Ethan Green comic strips] came out.”

One day, one of Orner’s father’s law partners saw a copy of the Ethan Green book at a bookstore at O’Hare Airport.

“The straight-laced partner had a meltdown in my father’s office,” Orner said, “over how terrible it was to see my Dad’s name on the book.”

Once Orner’s nonconformist Dad saw his partner’s pearl-clutching, Orner said, “he got his head around [his son’s being gay].”

Orner’s mother was very political. Politics runs in his family, Orner said.

“The minute I came out, unbeknown

to me,” Orner said, “my Mom had joined PFLAG.” Orner has great affection for Boston. He lived there for 25 years. He’d see the Orson Welles Cinema between Harvard and Central Square as he walked toward Bay Street. The first drawing Orner sold was to the “The Phoenix,” a (now defunct) Boston alternative weekly.

He loved cartooning. But, “like most artists, I needed a day job,” Orner said.

Orner and Barney Frank crossed paths at a cocktail party. At that time, Cardinal Bernard Law (since disgraced because of his involvement in the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal) was the Archbishop of Boston.

“I was making wiseass shit about the Cardinal,” Orner said, “Barney said it was a funny cartoon – to call him if I needed a job.”

Orner took Frank up on his offer. For 20 years, on and off, he worked for Frank as staff counsel and press secretary for the House Financial Services Committee.

In between stints working for Frank, Orner worked for Disney. “Disney taught me to draw fast,” he said, “and to capture the essence of something – like a gesture – quickly.”

Frank was your classic tough boss, Orner said. “Barney was interested in policy,” he said, “he wanted government to be professional.”

Orner admires Frank, but “sometimes he makes mistakes,” he said.

“Smahtguy” isn’t an authorized biography. After working on it for three years, Orner packaged it up and sent it to Frank.

“Barney had only a few, 19, I think, minor corrections,” Orner said.

One was over a drawing of a daily racing form in Frank’s mother’s purse. “Barney said I had to change that,” Orner said, “because his aunts gambled, but his Mom never gambled.”

Orner strived to convey Frank’s greatness – his political achievement and personality – warts and all. “I very much didn’t want to do hagiography,” he said.

With the news as terrible as it often is now, Orner’s art is more needed than ever.

“I never feel things are so fraught or horrible that I don’t want to draw about them,” Orner said in an email to the Blade.

“And, a lot of my work over the past 10 years has been about Israel and Palestine,” he added.

In comics, creators are able to tap into the full range of human emotions, Orner said.

“Watching the House Freedom caucus somehow convert a single clown car into an epic interstate pile up,” Orner said, “is for this longtime Capitol Hill staffer pretty funny.”

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ADVICE

My girlfriend drinks too much. What do I do?

A tricky problem to navigate in relationship of equals

By MICHAEL RADKOWSKY

Dear Michael, My girlfriend drinks way too much and it worries me a lot. We’ve been together for three years and I’d like to make it forever, but only if she stops.

I’ve explained to her that her drinking is especially scary to me because my older brother died of of an overdose when I was a teen, long before I met Lucy. I can’t lose someone I love like that again.

Lucy tells me that I’m making a big deal out of nothing. She says she doesn’t drink any more than her friends, and it’s mostly just a fun weekend thing.

I don’t agree with her about any of this. Sometimes she drinks to black out. I’ve had to clean her when she’s thrown up all over herself after a night out with her friends, at least three times in the last six months, which is a really disgusting thing to have to do.

And just last week she came home on a work night so drunk that I couldn’t get her up for work the next morning. I’m worried this behavior is going to endanger her job.

I know that Lucy had a really tough time growing up. Her parents are anti-gay and cut her off. She has no contact with any of her family. I am pretty sure she’s depressed from all this, and I think drinking is a way to cope. I keep encouraging her to talk to me about all of this but she usually shuts down when I ask.

I’ve urged Lucy to go to therapy to help her deal with her family stuff and I’ve also begged her to consider an alcohol treatment program. She gets annoyed with me whenever I bring this up and has told me that I’m overreacting because I lost my brother.

I don’t want to leave her because she’s a fantastic girlfriend in so many ways. But I can’t deal with her drinking.

How do you get through to someone who can’t see their own self-destructive behavior?

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Michael replies: I’m sorry, I know it feels awful when you can’t help someone you love who is having a hard time.

The reality, though, is that you can’t force Lucy to address her drinking. You should bring up your concerns, as you’ve done; but what she does is up to her.

If you are willing to stay with Lucy as she is, perhaps you can take better care of yourself in this relationship and change some of your behaviors to help you be less resentful. While there are no guarantees, your actions may influence Lucy to take more responsibility for herself.

For example, if you don’t like cleaning her up, why continue to do so? You might think I’m picking on a small point, but I’m not. Lucy chooses to drink and she is responsible for the consequences. When you do her work for her, she doesn’t have to deal with some of those consequences. And you wind up feeling like a resentful victim, although you’re putting yourself in that position.

I’ve heard from many clients in similar predicaments over the years, and they usually tell me that they “have to” help the person they love to get out of whatever awful spot they’ve gotten themselves into. I understand that leaving Lucy in a mess may seem heartless (and disgusting), but the fact remains that you’re letting Lucy off the hook when you step in. (Of course, I’m not advocating that you leave her in any dangerous or life-threatening situation).

Another example: Spending time trying to wake Lucy up so that she won’t be late for her job. If Lucy has to deal with the consequences of her drinking, she may (again, no guarantee) decide to cut back.

Regarding Lucy’s suggestion that you are blowing her drinking out of proportion, that’s a matter of opinion, and you get to have your own opinion here. Lucy’s drinking is a problem for you, but evidently not for Lucy.

So where does this leave you?

If you aren’t willing to have a girlfriend who drinks to the extent that Lucy does, let her know. But please don’t say this unless you mean it. Threatening consequences to get someone to change is an ugly way to behave in a relationship. On the other hand, telling someone what you aren’t willing to live with is part of constructing an honest and respectful relationship.

Three more points: First, your continuing to argue with Lucy about this issue gives her someone to fight with about how much she drinks, instead of possibly confronting herself. This includes hypothesizing to Lucy about why she drinks as much as she does.

Second, in your efforts to rescue Lucy, you are positioning yourself as her superior in the relationship rather than her peer. If you want a relationship of two equal partners, this is not a good move.

Finally, you might consider attending Al-Anon, a group for people who are concerned about a loved one’s drinking. This could help you feel less alone, get some clarity about why you are making the choices you are making, think of ways to support Lucy without telling her what to do, and decide what you want to do going forward.

(Michael Radkowsky, Psy.D. is a licensed psychologist who works with couples and individuals in D.C. He can be found online at michaelradkowsky.com. All identifying information has been changed for reasons of confidentiality. Have a question? Send it to michael@michaelradkowsky.com.)

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High Heel Race

36th annual drag event draws thousands to 17th Street (Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)

The 36th annual High Heel Race was held on 17th Street at Frank Kameny Way on Tuesday, Oct. 24. Thousands of spectators came to watch drag queens and other costumed contestants strut in a parade and run in a race.

Rayceen Pendarvis served as the emcee and Karamo Brown was a special guest on the stage. Mayor Muriel Bowser spoke and marched in the parade. Participant John Kim won the race for the third time.

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BLADE BIZ

Octane Public Relations: Where culture and action meet Connecting the world to diverse stories unfolding in Washington, D.C.

By OMARI FOOTE

Everett Hamilton was running an event planning business 23 years ago and realized that at the core of his work, he was a publicist. According to him, event planning and public relations are both meant to accomplish one goal – connection.

So, he started Octane Public Relations & Advertising and has since worked to connect the EVERETT HAMILTON started world to the diverse stoOctane 23 years ago. ries unfolding in Washington, D.C. “What I found was that a lot of the work I was doing on the events side intersected with communications,” he said.

Now, with more than two decades of experience and a team that is steadily growing, he doesn’t have to be as hands-on with running the company. He credits his COO, Marcelle Brawner, and her two-person team with handling the everyday functions like payroll, bills, and other operating tasks. At one point, Hamilton and his former business partner were the only two people

wearing all of those hats. For this reason, Hamilton still says that he is the best spokesperson for the company.

“What I do in my role as CEO is set up the strategic vision for the things I want to see us accomplish in a given year,” he said.

He says that when managing his company there are three areas to focus on: get the business, run the company that does the business, and attract talent to implement the business. A public relations company cannot thrive if it’s stagnant.

“I have to constantly source for new business and I do that through developing high-level relationships with clients,” Hamilton said.

As technology develops his work looks different.

When he started the company in 2003 they were creating campaigns on paper and now they are trying to reach users on a multitude of digital platforms.

Despite these technological changes, the values statement remains the same: “Where culture and action meet.”

“We want to make sure that the clients we have are truly committed to communicating to diverse audiences,” Hamilton said. “Not telling them what to do, not dictating them – but bringing them along through empowerment.”

Octane has been working with the District’s government for more than 15 years, doing its HIV social marketing campaigns.

“That is something close to our hearts in the LGBTQ+ community and we have been really honored to work on all of those campaigns.”

Hamilton emphasized that they were intentional about empowering sub-cultures within the LGBTQ community with culturally aware campaigning. With Octane’s guidance, D.C. was the first city in the U.S. to specifically campaign for the transgender Latinx community.

In the beginning, campaign work looked like encouraging people to use condoms and now looks like viral load suppression and teaching people how to use PrEP. Their work has transformed from making people aware of the importance of sexual health, to helping people live longer no matter their diagnosis. “[We have] issues that we couldn’t even dream of 15 years ago,” said Hamilton. “But we still have too many people not getting treatment, so we still have work to do.”

As Hamilton looks ahead, he only wants to increase his business footprint on community-driven work like this. Healthcare, energy, and corporate social responsibility are at the top of his priorities.

“We live in a world where people think to be profitable, you can’t be community and people centered,” he said. “But there are so many companies out there that are doing both and Octane wants to be a part of those teams.”

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REAL ESTATE

Making your home a safer haven Five easy tips to help you avoid common risks

By SCOTT BLOOM

Your home is more than just a place to eat and sleep; it’s your safe haven. As much as you might cherish your home, you should probably also recognize the potential hazards within its familiar walls. Accidents can happen in an instant, yet with a little foresight and some simple adjustments, you can transform your house into a safer haven.

Accidents can happen anywhere, and with a few simple tweaks, you can lower risks in your space. Below you’ll find five tips for each room in your home to help prevent injuries, falls, and other mishaps. In short, home safety.

This article was inspired by a shower in a rental we managed that began leaking through the kitchen ceiling below. If only the landlord had installed grab bars, right!? Below, we’ll guide you through the steps to fortify your bathroom, making it a place of relaxation without the fear of slips and falls. Then, we’ll venture into the room where the magic happens, where proper planning can ensure great nights and peaceful mornings. We’ll show you how to prevent accidents while you experiment becoming the next Gordon Ramsey. And we’ll include a few surprising solutions for those other rooms that hold their own unique hazards, offering solutions to safeguard against unexpected mishaps.

Bathroom Safety

fan. Also six inches away from the joint between the wall and ceiling. And test smoke detectors regularly.

Kitchen Safety

Be sure to install baby gates if you have stairs in your home with young children.

Install Grab Bars: Adding grab bars near the shower and toilet can provide essential support for family members of all ages.

Not only can they help with getting in and out, but they can help provide stability when washing. Make sure they are securely anchored to the wall.

Non-Slip Mats: Place non-slip mats inside the shower and bathtub to prevent slips.

They’re a small investment that can save you from falls and head injuries.

Adjust Water Temperature: Ensure your hot water is set to a safe temperature to avoid scalding. The hot water heater should be set to around 120°F (49°C)l, the middle setting on many water heater settings.

Medicine Cabinet Locks: If you have young children, use childproof locks on your medicine cabinet to keep harmful substances out of reach.

Proper Lighting: Ensure there’s adequate lighting in the bathroom to avoid trips and falls during nighttime visits. Nightlights can be a simple and effective solution.

Bedroom Safety

Clear Pathways: Keep pathways in the bedroom clutter free to prevent tripping. Ensure there’s enough space to move around comfortably, particularly getting around the bed. Be aware where all furniture is when walking around to avoid stubbed toes, particularly at night.

Secure Rugs: If you have throw rugs, use rug grippers or double-sided tape to keep them from slipping. Loose rugs are a common trip hazard.

Bed Rails: For anyone at risk of falling out of bed, consider installing bed rails to provide extra support and prevent falls.

Nightstands with Drawers: Opt for nightstands with drawers to keep essential items.

This reduces the need to get out of bed at night, minimizing the risk of falls, as you race to grab what you need and not lose a moment’s rest.

Fire Safety: Install battery-operated smoke detectors in the bedrooms if there are none. Make sure to install them 36 inches away from an air vent or the edge of a ceiling

Non-Slip Flooring: Choose slip-resistant rugs in the kitchen, especially in areas where spills are common. Mats near the sink and stove can also help and you can often buy them fairly cheaply at Costco.

Childproof Cabinets: If you have little ones, use childproof latches on cabinets and drawers to prevent them from accessing potentially hazardous items.

Anti-tip brackets: Install an anti-tip bracket behind the range. These are often used when children are in the home. Although they are less likely to open the oven door and use it as a step stool to get to the stove-top, adults can also benefit from installing these.

Adequate Lighting: Proper lighting is crucial in the kitchen to avoid accidents. Under-cabinet lighting can illuminate work areas effectively.

Secure Heavy Items: Ensure heavy pots and pans are stored at waist level to prevent straining or dropping them from high shelves.

Sharp Object Storage: Keep knives and other sharp objects in a secure drawer or block. And handle all sharp items with extreme care, even when washing and drying.

These steps reduce the risk of accidental cuts.

Other Safety Tips

Furniture Anchors: Secure heavy furniture, like bookshelves and dressers, to the wall to prevent tip-overs, especially if you have young children.

Adequate Outlets: Check for damaged outlets and replace them promptly. Avoid overloading circuits with too many devices. Install placeholder plugs in outlets to prevent young curious fingers (or tongues?) from going inside an electrical outlet.

Stair Gates: If your home has stairs, install safety gates at the top and bottom to prevent falls, especially if you have toddlers or pets to keep them off of the stairs when you cannot monitor them.

Emergency Escape Plan: Develop and practice an emergency escape plan with your family, including a designated meeting place outside.

Carbon Monoxide Detector: If your home burns any fossil fuels for heating or appliances, install carbon monoxide detectors in common areas of your home to detect this odorless gas. The D.C. building codes require this if you use a fireplace or if you have an attached garage. In essence, if there is any potential source of carbon monoxide in the home, be sure to install these detectors.

Remember, a safer home not only prevents accidents but also provides peace of mind for you and your family. Implement these simple tips to create a secure environment in every room of your house.

With these practical tips and a few adjustments, you can significantly reduce the risk of injuries and falls in your home. Enjoy peace of mind in your now much safer haven.

SCOTT BLOOM

is owner and senior property manager of Columbia Property Management.

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