Washingtonblade.com, Volume 50, Issue 40, October 4, 2019

High court to hear LGBT discrimination cases next week, PAGE 12

OCTOB E R 04, 2019 • VOLUM E 50 • I S S UE 40 • WA S HI N GTONB LAD E.CO M

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Acorn Urban Park

8060 Newell Street, Silver Spring, MD

Friday, October 11 The FREE block party will feature live performances from local poets, artists, and musicians. Food truck items will be available for purchase.

Live Performances by:

BOOMscat Regie Cabico Tyler French Micah Powell Jack Shamblin Jessica G. Simon

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O CTO BE R 04, 2019 • WA SHINGTONBLA D E.COM • 03

5:00 pm – 9:00 pm 5 pm - 6 pm

Family Tea | Face Painting | Mask Making | Games

6 pm - 6:30 pm

Drag Queen/King Storybook Hour

6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

Open Mic with Featured Spoken Word & Musical Performances

8:00 pm - 9:00 pm DJ Dance Party

VOLUME 50 ISSUE 40 ADDRESS

PO Box 53352 Washington DC 20009 PHONE

rethinking trans actors

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 FEATURES EDITOR JOEY DIGUGLIELMO joeyd@washblade.com ext. 8081 SR. NEWS REPORTER LOU CHIBBARO JR. lchibbaro@washblade.com ext. 8079 NEWS REPORTER CHRIS JOHNSON cjohnson@washblade.com ext. 8083 REPORTER & INTERNATIONAL NEWS EDITOR MICHAEL K. LAVERS mlavers@washblade.com POP CULTURE REPORTER MARIAH COOPER PHOTO EDITOR MICHAEL KEY mkey@washblade.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS PETER ROSENSTEIN, MARK LEE, LATEEFAH WILLIAMS, KATE CLINTON, KATHI WOLFE, RICHARD J. ROSENDALL, ERNESTO VALLE, NICOLÁS LEVY, FELIPE ALFACE, YARIEL VALDÉS, LYNARE ROBBINS, RACHAEL ESPINET, KATLEGO K. KOL-KES, VICTOR MAUNG NEWS INTERN JAMES WELLEMEYER 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 ACCT. EXECUTIVE JOE HICKLING jhickling@washblade.com ext. 8094 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. Distributed by MediaPoint, LLC

All eyes will be on the Supreme Court next week, as justices hear three cases that will decide whether Title VII bars anti-LGBT discrimination.

PAGE 12

06

Looking back:

18

50 years of the Blade 08 10 11 12 14 16

Veterans group ramps up LGBT cultural training

Frenchie Davis to perform

21

Viewpoint

at Blade 50th gala

26

‘Boys Don’t Cry’ at 20:

Trans march on D.C. called ‘first major step’ in visibility campaign

30

Queery: James Taglauer

LGBT issues a high priority

32

Bloom plays Anthem Oct. 10

for some Iowa voters

36

Female trouble

High stakes for LGBT Americans

38

‘The Politician’ problem

at Supreme Court

39

High school revisited

New HRC president thrills crowd

40

The Sound and the ‘Furies’

at annual dinner

41

Judy gets lost somewhere

Starbucks serves an empty cup to LGBT media

over the Rainbow 44

Not Metro accessible? No problem!

46

Classifieds

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04 • WAS H IN GTO N B LAD E.CO M • O CTO B ER 0 4 , 2 0 1 9

Strap on your lederhosen and join Jackie O for DC’s first official Oktoberfest on September 21 at Dacha’s brand new Navy Yard beer garden at 79 Potomac Avenue SE. We’ll have live music, costumes, and a transformed outdoor space that’ll bring Germany to DC. Plus, enjoy a Fest Beer from the oldest brewery in the world - Weihenstephan.

O CTO BE R 04, 2019 • WA SHINGTONBLA D E.COM • 05

How long have we loved thee? Pamala Stanley gets rave in Blade’s 1979 ‘Disco Fever’ roundup FROM STAFF REPORTS

OK, so we know Pamala Stanley has been a long-time gay favorite. The sizzling songstress — whose Rehoboth Beach, Del., residency at the Blue Moon is a “can’t miss” East Coast gay experience — is a veteran diva who’s loved across the board in these parts.

But who knew the love went back this far? A roundup of disco album reviews from the Oct. 11, 1979 edition of the Blade named Stanley’s then-new release “This is Hot” “this month’s most interesting new album.” “‘This is Hot’ features a very strong selection of upbeat, well-balanced and produced tunes,” writer Bary Maddox gushed. “Included is the title track … the LP’s first single with its cute echo breaks and well performed synthesizer tracks.”

He later called Stanley’s voice “strong, yet sensitive” and gave a nod to her “nearuniversal appeal.” That’s 40 years of love!

Pretty impressive.

That edition’s music page (A-18 if you want to look it up on the Blade’s free online archives) also featured a review of Bette Midler’s then-new release “Thighs and Whispers.” Reviewer James Wagoner wrote “this lady leaves me speechless.”

Gays and their divas — not really a new thing, eh?

We’ve loved Pamala Stanley since the ‘70s. You can still catch her irresistible show at the Blue Moon in Rehoboth Beach.

06 • WAS H IN GTO N B LAD E.CO M • O CTO B ER 0 4 , 2 0 1 9

Thank you to our sponsors and partners of the Washington Blade’s 50th anniversary year.

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For more information on getting involved with the 50th Anniversary please contact Stephen Rutgers at srutgers@washblade.com O CTO BE R 04, 2019 • WA SHINGTONBLA D E.COM • 07

Frenchie Davis to perform at Blade 50th gala

Broadway star FRENCHIE DAVIS is scheduled to perform at the Blade’s 50th on Oct. 18.

The Washington Blade announced this week the presentation of awards to two honorees at its 50th anniversary gala as well as a performance by Broadway star Frenchie Davis.

The evening will celebrate the pioneering publication, which was founded in the aftermath of the Stonewall rebellion in 1969. The gala will be held Friday, Oct. 18 at the Intercontinental Hotel at the Wharf in Washington, D.C., beginning with a cocktail reception at 6 p.m. followed by a dinner and program at 7 p.m. Among those honored will be philanthropist Ariadne Getty and pioneering journalist Lou Chibbaro Jr., who has covered the LGBT community for more than three decades at the Blade. Tickets are on sale now at blade50th.com.

Proceeds from the gala will benefit the Blade Foundation, which works to support, train and encourage diversity in the next generation of LGBTQ journalists by investing in students and enterprise journalism projects focused on LGBTQ and other underrepresented communities around the world.

“I am humbled to be receiving the Washington Blade Lifetime Achievement Award as we recognize and celebrate 50 years of Blade’s pioneering, dedicated, accurate and insightful LGBTQ coverage. It is the go-to for readers who seek to be informed on all LGBTQ matters,” said Ariadne Getty, president and executive director of the Ariadne Getty Foundation.

Confirmed speakers include Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), the senior openly gay member of the U.S. House of Representatives; D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser; and Getty. In addition to Davis, Potomac Fever, part of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, is slated to perform.

STAFF REPORTS

Loudoun school board includes LGBT people in ‘anti-hate’ statement

The Loudoun County, Va., School Board on Sept. 24 approved a strongly worded resolution condemning white supremacy, hate speech, and hate crimes against a wide range of minority groups, including LGBT people.

The resolution came in response to a report commissioned by Loudoun County Public Schools officials that found racial minority students, especially African Americans, have been subjected to a “hostile learning environment” in school and that school system officials were not appropriately addressing the issue.

The report is based on a comprehensive study conducted by an educational consulting firm hired by the school system. It focuses mostly on reported incidents of racial slurs, insults and harassment encountered by students in their “everyday” school interactions.

Rob Doolittle, a spokesperson for Loudoun Public Schools, told the Washington Blade that school officials are committed to aggressively addressing instances of

hatred and harassment encountered by all categories of students beyond just racial discrimination.

“WHEREAS, the recent equity assessment and other reporting has uncovered that many students have been targeted by hate-based action, racial slurs, and insults in their everyday learning experiences, causing indifference and trauma for the victims of such incidents,” the resolution states.

“THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT The Loudoun County School Board and its division superintendent publicly declare the condemnation of white supremacy, hate speech, hate crimes, and other hatebased acts of violence, and any instances of hate, discrimination, and violence based on race, religion, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, ability, appearance, and socio-economic status,” the resolution states.

The Loudoun School Board approved the resolution a little over six months after it voted 5-4 in February to amend its longstanding nondiscrimination policy to add sexual orientation and gender identity. The amended policy now bans LGBT related discrimination pertaining to faculty, staff, and students.

Meanwhile, on Sept. 13, Loudoun County Schools Superintendent Dr. Eric Williams issued his own LGBT-inclusive statement condemning hate speech and other forms of hate based on race and other factors.

“Loudon County Public Schools calls for all students, staff, families, and other members of our community to engage in the disruption and dismantling of white supremacy, systemic racism, and hateful language and actions based on race, religion, country of origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, and/or ability,” he says in his statement.

LOU CHIBBARO JR.

U.S. Attorney prosecuting D.C. anti-trans attack as hate crime

D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham and Mayor Muriel Bowser were reluctant at a news conference on Tuesday to join LGBT activists in criticizing the U.S. Attorney’s Office for dropping most of the hate crime designations made by D.C. police for violent crimes against LGBT people in 2018.

Bowser and Newsham called the news conference to provide an update on the D.C. police response to an increase in violent crime, including shootings, in recent weeks. Newsham gave a report on several arrests in a number of cases. He and Bowser said the department would be requiring some officers to work one extra day in overtime each week to step up efforts to apprehend violent offenders and recover illegal firearms.

In response to a question by the

Washington Blade asking for their reaction to a Washington Post investigative report in August showing that prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office dropped hate crime designations last year for nearly all hate crime charges brought by D.C. police in both LGBT and non-LGBT cases, Bowser said she was pleased that LGBT people, especially transgender women, were coming forward to report hate crimes.

“And we are sending a very clear message that we’re investigating these crimes and we expect them to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” she said.

“I appreciate the work that MPD has done,” Bowser said, adding that the increase in hate crimes based on LGBT status, religious status and other categories over the past two years in D.C. appears to be part of a national trend. “And I think we should be proud people in the LGBT community, especially transgender women, are calling us for help.”

Newsham noted that the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which prosecutes most violent crimes in the District, has retained the hate crime designation made by D.C. police for the most recent anti-LGBT incident in the city. He was referring to a Sept. 17 assault and robbery of a transgender woman on the 7700 block of Eastern Ave., N.W. for which D.C. police arrested a male suspect, 23-year-old Besufikad Tujuba, on charges of bias related assault and biased related second-degree theft.

Charging documents filed in D.C. Superior Court accuse Tujuba of yelling anti-trans and anti-gay slurs shortly before he allegedly punched and kicked the woman and stole her purse, which contained $40 in cash and her cell phone.

The victim is a client of the Casa Ruby LGBT community services center, which is located about three blocks from where the incident took place.

“I think there’s been a lot of discussion about it, about the fact that there have been a lot of crimes going to the U.S. Attorney’s Office that we believe to be hate crimes,” Newsham said in response to the Blade’s question. “I’m really thankful that in this most recent case they did make the hate crime designation.”

U.S. Attorney for D.C., Jessie K. Liu, who was appointed by President Trump, has said her office drops hate crime designations for cases only after her prosecutors determine the evidence isn’t sufficient to obtain a hate crime conviction before a jury.

She has said her office continues to prosecute such cases as non-hate crimes for the underlying offense such as assault or murder.

LGBT activists have complained that prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office appear to be overly cautious about bringing hate crimes cases to trial, saying the federally appointed prosecutors often prefer to drop the hate crime designation as part of a plea bargain offer to persuade a defendant to plead guilty to a less serious charge.

LOU CHIBBARO JR.

08 • WA S HI N GTON B LAD E.CO M • O CTO B ER 0 4 , 2 0 1 9 • LO CAL N EWS

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O CTO BE R 04, 2019 • WA SHINGTONBLA D E.COM • 09

Trans march on D.C. called ‘first major step’ in visibility campaign ‘There is a crisis raging across our country’

By LOU CHIBBARO JR. LCHIBBARO@WASHBLADE.COM

Actress ANGELICA ROSS made an impassioned call for unity, inclusiveness and compassion at the National Transgender Visibility March on Sept. 28.

Washington Blade photo by Lou Chibbaro Jr.

Organizers and observers said up to 3,000 people turned out on Saturday for the first ever National Transgender Visibility March on Washington in which scores of participants held signs proudly declaring their status as transgender or gender nonconforming Americans.

The march kicked off at 11:35 a.m. on Sept. 28 from Freedom Plaza in downtown D.C. following the completion of a twoand-a-half hour rally. It traveled along Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., from 13th to 4th Streets, where the march ended four blocks from the U.S. Capitol.

Among the speakers at the rally was trans actress of “Pose” and “American Horror Story” fame Angelica Ross, who made an impassioned call for unity, inclusiveness and compassion within the transgender and overall LGBT rights movements and those movements’ allies.

Also expressing strong support at the rally for the march and trans rights were D.C. Congressional Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton and Sheila Alexander-Reid, director of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs.

Alexander-Reid read an official proclamation issued by the mayor declaring Sept. 28, 2019, Trans Visibility Day in D.C. Many of the marchers carried signs saying, “Trans Lives Matter.” Several told the Washington Blade they were moved and inspired as they walked past the buildings along Pennsylvania Avenue that they said symbolize the people and the

institutions they are calling on to change to ensure their equal rights and dignity.

Among the buildings the marchers walked past were the FBI Headquarters, the Trump International Hotel, and the Justice Department, which, under the administration of President Trump, has taken positions against transg rights in pending federal court cases.

“This is amazing,” said trans activist Maggie Downs, who said she traveled from Florida to attend the march. “I’m here for black trans lives and trans children’s lives, and then my own rights,” she said as she walked past the Trump hotel.

“We’re here not to be invisible, which is what this administration is trying to do to us,” she told the Blade.

Marty Drake, an official with the Montgomery County Pride Center who marched with the group Maryland Trans Unity, said this was not the first time he has walked past the Trump hotel in a protest march.

“It’s always a treat going by the Trump hotel in any march,” he said. “This group was very polite. The shouts of ‘shame, shame, shame,’ were a lot politer than some of the other marches I’ve been at,” he said. “It was remarkable that a lot of people simply waved at the Trump Hotel.”

Several speakers at the rally, including Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, deputy executive director at the D.C.-based National Center for Transgender Equality, said an important objective of the trans rights movement is securing passage by Congress of the Equality Act, an LGBT civil

rights bill that includes strong protections for trans people.

“Today’s march is about the power and visibility to get us equality,” he said. “At a lightening pace, Americans have seen our power at work as transgender people have moved from a side issue that our neighbors didn’t even know a lot about to a priority in the halls of power and the presidential campaign,” he told the rally.

“A community long forced into the darkness is now finally stepping into the daylight,” Heng-Lehtinen said. “But what the grassroots organizers of this march and what you know is that progress for any of us is not enough unless it is progress for all of us.”

Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign, described as a crisis the large number of murders of mostly black trans women over the past several years in the U.S. “As we gather here in the capital of the greatest country on earth there is a crisis raging across our country,” David, a long time civil rights attorney, told the rally.

“There is a crisis that is shattering dreams and shattering lives. There is a crisis that has been largely overlooked by the media,” he said.

“It is a crisis that has taken the lives of more than 150 transgender people in the past five years, most of them black transgender women,” he continued. “It is a crisis that none of us can ignore anymore.

We have to stand up. We have to speak out,” he said.

“For those of us who are gay or are lesbian or bisexual or queer or who are straight, we have to stand up for the transgender community, said David. “We have to stand up for the transgender community and stand up for them as if they are our family because you are our families.”

As in all protest marches in the nation’s capital, D.C. police have a policy of not releasing estimates of the number of people who turn out for such events.

In the case of Saturday’s Trans Visibility March, although no official crowd estimate was released, it was clear to observers that the march was about three and a half blocks long as it traveled along Pennsylvania Avenue in the east bound lanes, which make up half the width of the famous street.

D.C. police closed the entire section of Pennsylvania Avenue between 13 and 4th streets, where the march ended and many marches gathered at John Marshall Plaza, a small park located at 4th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue between the Canadian Embassy and the U.S. District Courthouse.

Among those walking in the rear of the march were members of the D.C. Police LGBT Liaison Unit. Also helping to oversee the police escort of the march and the closing of nearby streets was Lt. Brett Parson, who oversees the police liaison units.

“It was a sizable crowd,” Parson told the Blade. “And it was cooperative and it was well organized and we were proud to be there to provide safety and security,” said Parson, who noted that the entire march and rally went off without incident or any safety related problems.

Among the buildings the march passed near the end of its route on Pennsylvania Avenue were the Newseum, which currently includes an LGBT exhibit on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, and the Canadian Embassy, which is next door to the Newseum. People standing in front both buildings waved at and cheered marchers as they passed in front of the two buildings.

“I think it was fantastic,” said Lucky Alexander, the assistant national strategy director for the National Trans Visibility March, as he stood in John Marshall Plaza following the march. “We got a lot of diversity in the crowd. We didn’t have any hiccups as far as any counter protesters,” he said. “I think we did a fantastic job.”

For more photos and a transcript of speeches from the march, visit washingtonblade.com.

10 • WA S HI N GTON B LAD E.CO M • O CTO B ER 0 4 , 2 0 1 9 • LO CAL N EWS

LGBT issues a high priority for some Iowa voters Presidential forum highlights violence against trans women

By CHRIS JOHNSON CJOHNSON@WASHBLADE.COM

NICHOLAS SCHNERRE is among the voters in Iowa who backs Julian Castro.

Washington Blade photo by Chris Johnson

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — LGBT issues, particularly issues facing black transgender women, ranked high among several LGBT voters in early primary states in choosing a Democratic candidate to take on President Trump in the 2020 election.

LGBT people who spoke to the Blade in Iowa, the first state in the country to hold a contest in the presidential primaries, each ranked LGBT rights at the top of their lists in their decision for a Democratic nominee.

Nicholas Schnerre, a gay 20-year-old teacher who lives in Des Moines, Iowa, said LGBT issues will be “the biggest thing” in his decision in backing a presidential candidate.

“I think a candidate needs to fight to end conversion therapy, needs to fight for teachers experiencing LGBT discrimination within education, and fight for Truvada access,” Schnerre said. “So those are very important things that I’ve always cared about. But if you want to be the nominee, you have to show me that you’ll come to our spaces, and you will speak with not only words, but action.”

Schnerre said he’s faced discrimination himself on the job in Iowa as a result of his sexual orientation, recalling a time when he said he spoke out for transgender students and was terminated.

“I got called aggressive for speaking up for transgender students,” Schnerre said. “And that’s fine. Call me aggressive about my students are more important than transphobia.”

Later on, Schnerre said he made overtures to get his job back, but said he was rebuffed and was told it was because

he “didn’t respond like most gay people do.” Iowa is one of 21 states in the country where discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is against state law.

“So that’s here in Iowa, and that was supposed to be in a progressive space,” Schnerre said. “Obviously, we have issues with the conservative side being whiny homophobic, but I’m more worried about within our own party what things are going on because that was a Democrat that told me that, that fired me because of that.”

Based on those views, Schnerre said his top choice in the primary is Julian Castro, who as secretary of housing and urban development in the Obama administration implemented a rule barring discrimination against transgender people in federally funded homeless shelters.

“Right now, it’s going to be Julian Castro for me,” Schnerre said. “I just believe in his message as a Black Lives Matter activist who’s marched with a lot of queer people that started that movement.”

Schnerre said Castro’s history of activism and LGBT record during the Obama administration demonstrates his support for black transgender women, which he said “is a big thing for me.”

“He’s advocated for years…being an ally to that community,” Schnerre said.

“And I just trust him as a queer person based off what he did as former secretary of housing.”

At least 18 transgender people have been killed this year alone, 17 were black transgender women. In a recent interview with the Blade, Human Rights Campaign

N ATI O NAL NE WS • OCTOBER 04, 2019 • WA S HI N GTONB L A DE . COM • 11

President Alphonso David said Trump is responsible for the anti-trans violence in the United States.

The LGBT voters who spoke to the Blade for this article were present at the LGBT presidential forum on Sept. 21 at Coe College’s Sinclair Auditorium, which was hosted by the LGBT media watchdog GLAAD. Bruce Teague, who’s gay and was elected in 2018 as counselor for the Iowa City Council, spoke to the Blade after the forum wearing a Cory Booker T-shirt underneath a jacket. A Cory 2020 campaign button was pinned on his lapel.

“I love Cory Booker,” Teague said.

“He was a counselor, and then he was mayor and now senator. And so for me, If you look at his history, just what he’s done within the community, he’s been very progressive and outspoken for LGBT [issues] and so many other things.”

Teague, who’s black and serves on Booker’s steering committee in Iowa City, said the candidate’s decision to continue to live in Newark, N.J. — a predominately African-American neighborhood “that is not the hoity, rizty area” — appeals to him.

“And so he’s really been connected to the people,” Teague said. “I find that to be very of [a] quality that means a lot and it speaks a lot.”

Teague said LGBT issues, which he said are related to issues facing black Americans, have been “extremely important” in his decision-making on whom to back in the 2020 election.

“Not only do I think of the LGBT community being an oppressed community, but there are so many other communities,” Teague said. “I’m African American. And so, I really do believe whoever is our sitting president, or even the candidate that I will support has to have that within their umbrella.”

Andrew Lenz, a gay 38-year-old who lives in Golden Valley, Minn., said LGBT issues will be “very important” in deciding his pick for the Democratic nominee..

“I do believe that anybody who is up on that stage tonight would offer their full-throated support and endorsement to LGBTQ rights, much more so than the

current occupant of the White House,” Lenz said.

Lenz, who works in business intelligence, said his current pick for the Democratic presidential nominee is South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg based on “his ability to articulate specific policy plans be they for housing equality, or for ending endless war.”

“I like the fact that he is for Medicare-forAll-Who-Want-It as opposed to trying to push a specific policy proposal toward Americans who might be happy with their employerprovided health insurance,” Lenz said.

Aime Wichtendahl, a 39-year-old transgender person who serves on the Hiwatha City Council, said every candidate at the LGBT forum — with the exception of Marianne Williamson — has an understanding of LGBT issues.

“This is the first time, really ever, that we’ve actually had presidential candidates talk about LGBT issues, and more than just a single throwaway line or a single issue,” Wichtendahl said. “And the fact that we had a lot of discussion on transgender issues speaks to the degree that a lot of these candidates are interested in learning about the issues and enacting policies for them.”

Wichtendahl said her priority for LGBT issues in deciding comes down to how he or she sees them in the context of civil rights issues across the board, including issues facing black transgender women.

“I’m glad to see that we’re able to get a discussion of transgender women of color,” Wichtendahl said. “Basically, any candidate that doesn’t have knowledge of it or just rattles off talking points will lose my support in the caucuses.”

During the LGBT forum, Wichtendahl said Buttigieg and Booker as well as Elizabeth Warren — who read the names of transgender people killed in 2019 in her opening statement — had strong performances.

“You can’t bargain on civil rights,” Wichtendahl said. “It’s freedom and justice for all. Not for some, so anyone who can’t commit to improving justice won’t have my vote at the end of the day.”

Iowa will hold its primary caucuses on Feb. 3.

High stakes for LGBTAmericans at Supreme Court Justices to determine if Title VII bans anti-LGBT discrimination

By CHRIS JOHNSON CJOHNSON@WASHBLADE.COM

The Supreme Court will hear three LGBT cases next week.

Washington Blade photo by Michael Key

The U.S. Supreme Court is set Tuesday to hear a trio of cases that will determine not just whether firing workers for being LGBT is legal under federal law, but will also have ramifications for LGBT people in education, health care and housing.

At issue is whether anti-LGBT discrimination is a form of sex discrimination and therefore prohibited under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination on the basis of sex, but says nothing explicitly about sexual orientation or gender identity.

At a time when only 20 states have complete laws banning anti-LGBT discrimination, a Supreme Court ruling affirming Title VII prohibits anti-LGBT discrimination would guarantee federal protections across the board — even for LGBT people who live in states with no protections.

But if the decision goes the other way, the ruling would leave LGBT people in those states with nothing.

Ria Tabacco Mar, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBT & HIV Project, said in a briefing with reporters the outcome of the decision will “in many ways” have greater impact than the marriage cases.

“We’re talking about the ability to earn a living, the ability to support our families [and] the ability to secure a safe place to live,” Mar said. “I mean, this goes to the very heart of what it is to live and work in this country.”

The Supreme Court agreed to take up the cases alleging anti-LGBT discrimination in April after they ended up with varied outcomes in the Second, Sixth and Eleventh circuits.

Whichever way they rule, the decision will have a profound impact on civil rights law protections for LGBT people,

particularly in employment.

For starters, a decision against the LGBT workers would uproot the practices of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which accepts LGBT charges in its enforcement of Title VII as a result of changes made in the Obama administration.

LGBT workers have made good use of these changes. According to data from the EEOC, LGBT workers have filed about 1,800 charges alleging anti-LGBT discrimination each year in recent fiscal years.

Those charges, the latest data show, have resulted at least 1,300 merit resolutions in favor of the workers and at least $22.2 million in monetary benefits awarded since fiscal year 2013.

That opportunity to obtain relief for workplace discrimination would be in jeopardy, if not outright eliminated, if the Supreme Court were to rule Title VII doesn’t cover LGBT people.

(Check out the related chart on the breakdown of LGBT-related charges at EEOC for each fiscal year.)

But because other federal rights laws besides Title VII bar discrimination on the basis of sex without explicitly banning anti-LGBT discrimination, the Supreme Court’s ruling will have an impact on areas besides employment.

Among the federal laws that prohibit sex discrimination are the Fair Housing Act, the Affordable Care Act and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. That means nondiscrimination protections for LGBT people in housing, health care and employment are at stake in the resolution of these cases.

The ACLU’s Mar said, “civil rights laws often run in tandem with Title VII,” noting the Supreme Court decision will impact not just employment.

“If the court says it’s perfectly lawful to

fire someone for being LGBT, that is going to have trickle down consequences as to how lower courts interpret similar federal statutes and prohibit sex discrimination in housing, and education and in health care,” Mar said.

The high stakes for the Title VII cases are making many LGBT legal observers nervous amid a perception the Supreme Court has tilted to the right under the Trump administration.

During oral arguments, all eyes will be on three justices — Chief Justice John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch — to determine which way they’re leaning.

Roberts is a justice of interest because he’s considered the new moderate and swing vote in the aftermath of former U.S. Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy stepping down from the bench.

Moreover, during the Obergefell arguments on same-sex marriage in 2015, Roberts included in his questioning a line suggesting he has at least considered the idea of sexual orientation discrimination being a form of sex discrimination.

“I mean, if Sue loves Joe and Tom loves Joe, Sue can marry him and Tom can’t,” Roberts said. “And the difference is based upon their different sex. Why isn’t that a straightforward question of sexual discrimination?”

(Roberts ended up ruling in the minority of the court, concluding that bans on same-sex marriage are constitutional.)

Observers will be watching Kavanaugh because he’s new to the court and doesn’t have a developed LGBT record. (The exception is joining with the majority in April to allow the Trump administration to proceed with the transgender military ban.)

Kavanaugh will be under scrutiny because many progressives are angry he won confirmation last year despite Christine Blasey Ford testifying he sexually assaulted her as a teenager. Kavanaugh continues to face calls for impeachment over this allegation and other reports of sexual misconduct.

Finally, Kavanaugh suggested during his confirmation hearing he’d oppose anti-gay discrimination at the Supreme Court when he read a statement from the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision under questioning from Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).

“In Masterpiece Cakeshop, and this is, I think, relevant to your question, Justice Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice [Samuel] Alito and Justice Gorsuch and Justice [Stephen] Breyer, the days of discriminating against gay and lesbian Americans as inferior in dignity and worth are over,” Kavanaugh said.

When Harris asked Kavanaugh

whether he agreed with that statement, Kavanaugh declined to answer on the basis that he couldn’t comment on court rulings during his confirmation process.

For Gorsuch, expectations may be low given his previous support for religious freedom in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case at the expense of LGBT rights, but he has built a legal career on being a textualist.

“Judges should instead strive (if humanly and so imperfectly) to apply the law as it is, focusing backward, not forward, and looking to text, structure, and history to decide what a reasonable reader at the time of the events in question would have understood the law to be — not to decide cases based on their own moral convictions or the policy consequences they believe might serve society best,” Gorsuch wrote in 2016.

LGBT rights advocates have argued their belief Title VII covers anti-LGBT discrimination is a textualist argument, so will be looking to see if Gorsuch holds true to his convictions in the Title VII cases.

Mar insisted the LGBT side in the cases “really have the more conservative side in the argument because we’re the textualists here.”

“We’re the ones who are pointing to the words of the statute and saying discrimination because of sex necessarily covers discrimination based on sexual orientation,” Mar said. “It’s the concrete concept of sexual orientation turns on one’s own sex in relation to the sex of the people to whom one is attracted.”

Sharon McGowan, legal director for Lambda Legal, made a similar case.

“Part of what will see here is this moment of accountability, right?” McGowan said.

“Will they actually follow that doctrine and where it leads in these cases or will they be engaged in the calisthenics to take sex out of sexual orientation?”

The litigation before the court consists of two consolidated cases — Zarda v. Altitude Express and Bostock v. Clayton County — seeking clarification on whether Title VII cover sexual orientation discrimination and one case — EEOC v. Harris Funeral Homes — that will determine whether Title VII bans anti-transgender discrimination.

Representing gay workers in the sexual orientation cases is Pamela Karlan, who’s director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at Stanford Law School.

During the Obama administration, Karlan served as deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department and helped worked to implement the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Windsor v. United States.

12 • WA S HI NGTON BL A D E.CO M • O CTO B ER 0 4 , 2 0 1 9 • N AT IO N AL N EW S

LGBT-Based Sex Discrimination Charges at EEOC

*

*

*

*

Monetary benefits include amounts which have been recovered exclusively or partially on non-LGBT claims included in the charge.

*

*The data for FY-13 is for the last three quarters only. EEOC began tracking information on charges filed alleging anti-LGBT discrimination for charges received on or after January 1, 2013.

N ATI O NAL NE WS • OCTOBER 04, 2019 • WA S HI N GTONB L A DE . COM • 13

New HRC president thrills crowd at annual dinner

‘They fired me because I came out as transgender’

By MICHAEL K. LAVERS MLAVERS@WASHBLADE.COM

A Michigan funeral home in 2013 fired AIMEE STEPHENS after she told her boss she is transgender. The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 8, will hear oral arguments in her case.

Photo by Charles William Kelly; courtesy ACLU

HRC President ALPHONSO DAVID speaks at the 2019 HRC National Dinner. For more photos, see page 42.

WashingtonBlade photo by Michael Key

Alphonso David energized the room at the Human Rights Campaign’s annual national dinner Sept. 28, receiving thunderous applause as he announced new initiatives for LGBT people facing challenging times.

As much of Washington reels from the Ukraine scandal that has landed President Trump at the center of an impeachment inquiry, the new president of the Human Rights Campaign made himself a beacon of hope for the estimated 3,500 people in attendance at the 23rd national dinner.

A key component of David’s speech was identity. He began his remarks with the question, “Who are you?” then listed several identities, including immigrant, gay, transgender and straight as individuals in attendance cheered when he mentioned their identities.

But David’s speech took a turn when he said those identities “will either serve as a tool to achieve liberation or as a tool to further oppress us.”

Blaming Trump for a “moral recession,” David said Trump uses identity “as a sword and to create false hierarchies to force us into believing that we lose something by simply recognizing someone else as a human being.”

“We have witnessed a dramatic rollback of our democracy at the hands of this president, who holds the rule of law in contempt, as we learned this week,” David said. “And as we saw recently, he even holds weather reports in contempt, and you can tweet all of that.”

David said Trump wants people to believe recognizing others makes them lose something, but the loss isn’t what Trump wants you to think.

“By adopting or acquiescing to Trump’s baseless factionalism, we’re losing something much larger and something much more significant than what Trump tells you,” David said. “We’re losing our souls, losing our government as a place that respects and represents all of us, losing our democracy as we know it.”

Lighting a way forward to “weather the storm, this existential crisis that we face in this country,” David announced new initiatives Human Rights Campaign would undertake under his new stewardship of the organization.

One was a new transgender justice initiative, which David described before reading the names of transgender people who were killed this year.

“For too long, our system has failed the transgender community,” David said.

“And by depending on that system, we have also failed the transgender community.

We must look outside of the existing paradigm to support transgender people in the community they call home.”

According to HRC, the effort will focus on economic empowerment; capacitybuilding programs; targeted task forces in communities hardest hit hard by the epidemic of anti-trans violence; and expanded public education campaigns.

CHRIS JOHNSON

Aimee Stephens was working at Harris Funeral Homes in Garden City, Mich., when she began her transition. Stephens said she was fired in August 2013 after she told her boss she is trans.

“When they actually fired me, they said, ‘This is not going to work,’ meaning me transitioning into a woman at work,” Stephens told the Blade on Sept. 27 during a telephone interview with her lawyer, Jay Kaplan of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan’s LGBT Project. “They basically fired me because I came out as transgender.”

The ACLU notes Stephens’ wife, Donna Stephens, “became the sole provider for their family, including Donna’s daughter in college” after Aimee Stephens’ termination.

The family also had “to sell a number of possessions in order to make ends meet.”

“Aimee eventually found another job, but then her kidneys failed and she became dependent on dialysis treatments costing $21,000 a week,” said the ACLU in a backgrounder about Aimee Stephens’ case. “She no longer had insurance from her employer to cover the expense, but Medicaid and a foundation began to cover the expenses after the first month.”

Aimee Stephens filed a complaint against the funeral home with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on grounds her termination violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that bans discrimination based on sex.

A trial court ruled Aimee Stephens was discriminated against based on gender stereotyping, but said Tom Rost, the funeral home’s owner, was exempt from Title VII because of his religious beliefs. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati overturned the lower court’s decision.

Rost, who is represented by the antiLGBT Alliance Defending Freedom, appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court.

“It’s been a long time coming,” said Aimee Stephens.

The justices on Oct. 8 will consider Aimee Stephens’ case and two others with gay plaintiffs who were fired from their jobs.

The Supreme Court will ultimately decide whether Title VII protects LGBT people from discrimination in the workplace.

Aimee Stephens told the Blade she is unsure she will be able to attend the oral arguments because of her poor health.

She said her case has “been an eyeopening experience.”

“You always wonder what goes on, what happens, what makes (things) tick, how do things get done,” she said. “One of the things I’ve noticed is the wheels of justice grind very slowly.”

The Transgender Legal Defense and Education and the Trans Latin@ Coalition are among the dozens of trans advocacy groups that submitted an amicus brief in support of Aimee Stephens with the Supreme Court in July. The Alliance Defending Freedom earlier this month on its blog wrote Rost’s decision to fire Aimee Stephens was consistent with Title VII. “Title VII prevents discrimination on the basis of ‘sex’ while allowing employers, like Tom, to have different dress codes for men and women in the workplace,” said the Alliance Defending Freedom. “But the EEOC concocted this case against Tom in order to redefine the word ‘sex’ to mean ‘gender identity’ in federal law.”

“It’s important for the whole LGBT community to come together and support each other,” Aimee Stephens told the Blade. “Hopefully we can move forward at this point and not have to worry about being fired or being thrown out of our housing or several other things.”

14 • WA S HI NGTON BL A D E.CO M • O CTO B ER 0 4 , 2 0 1 9 • N AT IO N AL N EWS

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O CTO BE R 04, 2019 • WA SHINGTONBLA D E.COM • 15

Starbucks serves an empty cup to LGBT media Iconic brand doesn’t advertise in queer outlets

By SCOTT STIFFLER

Washington Blade photo by Tiara Slater

(Editor’s note: This is the second in a three-part series highlighting large companies that talk the talk, but don’t always walk the walk when it comes to supporting LGBTQ customers.)

Many are happy to stand in line for what they serve at Starbucks—but the global coffee conglomerate has left LGBT media standing at the altar, rebuffing repeated proposals to court a demographic of discerning tastemakers who would, seemingly, make for a marriage made in marketing heaven.

“It’s surprising to me that Starbucks wouldn’t target ads to our community,” says Todd Evans, president and CEO of Rivendell Media, which places advertisements for the National LGBT Media Association. Together, the Association’s members—including Boston’s Bay Windows and the Washington and Los Angeles Blades —reach an estimated 500,000 weekly print and online readers.

Evans, who had just returned from a Starbucks run when the Blade spoke with him, said numerous deep dives searching LGBT media for the company’s ubiquitous mermaid logo left Rivendell treading water in a sea of unproductive efforts.

“We monitor all LGBT newspapers and websites to see who’s out there, advertising,” said Evans of his sales team, “and they’ve not come across our radar as doing any outreach.

Like Apple, the thing I would most want to say to them is, with a company with a presence in every major urban center, they have to know the LGBT market is a big part of their clientele.”

Evans says Rivendell has been reaching out to Starbucks “for years,” through its various advertising agencies (currently Spark Foundry). “And the answer was always, ‘Starbucks doesn’t do print.’ Now they do. I see their ads all the time, in the New York Times and Martha Stewart Living Magazine, so we know they’re predisposed to having creative [print-centric material at the ready]. That’s all the more reason for Starbucks to be more precise in their marketing. We will definitely be reaching out again shortly.”

Also making the case for direct marketing

is Michael Yamashita. The president and CEO of BAR Media Inc, Yamashita is publisher of San Francisco’s Bay Area Reporter, a member of the National LGBT Media Association.

“It’s as close as you can get to speaking directly to the LGBT consumers, and the decision makers in the community,” says Yamashita, of advertising in print and online, via LGBT-focused outlets.

Bay Area Reporter reader surveys, he notes, consistently show LGBT readership is “interested to know which corporations support them,” and more inclined to give those corporations their business.

“There are several Starbucks locations in the gay [Castro] neighborhood here,” said Yamashita. “They’ve been a mainstay for years. Our sales manager, he’s pretty aggressive about trying to get local corporations to advertise with us, but we’ve never seen any advertising from them.”

That absence is not just felt locally, says Bay Area Reporter vice president of advertising Scott Wazlowski. “I’ve been here since 2010, and, to the best of my knowledge, they’ve never done any print or online advertising in our publication— and beyond that, I don’t think I’ve seen them in any LGBT publication.”

Although Rivendell handles national sales, Wazlowski did reach out to Starbucks locally, and was “told by the store manager the only thing they could do to show any support would be to provide product” at Pride or other notable LGBT events.

Starbucks, he notes, “brings coffee and pastries for each of the monthly membership meetings of the Castro Merchants.”

A tasty treat perhaps, but of no help to the bottom line.

“We didn’t want that,” said Wazlowski.

“We wanted an ad in the paper. Advertising in a local or regional publication says, ‘We care about you, and we care about the news that affects your community.’

Anecdotally, advertisers who do that seem to do better, in terms of having an impression among our readers.”

Wazlowski cites San Francisco Federal Credit Union as a success story of how local engagement pays dividends. A winner of its Reader’s Choice Award for Best Bank or Credit Union, they never, Wazlowski recalls, “showed up on the radar until they placed ads with us. They skyrocketed in the ratings, and have held that position ever since.”

Wazlowski attributes this ascension to advertising “at least once, monthly, or in special editions” as well as, in past years, having a booth at the Castro Street Fair. “That multipronged appeal to the LGBT community,” he says, “has proven very successful.”

Much more successful, says Yamashita, than gestures perceived as merely symbolic, or downright opportunistic. “It’s a frequent criticism,” he notes, “to see a lot of these corporations participate in our Pride parades and events in the month of June. But they are nowhere to be seen before or after. People do see that concentrated presence in June as a token recognition. That’s pretty much the heart of the matter right there.”

Echoes of token recognition reverberated through two weeks of email communication, when the Blade’s request for an interview with a Starbucks representative was answered by a Seattle-based member of global communications firm Edelman.

Replying on the day of this reporter’s deadline to repeated requests to answer a series of questions sent via email, Jonathan J. Cruz, Account Executive, Starbucks Corporate & Crisis Communications, wrote, “Apologies for the delay as we worked on gathering details for you. Unfortunately we are unable to facilitate your request for an interview, but we’re happy to share more details on how Starbucks supports and advocates on behalf of the LBGTQ+ community.”

Starbucks’ “longstanding commitment to creating an environment of belonging and inclusion” was one such example. Ally status was further claimed, when Cruz noted U.S. and Canadian customers were privy to “limited edition rainbow Pride cups, and our in-store partners (employees) had the option to wear Pride t-shirts.” He also noted the raising of a Pride flag at Starbucks’ Seattle headquarters (“for the sixth year in a row”), and a June 2019 partnership with the Born This Way Foundation, in which the Starbucks Foundation engaged in “matching donations to the BTW Foundation up to $250,000 which will be used to increase access to mental health resources and support organizations that empower the LGBTQ+ community and young people across the country.”

Bringing a perspective from the town where Starbucks started, Seattle Gay News editor George Bakan said of their local presence, “They spend a lot of money at Pride, they sponsor community events, and they have a scholarship fund. There’s lots

of ways you can help a community besides advertising in the gay press, as much as I hate to say that. I’d love to get a big check from Starbucks every month, to help my business.

But I’m much more concerned with their equitable hiring, and welcoming everybody as a customer. A gay couple holding hands will not elicit a smirk or a comment from somebody behind the counter at Starbucks…

It’s one thing to talk about equality. It’s another thing to act upon it.”

In the realm of LGBT engagement, Starbucks should act now, says Evans. “Like Apple, they’re not the only game in town anymore. Pretty much everyone makes a latte today. Why not capitalize on their already loyal following?”

Still, Evans observes, the java conglomerate consistently “comes up as a gay-friendly company” in surveys, and places well in the Human Rights Campaign’s annual Corporate Equality Index.

But they’re hardly immune from controversy. In May 2018, the company shuttered thousands of its U.S. stores for a training session, after the April arrest of two black men at a Philadelphia location. A photo from a May 29, 2018 NPR article showed a sign on a Starbucks cafe in Portland, Maine, noting the shutdown’s purpose was to “reconnect with our mission and share ideas about how to make Starbucks even more welcoming.”

In 2015, a gay D.C. man filed a discrimination complaint claiming the manager of a Dupont Circle Starbucks called him anti-gay slurs and assaulted him.

“You are fucking with the wrong one and I will break your neck you little fag, and I will break your spic boyfriend’s neck as well,” the complaint quoted the store manager as saying to the gay couple.

Evans also noted an annual kerfuffle that began in 2015, when Starbucks introduced a red cup for the holidays, instead of a Christmas-oriented one.

“I literally heard about that while I was in line at a Starbucks store, looking at one of their Advent calendars,” recalls Evans. “It was a really poorly handled public relations thing for Starbucks, because they didn’t push back. I thought, ‘Oh, what a shame.’ LGBT consumers are fiercely loyal… The idea is to turn your best customers into your advocates—and this is a company, like Apple, that could really do that with just a little specific outreach. I know it would certainly make me feel better about the amount of money I spend there.”

Moral support aside, Evans makes the case for a presence in LGBT media thusly: “Who are the people reading it? The people who care the most, the people who want to see who is reaching out to them, who want their business. So from a corporate standpoint, they haven’t been open to it, but maybe it’s time to say, ‘We should support our best customers. It is time do this.’ ”

16 • WA S HI NGTON BL A D E.CO M • S EPT EM B ER 2 7 , 2 0 1 9 • N AT IO N AL N EW S

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WASHINGTON — New York will soon be the first state in the country to offer veterans’ services staff all certified in LGBT cultural competency, the Modern Military Association of America announced this week.

Its Rainbow Shield program will provide LGBGT and HIV-positive competency training to the entire New York State Division of Veterans’ Services. About 90 of the division’s employees will receive the Association’s training.

“We’re proud to work with the state of New York to help ensure their services providers have a greater understanding of the unique challenges the LGBTQ military and veteran community face,” said Andy Blevins, Association director.

Topics to be covered in the Rainbow Shield certification program include an overview of the history and demographics of the LGBTQ and HIV-positive military and veteran community; terminology and common experiences of the LGBTQ and HIV-positive military and veteran community; myths and stereotypes that impact how LGBTQ and HIV-positive people are seen and treated in society, including how to recognize and see past harmful representations; and policies impacting LGBTQ and HIV-positive service members, veterans, and their families.

Hamburger Mary’s franchisee alleges discrimination

HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — A former franchise owner of popular gaythemed burger restaurants is suing ADVERTISING PROOF the Florida Department of Health for ISSUE DATE: 10.26.12 SALES REPRESENTATIVE: BRIAN PITTS (bpitts@washblade.com) discrimination in a case involving a local hepatitis A scare, ABC Action News reports.

REVIEW AD FOR COPY AND DESIGN ACCURACY. Revisions must be submitted within 24 hours of the date of proof. Proof will be considered final and will be submitted for publication if revision is not submitted within 24 hours of Kurt King, who owned Hamburger the date of proof.

Revisions will not be accepted after 12:01 pm wednesday, the week of publication.Brown naff pitts NS omnimedia llc (dba the washington blade) is not responsible for the content and/or design of your ad. Advertiser is responsible for any legal liability arising out of or relating to the advertisement, and/or any material to which users GN Mary’s Restaurant Bar and Grille in Ybor can link through the advertisement.Ave., Advertiser represents 1221 Massachusetts NW that its advertisement will not violate any criminal laws or EVISIONS any rgihts of third parties, including, but not limited to, such violations as infringement or misapporpriation of any City, alleges the health department and copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret, music, image, or other proprietary or propety right, false advertising, unfair /LOGO REVISIONS competition, defamation, invasion of privacy or rights of celebrity, violation of anti-discrimination law or regulation, 703 D ofSt., NW Dr. Douglas Holt, Hillsborough County’s or any other right any person or entity. Advertiser agrees to idemnify brown naff pitts omnimedia llc (dba the ADVERTISER SIGNATURE SIONS washington blade) and to hold brown naff pitts omnimedia llc (dba the washington blade) harmless from any and all By signing this proof you are agreeing to your contract obligations with the liability, loss, damages, claims, or causes of action, including reasonable legal fees and expenses that may be incurred washington blade newspaper. This includes but is nothealth limited to placement, public boss, “treat homosexual by brown naff pitts omnimedia llc, arising out of or related to advertiser’s breach of any of the foregoing representations payment and insertion schedule. and warranties. Plz., SW PR #325 955 L’Enfant persons differently as demonstrated by the false reporting of Hepatitis A,” according to the lawsuit.

“We were definitely targeted for just being LGBTQ,” King told ABC Action News shortly after his lawyer electronically filed the lawsuit in Hillsborough County In-Network with most PPOs Monday afternoon.

The civil lawsuit references a public warning issued by the Hillsborough County Health Department in October

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2018 about a Hamburger Mary’s worker who tested positive for hepatitis A. But King has accused the agency of false reporting. He previously said lab test results his employee sent him show the hepatitis A test was not positive and shared those test results with Anchor Wendy Ryan during a sit-down interview that aired on ABC Action News in early 2019.

A Dirty Dining investigation earlier this year uncovered the Hillsborough County Health Department never told the public about four other local restaurants with workers who tested positive for hepatitis A during the same time period.

At the time, Holt told ABC Action News the public had no right to know the names or locations of those other restaurants and insisted hepatitis A cases were more prominent among gay men.

ABC Action News reached out to the health department and Dr. Holt for comment on the lawsuit Monday night but have yet to hear back.

Fatherly support could help prevent heart attacks NEW YORK — The discrimination experienced by sexual minorities can increase the chance of a heart attack, but support from their father may be an antidote, according to new research from New York University, ABC News reports.

“Father support mitigates the negative effects of discrimination on inflammation, but only for low to moderate levels,” Dr. Stephanie Cook, senior author of the study and assistant professor of biostatics and social behavioral sciences at New York University College of Global Public Health, told ABC News.

“We neglect the role of fathers and we need to increase interventions as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer youth are more likely to be rejected by their fathers. Public policy needs to focus on how we can increase support,” she said.

Researchers examined C-reactive proteins, or CRP, which increase when something starts to become inflamed in the body. This biomarker can be measured in the blood and may potentially predict future cardiovascular risk. Researchers looked at CRP in relation to perceived discrimination with both maternal and paternal support, ABC News reports.

The study took high schoolers in grades seven-12 who were subsequently followed into young adulthood. They were interviewed about their sexual orientation, and those who were sexual minorities were asked about any discrimination they’d felt, and the social support they got from their father and mother.

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20 • WAS H IN GTO N B LAD E.CO M • O CTO B ER 0 4 , 2 0 1 9

BEIRNE ROOSESNYDER & ZOE BULLS

Beirne Roose-Snyder is director of Public Policy at the Center for Health and Gender Equity. Zoe Bulls is an Advocacy and Partnerships Associate at the Center for Health and Gender Equity.

RICHARD J. ROSENDALL

is a writer and activist. Reach him at rrosendall@starpower.net.

VI E WPO I NT • O CTOBER 04, 2019 • WA SHINGTON BL A DE . COM • 21

PETER ROSENSTEIN

is a D.C.-based LGBT rights and Democratic Party activist. He writes regularly for the Blade.

MARK S. KING

is a writer and blogger.

Reach him via marksking.com.

BEIRNE ROOSESNYDER & ZOE BULLS

RICHARD J. ROSENDALL

is a writer and activist. Reach him at rrosendall@starpower.net.

D.C. Council should ‘Like I had the decriminalize sex work right to be here’ Harmful laws create barriers to health services Like gay marriage and marijuana regulations before it, across the country, Americans are waking up to our harmful laws against sex work. As they are now, sex work criminalization laws create barriers to access to health services for sex workers and increase their vulnerability to physical harm, financial abuse, and other crimes.

Earlier this year, the Reducing Criminalization of Commercial Sex Amendment Act of 2019 was introduced by the D.C. City Council. Despite the rising groundswell of sex worker-led advocacy to call attention to the issues sex workers face, and the growing support among politicians to decriminalize sex work in D.C., The Washington Post’s editorial page recounts a more extreme, carceral view — one that relies on anecdotes more than facts, and has no real consideration of the significant benefits that decriminalizing sex work would have for the city.

Sex work decriminalization affirms sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Decriminalization enables sex workers to better screen clients, negotiate safer sex practices, and report incidents of trafficking or client and police violence, which benefits not only sex workers, but the general public as well. No one can afford to ignore these facts when we have conversations about people’s health care needs.

On a global scale, international health and development agencies including UNAIDS, UNFPA, UNDP, the WHO, and the World Bank have recognized the role that decriminalization of sex work plays in advancing public health outcomes while also advancing the human rights of sex workers.

For example, the decriminalization of sex work would have the greatest effect on the course of HIV epidemics across all settings, averting 33–46% of new HIV infections in the next decade. There were 12,322 individuals living with HIV in the District at the end of 2018. In 2016, the Center for Health and Gender Equity released a report highlighting the role that decriminalization plays in advancing health and rights internationally, and provides recommendations for actions that the U.S. government can take to advance these objectives.

Furthermore, criminalizing sex work

has done nothing to decrease sex workers’ exposure to the very real threat of human trafficking. And to be clear, child abuse, rape, physical abuse, coercion and trafficking are still criminal offenses — the proposed law to decriminalize sex work in no way weakens or eliminates existing laws around sexual violence and exploitation. The difference is that with common sense legislation like the Reducing Criminalization of Commercial Sex Amendment Act, if a sex worker comes forward to report abuses, they don’t have to worry about being convicted of a crime themselves. If D.C. sex workers don’t fear arrest, they’ll be better able to access services and health care, as well as inform authorities when they see trafficking occur.

For example, as our sex work laws are written now, trans women who are sex workers live in fear of police violence and arrests at an alarming rate. In New York City, eighty percent of sex workers report experiencing some form of violence in the course of their work, but sex workers who are immigrants, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and black and brown sex workers in particular feel discouraged to report these incidences. Trans women face alarming rates of murder - and this includes trans women who are sex workers. Earlier this year, Ashanti Carmon, a trans woman of color who was a sex worker was murdered in a D.C. suburb.

That is unacceptable. All sex workers — including trans women and queer women — have the right to bodily autonomy and control over their lives, and the government should work to positively affirm those rights rather than restrict them.

It’s time for those like Colbert King and The Washington Post’s editorial team to reckon with the simple fact that sex work is going to happen no matter what, and keeping it illegal promotes the exploitation of the people he pretends to care about.

This month, as the D.C. City Council comes back to session, we are calling on it to address policies that perpetuate stigma, abuse, and bad public health policy by passing the Reducing Criminalization of Commercial Sex Amendment Act of 2019.

Women everywhere are depending on it.

Title VII cases test court’s textualism The importance of the gay and transgender employment discrimination cases being argued before the Supreme Court on Oct. 8 is demonstrated by the wide array of amicus briefs submitted by legal groups, civil rights groups, advocates, academics, labor unions, religious groups, 21 states and the District of Columbia.

Lacking space to list, much less analyze, them all, I will discuss just one brief affirming that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, specifically its prohibition against discrimination “because of...sex,” protects LGBTQ employees.

The brief was written by Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz (a member of Roberta Kaplan’s law firm) for four former Solicitors General and Acting Solicitors General and a former Associate White House Counsel.

Tribe and Matz ground their argument in textualism and cite Justice Scalia in Oncale, regarding a man sexually harassed on an oil rig. They quote Justice Kagan, “we’re all textualists now.” Regarding claims that Congress did not have LGBTQ folk in mind when it passed Title VII, they write, “A statute’s meaning is distinct from how people may have expected the statute would apply when it was enacted.” They quote Justice Scalia and Bryan Garner explaining that, “the presumed point of using general words is to produce general coverage—not to leave room for courts to recognize ad hoc exceptions.”

Tribe and Matz defend gender identity coverage: “Few forms of sex-based discrimination are more fundamental than firing someone on the premise that they have misapprehended their own sex.”

They defend sexual orientation coverage: “Even if Title VII is read as prohibiting only discrimination because of a person’s ‘sex’— understood as the status of being male or female—it bars employment discrimination based on sexual orientation because a person’s ‘sex’ (and that of his or her desired partners) is a motivating factor in such discrimination.”

Despite a clear textualist basis for applying Title VII to LGBTQ cases, I fear the court as currently constituted will apply an “original expectations” approach that better serves its conservative members’ animus, barring another legacy-preserving moment from Chief Justice Roberts or an

unlikely epiphany in one of the Trumpappointed justices from Georgetown Prep (Gorsuch and Kavanaugh).

The work that LGBTQ advocates are doing on these cases matters regardless of the hazardous prospects caused by Sen. McConnell’s refusal to consider Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland and Trump’s Electoral College victory in 2016. The law lives, if at all, in its defenders and interpreters, as it does in those who seek its protection.

Justice Blackmun’s bracing dissent from the Court’s anti-gay 1986 ruling in Bowers v. Hardwick ultimately prevailed 17 years later in Lawrence v. Texas. A decade later came marriage equality. Now we face a renewed backlash. As Langston Hughes asked, “What happens to a dream deferred?” Fifty years after Stonewall, black trans women are murdered, and cyberbullied students kill themselves. They have no timeless Shangri-La where they can wait, as Billy Porter recently quoted James Baldwin, to “walk around this earth like I had the right to be here.”

America will be a long time recovering from Trump-era vandalism, especially if Justices Ginsburg and Breyer are replaced with right-wing justices half their age, as would almost certainly happen in a second Trump term. In that case many of us will not live to see the victory. Let us remember that the National Museum of African American History and Culture has artifacts that were passed down by six, seven, and eight generations before reaching the hands of its founder, Lonnie Bunch, who surely felt the ancestors with him as he was named Secretary of the Smithsonian.

45 and his mob would plunge us into a dark age of know-nothingism and civil strife. I imagine a future explorer discovering forgotten legal battles, reading, wondering, nodding, experiencing a flash of recognition—an old light flickering on again.

We never know when the time will come to pass the torch. Let it suffice that we carry it for a time, like those who plant trees in whose shade they will never sit.

But as Monty Python said, we are not dead yet. Duty beckons. Win or lose, we have a country to defend.

Copyright © 2019 by Richard J. Rosendall. All rights reserved.

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PETER ROSENSTEIN

MARK S. KING

is a D.C.-based LGBT rights and Democratic Party activist. He writes regularly for the Blade.

Speaker Pelosi gets it right

Cautious approach to impeachment was strategic, smart Those who have questioned Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s ability to know when the time was right to call for an impeachment inquiry owe her an apology. In saying the time is now Speaker Pelosi said, “The actions of the Trump presidency revealed dishonorable facts of betrayal of his oath of office and betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.” So along with working to defend the Constitution she is clearly the best political strategist in Washington.

This is only the fourth time in the history of our republic the House of Representatives has begun an impeachment inquiry against a president. The first three were against Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. In the cases of Johnson and Clinton the House passed articles of impeachment, sent them to the Senate for trial and both were acquitted. In Nixon’s case before the House voted articles of impeachment a group of rational Republicans convinced him to resign. We could only hope for 20 rational Republicans in the Senate today with the guts to go to President Trump and convince him to resign. I won’t hold my breath.

President Trump is in so many ways worse than Nixon ever was. He has never had the best interests of the country at heart but rather his own as is evident in the transcript of his phone call with the President of Ukraine.

Speaker Pelosi was attacked for waiting too long to call for an impeachment inquiry because there have been many instances in which this president has proven his allegiance to himself and his family above country. That began long before he appointed his daughter and son-in-law to high level posts in the administration overriding those who said they weren’t qualified and in the case of his son-in-law overriding those who said he shouldn’t be given a high-level security clearance. We know Trump never totally divested himself of his interests in his company and his hotels are making money from those seeking to curry favor with him. He sends his vice president to Ireland and has him stay at his hotel — just a few of the instances that many felt should result in impeachment. But

Pelosi knew until now the time wasn’t right.

Today, at least 225 Democrats in the House support the impeachment inquiry.

It will be important for the nation and the Democratic Party for those in Congress to convince those still needing convincing.

That means it will take the right people as spokespersons for the inquiry and the party, those like Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). They will not be the far-left or those who claim the most Twitter followers; rather it will also be those who won election in Trump districts who have served their country in various ways before entering Congress.

The following seven members fit that criteria and spoke out on impeachment in a Washington Post op-ed: Reps. Gil Cisneros of California, Jason Crow of Colorado, Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Elaine Luria of Virginia, Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia all freshman Democrats.

They wrote: “Our lives have been defined by national service. We are not career politicians. We are veterans of the military and of the nation’s defense and intelligence agencies. Our service is rooted in the defense of our country on the front lines of national security. We have devoted our lives to the service and security of our country, and throughout our careers, we have sworn oaths to defend the Constitution of the United States many times over. Now, we join as a unified group to uphold that oath as we enter uncharted waters and face unprecedented allegations against President Trump.”

What we have now is not an impeachment inquiry based on simple criminality or petty politics, rather something easier to understand — gross abuse of power. It is a more unifying cause for many to understand and support.

Trump may actually be a common criminal but his abuse of the powers granted to the president by the Constitution is more detrimental to our democracy. He has abused the powers of the president by totally disregarding the Constitution’s explicit separation of powers and his now clear alignment with foreign powers against citizens of our own country.

is a writer and blogger.

Reach him via marksking.com.

Gilead duped me into being their mouthpiece This is the story of the insidious influence of Big Pharma on our HIV/AIDS leadership and policy-making, and how an experienced activist like me was tricked into delivering messages for the HIV pharma giant Gilead Sciences.

I was bamboozled because I didn’t do my homework, and I acknowledge this. I relied upon institutions I trusted and causes that sounded great on paper. All the while, Gilead’s fingerprints were everywhere.

The only way for me to make this right is to apologize, first, for putting my name on a seemingly helpful editorial, “The struggle to maintain access to life-saving HIV medications,” (The Washington Blade, 2/22/2019), which also appeared on my blog as, “A Medicare Change Could Keep Us from Life-Saving HIV Medications,” a post I must now disavow.

This media outreach project, as it turns out, was bought and paid for by Gilead, and included specific messaging that benefits the marketing of their newer HIV drugs.

This is how it happened and who was involved. The chips can fall where they may.

In January 2019, I responded to outreach from AIDS United, a national HIV/AIDS policy, lobbying and funding organization, to participate in a media strategy they asserted would help people living with HIV (PLWH). AIDS United wanted to identify PLWH who have benefited from Medicare Part D; specifically, how that program makes life-sustaining HIV medications available to those of us who are on Medicare.

At the time, AIDS United was fighting a proposed federal policy change that would have placed restrictions on what medications those of us on Medicare Part D could access first, before being eligible for newer medications.

The policy change was presented as an attempt to save taxpayer dollars, but AIDS United argued it could potentially limit the options of those who may need the newest medications.

AIDS United sought influential PLWH to write editorials to drive public opinion against the policy change. I agreed to participate but did not receive payment of any kind.

AIDS United then handed me off to Precision Strategies, a public relations firm coordinating the project. Since governmental policy isn’t my usual lane, Precision Strategies drafted the editorial and I added my own voice and biographical details.

Activism lesson: if it isn’t your lane, don’t

pretend that it is. Activist Writer lesson: don’t ever allow your name to be pasted onto someone else’s writing. They might be sneaking in key messages for Big Pharma.

The finished editorial sounded really smart. It cited how people might perish if they were forced to rely upon generics before having access to the latest drugs. It even referenced a study that suggests as much.

I never questioned the study referenced. I trusted the players involved. Ahem.

A few weeks after the piece was published in the Washington Blade and on my site, activist James Krellenstein pointed out to me that the study’s relevance to the Medicare Part D debate is highly questionable. The reason is a pharma marketing lesson that Gilead doesn’t want you to read or understand, but stick with me. Drama is coming.

The study takes a fantasy scenario and manipulates it for Gilead’s benefit. It imagines that, if every PLWH were forced to use Gilead’s older drugs (such as Truvada, Viread, Atripla, Complera, and Stribild), and they had restricted access to Gilead’s newer drugs (like Descovy or Genvoya), then over 16,000 people would perish.

Why, James asked me, would this study suggest that 16,000 people could die if they were forced to rely on the older drugs? Doesn’t that death toll sound severe? Would it, perhaps, have anything to do with the fact that Gilead’s older formulations, such as Truvada, are going generic and the newer versions make them a lot more money? Why did this study conjure up this fantasy scenario in the first place?

The reason is simple. Because the study was funded by Gilead, the maker of those older drugs as well as the new, more expensive alternatives. Had I read the study thoroughly, I would have seen that it notes, right there in the text, that Gilead paid for the research.

How did Precision Strategies come up with this obscure study to help make a case about Part D expansion? Because Precision Strategies doesn’t work for AIDS United.

Nope. They work for Gilead Sciences.

It is amazing, really, how fear can drive the decisions of the very HIV organizations that were founded to empower people.

(A longer version of this op-ed appears at marksking.com.)

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HILARY SWANK won an Oscar for her work in the 1999 movie ‘Boys Don’t Cry.’ Photo by Bill Matlock; courtesy Fox Searchlight Pictures via Blade archives

‘Boys Don’t Cry’ at 20: rethinking trans actors

Cis actress Hilary Swank won the Oscar playing a trans man but would it happen today?

By JOEY DIGUGLIELMO JOEYD@WASHBLADE.COM

It’s been 20 years ago this month since the release of “Boys Don’t Cry,” the Fox Searchlight movie that depicted the true story of Brandon Teena, a trans man played by Hilary Swank, who adopts a male identity in Nebraska but is murdered in a hate crime.

Directed by Kimberly Peirce, whose interest was piqued by a 1994 Village Voice article about Teena, the film was made for $2 million and made $20 million at the box office. It premiered Oct. 8, 1999 at the New York Film Festival and went into wider release later in the month.

Swank won a bounty of awards for the role including prizes from the New

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Younes says “Transparent,” the hit 20142019 (it just wrapped with a musical finale on Amazon Prime Video Sept. 27) show on which he guested twice in its fourth season, was a game changer just before “Pose” hit big. Although cis actor Jeffrey Tambor played Maura, a retired college professor who comes out as trans, creator Jill Soloway enacted a “transfirmative action program” for the show (cast and crew) where trans applicants were hired in preference to cis applicants. Tambor (“The Larry Sanders Show,” “Arrested Development”) left the show in late 2017 amid sexual misconduct allegations.

“Just letting trans people in the room — directors, writers, consultants — makes a huge difference,” Younes says. “That’s when we start getting layered and nuanced characters that tell stories beyond their transitions, with interesting people. We’re seeing less and less of a need for the Eddie Redmaynes of the world who say, ‘Oh, I did so much research,’ which I call bullshit on that because if you’d really done so much research, you’d have an understanding that we’re not just some costume you can slip on which just helps solidify the Academy’s thinking that that’s all it is and playing trans becomes a farce.”

INDYA MOORE as Angel on ‘Pose.’ Moore is one of several trans actors in the cast, which has been a game changer for trans representation on TV. Photo by JoJo Whilden for FX

York Film Critics Circle, the Chicago Film Critics, the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Independent Spirit Award, the Golden Globe and the Oscar. It was both widely praised in reviews at the time and holds an 88 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

It’s unlikely, though, that Swank would get cast in the role were it made today.

With trans actresses Mj Rodriguez, Indya Moore, Dominique Jackson, Hailie Sahar and Angelica Ross having been cast on the Ryan Murphy FX drama “Pose,” and Scarlett Johansson all but forced to withdraw last year from her planned movie “Rub & Tug” (she was to play a trans character based on Dante Gill, who ran massage parlors in the ‘70s and ‘80s that were brothel fronts) after a backlash ensued, many say it’s a new day for trans actors. Of Johansson, trans actress Trace Lysette (Shea on “Transparent”) wrote on Twitter, “Not only do you play us and steal our narrative and our opportunity but you pat yourselves on the back with trophies and accolades for mimicking what we have lived.”

CISGENDER BACKLASH Elle Fanning drew ire the year before for being cast in “3 Generations” as Ray, a female-to-male trans teen. A groundswell had been building with actors like Matt Bomer in “Anything” (2017), Eddie Redmayne in “The Danish Girl” (2015) and Jared Leto in “Dallas Buyers Club” (2013) drawing muted but present backlash.

Conversely, on TV, trans actress Candis Cayne earned the distinction of being the first trans actress to play a recurring trans character on a primetime show when she played Carmelita on ABC’s short-lived “Dirty Sexy Money” (2007-2009). Trans actress Nicole Maines plays the first trans superhero as Dreamer/NiaNal on The CW’s “Supergirl.” In its latest report, GLAAD says there are 26 trans characters currently on TV, vs. 17 in its previous report.

Leto ended up winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role.

Redmayne won the Best Actor Oscar for his and back in 2005, Felicity Huffman

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was nominated for playing trans in “Transamerica.” A trend was clearly at play — playing trans is Oscar catnip for cisgender actors.

That’s a problem, working trans actors today say.

“The Academy seems to see it as some heroic transformation, but is it any more a feat of acting than what, say, Daniel DayLewis did as Lincoln, or any number of great performances you could name,” says Samy Nour Younes, a trans male stage and screen actor in New York. “Beyond the fact that they’re playing another gender identity, the roles are usually not that good.

If you watch ‘Boys Don’t Cry,’ ‘Transamerica’ or ‘Dallas Buyers Club,’ which is the worst among them, they’re not particularly well written characters period, not because they assumed a marginalized identity, but we think there’s something inherently taboo or exotic, but in a stigmatized kind of way, about it. Like, ‘Oh, you’re so brave, you deserve an Oscar,’ when it actually wasn’t that great.”

THE CASTING CONUNDRUM Tammara Billik, a veteran Hollywood casting director known for her work on “Married … with Children” and the famous coming-out episode of “Ellen” in 1997, says things have come a long way since the “Boys Don’t Cry” era.

For one, she says, TV has come into a “golden age” that has “provided a lot more opportunities for all kinds of inclusive roles.”

“Not just with ‘Pose’ and ‘Transparent,’ but now there are a number of trans actors,” Billik, a lesbian, says. “I just read something about their being a trans actor in a series regular role on ‘The Politician’ with Ben Platt. I didn’t know anything about that.

It’s happening without a big splash, it’s happening on weekly shows, so I think there is tremendous progress in terms of the trans actor community, particularly on TV.” Film, she says, is different.

“When ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ came out, gosh, I don’t think I knew a trans actor at the time. … It certainly wouldn’t have been a time when a trans actor would have been cast. Now you would be hard pressed to cast that role with a cis actor,” Billik says.

“You just wouldn’t do it, right?”

She says the Johansson episode was “a giant shift.”

“In both a good and bad way,” Billik says.

“It’s good for the actors and a good way to show more diversity on television but we’ve also seen a backlash against particularly CON T I N U E S ON PAGE 2 8

Days of A-listers nabbing Oscars playing trans may be over CONTINUED FROM PAGE 27 trans women of color. I’m not saying ‘Pose’ is responsible for it, but people get angry when you show them the truth. We’re all wondering why so many trans women of color are being targeted for violence. Is it because we’re seeing their images more on TV, is it because people have been emboldened by Trump? I don’t know the answer to that.”

It’s an issue GLAAD has been working on for years. Nick Adams and Alex Schmider, GLAAD’s Transgender Media Program team, work with TV networks, production companies, showrunners, script writers, casting directors and agencies as well as PR firms to help bring what it calls “fair and accurate representations for transgender people to the screen.”

They say things are improving dramatically.

“Hollywood is beginning to tell more accurate and well-rounded stories about transgender people and casting trans characters more authentically,” Schmider said in an e-mail comment to the Blade.

“Not only are trans characters starting to be written with more nuance, complexity and humanity in the worlds in which they exist, but casting has also begun to evolve in positive ways.”

By their count, there’s only one cis actor still playing a trans role on TV. The issue is a bit more complex, casting vets say, than “casting more authentically.”

Alexa L. Fogel, casting director for “Pose” and a slew of HBO shows such as “Oz,” “The Wire,” and others, says it’s “a really complicated issue” that has multiple angles.

“TV is easier in that you’re creating characters, you’re creating roles, you’re creating stars,” she says. “In the case of ‘Pose,’ none of these people were known before. A lot of them hadn’t really acted before. These roles could be crafted around these people’s strengths to some degree, not so much in the character of Elektra, with her we had to find someone who could deliver what was on the page, and that was challenging for sure, but I think the other side of it is that certainly with films, there are certainly situations in which you need to sell tickets to things. Certain things might not get made without movie stars. These are complicated questions and I don’t know that anyone knows the answers to them all yet, but it’s a conversation.”

The decision to cast trans actors

on “Pose” was made prior to Fogel’s involvement with the show. She says that added a layer to the casting process, but she didn’t see it as an extra burden.

“It’s part of the joy of the job,” says Fogel, who declined to state her own sexual orientation or gender identity. “It’s about rising to the challenge. I never considered that it couldn’t be done. It was just about, you know, doing the research, getting ambassadors to the community, making sure I had enough time to meet enough people. Anytime you do something that’s less visible, it’s more time consuming.”

How deep was the talent pool?

“I wouldn’t say it was a huge talent pool, but I’ve done a lot of projects where you just have to really put your head down and do extra research and this was one of them,” she says. “It was challenging but it never felt that it was going to be impossible. It just meant we had to do extra work.”

She’s not aware if the Screen Actors Guild tracks its members’ gender identity (SAG did not respond to requests for clarification on that). Fogel says membership is easy to secure once she casts a lead role.

COULD ‘POSE’ BE A FLUKE? Is “Pose” a one-off or a game changer?

“I don’t have a crystal ball, but I think yeah, the ground is certainly shifting in terms of the conversation,” Fogel says. “I think it’s ultimately about the writing, about the culture and what people feel like they want to see.

People want real representation and that seems to be happening across the board.”

Billik agrees. “‘Pose’ is telling a story that’s really spectacular and a lot of people are really responding to it, so I don’t think it will be a one-off,” she says. “I think we’ll see a whole slew of trans actors cast because of it.”

Aneesh Seth, a trans actress on the Netflix show “Jessica Jones,” says there’s still “a long way to go.”

“Athough trans folks have gained some control over the types of trans narratives out there, they can still tend to be reductive and focused on our trauma,” she said in an e-mail. “Where are the stories of trans folks winning? Falling in love? Having successful marriages and careers?”

Is this the end, at least, of the big stars taking home Oscars and nominations for all the major trans movie roles? And how realistic is it — theoretically — for a trans actor to have given the caliber of performance

Swank gave in “Boys Don’t Cry”?

Some say it’s a chicken-or-the-egg argument. If trans actors had been given time to build up their resumes on equal footing with a Swank or a Jared Leto, who knows what they might have achieved?

That’s not to say they had easy rides — Swank and her mother, for a time, lived out of a car upon moving to Los Angeles as Swank pursued her dream. But inarguably, upon starting her acting career, she got cast in varied roles far faster and more regularly than any trans actor would have fared, especially in the ‘90s.

Fogel, especially, says it’s hard to account realistically for “what ifs.”

“You can’t really know the answer to that without doing the work,” she says.

“I couldn’t have answered any of these questions about ‘Pose’ before I’d done it.

The process is so important when it comes to casting. You really have to do the work to find the people, it’s all about the process.”

LOOKING AHEAD The path ahead, many agree, is bright.

“I actually think Time magazine jumped the gun a little bit when they put Laverne Cox on the cover for ‘Orange is the New Black’ and said it was ‘The Transgender Tipping Point,’” Younes says. “Not to take anything away from her, but I think the tipping point is actually now because it’s not just one, it’s multiple roles. There’s a brand new pool of talent and we’re more open to the fact that it

could come from anywhere.”

Several folks interviewed for this piece mentioned bit parts they’d seen trans actors cast in of late. Billik just saw “Moulin Rouge” on Broadway and said one of four ladies in the opening number was trans. Younes knows a trans colleague in the ensemble in “Tina: the Tina Turner Musical,” which opens at the LuntFontanne Theatre on Broadway next month (previews are in October). He also cites two trans actors with brief speaking parts in this summer’s “Spider Man: Far From Home.”

GLAAD reps helped cast Zoey Luna, a trans Latina actress, in “The Craft” reboot from Sony as Lourdes, one of the lead girls in the coven who happens to be trans.

In 2018, not one of the 110 major studio films released included a trans character, according to GLAAD. “So this casting and character are game changers in the film landscape,” Schmider says.

Non-binary actor Asia Kate Dillon on Showtimes “Billions,” is another positive step, many agree. And Daniela Vega made history in “Fantastic Woman,” a 2017 Chilean drama that won an Oscar. Vega was the first trans presenter in the history of the Academy Awards when she presented in 2018.

“This isn’t a trend, this isn’t just the topic du jour,” Younes says. “For decades, all we could get were playing the dead hooker on ‘Law & Order: SVU.’ … I hope it’s a continuing trend for trans people making inroads in entertainment.”

‘Boys Don’t Cry’: problematic in retrospect?

Although it was seen as fairly groundbreaking in its day, the 1999 film “Boys Don’t Cry” hasn’t aged particularly well, some argue.

Donna Minkowitz, the writer of the original Village Voice story that inspired the movie, apologized last year in a piece she wrote (also for the Voice) called “How I broke, and botched, the Brandon Teena Story.”

“For years, I have wanted to apologize for what I now understand, with some shame, was the article’s implicit anti-trans framing,” Minkowitz wrote. “Without spelling it out, the article cast Brandon as a lesbian who hated ‘her’ body because of prior experiences of childhood sexual abuse and rape. … At the time, I was extremely ignorant about trans people. Like many other cis queer people at the time, I didn’t know that there were gay trans men, trans lesbians, bisexual trans folks, that being trans had nothing to do with whether you were straight or gay, and that trans activism was not, as some of us feared, an effort to stave off queerness and lead ‘easier,’ more conventional heterosexual lives.”

The trope of the butch lesbian who takes things “just a little too far” and comes out as trans, is a recurring one, trans actor Samy Nour Younes says. He, too, found the film adaptation “problematic.”

“There was a similar storyline on ‘The L Word,’ when Max Sweeney starts taking hormones and becomes this raging mobster, a really awful storyline. Seeing some of those things and ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ were the first representations I saw of a trans masculine storyline and stopped me from coming out sooner.”

JOEY DIGUGLIELMO

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GREAT PERFORMANCES AT MASON 2019–2020 SEASON Featuring a variety of family-friendly events!

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The Bollywood Musical Revue Saturday, Nov. 9 at 8 p.m.

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PETER RABBIT TALES Sunday, October 6 at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m.

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QUEERY James Taglauer Washington Blade photo by Michael Key

QUEERY: James Taglauer

The Bethesda Row Arts Festival co-director answers 20 queer questions

By JOEY DIGUGLIELMO JOEYD@WASHBLADE.COM James “Jimmy” Taglauer says codirecting the Bethesda Row Arts Festival unites the two things he and Jon Gann (the other co-director) do best: showcasing great works of art while putting their logistical mindsets to work.

Despite both being D.C.-area residents, they met 13 years ago at Camp Camp, a Maine event for LGBT adults. In 2011, they worked together on the D.C. Shorts Film Festival and their collaboration spun out from there.

“This show is all about the art and the artists,” he says of Bethesda Row. “We’re committed to making it as accessible as possible, both in person and online. …

The picturesque setting provides a perfect backdrop for a fabulous fall festival.”

The festival runs Oct. 12-13 as a large outdoor art gallery featuring ceramics, drawing, fiber, glass, printmaking, jewelry, metalwork, painting, photography, sculpture and other disciplines from about 200 jury-selected artists around the

country. It’s free and open to the public.

Details at bethesdarowarts.org.

Taglauer, a 38-year-old Bay City, Mich., native has worked in event management for 15 years in various capacities from weeklong experiential learning conferences to corporate and non-profit events. Bethesda Row gobbles up most of their time at parts of the year, but also leaves he and Gann time to do other stuff as well.

Taglauer came to Washington in 2004 and has been here ever since except for the summer of 2005, when he sold diamonds at a cruise ship port in Alaska.

“I came here originally for a job and now I can’t imagine living anywhere else,” he says.

He’s engaged to Carlos “Charly” Guardia, his partner of three years. They live together in Bethesda, Md., with their cat, Linda. Taglauer enjoys pinball, show tunes, documentaries and cooking in his free time.

How long have you been out and who was the hardest person to tell?

Mostly since college, some people knew earlier than others. My conservative father was the hardest to tell. I told him I was gay on the day I got fired from my first “real job” after college, a year after graduation.

Who’s your LGBTQ hero?

At camp, we sleep in cabins named for LGBTQ heroes and I’m proud to have always been in cabin RuPaul. Ru has made his career in being himself and now famously helping others find their voice through drag. I think Ru’s a success because he knows what he does better than anyone else, and that’s being himself. I love authentic people who don’t make apologies or excuses for who they are.

What LGBTQ stereotype most annoys you?

That only lesbians can own Subarus.

My partner Charly wants one!

What’s your proudest professional achievement?

In 2017, I returned to my former company to lead my second delegation of college students across three cities in Australia. It was one of the most seamless and highly reviewed trips I’ve ever had. Having been away from the company for some time, it felt great to go back and cap off my time there with such a positive experience for both the students and the organization.

What terrifies you?

Spiders

What’s something trashy or vapid you love?

I love Taco Bell and I don’t care who knows.

What’s your greatest domestic skill?

I can iron a shirt better than anyone you’ve ever met. I’m also really good at taking out the trash.

What’s your favorite LGBTQ movie or show?

“Serial Mom” and “Evita.”

What’s your social media pet peeve?

Ugh. I’m just about over all social media. But I think the change to “thread” on Twitter made people even dumber.

What would the end of the LGBTQ movement look like to you?

Wow, I don’t know. When marriage equality became law in the U.S., I never pictured myself getting married, but I also knew that it wasn’t the end of the movement. Being able to marry the person you love was more of a recognition that we are all equal under the law. Though all too often, the most marginalized of our community are still the most impacted.

The end of the movement occurs when we’re all treated equally, under the law and in society.

What’s the most overrated social custom?

Having children.

What was your religion, if any, as a child and what is it today?

Grew up Lutheran, still a Christian.

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What’s D.C.’s best hidden gem?

The Volta pool in Georgetown.

What’s been the most memorable pop culture moment of your lifetime?

In 2004 I met Kelly Clarkson backstage at “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” We hung out and chatted for a while, and it ended with her recording my outgoing voicemail message. I had it forever but I lost it when I went to an iPhone years ago. It was awesome and so is Kelly!

What celebrity death hit you hardest?

I was running an event a block away from the UCLA Medical Center the day Micheal Jackson died. It was super sad, but it also turned the neighborhood into a media and traffic nightmare!

If you could redo one moment from your past, what would it be?

Never start smoking cigarettes!

Although I loved smoking pfunks for a long time and have been a non-smoker for years, I wish I would have never started.

What are your obsessions?

Charly and Linda.

Finish this sentence — It’s about damn time: That we all had universal health care!

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Counterclockwise from left: PEPPERMINT headlines at Music in the Night on Oct. 7 Photo courtesy Capital Pride; A sake cup made by Deborah Zickler, one of the artists exhibiting in Arty Queers Photo courtesy the artist; and RACHEL BLOOM plays the Anthem Oct. 10 Photo courtesy AMP

Bloom plays Anthem Oct. 10

Peppermint to headline Pride event

Arty Queers returns Oct. 12

Rachel Bloom performs stand-up and songs from her popular CW television series, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” Thursday, Oct. 10 at the Anthem (901 Wharf St., S.W.) at 8 p.m. Tickets start at $39.50.

The performance is part of Bloom’s “What Am I Going to Do with My Life Now?” tour and features insights from an entertainment career which earned her a Golden Globe Award as well as Critics’ Choice and Television Critics Award nominations. Bloom’s TV guest star credits include roles in “Portlandia,” “The Simpsons,” “iZombie,” “How I Met Your Mother” and “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” among others. She also appeared as herself on “Drunk History, Gay of Thrones” as well as numerous awards and talks shows.

For tickets and information, visit theanthemdc.com.

Capital Pride presents Music in the Night with special guest Peppermint on Monday, Oct. 7 at the Hamilton (600 14th St., N.W.) at 6:30 p.m. Tickets start at $19.75.

The event features the talents of singer, actress and activist Miss Peppermint, a runner-up on the ninth season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and the first trans woman to originate a principal role in Broadway’s “Head over Heels,” a musical inspired by ’80s girl group The Go-Gos. Performances also by Willie Garner, William Hernandez, Tiffany Lyn Royster, DonMike H. Mendoza and more.

Capital Pride’s annual Music in the Night event is an evening of song and theatrical performances fostering local theater talent.

Tickets and artists’ information available on capitalpride.org/music.

Center Arts presents Arty Queers: D.C.’s LGBTQ Art Market Saturday, Oct. 12 from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. at the D.C. Center (2000 14th St., N.W., Suite 105).

Arty Queers is the D.C. Center’s monthly indoor LGBTQ art market featuring original works for sale, including paintings, pottery, photography, jewelry, textiles and more. The market showcases creations by local LGBTQ artisans in the heart of the U Street corridor.

Visit thedccenter.org for more information.

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All Things Go is next weekend Union Market D.C. (1309 5th St., N.E.) hosts the All Things Go Fall Classic 2019 beginning Saturday, Oct. 12 at noon.

Tickets start at $70. Nellie’s Brunch X Party Bus Bundle is $99.

The festival features music from synthpop bands Churches and Lany, former “The Voice” contestant Melanie Martinez, Australian singer-songwriter Betty Who, Nashville indie pop band Coin and more.

The All Things Go Fall Classic showcases emerging artists and exotic foods for audiences to enjoy.

For tickets and information, visit allthingsgofallclassic.com.

TODAY

Saturday, Oct. 5

The Outrage (1722 14th St., N.W.) hosts the 50 Years of Queer D.C. Photo Exhibit tonight from 6-8 p.m. Admission is free and open to the public. The exhibition includes a one-of-a-kind journey through Washington Blade archival photos and features remarks

by Council member David Grosso. Photos will be auctioned off at the Washington Blade 50th Birthday Gala on Oct. 18. Tickets and information at blade50th.com.

Ladies Night in the Park hosted by Sarah Fraser is tonight from 6-9:30 p.m. at various venues along Park Potomac Avenue. Tickets are free, but register to attend. Participating restaurants include Addies, Founding Farmers and SUGO. The Wine Harvest will provide wine and beer for purchase, and area DJs will provide the music. Also available will be Putt Putt, lawn games and raffles to support charity partner I Support the Girls. Visit eventbrite. com for tickets and information.

Desiree Dik hosts “Slay Them!” tonight from 9-11 p.m. at Red Bear Brewing (209 M St, N.E.). Performers are invited to bring their friends to this drag competition happening the first Friday every month. Fans of queer art and drag are encouraged to come out and vote for their favorite performer each month. For more information, visit redbear.beer.

The Arlington Gay and Lesbian Alliance (AGLA) hosts its monthly First Friday Social at Pinzimini at the Westin Hotel (801 North Glebe Rd., Arlington, Va.) tonight from 6:30-8:30 p.m. AGLA social events enable Arlington LGBTQ and ally neighbors time to relax and spend time together. Attendees are invited to bring friends, enjoy cash bar drinks and meet new people from around the community and the world. More information is available at agla.org.

The Pride Center of Maryland (2530 N. Charles St., 3rd Floor, Baltimore) hosts Giovanni’s Room Open Mic tonight from 7-10 p.m. This event is a monthly open mic that seeks to support Baltimore’s LGBTQ artists and entrepreneurs by providing a platform to share, sell and support one another. Doors open at 7 and show starts at 7:30. Hosted by DaTruth DaPoet and featuring Hip-Hop artist Malcolm Ivanon. Visit pridecentermd.org for more information.

Ladies First Fridays Super Happy Hour is tonight and every first Friday at Club Elevate (15 K St., N.E.) from 5-9:30 p.m. Entry fee is $5. Hosted by Shari Dee and featuring music by DJ Styles, the venue provides happy hour food, drink specials and hookahs as well as House music, Reggae, line dance and more. More information available at facebook.com/ ladiesfirstent.net.

The Center Arts Gallery Opening Reception for Veyron Pax is tonight from 7-9 p.m. at the D.C. Center (2000 14th St., N.W., Suite 105). Pax is an IranianAmerican artist, filmmaker and human rights activist currently based in D.C. For more information about this free public event, visit thedccenter.org.

Sheila E. Performs tonight at the Howard Theater (620 T St., N.W.) at 8 p.m.

Tickets start at $49.50. For tickets and information, visit thehowardtheater.com.

Run the Rainbow Pride 5K in Virginia Beach is today starting at 5:30 a.m. at 2200 Parks Avenue in Virginia Beach, Va. This 18-and-up event is to celebrate the Hampton Roads LGBTQ community through fun and visibility. For more information, visit hamptonroads.eventful.com.

Avalon Saturdays presents Daddy Issues with DJ’s Steve Sidewalk and Sean Morris tonight starting at 10 p.m. at Soundcheck (1420 K St., N.W.). Tatianna from “RuPaul’s Drag Race” hosts this 21-and-up event. Tickets start at $10 with $4 Absolut drinks served from 10-midnight.

Drag show runs from 10:30-11:30 p.m. Visit soundcheckdc.com for details.

The Transgender Assistance Program of Virginia meets today from 4-6 p.m. at the LGBT Life Center (247 W. 25th St., Norfolk, Va.) to discuss ways to combat homelessness within the transgender community in Virginia. TAP VA is an all volunteer, trans-led non-profit organization created to provide educational opportunities around the intersectionality between homelessness, discrimination, socioeconomic status and racism within the trans community in Virginia. For more information, visit lgbtlifecenter.org.

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Sunday, Oct. 6 “Cats” ends its run at the Kennedy Center (2700 F St., N.W.) with today’s 1:30 p.m. performance. Tickets start at $49. Tickets and information available at kennedy-center.org.

The National Museum of Women in the Arts (1250 New York Ave., N.W.) presents the Fierce Women 2.0 tour today from 1-2 p.m. No reservations are required, but space is limited. Visitors are encouraged to arrive at least 30 minutes prior to the start of the tour to sign up at the information desk. Tour departs from the Great Hall. For more information, visit nmwa.org.

Drag Queen Tiny Kitten Bingo hosted

by Caring Hands Animal Support and Education and the Animal Welfare League of Arlington is tonight from 6:30-9:00 p.m. at the Arlington Drafthouse CInema (2903 Columbia Pike, Arlington, Va.). The Imperial Court of Washington will be on hand to bring sparkle while raising funds for animals in need. Tickets

are $25 and include admission and your first bingo card. For more information visit a DJ.arlingtondrafthouse.com.

The D.C. Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence host their second annual Lavender Mass today at 3 p.m. at the Lutheran Church of the Reformation (212 East Capitol St., N.E.). The public is invited to join the Sisters as they celebrate and fight for social justice and LGBTQ rights.

This year’s mass will feature the D.C. Sisters’ sainting of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Badger Ginsburg for her lifeline commitment to advancing civil rights. Refreshments will be served. For more information, contact Sister Mary Full O’Rage at Mary.fullorage@dcsisters.org.

Monday, Oct. 7 The Staunton Public Library (1 Churchville Ave., Staunton, Va.) hosts a screening of the American Experience film “Stonewall Uprising” tonight from 7-8:30 p.m. The film explains the history behind the event launching the modern LGBTQ rights movement as well as the history leading up to the uprising. For more information, visit ci.staunton.va.us.

Tuesday, Oct. 8 The National Press Club (529 14th St., N.W.) presents Fired for Being Gay: The State of LGBTQ Rights in the Workplace today from 1-2 p.m. This free event is held on the same day the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case of Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia which may determine whether sexual orientation discrimination by an employer is prohibited under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This event is in the Club’s First Amendment Lounge and is open to credentialed media and members of the National Press Club.

Registration is required.

Wednesday, Oct. 9 Lez Read is tonight, and the second Wednesday of each month, at 7:30 p.m. at the Politics and Prose bookstore’s coffeehouse, The Den (5015 Connecticut Ave., N.W.). Group members read a wide selection works with lesbian and queer themes or written by lesbian or queeridentified authors. Email bookgroups@ politics-prose.com for more information or to see this month’s selection.

The Lambda Bridge Club meets tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Dignity Center (721 8th St., S.E.) for duplicate bridge. No reservations are needed and newcomers are welcome. Phone 202-841-0279 if you need a partner.

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Colonel Don Schofield, Commander and Conductor

THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE BAND WASHINGTON, D.C. COL. DON SCHOFIELD, COMMANDER AND CONDUCTOR

Join us for the region's premiere event in support of LGBTQ youth as we celebrate SMYAL's 35th Anniversary!

Chamber Players Series The Lyceum

Alexandria’s History Museum 201 S. Washington St., Alexandria, Virginia

FREE CONCERTS!

Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.

Sept. 26 – Nov. 21 Cocktail reception and silent auction begin at 10:30 am

For more info, please visit our website.

Three-course brunch and seated program begin at 12 pm

Featuring Emcee Aaron Gilchrist NBC4

To purchase tickets, become a sponsor, or donate auction items visit

SMYAL.org/Brunch

~SAVE THE DATES!~ SWINGIN’ IN THE SEASON | DECEMBER 14TH AND 15TH, 2019 D.A.R. CONSTITUTION HALL, WASHINGTON, D.C.

for FREE tickets, please visit: www.usafband.eventbrite.com

www.usafband.af.mil O CTO BE R 04, 2019 • WA SHINGTONBLA D E.COM • 35

From left: DEBORA CRABBE (Mercy), AWA SAL SECKA (Ama), JADE JONES (Nana), KASHAYNA JOHNSON (Paulina) and MORIAMO TEMIDAYO AKIBU (Gifty) in ‘School Girls.’

Photo courtesy Round House

Female trouble

Round House’s ‘School Girls’ is breezy comedy set in Ghanian boarding school

BY PATRICK FOLLIARD

Round House Theatre’s production of Jocelyn Bioh’s “School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls” starts off so-so. But what first feels a facile teen comedy soon erupts into something entirely different.

Set in a girl’s boarding school in Ghana in 1986, the action unfolds in that most storied of high school proving grounds — the lunch room. Rendered by the consistently excellent Paige Hathaway, it’s a simple, high-ceilinged structure painted with splashes of bright blue and pink and filled with serviceable wooden tables. Here’s where, uniformed in yellow blouses and happy, green-patterned skirts by Ivania Stack, the Aburi school’s top clique congregates.

Paulina, played as poised, pretty and vicious by Kashayna Johnson, is the school’s very own Regina George, a true mean girl.

With the wave of a hand or snap of her fingers, she demands obedience from her cowed classmates. As resident diva, she runs the show; and when angered she’s not above dropping the harshest of “f-bombs” or hurling the most decimating insults.

Deftly directed by Round House’s associate artistic director Nicole A. Watson, the 85-minute comedy boasts an engaging eight-person cast (all people of color), including both familiar and new faces.

Besides Paulina, the Aburi squad includes Ama (the versatile Awa Sal Secka), a sensible girl not entirely intimidated by Paulina; Nana (out actor Jade Jones), who is singled out as the target for Paulina’s incessant body-shaming jokes; and groveling cousins Mercy (Debora Crabbe) and Gifty, played hilariously by rangy, nonbinary actor Moriamo Temidayo Akibu.

When we meet the girls, they’re in the lunch room buzzing about the upcoming visit from a recruiter for the Miss Ghana beauty pageant. Paulina believes she’s a shoo-in to be selected to compete.

The friends dare not disagree. And while Headmistress Francis (Theresa

Cunningham) is more concerned with developing her students’ brains and character, she can’t help but be interested when she learns that if one of her girls wins the pageant, a sizeable donation will be made to the cash-strapped school.

But things go awry when Ericka (Claire Saunders), a friendly new student from Ohio arrives on the scene loaded down with superior beauty products, chocolate bars from her father’s factory and a new boom box and New Edition cassettes (standout Bobby Brown is the fan favorite). She immediately threatens Paulina’s top dog status.

What’s more, Ericka is biracial (black and white). Not surprisingly, in a culture entrenched in colorism like Ghana, the topics of hair straightening, skin bleaching and complexion come quickly to the fore. Ericka’s new friends are impressed that her looks (read hair and skin) come without effort.

Soon after, snooty pageant recruiter Eloise Amponsah (Shirine Babb) arrives dressed in a “Dynasty”-esque power suit and heels. Vying for her attention, the girls don their most colorful 1980s finery and present a show choir performance of Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love Of All.” Houston’s song, a mid-’80s beauty pageant talent staple, was served up in many harrowing interpretations over the years, and that’s no different here.

Still, with her pleasing presence, tousled curls and light skin, Ericka catches Eloise’s eye. The recruiter and former beauty queen (Miss Ghana 1966) is determined to bring a viable contestant back to contest and Ericka is it. But when Paulina learns that she’s now effectively out, the fallen queen bee threatens to ruin all pageant possibilities for everyone involved.

“School Girls” is a crowd-pleasing show, boosted by strong performances and uplifting design. The playwright’s humor, along with adroit direction makes an entertaining yet compelling examination of a sticky subject.

‘School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls’ Through Oct. 20 Round House Theatre 4545 East-West Highway Bethesda, Md. $46-78 240-644-1100 roundshousetheatre.org

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MAKE YOUR HOLIDAY RESERVATIONS TODAY! O CTO BE R 04, 2019 • WA SHINGTONBLA D E.COM • 37

BEN PLATT in ‘The Politican.’

Photo courtesy Netflix

‘The Politician’ problem

New Netflix series muddled by inconsistent tone, continuity issues and more

By BRIAN T. CARNEY

If a camel is what a horse designed by a committee looks like, then the “The Politician” must be what a television show designed by a committee looks like. With three writer/creators (Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan), six directors and a squadron of producers, the new eight-episode series now streaming on Netflix never finds a consistent tone or steady pace. Instead it lurches awkwardly from incident to incident without finding a satiric target or a dramatic story arc.

“The Politician” is about the electoral ambitions of Payton Hobart, a wealthy high school senior in Santa Barbara who decided when he was a young child that he was going to be president of his high school class and then attend Harvard on the way to his ultimate goal of becoming president of the United States. The series references several pop culture milestones (including “Election” with Reese Witherspoon as Tracy Flick and “The Graduate” with Dustin Hoffman and Katherine Ross), but never establishes an identity of its own.

It’s not clear if the show is supposed to be a satire, a comedy or a drama. A satire would require faster pacing and a sharper point-ofview; a comedy would require a lighter touch and regular laughs; a drama would require more serious themes and fully developed characters. Given the moody pacing and heavy subject matter (including teen suicide, kidnapping, abusive parents, murders and attempted murders, and Munchausenby-proxy syndrome), the production team seems to be leaning toward drama, but it’s hard to identify with the inconsistent and unsympathetic characters.

The problems with tone and pacing get emphasized by some odd writing choices. The show begins at the start of Payton’s senior year of high school, but he’s simultaneously running for office (an event that normally takes place in the spring of junior year) and getting college admission letters (an event that doesn’t happen until

spring of senior year). Further, Payton and his rival are obsessed with polling data, but it would be impossible for the student pollsters to generate any meaningful information, especially with the frequency that Payton demands. In a satire, these inconsistencies would be part of the fun; in a drama, they undermine the believability of the characters and the situation.

Without a strong show runner, there are also minor but annoying inconsistencies between (and even within) episodes.

Character accents come and go, as do Payton’s glasses.

It’s also odd that the election takes place in the middle of the series. This makes the final episodes seem superfluous, especially the last episode which serves as a spoiler-laden trailer for what appears to be the series’ second season.

The series also has an oddly sex-negative tone. The students at St. Sebastian High School all talk a good game about inclusivity, diversity and sexual and gender fluidity, but all of the characters (teen-aged and adult) are trapped in manipulative and transactional relationships. Love of any sort is an empty promise and sex is at best a guilty pleasure.

Payton even blackmails a former male lover.

The production team does get credit for pulling together a diverse cast, which includes a trans actor and several actors with disabilities. The cast is led by out actor Ben Platt (the “Pitch Perfect” movies and “Dear Evan Hansen” at Arena Stage and on Broadway), but the lack of a strong vision for the series undermines his performance.

It’s not clear if he’s supposed to be Frankenstein (as is implied in the clever opening credits) or Hannibal Lecter (Payton accuses himself of being a sociopath) or Pinocchio (the puppet who needs to get in touch with his emotions). It also doesn’t help that Platt and his castmates are not particularly believable as teenagers.

Despite these problems, some of the cast members do turn in fine performances. Lucy Boynton (who played Freddie Mercury’s girlfriend in “Bohemian Rhapsody”) shines as Astrid Sloan, Payton’s political and romantic rival. Her finely detailed performance creates an interesting three-dimensional character that offers a tantalizing glimpse of what the series could have been. Boynton is given great support by Dylan McDermott (“American Horror Story”) and January Jones (“Mad Men”) as her materialistic parents. Rahne Jones also brings great energy and sly humor to her role as an opportunistic student politician.

Unfortunately, Jessica Lange is wasted as Dusty Jackson, the monstrous grandmother of Payton’s running mate.

She’s reduced to playing yet again the standard Ryan Murphy role of the evil Southern mama/nana who gives long expository monologues and dances to golden oldies.

Despite some enjoyable moments, “The Politician” does not live up to the promise of its interesting premise. Since Murphy signed a two-year deal for the series with Netflix, let’s hope Payton’s future campaigns are more exciting than this one.

38 • WAS H IN GTO N B LAD E.CO M • O CTO B ER 0 4 , 2 0 1 9

High school revisited

Tegan and Sara look back with new memoir, refreshing ’90s-sounding album

By THOM MURPHY

+ Largest LGBT owned title company + Billions of dollars in transactions closed annually + 6 in house attorneys + Residential and commercial transactions + In home and in office refinance settlements + Licensed in DC, DE, MD, NJ, VA & WV TEGAN and SARA revisit their grittier early musical style on new album ‘Hey, I’m Just Like You.’ Photo by Trevor Brady; courtesy Sire

This week I had the chance to see the jukebox musical “Moulin Rouge” on Broadway, based on the 2001 film of the same title. And while the singing, dancing and set were beyond anything I’ve seen so far, I couldn’t help but leave feeling a bit depressed about the hollowness of the music — most of it recent pop — which felt more like a collection of marketing jingles.

What a relief it was to be reminded that this isn’t the condition of all current music

by Tegan and Sara, whose newest album, “Hey, I’m Just Like You,” was released last Friday on Sire Records. “Hey, I’m Just Like You” is their ninth studio album, following a long chain of recordings beginning with their 1999 debut “Under Feet Like Ours.”

But the record does something rather unusual — the twin sisters have re-recorded and re-worked a number of songs they wrote while in high school in the mid ’90s.

This comes in conjunction with the release of their new memoir “High School,” which focuses on their high school years in Calgary, their struggles with queerness and the inception of their musical project.

Nostalgia glimmers on the new record, like a vintage car that has been carefully restored to a better condition than it ever knew in its heyday. As such, the new album easily capitalizes on the ‘90s as focus of so much nostalgic feeling: The internet before Cambridge Analytica, overalls, and of course Alanis Morisette’s “Ironic.”

The album plunges into this world straightaway with the first track, “Hold My Breath Until I Die.” The song has an uptempo, alternative pop-rock sound and an instrumentation that is neither over produced nor excessively busy, typical of a distinctive ‘90s rock sound. Lyrically the teenage angst comes through distinctively: “Late at night, when your words are eating me alive/does it make you sad to leave me here like that?/in my dreams‚ the blood runs from my eyes/if I fall‚ will you catch me in your arms?”

This is not to say that the new album sounds exactly like their early stuff. On the contrary. Re-listening to “Under Feet Like Ours” and their second album “This Business of Art” (2000) one can’t help notice a grittier, tougher sound, one that fades away slowly through subsequent releases and ultimately evolves into the sisters’ 2013 record “Heartthrob,” which is basically just synth pop. The new album layers the grit of their early sound with the sentimental gloss of nostalgia. It makes for a seemly balance of the music of yesteryear and a contemporary sound.

The lead single “I’ll Be Back Someday” functions as an teen anthem, pulsing with the restless energy that only puberty can supply: “I run, run, run, run, run away/get, get, get, get, get away/but I’ll be back someday.” It’s a head-banging, must-seelive kind of concert song. But it is also another example of the fusion between old and new. The bridge offers something akin to a mellow synth pop sound, linking together the riotous refrains.

“Hello, I’m Right Here” is one of the slower, sadder tracks on the album.

ADVERTISING Largely piano driven, it’s a testament to the PROOF #1 ISSUE DATE: 181026 SALES REPRESENTATIVE: versatility of the sisters. And it captures the mournful and ubiquitously teenage desire REVIEW AD FOR COPY AND DESIGN ACCURACY. Revisions must be submitted within 24 hours of the date of proof. Proof will be considered final and will be submitted for publication if revision is not submitted within 24 hours of to be seen. “I Don’t Owe You Anything” is the date of proof. Revisions will not be accepted after 12:01 pm wednesday, the week of publication.Brown naff pitts REVISIONS omnimedia llc (dba the washington blade) is not responsible for the content and/or design of your ad. Advertiser is responsible for any legal liability arising out of or relating to the advertisement, and/or any material to which users REDESIGN a slower, synth-heavy rock track.

Another can link through the advertisement. Advertiser represents that its advertisement will not violate any criminal laws or TEXT REVISIONS any rgihts of third parties, including, but not limited to, such violations as infringement or misapporpriation of any successful integration of contemporary copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret, music, image, or other proprietary or propety right, false advertising, unfair IMAGE/LOGO REVISIONS competition, defamation, invasion of privacy or rights of celebrity, violation of anti-discrimination law or regulation, pop sound with angsty lyrical content. or any other right of any person or entity. Advertiser agrees to idemnify brown naff pitts omnimedia llc (dba the ADVERTISER SIGNATURE NO REVISIONS washington blade) and to hold brown naff pitts omnimedia llc (dba the washington blade) harmless from any and all By signing this proof you are agreeing to your contr liability, loss, damages, claims, or causes of action, including reasonable legal fees and expenses that may be incurred washington blade newspaper. This includes but is n It’s impossible not to belt along, without by brown naff pitts omnimedia llc, arising out of or related to advertiser’s breach of any of the foregoing representations payment and insertion schedule. and warranties. falling into the mindless earmwormery that is everywhere so pervasive.

The album does a great job of making peace between the old and new. Opening with an almost wistful sound, it seamlessly SERVING THE LGBT COMMUNITY FOR ALMOST 20 YEARS. NOW IN DC, MD & VA! integrates the more poppy tracks, including the pop apex of the album, “We Don’t Have 827 Woodside Parkway • Silver Spring, MD 20910 Fun When We’re Together Anymore.” It’s p: 240.863.2441 • f: 240.491.9551 masterfully moody yet fun album, an absolute jfairfax@jenniferfairfax.com • www.jenniferfairfax treat for anyone suffering from residual ‘90s nostalgia. Let’s hope it catches on.

O CTO BE R 04, 2019 • WA SHINGTONBLA D E.COM • 39

Family Building through: • Adoption • Donor Agreements • Surrogacy

The Sound and the ‘Furies’

Mariinsky Ballet Paquita

SAM MOORHEAD (left) and LIZ LINSTROM on the field.

Photo courtesy Furies

Photo by Valentin Baranovsky

October 8–13 | Opera House

By KEVIN MAJOROS

Valery Gergiev, Artistic Director of the Mariinsky Theatre Yuri Fateev, Deputy Director of the Ballet Company with the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra Gavriel Heine, conductor Visit Kennedy-Center/org for the star-studded casting

Kennedy-Center.org (202) 467-4600

Groups call (202) 416-8400 For all other ticket-related customer service inquiries, call the Advance Sales Box Office at (202) 416-8540

Support for Ballet at the Kennedy Center is generously provided by C. Michael Kojaian.

International Programming at the Kennedy Center is made possible through the generosity of the Kennedy Center International Committee on the Arts.

This week in the Washington Blade All Star series, we meet two athletes from the D.C. Furies who are thriving in the sport of rugby.

The Furies are a Division 1 team and play fifteens matches in the spring and fall, along with sevens tournaments in the summer.

When her wife Kirsten was reassigned to Andrews Air Force Base in April, 2018, Sam Moorhead checked in to play with a local rugby team but didn’t click with them.

She sought out the Furies that summer and found her place with the team.

Growing up in Greenville, S.C., Moorhead played club soccer and was also on her high school soccer team. She started her freshman year at University of South Carolina playing pick up soccer before switching over to club rugby.

“I was like a deer in headlights at first, but quickly found out that I liked the analytical aspect of the sport,” Moorhead says. “Depending on what position you play, there is time to think and it becomes similar to being in a chess game.”

Her eligibility ran out in college and Moorhead continued in the sport by joining an adult women’s club in Columbia where she met her future wife. Moorhead plays as a fly-half and her wife was playing as an 8-man. The two faced off on occasion in practice and scrimmages.

“I am the finesse player making tactical decisions and trying not to get hit,” Moorhead says. “After several tackles by Kirsten, I learned that whenever I heard her distinct footsteps, I should just fall down.”

The pair moved to Dayton, Ohio, for Kirsten to pursue her master’s at The Air Force Institute of Technology. When they arrived in D.C., it was important for Moorhead to seek out a rugby team.

“It’s a built-in community that transcends community pretty quickly and becomes family. You meet people who have a small interest, but are vastly different,” Moorhead says. “Rugby gives me stress relief and it never gets boring. I could play forever.”

After playing with the Furies last fall and elite sevens with them this past summer, Moorhead was nursing an injury for their first double-header match of the season last weekend. She stepped in and played anyway showing her commitment to the team.

“We bleed for each other and the cost of your body makes the connection even deeper,” Moorhead says. “After every match, I can’t wait to get back on the field.”

Liz Linstrom grew up in Woodbridge,

Va., and played basketball and soccer through middle school and high school, along with playing club soccer. Looking for something different, she started playing rugby in her first year at William & Mary.

“I was in great shape for my first practice and 15 minutes later, I was bent over, breathing hard and experiencing muscle fatigue,” Linstrom says. “I took that as a challenge.”

She ended up tearing an ACL in her freshman year and remained active in rugby through non-contact drills and coaching. Even though she was aggressive with her post-surgery recovery, she was out of the sport for one year.

Linstrom returned to the pitch for the National Small College Championships at the end of her sophomore year where her team captured third place. She had recovered mentally and physically and was at the top of her game.

She experienced another ACL tear in her senior year and faced a different path because of where she was in her career.

“The second tear was more traumatizing because I was at the end of my college career and I knew how long it would take to recover,” Linstrom says. “After graduation I didn’t even look for jobs, I just focused on recovery.”

One year later, Linstrom joined the Furies and spent the summer of 2018 building her skills, testing her limits and gaining back her confidence. By the middle of their fall season, she was back into full-contact rugby. Despite the injuries, she remains dedicated to the sport.

“I think as a woman, there are not a lot of opportunities to show aggression like you can in rugby. Other sports such as lacrosse allow the men to be more aggressive than the woman,” Linstrom says. “There is still a stigma around women being powerful and rugby gives us the opportunity to show different strengths.”

Linstrom is a utility player who floats into different positions, sometimes inside centre, sometimes as a flanker. She suffered a concussion this summer and is currently sidelined for matches, but still practicing.

Going forward, she has thought about what her path might be in the sport.

“I will always contribute in any way that I can, but I want to find a position that I can specialize in,” Linstrom says. “I don’t care where I am playing as long as I am playing. I always want to be ready to hop in and be my best.”

40 • WAS H IN GTO N B LAD E.CO M • O CTO B ER 0 4 , 2 0 1 9

RENÉE ZELLWEGER in Judy Photo © Pathe UK

‘Judy’ gets lost somewhere over the Rainbow Zellweger is admirable but the erasure of gay history is not

By DAVID EHRENSTEIN Frances Ethel Gumm, aka Judy Garland died 50 years ago in London. But she remains in the spotlight everywhere, particularly the LGBT everywhere, to this day, and that ain’t likely to change. Ever.

Judy Garland is a “gay icon” like no other.

Her life bridges the gap between the pre-Stonewall world when gay was “in the closet” to the post-Stonewall one, filled with the “out and proud” whose attentions are longed for gay icon wannabes like Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift (good intentions sometimes aren’t good enough).

That Stonewall took place on the day of Judy’s funeral was mere coincidence, but like the film’s failure to mention Stonewall — even in a closing crawl — something crucial is missing from her performance, a sense of magic/ How is it then that Stonewall isn’t mentioned at all in “Judy,” the new Renée Zellweger-starring biopic — it doesn’t even count as a blip on the gaydar?

It’s a well-meaning, competently made film and Zellweger gives it her all, but like the film’s failure to tie her to Stonewall, O CTO BE R 04, 2019 • WA SHINGTONBLA D E.COM • 41

something is missing.

While she’s capable of perfectly reflecting Garland’s facial tics and physical stance, she can’t reproduce her vocal power. No one can.

Judy, adapted from the play “End of The Rainbow” by Peter Quilter, is an attempt to reproduce Garland’s last days but wanes bathos rather than insightful.

And in no matter more so than when it touches on LGBT history.

“Judy” features an entirely fictional British gay couple who come to know her.

Clearly they’re meant to stand in for her many gay fans. But two men won’t do.

Nor does the film explore the fact that her fifth and last husband, hustler/ promoter Mickey Deans was gay.

You could make an entire film about Judy’s many gay husbands alone.

You could also make a film about the gay men so important to her career like producer-songwriter Roger Edens, directors Vincente Minnelli, Charles Walters and George Cukor and many actors including Tom Drake who played “The Boy Next Door” in one of her greatest films, Minnelli’s “Meet Me in St. Louis.”

And then there’s the film that might be made about her gay appeal, which in her lifetime won her both adulation and opprobrium that has morphed her into a goddess.

In a chapter of his book “Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society Devoted to Garland,” gay scholar, activist Judy-adept Richard Dyer notes that while “Garland was the image of heterosexual family normality” in the films that made her a star she worked “in an emotional register of great intensity which seems to bespeak equally suffering and survival, vulnerability and strength, theatricality and authenticity, passion and irony.”

And it’s within this range she connected to gays at a time when so much as acknowledging our existence was controversial.

And she knew it. On “The Jack Paar

Show,” which aired from 1957 to 1962, she declared her undying love for her gay fans.

She could also tease about it. In the climactic hospital scene of her last film “I Could Go On Singing,” she acknowledges to an ex-beau played by Dirk Bogarde (no you can’t get any gayer) that not only is she drunk but, “I’ve had enough to float Fire Island.”

That line like much of the entire scene was an ad lib, providing a quite insightful portrait of how insightfully Garland was about her gay fans.

How they reacted to those subliminal callouts is something of a story all by itself. Dyer quotes a gay British friend who with scores of other gays flocked to her concerts discovering “it was as if the fact that we had gathered to see Garland gave us permission to be gay in public for once.”

This “permission” enraged homophobes like writer William Goldman who in his foaming-at-the-mouth antigay screed “The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway,” declared, “If homosexuals have an enemy it is age. And Garland is youth, perennially over the rainbow. And second, the lady has suffered. Homosexuals tend to identify with suffering. They are a persecuted minority group, and they understand suffering. And so does Garland.

She’s been through the fire and lived — all the drinking and divorcing, all the pills and all the men, all the pundage come and gone — brothers and sisters she knows.”

This suggests that Garland was little more than a crying towel.

But gay activist and dedicated Garland fan Vito Russo said, “She had the guts to take a chance at dropping dead in front of a thousand people, and won.” And that for the gays who loved her was the point.

As for the straights who hated her, Goldman, whose “bromance” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” hovers right on the edge that “Brokeback Mountain” finally lapsed into, quotes another screenwriter friend who observed Garland at a Hollywood party: “I’m in the corner now, and she’s sitting all alone in the center of this patio and for a minute there was nothing. And then this crazy thing started to happen: every homosexual in the place — every guy you’d heard whispered about, all these stars, they left the girls they were with and started a mass move toward Garland. She didn’t ask for it. She was just sitting there blinking in the sun while this thing happened: All these beautiful men, some of them big stars, some of them not so big, they circled her, crowded around her, and pretty soon she disappeared behind this expensive male fence.”

One can only ask “Your point?”

In “As Time Goes By,” a play about gay life by Noel Greig and Drew Griffiths produced in England in 1977, one of its many characters says of Judy Garland, “When they said she was fat, when they said she was thin, when they said had fallen flat on her face ... People are falling on their face every day. She got up.”

No, Judy Garland didn’t “die for our sins.” She got up instead, until she could no longer stand. Her passion set an example.

Zellweger’s womanlike skill is strikingly admirable but the passion of Judy Garland just didn’t zing the strings of my heart.

FRIDAY OCT. 18 2019

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A night celebrating LGBTQ journalism Washington Blade 50th Anniversary Gala

FRIDAY, OCT. 18 Intercontinental Hotel - Wharf

• Dinner • Open Bar • Guest Speakers • Performance by Frenchie Davis

O CTO BE R 04, 2019 • WA SHINGTONBLA D E.COM • 43

Not Metro accessible? No problem!

Ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft have dramatically impacted the local real estate market, easing reliance on Metro accessibility.

Photo courtesy of Bigstock

Uber, Lyft have major impact on local real estate market

By JILL PATEL As an experienced agent on the Jenn Smira Team, I specialize in new developments throughout the city, focusing on rising neighborhoods such

as Trinidad, Brookland, and Petworth.

These neighborhoods maintain the Washingtonian charm, along with the walkability that buyers are searching for while remaining within their budget.

Square and Lot Development, a Washington, D.C.-based development team, is primarily focused on cultivating these growing markets. Sima Tessema, a co-founder, believes in the value of repurposing or renovating in these markets. He states, “We develop in momentum markets — Trinidad, Benning Rd, Petworth, Brookland, Hill East — that have tremendous potential and upside.

These neighborhoods allow our buyers to

participate in the renaissance of our city.”

What both developers and agents have also been seeing in this renaissance is the utilization of rider-sharing apps. In my experience, buyers have been focused on remaining near a Metro station.

Recently, I have fewer buyers who require Metro accessible as a musthave; buyers are looking for unique neighborhoods that maintain their historic charm. Sima has shared the same thoughts, saying, “We see a lot of momentum in neighborhoods that historically had poor transit access. Uber & Lyft and other car sharing companies are significantly impacting the real estate landscape in

urban core markets. “ These apps have not only allowed buyers to expand their search, but developers to widen their reach and create communities.

New developments in D.C. continue to offer buyers investments in their future, while maximizing real estate value.

Jill Patel

is a real estate agent licensed in D.C. with the Jenn Smira Team of Compass Real Estate. Reach her at 202-302-3797 or jpatel@compass.com.

44 • WAS H IN GTO N B LAD E.CO M • O CTO B ER 0 4 , 2 0 1 9

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O CTO BE R 04, 2019 • WA SHINGTONBLA DE.CO M • 47

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Nice quiet neighborhood.

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4302 Saint Barnabas Rd, Ste D (301) 432-1071