LOSANGELESBLADE.COM • JANUARY 03, 2020 • 03
Gay West Hollywood resident Ed Buck was arrested and charged with ‘operating a drug house and providing methamphetamine to a 37-year-old man who suffered an overdose’ in 2019. Photo by Karen Ocamb
No. 4 HRC/CNN LGBTQ Town Hall. For the Human Rights Campaign, the Oct.10 LGBTQ Town Hall at The Novo was an historic follow-up to their news-making forum in 2007. To CNN, it was a town hall on a political “issue,” with out anchors Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon as questioners, each handling protesters with courtesy. Nine Democratic presidential candidates showed up, with gay presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg generating the peak ratings at 1,430,000 viewers. Frontrunner Sen. Elizabeth Warren did well, but former Vice President Joe Biden oddly stumbled and longtime LGBTQ ally Sen. Kamala Harris failed to hit a homerun message. Sen. Bernie Sanders was absent, recovering from a heart attack. A Saturday Night Live spoof featured Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda as former HUD Sec. Julián Castro saying: “Well, first of all, gracias. As a Democrat, I want to apologize for not being gay, but I promise to do better in the future.” No. 3 ED BUCK INDICTED/ LA DA RACE IMPACTED. Thanks in large part to Black lesbian activist Jasmyne Cannick, the Ed Buck scandal dominated headlines until
finally federal authorities stepped in and arrested Buck at his West Hollywood apartment in September, charging him with a federal drug crime in the July 2017 overdose death of Gemmel Moore. Timothy Dean also died in January of a drug overdose at Buck’s apartment, which LA DA Jackie Lacey called a “drug den.” The feds claimed there were at least 11 additional victims, most young Black male escorts, who allege Buck, who is white, injected them with meth as part of a sexual fetish. If convicted, Buck could get a sentence of 20 years to life in prison. Lacey claimed her office was legally restricted in how she could proceed but critics claimed she failed at her job, with former San Francisco DA George Gascon moving to LA to challenge the incumbent. No. 2 REP. KATIE HILL RESIGNS Rep. Katie Hill, a Democrat from Santa Clarita and California’s first bisexual representative in Congress, announced her resignation “with a broken heart” in an Oct. 27 tweet and statement. She was being investigated by the House Ethics committee for allegedly engaging in a relationship
LA LGBT Center CEO Lorri L. Jean and Anita May Rosenstein. Photo courtesy of LA LGBT Center
with a congressional staffer, which she vehemently denied. She did admit to a consensual affair with a campaign staffer prior to her election in 2018, defeating anti-LGBTQ Republican Rep. Steve Knight. The relationship came to light after rightwing blog Red State and UK’s Daily Mail published nude photos of her that she knew nothing about, supplied by her estranged husband. In an astoundingly personal Dec. 7 New York Times op-ed, she shared her new activism after overcoming the suicidal depression caused by the revenge porn cyber exploitation. The race for Hill’s 25th CD seat is heating up with Hill and most Democrats supporting Assemblymember Christy Smith over alleged sexist and homophobic “progressive” Cenk Uygur, who lost his Bernie Sanders’ endorsement after a backlash, as well Republicans Steve Knight and convicted felon and former Trump associate George Papadopoulos. No. 1 IMPEACHMENT. On June 11, 2017, Rep. Maxine Waters took the stage at the #ResistMarch in West Hollywood, flanked by California colleagues House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff, chair
of the House Intelligence Committee, and led a loud call-and-response chant: “Impeach 45!” Two years later, Pelosi agreed to launch an impeachment inquiry and Schiff’s committee concluded President Donald J. Trump needed to be impeached for withholding congressionally appropriated military aid to Ukraine, contingent on that country’s new president promising to announce an investigation into Trump’s anticipated 2020 rival, former Vice President Joe Biden and his son. Gay representatives Sean Patrick Maloney and David Cicilline acquitted themselves well during the hearings, as did a slew of California leaders. On Dec. 19, the House historically voted to impeach Trump on two counts — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. What happens in the Senate, with lesbian progressive Tammy Baldwin and bisexual conservative/moderate Democrat Kyrsten Sinema serving as impeachment trial jurors, may determine the strength and operation of the Constitution’s three coequal branches of government, and with it, the fate of the republic in advance of the 2020 elections.