Washington Blade, Volume 55, Issue 25, June 21, 2024

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D.C. police marched in Pride parade in uniform

D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith led a contingent of D.C. police officers, including members of the department’s LGBT Liaison Unit, in the June 8 Capital Pride Parade with the chief and all the officers in uniform in what appeared to be a violation of a Capital Pride policy of not allowing law enforcement officers to participate in the parade in uniform.

The Capital Pride Alliance, the group that organizes most D.C. Pride events, including the parade, posted a statement on its website in June of 2020 announcing that a policy it adopted in 2018 that does not allow uniformed police officers to march in the parade remained in effect. The group told the Washington Blade this week in a statement that the no uniform policy remained in place for this year’s Pride parade.

In her own statement released on the day of the parade Chief Smith appeared to take exception to the no uniform policy without saying so directly.

“I am proud to march in today’s Capital Pride Parade in full uniform to support our LGBTQ+ colleagues and to further our commitment to creating inclusive and supportive environments,” the chief said. “MPD will continue to support, and ensure security, at Pride events and different community focused events year-round,” she said.

The chief’s statement, which was sent to the news media in a press release, added, “Having been selected as the department’s first Chief Equity Officer, and now as the Chief of Police, I’m committed to celebrating diverse identities. I will always stand up for diversity, equity and inclusion for our members and our community.”

In response to an inquiry from the Blade asking for confirmation of whether the “no uniform” policy was still in effect for the 2024 Pride parade, Capital Pride Alliance responded with a statement.

“The Capital Pride Alliance policy concerning MPD remains in place,” the statement says. “If the group officially registers for the march, they must participate out of official uniform,” it says.

“This year, the police did not register and as such were not an official parade contingent,” the statement continues. “The police chief walked the route with on-duty police officers, and being on-duty, officers are required to be in uniform.”

The statement adds, “We continue to have conversations with MPD, including the Chief of Police, about how we build a collaborative relationship with our community.”

D.C. police didn’t immediately respond to a Blade request for comment by Chief Smith or a spokesperson on the claim by Capital Pride officials that the police were not in an official contingent in this year’s parade.

But late Thursday evening on June 13, the day after the Blade reached out to the police for comment, police spokesperson Paris Lewbel sent a statement from Chief Smith expressing concern over the no uniform policy.

“I was not provided a policy from Capital Pride that informed me of the Metropolitan Police Department’s ban on marching in the Capital Pride parade in uniform,” the chief says. “As Chief of Police and the Department’s first Chief Equity Officer, I will always remain focused on ensuring that we, MPD, are inclusive of all members, partners, and stakeholders,” her statement says.

“Now that I have been ‘told’ that there is a ban on the MPD from marching in the Capital Pride parade, in uniform, I believe there needs to be more conversations around inclusivity and equality,” the statement continues. “We have MPD members who are allies as well as members of the LGBTQ community who support Capital Pride and safeguard the participants and attendees of the parade,” the chief said. “We need to break down the silos that are excluding others and find a way to be more inclusive.”

The statement concludes by saying, “I am willing to work with Capital Pride to discuss ways where we (MPD) can be engaged in Capital Pride as participants in the parade, in uniform, as opposed to being excluded.”

Capital Pride officials did not respond to the Blade’s additional request this week for an explanation of why the no uniform policy was adopted and whether the policy is still needed.

In earlier statements posted on its website in past years, Capital Pride officials cited the Black Lives Matter movement and the police killing of Black Minneapolis resident George Floyd that triggered anti-police protests across the country as an issue that made some in the LGBTQ community and others participating in the Pride parade uncomfortable in the presence of uniformed police officers.

“Pride this year comes on the heels of a global pandemic and a nation confronting the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers,” the group said in a June 3, 2020, statement. The Floyd case and the 2020 police shooting deaths of a Black woman in Louisville, Ky., and a Black transgender man in Tallahassee, Fla. “have created a nationwide uprising crying out for racial justice and the protection of Black life,” the statement said.

“As members of the Black and Brown communities have stood with the LGBTQ+ community, the Capital Pride Alliance stands in complete solidarity to unite against these disparities that impact communities of color,” the 2020 statement said. “We pledge that we will work together to find solutions and make positive changes that are so desperately needed to end inequity, injustice, and violence against people of color.”

LOU CHIBBARO JR.

Police say they didn’t spray chemical agent at Baltimore Pride

A chemical agent that disrupted Pride Parade festivities last weekend continues to cause confusion and raise suspicion among many in the Baltimore LGBTQIA+ community, who question the police account of what happened.

The Baltimore Police Department said Tuesday that they had determined the released substance was Mace, but did not say how they came to that conclusion. A BPD spokesperson said that the chemical was released after two groups of people got into an altercation. Three people were treated and released from a nearby hospital because of injuries from the spray.

One of many videos circulating on social media shows an altercation at Pride where a brown substance was squirted through the air. Some also wonder if a chemical agent was released in more than one location. Many in the crowd who attended don’t believe it was

Mace because they say the chemical spread too far and resulted in extreme physical symptoms, such as vomiting, respiratory attacks and unconsciousness.

“If the police want people to think that it was just somebody who breached the festival and purposefully released mace, that is not a plausible story,” said attendee Elisabet Eppes, who was about 100 feet away from the release of the chemical agent.

Nobody The Banner spoke with said they saw police release a chemical and no video has surfaced showing this it, either.

As people are dancing and cheering, the video also shows a quick movement towards the left of the frame and a brown smoky substance filling the crowd, followed by people running..

Several attendees told The Banner they saw yellow and

white smoke, not brown. They added they experienced the effects of the chemical — nausea, vomiting, burning eyes — in the opposite direction of where the video was filmed, with hundreds of people between them.

“This suggests multiple attacks,” attendee Joanne Sherrod believes.

Soon after the chemical agent was released, a BPD helicopter flew overhead.

“You are safe. The situation is under control,” numerous attendees recalled coming from the loudspeaker. Police did not address questions about why the helicopter was deployed.

On the ground, dozens of people were vomiting. Some were having respiratory attacks, and others had lost consciousness, attendees said.

BRENNA SMITH & JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV

D.C. Police Chief PAMELA SMITH marches in the Capital Pride Parade on June 8. (Blade photo by Michael Key)

Accused drug dealer charged with fentanyl distribution leading to deaths of two D.C. gay men

June 13 indictment links previously arrested suspect to deaths

By LOU CHIBBARO JR. | lchibbaro@washblade.com

The Office of the U.S. Attorney for D.C. has announced that federal prosecutors on June 13 obtained an indictment against one of two D.C. brothers previously charged with multiple counts of illegal drug distribution that now charges him with “distributing cocaine and fentanyl” on Dec. 26, 2023, that resulted in the deaths of D.C. gay men Brandon Roman and Robert “Robbie” Barletta.

In a June 13 press release, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Jevaughn ‘Ledo’ Mark, 32, is charged in a new “secondary superseding indictment” linked to the Roman and Barletta deaths. It says he and his brother, Angelo Mark, 30, “previously were charged on April 9 in a 17-count superseding indictment for participating in a conspiracy that distributed large amounts of fentanyl and cocaine in the metropolitan area.”

The press release says Jevaughn Mark is currently being held without bond on charges that include eight counts of unlawful distribution of fentanyl, cocaine, and heroin and distributing 40 grams or more of fentanyl between Jan. 10, 2024, and March 13, 2024. According to the press release, the charges were based on six illegal drug purchases from Jevaughn Mark by undercover U.S. Drug Enforcement

Administration and undercover D.C. police officers.

Court records show that Angelo Mark was charged in a criminal complaint on March 22 with multiple counts of conspiracy to distribute narcotics and is also being held without bond.

D.C. police and Fire and Emergency Medical Services reports show that Roman, 38, a prominent D.C. attorney and LGBTQ rights advocate, and Barletta, 28, a historic preservation expert and home renovation business owner, were found unconscious when police and emergency medical personnel responded to a 911 call and arrived at Barletta’s home on Dec. 27. The reports show that Roman was declared deceased at the scene and Barletta was taken to Washington Hospital Center where he died on Dec. 29.

A police spokesperson told the Washington Blade in February that police were investigating the Roman and Barletta deaths, but investigators had to wait for the D.C. Medical Examiner’s official determination of the cause and manner of death before the investigation could fully proceed.

Both men were patrons at D.C. gay bars and their passing prompted many in the LGBTQ community to call for stepped up prevention services related to drug overdose cases, even though the cause and manner of death for the two men was not officially determined until early April.

In April, the D.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner disclosed that the cause of death for both men was an accidental consumption of several drugs that created a fatal “toxic” effect. The Medical Examiner’s office said Barletta’s death was linked to the consumption of at least four different drugs and Roman’s death was caused by the “combined toxic effect” of six drugs. The Medical Examiner’s office disclosed that cocaine and fentanyl were among the drugs found in the bodies of both men. And for both men, the manner of death was listed as “Accident/ Intoxication.”

When the cause and manner of death were disclosed by the Medical Examiner, D.C. police spokesperson Tom Lynch said the police investigation into the deaths remained open but said, “There are no updates on the investigation that we are ready to release to the public.”

Johnny Randolph Hunt dies at 72

Known for his many years at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

FROM STAFF REPORTS

Johnny Randolph Hunt passed away quietly on May 27, 2024, after a well-fought battle against late-stage metastatic prostate cancer that had spread to his bones. He was 72.

Hunt was well known for his many years at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Washington, D.C., and for his artistic talents, where he used recycled junk mail to make whimsical masks and wall hangings known as Peculiars.

In high school, he was a top-performing cross-country runner, and he frequented Shenandoah National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway for long hikes and camping trips. Hunt was born on Feb. 15, 1952 to parents Janette Simshauser Hunt of Amherst, N.Y., and Melvin Hunt of Covesville, Va., both now deceased. He is survived by his husband of 45 years, Jeffrey David Miller and three sisters, Motanna Cason, Joyce Brown, and Shirley Shiflett, and one brother, Rocky

But the Medical Examiner’s findings prompted Johnny Bailey, the Community Outreach Coordinator for HIPS D.C., an LGBTQ supportive organization that provides services and support for those who use recreational drugs, to say he strongly believed that Barletta and Roman did not intentionally consume some of the drugs found in their system.

“I’m going to say I do believe this was a poisoning,” Bailey told the Blade. “I think it is unfair to call some things an overdose because an overdose is when you do too much of a drug and you die from that drug,” he said. “This is like if you have a few glasses of wine every night and someone puts arsenic in your wine, no one would be like, ‘oh, they drank themselves to death.’ They were poisoned. And that’s what I think is happening here,” he said in referring to Barletta and Roman.

In announcing the new charges against Jevaughn Mark that link him to Barletta and Roman’s deaths, the U.S. Attorney’s press release discloses that he supplied fentanyl in the drugs he sold unknowingly to the undercover DEA and D.C. police officers when one of the officers, posing as a drug buyer, did not ask for fentanyl.

“In each instance, the DEA/MPD agents requested to buy ‘Special K’ or Ketamine from Jevaughn Mark,” the press release says. “In every instance, Jevaughn Mark supplied a mixture of fentanyl and other substances, including heroin, but not ketamine,” it says.

The release says that after the earlier indictment against Jevaughn Mark was issued, law enforcement agents conducted a search of his Southeast D.C. home and “recovered two firearms, cocaine, fentanyl, about $38,000 in cash, body armor vests, and drug trafficking paraphernalia.” It says on that same day authorities executed another search for a second residence linked to Jevaughn Mark, where they located a bedroom used by his brother Angelo Mark.

“From Angelo Mark’s bedroom, law enforcement recovered seven firearms, 900 rounds of ammunition, dozens of pills, cocaine, fentanyl, drug trafficking paraphernalia, and about $50,000 in cash,” the press release says, adding, “Based on the evidence, both brothers were indicted in the first superseding indictment.”

Hunt, and a host of other relatives. A celebration of life was held on Saturday, June 15. There will be follow-on services in Kinsale, Va., Charlottesville, Va., and Amherst, N.Y., which will be announced later. His favorite charities were Wounded Warriors, the Nature Conservancy, the National Wildlife Federation, Saint Jude’s Children’s Hospital, and Habitat for Humanity. Donations in honor of Johnny should be directed to your charities of choice.

Shakers hosted a celebration of life for BRANDON ROMAN and ROBBIE BARLETTA in February.

Club Q shooter sentenced to life in prison

Anderson Lee Aldrich, 24, formerly of Colorado Springs, Colo., was sentenced to 55 concurrent life sentences to run consecutive to 190 years in prison after pleading guilty to 74 hate crimes and firearms charges related to the Nov. 19, 2022, mass shooting at Club Q, an LGBTQ establishment in Colorado Springs.

According to the plea agreement, Aldrich admitted to murdering five people, injuring 19, and attempting to murder 26 more in a willful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated attack at Club Q. According to the plea, Aldrich entered Club Q armed with a loaded, privately manufactured assault weapon, and began firing. Aldrich continued firing until subdued by patrons of the club. As part of the plea, Aldrich admitted that this attack was in part motivated because of the actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity of any person.

“Fueled by hate, the defendant targeted members of the LGBTQIA+ community at a place that represented be-

Assistant U.S. Attorney General KRISTEN CLARKE of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. (Justice Department YouTube screenshot)

longing, safety, and acceptance — stealing five people from their loved ones, injuring 19 others, and striking fear across the country,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland. “Today’s sentencing makes clear that the Justice Department

is committed to protecting the right of every person in this country to live free from the fear that they will be targeted by hate-fueled violence or discrimination based on who they are or who they love. I am grateful to every agent, prosecutor, and staff member across the Department — from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado, to the Civil Rights Division, the ATF, and FBI — for their work on this case. The Justice Department will never stop working to defend the safety and civil rights of all people in our country.”

“The 2022 mass shooting at Club Q is one of the most violent crimes against the LGBTQIA+ community in history,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray. “The FBI and our partners have worked tirelessly towards this sentencing, but the true heroes are the patrons of the club who selflessly acted to subdue the defendant. This Pride Month and every month, the FBI stands with the survivors, victims, and families of homophobic violence and hate.” FROM STAFF REPORTS

65% of Black Americans support Black LGBTQ rights: survey

The National Black Justice Coalition, a D.C.-based LGBTQ advocacy organization, announced on June 19 that it commissioned what it believes to be a first-of-its-kind national survey of Black people in the United States in which 65 percent said they consider themselves “supporters of Black LGBTQ+ people and rights,” with 57 percent of the supporters saying they were “churchgoers.”

In a press release describing the findings of the survey, NBJC said it commissioned the research firm HIT Strategies to conduct the survey with support from five other national LGBTQ organizations – the Human Rights Campaign, the National LGBTQ Task Force, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Family Equality, and GLSEN.

“One of the first surveys of its kind, explicitly sampling Black people (1,300 participants) on Black LGBTQ+ people and issues – including an oversampling of Black LGBTQ+ participants to provide a more representative view of this subgroup – it investigates the sentiments, stories, perceptions, and priorities around Black values and progressive policies, to better understand how they impact Black views on Black LGBTQ+ people,” the press release says.

It says the survey found, among other things, that 73 percent of Gen Z respondents, who in 2024 are between the ages of 12 and 27, “agree that the Black community should

do more to support Black LGBTQ+ people.”

According to the press release, it also found that 40 percent of Black people in the survey reported having a family member who identifies as LGBTQ+ and 80 percent reported having “some proximity to gay, lesbian, bisexual, or queer people, but only 42 percent have some proximity to transgender or gender-expansive people.”

The survey includes these additional findings:

• 86% of Black people nationally report having a feeling of shared fate and connectivity with other Black people in the U.S., but this view doesn’t fully extend to the Black LGBTQ+ community. Around half — 51% — of Black people surveyed feel a shared fate with Black LGBTQ+ people.

• 34% reported the belief that Black LGBTQ+ people “lead with their sexual orientation or gender identity.” Those participants were “significantly less likely to support the Black LGBTQ+ community and most likely to report not feeling a shared fate with Black LGBTQ+ people.”

• 92% of Black people in the survey reported “concern about youth suicide after being shown statistics about the heightened rate among Black LGBTQ+ youth.” Those expressing this concern included 83%

of self-reported opponents of LGBTQ+ rights.

• “Black people’s support for LGBTQ+ rights can be sorted into three major groups: 29% Active Accomplices, 25% Passive Allies (high potential to be moved), 35% Opponents. Among Opponents, ‘competing priorities’ and ‘religious beliefs’ are the two most significant barriers to supporting Black LGBTQ+ people and issues.”

• 10% of the survey participants identified as LGBTQ. Among those who identified as LGBTQ, 38% identified as bisexual, 33% identified as lesbian or gay, 28% identified as non-binary or gender non-conforming, and 6% identified as transgender.

• Also, among those who identified as LGBTQ, 89% think the Black community should do more to support Black LGBTQ+ people, 69% think Black LGBTQ+ people have fewer rights and freedoms than other Black people, 35% think non-Black LGBTQ+ people have fewer rights and freedom than other Black people, 54% “feel their vote has a lot of power,” 51% live in urban areas, and 75% rarely or never attend church. Additional information about the survey from NBJC can be accessed at nbjc.org.

LOU CHIBBARO JR.

Garcia urges officials to protect Pride events

U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) on June 12 sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray to work to ensure LGBTQ people during Pride events.

“Over the last several weeks, your respective agencies and departments have issued stark warnings, and travel advisories to the public over potential threats from foreign terrorist organizations (FTO), and their supporters during this year’s Pride Month,” said Garcia in his letter. “I understand that these steps have come after deeply concerning increases in anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, calls for targeted violence, and foiled violent plots.”

The FBI on May 10 issued an advisory that warned of potential violence at Pride events and other LGBTQ-specific events. The State Department on May 17 — the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia — announced a similar warning.

“Ensuring that people can peacefully and safely celebrate Pride and the diversity of the LGBTQ+ community is of utmost importance,” wrote Garcia, a gay man who represents California’s 42nd Congressional District that includes Long Beach.

June 12 also marked eight years since a gunman killed 49 people inside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla.

The massacre at the time was the deadliest mass shooting

in modern U.S. history. The gunman pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State, even though there is no evidence that suggests the extremist group ordered him to carry out the massacre.

“This week marks the eight (sp) anniversary of the horrific Pulse nightclub Orlando shooting — during which the attacker deliberately and viciously targeted the LGBTQ+ community,” wrote Garcia in his letter. “It is important to put the recent escalation of extremist anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda and messaging in the context the Pulse nightclub shooter who was influenced by these same forces of extremism.”

MICHAEL K. LAVERS

Mass. startup streamlining name changes for trans, non-binary residents

‘No. 1 legal need that trans folks have is identity documents’

By HENRY CARNELL

A guy in America wants to buy a truck. They save money. They have built up good credit. They find a truck in their price range. They go to the dealership to buy it, but when the dealership puts the guy’s name through the system no credit shows up.

The problem? That guy is trans and had recently changed their name. “Due to the name change, I was credit invisible,” Luke Lennon explained. “This can happen often for trans and non-binary folks who change their name.” The kicker? “That piece is not the same for folks that change their name due to marriage.”

This is structural, not accidental, explains Lennon, who uses he/they/any pronouns. While name changes for marriage are accommodated by financial systems, “if you’re trans, you have to notify each creditor of your name change individually.” It is an equity problem: “For a community that already faces huge barriers to wealth building, this is a major issue.”

Lennon opted out of the truck. Without the financing options made available by good credit, the vehicle was outside of their price range. “I was getting just near predatory rates for loans at that point,” he says.

Truck dreams deferred. But he worried about people whose financial needs couldn’t be deferred, like needing a loan for medical care or housing. “For many, that could be a more high-stakes situation. It could put them in financial peril and result in more serious consequences.”

Lennon had already thought about leveraging his tech and business background toward helping his community with name changes, but the experience in the car dealership cemented how vital the service was. So, they launched Namesake Collaborative, a program to ease the burden of name changes for the trans community.

Getting his name changed at all was a grueling process in Lennon’s home state of Massachusetts, one of the most trans-friendly states in the country. Paperwork was long, confusing, and expensive — a big difference from the Boston FinTech scene he worked for where digital health startups were automating “complex paper-heavy processes to make them easier for end users.” When he sought out that type of service for name changes, they were only for cis women changing their names because of marriage.

Lennon’s instinct was in line with what trans advocates identified as one of the big-

gest needs in the state. MG Xiong, the program director at Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, shared that “the number one legal need that trans folks said that they have is their identity documents.” This comes from MTPC’s 2019 Comprehensive Needs Assessment Survey, but its need is mirrored nationally

“Filling out court forms is incredibly inaccessible to folks who are not looking at these types of forms on a regular basis or who do not have the knowledge of bureaucratic processes of court processes or legal language,” said Xiong. This stress does not include the fees, which can sometimes exceed $400 in Massachusetts. There is a patchwork of differing systems, forms, and expectations across jurisdictions, as Paisley Currah writes in his seminal book on the topic “Sex Is as Sex Does,” “the same individual has Fs on some state-issued documents and Ms on others.”

All this trouble means that only 11% of trans people in the U.S. have all identity documents that correctly reflect their name and gender, per the National Center for Trans Equality. The discrepancy is not just annoying or disheartening — it can be outright dangerous.

While MTPC’s small team raised money to aid in filing fees and led workshops to help, there was always more of a need than they could meet. So, when Lennon pitched a process that streamlined inaccessible forms, they jumped at the opportunity to collaborate. “It was a strategic decision for me to not try to take the traditional startup path,” he explained.

And their path was far from traditional. Instead of pitching to Venture Capital, the startup and non-profit duo drove around Massachusetts. Xiong explains that they and Luke went to “different community centers, bringing the services [directly] to the spaces that people are already in.”

Lennon had actually met the MTPC team at one of their workshops and appreciated the community building they fostered. He trusted the organization that had helped him with his name change to make sure the technology he was building would reach the trans community effectively.

After a beta period in 2021, Namesake launched as a website in 2022with input from community assessments. Despite being a tech startup, they kept it lower-tech. “We decided to operate on a no-code platform to be able to build something more quickly,” said Lennon. Since then, more than 500 transgender Massachusetts residents have used the program to complete gender and name changes.

A huge part of the program was built on lessening the load of process: getting different forms in one location and being able to fill them all out online in one standardized process. But it also met the need in terms of access in other ways. “We are getting gratitude for the simplicity of it.” Xiong said. “That it uses common and accessible language. It defines what certain court language or legal language means.”

Namesake is on the cusp of a new iteration, which will make it more user-friendly through an app version. Lennon has partnered with Computost, a worker-owned software consulting co-op that understood Namesakes’ values.

While always working to make the product more usable, Lennon is careful about keeping it more trans than tech. Lennon explains that the variability in the community is “often at odds with technology’s reductive approach to an ideal user profile or persona.”

The longer they work with Namesake, the more they are convinced, “I don’t think tech should ever be heralded as THE solution to anything, really.” He explains that their method of development is “using community-sharing knowledge in order to augment that technology.”

Lennon explains that he is more concerned with making a community than a traditional tech product. “A strong community also requires breaking the binary of ‘giver and receiver,’ which runs counter to much of the startup folklore around serving customers.” However, they “have compassion for any trans or queer person trying to solve a real problem for our communities through tech.”

Looking forward, Lennon explains that Namesake is “focused on creating something more fluid and communal, something that will ideally evolve with the community and help folks feel less alone throughout the process.”

(This story is part of the Digital Equity Local Voices Fellowship lab through News is Out. The lab initiative is made possible with support from Comcast NBCUniversal.)

KELSEY GRUNSTRA, TRE’ANDRE CARMEL VALENTINE, MG XIONG, and LUKE LENNON

Upcoming Dates & Locations

* May 18th 9am-3pm in DE

* May 25th - 26th in MD

* June 1st Dover Gay Pride, Dover set up 7am

* June 8th Car Show NJ

* June 15th Dover DE, 8am-9pm

* June 14th 15th 16th

MD Gay Pride

* June 29th Salisbury, MD Pride

* June 30th 9am-7pm Dover show

* Aug 2nd 3rd 4th Karma Fest

32oz Lemonade - $10

16oz Lemonade - $5

* June 22nd Lewes DE, 10am set up, show 1pm 6pm

* Aug 24th Harrington

* Sep 4th NJ Pride

Project 2025: Far right seeks to eliminate LGBTQ rights Plan

would alter post-WWII international order

By SIMHA HADDAD

A dystopian “Handmaid’s Tale” style future may soon be underway in the U.S., should former President Donald Trump and the Republicans seize the upcoming election. Backed by billions of dollars in funding, and more than 100 organizations, many of which are tied to hate groups and white nationalists, the far right’s laundry list of goals includes removing all women’s reproductive rights, and firing all LGBTQ employees.

This plan is called Project 2025, and it is terrifying for the minority groups it calls out.

In a recent Zoom discussion attended by the Blade, Wendy Via and Heidi Beirich, co-founders of the advocacy group the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), shed light on the disturbing realities of the far-right’s manifesto that has gained surprisingly little media coverage thus far.

Project 2025, led by the far-right Heritage Foundation and supported by 100 organizations, is a 920-page plan aimed at reshaping America into a more authoritarian and Christian Nationalist state.

The plan threatens to roll back constitutional rights for women, LGBTQ people, immigrants, and people of color, and proposes centralizing power in the executive branch. Project 2025 aims to radically reshape the U.S. government, systematically dismantling protections for LGBTQ individuals, women, people of color, immigrants, and disabled individuals.

One excerpt from Project 2025 reads: “The next conservative President must make the institutions of Amer-

ican civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion, gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.”

Project 2025 entails a coordinated attack on people of color and immigrants, proposing measures such as militarizing the border and executing mass deportations. Further proposals include re-assigning control of the FBI to the president, giving the ruler of the free world the power to turn the FBI on anyone not following through on the rules outlines by Project 2025.

Trump’s plan to increase law enforcement and military presence, coupled with the potential use of the DOJ and FBI to target marginalized groups, raises alarms about civil rights protections.

The militarization of law enforcement under Project 2025 threatens the safety and freedoms of vulnerable populations, and all those who do not fall under the category of cisgender heterosexual, white, Christians.

Authors of Project 2025 seek to erase terms like “gender identity” and “diversity” from government language, further marginalizing LGBTQ individuals. The plan also includes proposals to demonize the LGBTQ community, painting them as societal threats through various government agencies.

Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) and a Project 2025 adviser, continues to promote controversial Christian Nationalist views. At a Phoenix rally, he compared the fight against “wokeness” to World War II battles against totalitarianism. TPUSA, with significant financial backing, actively promotes conservative values and opposes LGBTQ rights.

The project calls for the removal of LGBTQ protections in employment, education, and adoption, and aims

to criminalize gender-affirming care. LGBTQ individuals face the threat of job termination and increased legal persecution under this plan.

Under these rules, anyone who can be proven or, perhaps, even suspected of being hired under Diversity and Inclusion initiatives, would be fired.

Christian nationalism is a keystone in shaping Project 2025, which includes efforts to restrict reproductive rights in addition to LGBTQ issues. The plan’s advocates seek to make the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) federal law, promoting Christian traditional family values at the expense of individual freedoms.

This includes allowing orphanages to turn away potential adopters who adhere to any faith other than Christianity. Further, Project 2025 threatens to eradicate adoptions as a whole, as the manifesto calls for a child’s “right” to be raised by their mother and father, regardless of the economic and/or mental states of said parents. The act would also limit or eliminate the right to practice one’s religion of choice, thereby annihilating the separation of church and state.

Project 2025 extends to altering the post-WWII international order, challenging established human rights declarations. Plans to fire civil servants and replace them with political appointees were also discussed, raising concerns about the impartiality and stability of federal agencies.

One zoom attendee voiced concerns about the defunding of LGBTQ nonprofits and the potential for increased investigations and demonization of organizations working with immigrants. The implementation of Project 2025 through executive orders by a conservative president poses a substantial risk to this concern.

Emphasizing the critical need to act now, speakers highlighted the growth of a far-right international network since Trump’s presidency, which could lead to the criminalization of LGBTQ individuals. The overturning of landmark cases like Lawrence v. Texas could pave the way for further legal persecution.

Beloved philanthropist Bruce Bastian dies at 76

Bruce Bastian, a successful Utah businessman and pioneering computer software developer who co-founded the word processing company WordPerfect before becoming a beloved philanthropist who donated millions of dollars to LGBTQ rights causes and the performing arts, passed away on June 16, according to an announcement by the LGBTQ organization Equality Utah.

“No individual has had a greater impact on the lives of LGBTQ Utahns,” Fox 13 TV News of Salt Lake City quoted Equality Utah Executive Director Troy Williams as saying. “Every success our community has achieved over the past three decades can be traced directly back to Bruce,” Williams was quoted as saying.

Fox 13 reported that Bastian co-created a word-processing program that later became WordPerfect as a graduate

student at Brigham Young University with co-founder Alan Ashton, who was a Brigham Young computer science professor. The two developed the software under contract with the city of Orem, Utah, but they retained ownership of it, according to Fox 13.

“Bruce was definitely a legend, running one of the most successful companies, and an out and proud gay individual,” his friend David Parkinson said in a 2022 interview with Equality Utah, Fox 13 reports. “Not only does he give his money, but he gives his time, he gives his connections, he gives his knowledge, to help change Utah,” Parkinson told Equality Utah, of which Bastian was a founding member.

Fox 13 reports that among the organizations to which Bastian was a generous supporter and financial donor were the Utah AIDS Foundation, Utah’s Plan-B Theatre, the Utah Symphony and Opera and Ballet West, and the University of Utah.

A Wikipedia article on Bastian’s life and career says that in 2003, he donated more than $1 million to the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization. It says he donated $1.7 million in 1997 for the renovation of the University of Utah’s Kingsbury Hall in 2000 donated $1.3 million to support the university’s purchase of

55 Steinway pianos. The article says he also supported the university’s LGBTQ Resource Center on campus.

Both Fox 13 and Wikipedia report that in 2010 President Barack Obama appointed Bastian to the Presidential Advisory Committee of the Arts.

Wikipedia, citing the OUTWORDS archive, reports that Bastian was born March 23, 1948, in Twin Falls, Idaho, was raised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and served as a missionary in Italy. It says he received a bachelor’s degree in music and a master’s degree in computer science from Brigham Young University. As an undergraduate, he served as director of the university’s Cougar Marching Band, the article says.

It says Bastian married Melanie Laycock in 1976 and the couple had four sons before they divorced in 1993. It says Bastian later married Clint Ford.

“Bruce’s impact reached far beyond Utah, as a leading supporter of the national marriage equality movement, and a major benefactor and board member of the Human Rights Campaign,” the Equality Utah statement says, as reported by Fox 13. “He has been a rock and pillar for all of us,” the statement continues.

LOU CHIBBARO JR.

Former President Trump speaks at Heritage Foundation event in 2018. (Screenshot/YouTube PBS NewsHour)

BRUCE BASTIAN

(Screen capture via Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube)

EMMA CIESLIK

served as a historian for this year’s Pride Interfaith Service.

Reflecting on Center Faith’s Pride interfaith service

Much work to be done before welcoming the world in 2025

“We must not rest! We must not rest! We must not rest!” These words rang out in Foundry Methodist Church during Center Faith’s recent 2024 Pride Interfaith Service. Rev. Cathy Alexander, associate pastor at the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC)-Washington, DC, implored everyone in attendance to keep fighting “until the doors of churches and temples and houses of faith open wide in welcome to all people.” She quoted Reverend Troy Perry, founder of the first MCC church in 1968, from the 2000 Millennium March for Equality.

It was a moving reminder of the many LGBTQ elders who have passed on, who have fought for LGBTQ rights today and made this service, held in a rainbow draped church, possible. This was especially meaningful as this year’s service also remembered Allan Armas — co-founder of the Pride Interfaith Service — who died this past October.

Held on a drizzly evening, the service began with an opening drum call to gather by members of the Unity Fellowship Church of Washington, D.C., and a procession of all presenters. Church Elder and Unity Fellowship Pastor Akosua McCray offered a libation to the ancestors, like Armas, who won many of the rights that LGBTQ individuals have today. “Let us together call out their names and invite their spirit here today,” McCray shared. “Carlton Smith,” an attendee shouted from the back. “Allan Armus,” said another. “Marsha P. Johnson.” “Bishop Thomas Gumbleton.” With each name, McCray filled a red vase with water in their honor.

Thus commenced the 41st annual Pride Interfaith Service, focused on the radical past, present, and future of LGBTQ interfaith action in the nation’s capital. The three-part service resonated with Capital Pride’s theme of “Totally Radical!” and included representatives from the DC LGBTQ+ Community Center and Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs. McCray’s Libation was the first part of the creation and blessing of a sacred space, featuring a call to the elements, directions and divine by Jonathan White of Stone Circle Wicca, a call to prayer by Nabeel Kirmani and translated by Sister Michelle Munson of Muslims for Progressive Values, and an opening prayer by Rev. Thomas Wieczorek from the National Catholic Church, among others.

GenOut Chorus, the youth chorus for the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, D.C., provided music, opening with Philip Silvey’s “Always a Place for You.” Their song began a reflection on the radical origins of the Pride Interfaith Service all the way back to the 1960s. Reverend Elder Robert “Michael” Vanzant, a Doctor of Theology at the Faith Temple and one of the pioneers of the Pride Interfaith Service, recounted his own journey from a fundamentalist rural Southern community all the way to the steps of the Temple Church of God in Christ on Sunday, Sept. 19, 1982.

Together, he and 16 others “embraced being same-gender loving and created a gathering of predominantly people of color, called a Third World gathering, to create a community for our sacred selves.” They gathered with signs, his reading “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all people” (Isaiah 56:&, Mark 11:17), after a Church elder Dr. James Tenney was told by the Bishop that by including LGBTQ+ individuals at All Souls Church DC, he had excommunicated himself from the Church. The bishop warned that Tenney’s problem was that he had no shame so the group gathered that Sunday morning before and after church “bearing witchess that we lived our lives without shame.” Thus Faith Temple was born.

Rev. Cathy Alexander reflected on MCC’s own history, followed by Rev. Eric Eldrith, Pa-

gan clergy with Circle Sanctuary, Kirmani, Jonathan White, myself, and Armas’s best friend cellist John Kaboff sharing fond memories and words of love and life about Armas. Eldritch spoke to Armas’s radical welcome of him as an ex-ex-gay fundamentalist to a Radical Faerie to Pagan clergy at Circle Sanctuary. This tribute spoke to the importance of all including faith communities beyond Abrahamic traditions. Pagan, Wiccan, and folk magic communities have for centuries been places of belonging and acceptance for LGBTQ+ people but are normally excluded from LGBTQ+ religious historical narratives. Armas challenged this exclusion.

“His deeply held Jewish faith,” White explained, “led him to care passionately about justice and liberation for all people, especially LGBTQ+ people, and to pursue justice as part of his own spiritual journey. He was humane, kind, thoughtful--he was a mensch. May his memory be a blessing.” He led his community surrounded by elders until he himself became one; one of the far too few LGBTQ+ elders who see the realization of their efforts. White celebrated this queer elderhood in Armas’s faith community, of bringing his experiences and wisdom to the community he helped to create. Kaboff played a Jewish funeral piece--one performed at an annual memorial service Armas founded, and Rabbi Jake Beilin-Singer blew the shofar, an instrument sounded during High Holy Day services, in recognition of his leadership.

Armas’s radical welcome has made LGBTQ faith experiences possible, from radical living as interfaith families, to radical justice through collective liberation, to radical presents through living as authentic selves, and radical leadership through DC’s LGBTQ+ religious leaders including the first lesbian rabbi, Julie Spitzer, at the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation in 1987. Even radical pride from that first Pride Interfaith Service in 1983.

During this time when over 500 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in state legislatures across the country, lay member of Sunstone Chapel Ebony C. Peace called us to remember, “hatred continues to come our way in full force because our liberation threatens their control. The liberation of all people threatens them. They are coming at us strong because we ourselves have become stronger.” It is only through love, Peace shared, that we can drive out hatred. This was especially true when two protestors interrupted the service, and were met with all attendees singing “This Little Light of Mine” to drown out their voices as ushers escorted them outside.

The service ended by envisioning this future of love, including radical inclusive love in faith communities and interfaith relationships that imagine a future of collaboration with newly established groups like Queerly Gathered, introduced by Presbyterian minister Matt Nabinger and Cali Bronkema.

Richmond looked ahead toward World Pride to be held in D.C. in 2025. Just as attendees committed this year’s service to “demonstrating the breath, depth, and sincerity of our faith, exposing the lie that anti-gay fundamentalists have a monopoly on faith and religion,” Pride Interfaith Service planner Jonah Richmond shared, next year’s service will include people from around the world remembering their LGBTQ religious histories, celebrating their presents, and pushing for LGBTQ+ religious liberation and community. It will celebrate LGBTQ elders of faith from around the world. As Alexander said, we must not rest! There is much work to be done before welcoming the world at the next service on June 3, 2025.

ROSENSTEIN:

PETER ROSENSTEIN

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

Is D.C. prepared for World Pride? Not just yet An incredible opportunity for the city to shine

The 2024 Pride parade and festival in D.C. were a tremendous success. Congratulations to all who worked so hard on this at Capital Pride, and others, including the mayor’s office, to make it a success. Now it’s onward to the next event, WorldPride 2025.

From all accounts, WorldPride celebrations around the world have been amazing. From Tel Aviv, to Rome, to Sidney, millions have enjoyed them. It is an event awarded to a city by InterPride, the international Pride organization. In 2025, from May 23-June 8, it is D.C.’s turn to shine. The event was awarded to the Capital Pride Alliance. While I know the great people in D.C. can handle this event, I have real concerns over whether the city as a whole will be ready. It will take an incredible amount of work and coordination, to prepare for close to three million people who will descend on D.C. in less than a year.

Since I moved to D.C. in October 1978, it has been a place that supports the LGBTQ community. That was the year Marion Barry was first elected mayor. In early 1979, I attended a dinner, even though not yet out, of what was then called the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club. Barry spoke and thanked the leaders of the Club, and the “GLBT community,” that is what we were called then, for helping him win the mayoralty. Today the club is called the Stonewall Democratic Club. I quickly got involved in the civic life of D.C., and local politics. Over the years there were members of the community on the Council, including Jim Graham and David Catania. Today, Zachary Parker represents Ward 5. As an activist, I have always had positive interactions with the mayors and Council.

Recently, the Washington Post had a column on how much the D.C. Council has placed in the budget for the LGBTQ community. It includes grants for housing, and for the new LGBTQ Community Center. It also has about $5 million for World Pride. It was sad to see some of the negative online comments, some asking why the money wasn’t being spent instead on the poor. Part of the problem is that it was a poorly written column. While talking about WorldPride as good for the economy of the city, it left out any detail, easy to calculate, on how good it will be. How much money will be spent in D.C. by the millions coming here for those two weeks. How much the city will add to its tax revenues. How much small businesses will make and how this benefits workers. This information would have helped people better understand the investment the city is making. I don’t think the budget investment is big enough. This is a giant undertaking, and I’m not sure there are enough people involved. This will be a citywide, multi-state event, because of our close-in suburbs. At least it should be. There should be planning for events in all eight wards of the city. Council members and community leaders in each ward, should be working on events, ensuring the businesses and residents in their wards feel a part of, and benefit from, the huge influx of tourists to our city. There will be concerts, dances, sporting events, and a Human Rights Conference. Potentially there could be an HIV/AIDS conference, as major research is going on in D.C.

I question whether those planning for this event have had serious discussions with airlines, and global companies like Amazon, and FedEx, to involve them in funding and sponsoring events. Is there a committee working to involve all the embassies, in

planning events beyond a float in the parade? They will all have attendees from their countries here. Like it or not, there will be issues with visas and passports, and people will need help solving their issues. Then there is the worldwide press operation. I can imagine that could be set up in the convention center, or other facility. If D.C. is to get the kind of long-term public relations promotion such an event should bring, organizing that is crucial.

How is the planning group liaising with Congress? How are the couple of hundred members of the Equality Caucus involved? This is the time for them to show their support, while thousands of their own constituents will be visiting D.C. for the event. Maybe WorldPride is time to encourage another push to pass the Equality Act. If Democrats take the House, keep the Senate, and Biden is president, we could pass it. It’s important to bring together HRC, the Victory Fund, the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce, the National Center for Transgender Equality, Trevor Project, Carr Center at Harvard, among others, to work on this and other issues. Each will contribute what they can and each will have ideas. Have the LGBTQ staffing groups on the Hill been involved with WorldPride yet? Then has the Capital Pride Alliance reached out to all the LGBTQ groups in the federal agencies, or to the wealth of talent within the leadership of groups like Whitman-Walker, SMYAL, and the LGBTQ+ Center, as well as those in the surrounding suburbs of Virginia and Maryland? Everyone should be involved.

It is important to find a way to ensure visitors from around the world have a way to easily access information about all the events that will take place during the two weeks of WorldPride, as they plan their trips. This information can be shared through all the embassies, and worldwide press. We know many events, and venues, will require tickets, and reservations. Any traveler knows, having this information well in advance, clearly helps make for a successful trip. The information shared could include information on potential add-on trips to Rehoboth Beach, and other venues.

One of the things we cannot know, is who will be president of the United States at that time. If it is Joe Biden, we are fine. If, God forbid, it’s Donald Trump, that could be scary. How would that impact how federal agencies get involved, how about Homeland Security? All contingencies need to be prepared for.

WorldPride will bring together people from across the country. Young people from San Francisco to rural Mississippi, places where being out is not yet so easy. We must showcase how being free to be who you are will make your life better. We need to showcase the best of the LGBTQ community, and show the world here in the United States, we are working to be truly equal and free. We need to involve all those who support us, and who we support. That includes the corporate community, police departments, and the military. We have fought long and hard to get their support, now is the time for us and them to be proud of it.

We have an incredible opportunity for D.C., and the entire United States, to shine. I urge those doing the planning to involve as many people as you can. Reach out, and let each person, and each group, take an active role in this venture. WorldPride 2025 will be better if you do.

SOUGHT-AFTER ARBOR-LYN!

Residents of Silver Spring’s Rosemary Hills neighborhood have come together to rebuild a Pride sign.

The sign was constructed in June 2020, and was meant to stay in place throughout Pride month. Neighborhood residents, however, requested it stay up past its intended month-long display, and has remained in place for more than four years.

The sign spelling LOVE is at the neighborhood’s entrance between Sundale and Richmond Streets. It was made from plywood and the O was painted in the colors of the Pride a

“We wanted to take it down, but we just felt it was not ours anymore and belonged to the neighborhood.” Tony Brown told the Washington Blade during a telephone interview. “It was a positive thing for the neighborhood and began to take on a life of its own.”

Brown and his partner, Mike Heffner, designed the sign and said the Black Lives Matter movement inspired them to create it as a strong symbol of an accepting community.

The sign was vandalized numerous times last fall, resulting in neighborhood residents taking turns repairing it. Brown and his partner could not do the repairs themselves because effner was fi htin ta e 4 lun cancer

Heffner passed away on Oct. 6, 2023.

A GoFundMe page was set up to help raise funds for the replacement Pride sign, and it has raised more than 4 he replacement si n is more permanent and

By SEAN KOPEREK

Silver Spring Pride sign rebuilt in memory of beloved neighbor o und e campai n raises more than 4

made of metal.

“I can’t speak for the neighborhood overall, but people who knew Mike I think are happy that we were able to honor his memory with this sign because this sign is so him,” Molly Chehak, a friend who lives next door to Brown, told the Blade. “[Heffner] was an outgoing super social (person) who just made you feel good the way this sign does. It’s a perfect tribute to him.”

Heffner’s family and his neighbors are still working to rebuild the Pride sign. It has become a memorial to Heffner.

“We wanted to do one that was clearly a Pride reference said rown notin the is a full painted Pride a that spirals across the entire letter.

“For the O we wanted to do something reminiscent of times in the past, a throwback to the 60’s and 70’s so it’s a hippie monta e of owers and butter ies he said

Brown described the V as being colorful, nonbinary people hugging each other with the idea that love is more than what one may see.

“During COVID, he had started painting rocks and putting kind and fun messages on them leaving them around places as sort of a pay it forward Karma and so the E is basically that stylized writing and to embrace a bunch of ways we embrace love,” he said.

he final letter had the phrase love is love written re peatedly in various handwritings to pay homage to Heffner and what he did for his neighborhood during the pandemic. Brown’s four daughters — one of whom is a professional artist — and their friends designed it.

The landscape around the sign has also been transformed with rocks that honor Heffner’s love for Rosemary Hills and his passion for rocks.

Chehak also said Heffner always wanted a bench, and neighbors are looking to install one soon next to the Pride sign.

Chehak and other neighbors created the GoFundMe account.

Tony Brown’s neighbors help repaint the Pride sign his late partner created in their Silver Spring, Md., neighborhood.

(Photo courtesy of Molly Chehak)

Friday, June 21

CALENDAR |

Center Aging Friday Tea Time will be at 2 p.m. on Zoom. This is a social hour for older LGBTQ+ adults. Guests are encouraged to bring a beverage of choice. For more information, email adamheller@thedccenter.org.

“LGBTQ+ Pride Comedy Series” will be at 8:30 p.m. at DC Comedy Clubhouse. Get ready to celebrate love, diversity and unity through comedy. Tickets cost $15 and are available on Eventbrite.

Saturday, June 22

GoGay DC will host “Pride Month Brunch” at 11 a.m. at Freddie’s Beach Bar & Restaurant. This fun weekly event brings the DMV area LGBTQ+ community, including allies, together for delicious food and conversation. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.

GoGay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Pride Month Social in the City” at 7 p.m. at Hotel Zena. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.

Sunday, June 23

GoGay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Pride Month Funday Social and Games” at 3 p.m. at Moxy. There will be monopoly, chess, checkers, Jenga and many other games. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.

AfroCode DC will be at 4 p.m. at Decades DC. This event will be an experience of nonstop music, dancing, and good vibes and a crossover of genres and a fusion of cultures. Tickets cost $40 and can be purchased on Eventbrite.

Monday, June 24

Center Aging: Monday Coffee & Conversation will be at 10 a.m. on Zoom. This is a social hour for older LGBTQ+ adults. Guests are encouraged to bring a beverage of their choice. For more details, email justin@thedccenter.org.

“Queer Book Club” will be at 6:30 p.m. on Zoom. This month’s reading is “Glitter + Ashes: Queer Tales of a World that Wouldn’t Die.” For more details, email supportdesk@ thedccenter.org.

OUT & ABOUT

Orioles to host Pride night on June 27

The Baltimore Orioles will host “LGBTQ+ Pride Night” on Thursday, June 27. There will be a live DJ at Legends Park before the 6:35 p.m. game against the reigning World Series champion Texas Rangers. The event, co-sponsored by the Washington Blade, will feature Pridethemed activities such as Pride face painting, a 360 photo booth, Pride temporary tattoos, and more. All these events will be in the Bullpen Picnic Area. In addition, the first 10,000 attendees receive a free Pride jersey.

For more details, visit the Orioles’ website.

The Baltimore Orioles host the annual Pride night Thursday, June 27. (Photo courtesy of the Baltimore Orioles)

By TINASHE CHINGARANDE

Tuesday, June 25

Pride on the Patio Events will host “LGBTQ Social Mixer” at 5:30 p.m. at Showroom. Dress is casual, fancy, or comfortable. Guests are encouraged to bring their most authentic self to chat, laugh, and get a little crazy. Admission is free and more details are on Eventbrite.

“Coming Out Discussion Group” will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This is a peer-facilitated discussion group and a safe space to share experiences about coming out and discuss topics as it relates to doing so. For more details, visit the group’s Facebook page.

Wednesday, June 26

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.

Thursday, June 27

The DC Center’s Fresh Produce Program will be held all day at the DC Center for the LGBT Community. No proof of residency or income is required. For more information, email supportdesk@thedccenter.org or call 202-682-2245.

Virtual Yoga with Charles M. will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This is a free weekly class focusing on yoga, breathwork, and meditation. For more details, visit the DC Center for the LGBT Community’s website.

All charged up: BMW i7 xDrive60

Fairy dust goes a long way in this all-electric luxe sedan

By JOE PHILLIPS

Sometimes it’s good to be a fairy godmother. That’s how it was for me when organizing a surprise dinner party for my husband Robert, who was celebrating a milestone birthday.

Event planning isn’t my thing, yet somehow the stars aligned. It seemed like all I had to do was wave a wand and — voila! — the magic began.

Make reservations at a fave intimate restaurant, which often gets booked months in advance? Zing! Ensure that family and childhood friends from across the country could all attend the same weekend? Zing! Find a handsome pianist to serenade us with Broadway show tunes. Zing again!

The only thing missing: a stunning chariot. But then, at the last minute, my test car for the week turned out to be— zing! —the all-electric BMW i7 xDrive60 glam sedan.

BMW i7 xDrive60

$121,000

MPGe: 87 city/95 highway Range: 291 to 321 miles

Fastest charging time: 212 miles in 34 minutes (80% charged)

PROS: Hyper fast. Sublime cabin. Dazzling tech.

CONS: Pricey. So-so cargo area. A sedan in a world of SUVs.

IN A NUTSHELL: To drive or not to drive, that’s the question with the BMW i7. Rarely is it more exciting to be the passenger than the driver in a sports sedan, especially a Bimmer. But as I chauffeured my husband to the restaurant on his birthday, he seemed to be having way too much fun enjoying the dizzying array of creature comforts.

Spa treatment. The futuristic seats, made of quilted Merino leather, are as plush and comfortable as anything from Roche Bobois. But the optional cashmere/wool fabric looks and feels even better. All seats—both front and rear—come with ventilation and heating that activates much quicker than in most cars. The superb massage

function does bodywork like a real masseur—but without the need to tip 20% when your session ends.

Concert-hall acoustics. Other high-priced rides offer premium audio, but the standard Bowers & Wilkens stereo in the i7 is bravo: 18 speakers and 655 watts. Better yet, my test car had the much-ballyhooed Diamond Surround Sound System, with 36 speakers powered by a 1965-watt amplifier. Yes, two of those speakers use actual diamonds to increase clarity. The result is perhaps the best-sounding vehicle acoustics ever.

IMAX-like screen. The Rear Executive Lounge Seating package adds a reclining right rear seat with footrest and a center console with foldable table that serves as a floating desk. Think first-class seating on an airplane. Most impressive is the huge, 31-inch 8K theater screen that drops down from the ceiling and comes with Amazon Fire capability. All rear window shades lower and the panoramic-glass roof shade closes when in theater mode. Built tastefully into the armrest on each rear door is what looks like an Apple iPhone to control the rear lighting, movie screen and other functions. Any home theater system should be so good.

Racecar features. Up front, the driver is spoiled with many other goodies. A curved digital screen, the same as in the cutting-edge BMW iX SUV, houses a 12.3-inch instrument cluster and 14.9-inch infotainment monitor. Two motors—one for each axle—creates an impressive 536-horsepower. Press the accelerator and— whoosh!—the i7 sprints from 0 to 60 mph in just 4.1 seconds. The amazing auto-leveling suspension absorbs potholes and speed bumps as if this 6,000-pound sedan were floating on air.

Rolls-Royce aura. BMW, which also owns Rolls-Royce, has sprinkled the i7 with stately design cues. This includes softer, more graceful styling and none of the severe, chiseled angles of previous BMWs. Other plusses: Swarovski crystals in the headlights and 22 precision-focused LEDs in the high beams. But the illuminated grille, while impressive, has a more ominous vibe. (Stephen King’s Christine, anyone?)

Full-size comfort. The i7 is a full-figured ride, more than 17-feet long and 6.4-feet wide. Here’s where the automatic parking comes in handy, allowing this BMW to parallel or perpendicular park itself. Trunk capacity is 18 cubic feet, which is decent but less than some competitors. Inside, though, there are plenty of clever storage compartments.

A pretty penny. Full of options, my test car was a wallet-busting $152,000. But that’s a bargain—well, sort of—compared with the high-performance i7 M70. With 650 horsepower and a 0-to-60 time of 3.5 seconds, the M70 is the fastest all-electric M car ever made. It also costs $169,000.

Alas, such sticker prices are too rich for my blood. Sorry Robert, maybe if we win the lottery.

BMW i7 xDrive60

Sophie Zmorrod embracing life on the road in ‘Kite Runner’

First national tour comes to Eisenhower Theater on June 25

By PATRICK FOLLIARD

Newly single, Sophie Zmorrod is enjoying life on the road in the first national tour of “The Kite Runner,” Matthew Spangler’s play with music based on Khaled Hosseini’s gripping novel about damaged relationships and longed for redemption.

“It’s a wonderful time for me,” says Zmorrod. “I’m past the breakup pain and feeling empowered to explore new cities. A lot of us in the cast are queer, so we figure out the scene wherever the show goes.”

What’s more, the New York-based actor has fallen in love with the work. “I love how the play’s central character Amir is flawed. He is our antihero. He has faults. As a privileged boy in Kabul, he bears witness to his best friend’s assault and doesn’t intervene. He lives with that guilt for decades and gets that redemption in the end.”

“He does what he can to right wrongs. For me who’s regretted things, and wished I could go back in time, it resonates. Watching someone forgive themselves and do the right thing is beautiful.”

Via phone from Chicago (the tour’s stop before moving on to Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater on June 25), Zmorrod, whose background is Lebanese, happily chats about sexuality, ethnicity, and acting.

WASHINGTON BLADE: Looking at your resume, I see you’ve been cast in roles traditionally played by men. And have you played queer characters?

SOPHIE ZMORROD: Oh yes, both. Whether or not they’re written on the page as queer, they sometimes turn out that way. And that holds true for this show too.

With “The Winter’s Tale” at Trinity Rep, I played Leontes — the king who banishes his wife — as a woman. So, in that production it was about two women and touched on the violence that women sometimes inflict on other women.

And there was Beadle Bamford in Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd” also at Trinity Rep; I played him as a woman who was masculine and wore a suit. It was a great opportunity to explore myself and gender expression. That was a really good experience.

BLADE: Are you an actor who’s often be called in for queer roles?

ZMORRAD: Not really. I’m what you might call straight passing. Sometimes I’ve had to advocate for my queerness. To be a part of something.

Similarly with my ethnicity. I’m called in to audition for the white and Arab roles. It gets tricky because I’m not the exactly the white girl next door and I’m not exactly Jasmine from Disney’s “Aladdin” either.

This is one of the reasons, I really want people to come see “The Kite Runner,” Audiences need to experience the reality of the wide diversity of Middle Eastern people on the stage. We’re all very different.

And not incidentally, from this 14-person cast, I’ve met some great people to add to those I know from the Middle Eastern affinity spaces and groups I’m connected to in New York.

BLADE: In “The Kite Runner” what parts do you play?

ZMORRAD: Three characters. All women, I think. In the first act, I’m an elderly eccentric pomegranate seller in the Afghan market, waddling around, speaking in Dari [the lingua franca of Afghanistan]; and the second act, I’m young hip and sell records in a San Francisco market; and at the end, I’m a buttoned-down American immigration bureaucrat advising Amir about adoption.

BLADE: Your training is impressive: BA cum laude in music from Columbia University, an MFA in acting from Brown University/Trinity Repertory Company, and you’re also accomplished in opera and playwrighting, to name a few things. Does “The Kite Runner” allow you to flex your many muscles?

ZMORROD: Very much. Playing multiple roles is always fun for an actor – we like malleability. Also, there are instruments on stage. I like working with the singing bowl; it’s usually used in yoga as a soothing sound, but here we save it for the dramatic, uncomfortable moments. I also sing from offstage.

We are creating the world of the play on a very minimal set. Oh, and we do kite flying, and I’m able to use the some of the languages I speak. So yeah, lots of challenges. It’s great.

BLADE: It sounds like you’re in a good place both professionally and personally. ZMORROD: It’s taken a long time to feel comfortable. My being gay was never something I led with. But I’m on the journey and excited to be where I am, and who I am.

‘The Kite Runner’

June 25 - 30 | The Kennedy Center

$39-$149 | Kennedy-center.org

SOPHIE ZMORROD (Photo courtesy of Zmorrod)

OPEN HOUSE SUNDAY 1-4PM

This is an absolutely stunning modernization of this classic 1928 condo. Your buyer will love you for showing them unit 6A and its BEAUTIFUL $50,000+ MAKEOVER!!! Be the first to enjoy this almost NEW 871 sf 2BR/2BA home! There is vinyl plank flooring throughout this beautiful home. Recessed lighting has been added to the living room and kitchen along with a new ceiling fan with light in the living room. Both bedrooms have been fitted with ceiling fans with light. Each bedroom has two closets. The dated kitchen was gutted and renewed with cabinets, quartz counter tops, stainless steel appliances, under and over cabinet lighting. Extra cabinets have been added for additional storage and counter space. Enjoy the convenience of the laundry closet which has been modified to accommodate side-by-side washer and dryer with shelving for storage. The en-suite bathrooms were gutted from floor to ceiling replacing everything but the tubs and windows. Of course, the unit was freshly painted in a neutral color scheme. Don’t miss out on this beautiful new light filled oasis, your comfortable retreat! Building has an elevator, extra storage and bike storage. Great location – in the heart of Mt. Pleasant, close to two metros, right down the street from the National Zoo, Rock Creek Park, shops, and restaurants. You will be only minutes to Woodley Park, Columbia Heights, and Adams Morgan.

PBS

‘Disco’ is a Pride party you don’t want to miss

Rich collection of footage highlighting the music and fashion of the time

By JOHN PAUL KING

Anyone who was alive and old enough to listen to the radio in the 1970s knows that disco wasn’t just a genre of music. It was an entire lifestyle, centered around dancing in nightclubs to music that meshed R&B with new electronic sounds and an infectiously up-tempo beat - and at the height of its popularity, it had bled into the entire American culture. Every TV theme or movie soundtrack was flavored with a disco vibe, every musician seeking a comeback recorded a disco record, and every would-be dance dandy dreamed of sporting a pair of “angel flight” slacks to the disco every Saturday night.

If you didn’t live through it yourself, most of what you might know about this era is likely gleaned from its popular culture – the hot radio singles, the popular movies like “Saturday Night Fever,” the kitschy crossovers like “Hooked On Classics” and parodies like “Disco Duck” – after the skyrocketing popularity of the phenomenon had made it a golden ticket for anyone who wanted to capitalize on it. They were crossovers into the homogenizing mainstream, intended to commercialize the disco frenzy for consumers beyond the record stores and nightclubs, which became cultural touchstones, for better or for worse; but because their campy shadows still loom so large, anyone whose understanding of the “disco craze” has been gleaned only from TV or the movies is likely to remember it as a little more than a fun-but-silly footnote in late 20th-century American history.

Fortunately, PBS and BBC Studios have unveiled a new docuseries that sets the record straight – or perhaps we should say it “queers” the record, because it offers a detailed and savvy chronicle that illuminates the ties that bind the story of disco inextricably with an essential chapter of modern queer history, revealing its link to the liberation movement that blossomed in the ‘70s and continues to weave its thread through American society today.

Produced and directed by Louise Lockwood and Shianne Brown, “Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution” – which broadcast its first episode on June 18, and is available for streaming in its entirety for subscribers via the PBS website – charts disco’s origins, success, and demise across a trio of episodes for a comprehensive look at the whirlwind of forces that surrounded and catapulted it into American consciousness. It explores the phenomenon as a vibrant and thrillingly inclusive cultural wave that originated within a blended underground of marginalized communities in New York City, at private loft parties and underground dance clubs, and grew until it had saturated the world –carrying with it a sense of empowerment, tangible in the opportunity and elevation it offered to artists who were queer, female or people of color, yet welcoming anybody who wanted to join the dance with open arms. It was a chance to celebrate, to feel good and have fun after an intense period of social strife in America, which meant it went hand-in-hand with the sexual liberation that was also exploding across society, and it came with a laidback vibe that gave you permission to let loose in ways that would have shocked your parents; in retrospect, it’s hard to imagine how anybody could resist.

Yet of course, there were people who did; and when the juggernaut that was disco inevitably began to lose steam as a result of its ubiquity in pop culture and the perceived decadence of its hedonistic lifestyle, it was their voices that emerged to tell us all that “Disco Sucks”

- a catch phrase that is perhaps almost as much a cultural touchstone as some of the genre’s biggest hit records.

That’s the broad overview that most people who remember the disco era already know, but “Soundtrack of a Revolution” gets much more granular than that. Much of the enlightening detail is provided, as one might expect, through a rich collection of contemporary footage highlighting the sights and sounds – the people, the parties, the music, the clubs, the fashion – of the time. Counterpoint to that material, however, comes through modern day interviews with key figures who were present for it all, whose memories help connect the dots between the evolution of disco and the societal environment in which it took place.

Of course, most audiences who are drawn to a documentary about disco will likely be coming – at least partly – for the music, and fortunately, this one gives us plenty of that, too. Better still, it gives us deep dives into some of the most iconic tracks of the seventies, not just spotlighting the artists who recorded them, but the DJs and tastemakers whose ideas and innovations built the very sound that fueled it all. Some of these pioneers may be gone, but they are represented via archival footage, and many who are still among us offer up their insider perspectives through candid filmed interviews that are woven throughout the series. There’s a first-person reliability that comes from allowing these participants in the history to tell their own part of it for themselves, and it gives the series an atmosphere of authenticity – not to mention an influx of free-wheeling, colorful personality – that can’t be achieved through the observations and analysis of expert “talking head” commentators.

It’s these voices that also help to impress upon us the feeling of freedom and acceptance that developed in those early disco clubs, where people from minority cultures could come together and feel safe as they danced to music that came from others like them, and the frustration of watching as it was co-opted by a (mostly white and heterosexual) mainstream and watered down into a pale mockery of itself – something that “killed” disco long before hate-fueled backlash from a racist, misogynistic, homophobic culminated in the infamous anti-disco rally at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, as documented in the series’ final episode.

Yet although it stops short of blaming homophobia and bigotry for the genre’s collapse, “Soundtrack of a Revolution” leaves no doubt of its influence over the environment that surrounded it, nor of the impact of the subsequent AIDS crisis on stopping the advance of queer liberation that was at the heart of the disco movement in its tracks – and in an election year that might make the difference between preserving or dismantling the ideal of Equality in America, the story of disco’s audacious rise and ignoble fall feels like a particularly apt warning message from the past.

Even so, one of the many gifts of the series is that it reveals a continuing creative lineage that, far from being cut off with the “death” of disco, has gone on to evolve and expand into new genres of dance and musical expression. Disco, it seems, never really died; it just went undercover and continued to develop, reinventing itself to meet the taste and match the needs of new generations along the way.

We could all take a lesson from that.

Studio 54 in 1977.

How much fighting is OK in a relationship?

I love my boyfriend but we can’t agree on anything

By MICHAEL RADKOWSKY

Dear Michael,

How much arguing is OK in a relationship?

Sometimes I think I’d like to spend the rest of my life with my boyfriend Adam but other times he drives me absolutely crazy.

We get into these fights where he just refuses to see it my way. He insists he’s right and digs in until I agree he has a point. He can never just agree with me or let it go. The thing is, he doesn’t always have a point and if I won’t concede that he does, he says I don’t respect his intelligence.

Our fights range from Madonna’s talent (or lack thereof) to what is or isn’t OK to eat for breakfast, to whose job it is to take out the garbage, to what the best abs exercises are, to where we should go on vacation this summer, to whether recycling plastics accomplishes anything, to whether we should have sex in the morning or at night. I’m sick of it!

On the other hand, Adam is smart, funny, and super-hot.

Is it normal for couples to fight so much? I don’t know why it’s so hard for him to see it my way sometimes.

Michael replies:

Sounds to me like you guys are in an ongoing power-control struggle where one of you is continuously trying to influence the other (power move), and the other one is continuously refusing to be influenced (control move).

There’s nothing “wrong” with making power and control moves. We all do them, all the time. They’re part of every relationship: Writing this reply, I’m making a power move, in that I’m wanting to influence the way you think about your relationship. If you disagree with me, you’re making a control move by not accepting my influence. No problem at all: You don’t have to let me (or anyone) influence you.

The problems arise when these moves become the ongoing operating system of your relationship. One of you keeps telling the other person how to behave or think, or what is “correct”; and the other won’t agree, no matter what the issue. You each dig in. Warmth and collaboration go out the window. You can’t have a loving relationship when you’re mired in a power-control struggle.

The problem is not that you two see things different-

ly. That’s an unavoidable part of life. In any relationship, partners will at times have very different opinions, even about very important matters. The problem is that you’re choosing to argue about it, to try to prove that you are right and the other person is wrong. He won’t see it your way and you won’t see it his way.

Notice that I’m putting you in the same boat as Adam. That’s because you’re joining him in this dynamic.

One thing you two can do to get out of this dynamic is to stop arguing about things that are a matter of opinion. It’s not possible to prove you’re right. Doing so just gets you dug in against each other.

In general, it’s a waste of time to argue about why you are right and your partner is wrong. If you win the argument, your partner loses. And if one of you is the loser, you both lose because you wind up with a bitter relationship.

Instead, you could have fun enjoying the reality that each of you has very different opinions, even about very important things, and each of you has the job of figuring out how to live and generally be happy with someone who is different in some big ways from you.

If you each start letting yourself be influenced by your partner, even if you don’t always agree on what’s “best”

or “right,” you’re going to open yourself up to all sorts of experiences, possibilities, and ways of looking at things that you hadn’t considered. That’s one of the great ways that relationships push us to grow.

If you think I have a point, I’m glad. You may decide you’d like to make some changes in your relationship. Remember, though, that Adam is his own person. Perhaps you’ll be able to influence him to consider a new way of approaching your differences, perhaps not.

That said, you have a lot of power over yourself. And if you decide you don’t want to keep getting stuck in power-control struggles, you can change this dynamic on your own simply by not participating. Not in a game-playing, “I’m right and you’re wrong” way, but by taking the position, over and over, that you two are different and sometimes see things differently, and you aren’t going to fight about who is right and who is wrong, because that isn’t going to get you anywhere good.

(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.)

Is it good for couples to fight a lot?

Baltimore Pride Parade

Thousands attend annual LGBTQ march and block party

The Baltimore Pride Parade and Block Party was held on Charles Street in Baltimore, Md. on Saturday, June 15.

(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)

A look at down payment assistance programs

Pride in ourselves, Pride in homeownership

By Joseph Hudson & Tina Del Casale

One of the most popular questions at our home buyer seminars is “What are the down payment assistance or first-time homebuyer programs available where I live?” There are various programs sponsored by multiple jurisdictions with the help of local banks, federal grants and loans as well. Knowledgeable lenders in the area will direct their eligible borrowers to these programs when a home purchase is being considered. Some of the programs are frequently mentioned in the local news: HPAP, EAHP, and DC Open Doors. There are also other options such as:

• FHLB grant for down payment assistance and/or closing costs

• Bank portfolio loans such as the Sandy Spring Bank loan, which can be 3% of the home purchase price – paired with a 97% first trust loan which is 100% financing at market rates

• Citibank Home Run

• Bank of America Down Payment Grant or Home Grant

• Chase Dream Maker Grant

• DC Open Doors - (DC Purchases only)

• HPAP/EAHP (for DC purchases only, when funds are available.)

All of these programs, grants, and loans come with guidelines and regulations, which may include income limits, household size limitations, geographic boundaries, homebuyer education classes, occupying the home as a primary residence, and funds availability. Some are easier to use and implement than others. Others may be available but can take 60 or more days to close on a home purchase, where another buyer may offer a seller a 30-day close. Some of these options may be stacked together to help build the buyer’s purchasing power.

In many cases they are worth exploring, and “seeing if the shoe fits.” A knowledgeable lender will be able to help a prospective home buyer to “try on these shoes” and see if there is a good fit. The best local Realtors and lenders will help a buyer understand which can be used at the time of purchase, and what types of documentation are necessary for each instance.

In our experience, the programs are there for those who need it, and in many cases make the difference between what a buyer has available to bring to the table, and what they need to get the “Sold” sign put out on the lawn, and the keys in their hand. Some buyers may decide to investigate these options and go without the program or the available funds anyway. Perhaps the interest rate is higher when using a program as opposed to going without it, meaning the monthly payment will be more when you use these programs. Each buyer has their own criteria of what makes a good fit for them. As with anything, “Mama said you gotta shop around.” It’s worth considering the various down payment & first time homebuyer assistance options available when looking to purchase and deciding which option(s) provide the best fit.

Don’t hesitate to reach out for more information.

JOSEPH HUDSON is a referral agent with Metro Referrals. Reach him at joemike76@gmail.com or 703587-0597. TINA DEL CASALE is a mortgage banker at Sandy Spring Bank. Reach her at 301-850-1326.

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