Washington Blade, Volume 53, Issue 09, March 04, 2022

(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)

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OutWrite, Washington, D.C’s annual free LGBTQ+ Literary Festival, is seeking reading, panel, & workshop submissions for our 2022 festival, which will be held August 5-7, 2022. We’re seeking readings, panels, and workshops exploring & celebrating all aspects of the LGBTQ+ identity and literary space!

The deadline to submit is March 15, 2022.

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VOLUME 53 ISSUE 09 ADDRESS PO Box 53352 Washington DC 20009 PHONE 202-747-2077 E-MAIL news@washblade.com INTERNET washingtonblade.com PUBLISHED BY Brown Naff Pitts Omnimedia, Inc. PUBLISHER LYNNE J. BROWN lbrown@washblade.com ext. 8075 EDITORIAL EDITOR KEVIN NAFF knaff@washblade.com ext. 8088 SR. NEWS REPORTER LOU CHIBBARO JR. lchibbaro@washblade.com ext. 8079 NEWS REPORTER CHRIS JOHNSON cjohnson@washblade.com ext. 8083 REPORTER & INTERNATIONAL NEWS EDITOR MICHAEL K. LAVERS mlavers@washblade.com POP CULTURE REPORTER JOHN PAUL KING PHOTO EDITOR MICHAEL KEY mkey@washblade.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS TINASHE CHINGARANDE, DUNIA ORELLANA, REPORTAR SIN MIEDO, PARKER PURIFOY, PETER ROSENSTEIN, MARK LEE, LATEEFAH WILLIAMS, KATE CLINTON, KATHI WOLFE, ERNESTO VALLE, YARIEL VALDÉS GONZÁLEZ, LYNARE ROBBINS, PHILIP VAN SLOOTEN, KATLEGO K. KOLANYANE-KESUPILE, KAELA ROEDER, TREMENDA NOTA, ALBERTO J. VALENTÍN, MAYKEL GONZÁLEZ VIVERO, ORGULLO LGBT. CO, ESTEBAN GUZMAN 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 ext. 8075. Distributed by MediaPoint, LLC

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Comings & Goings

Roem named executive director of Emerge Virginia

By PETER ROSENSTEIN

The Comings & Goings column is about sharing the professional successes of our community. We want to recognize those landing new jobs, new clients for their business, joining boards of organizations and other achievements. Please share your successes with us at: comingsandgoings@washblade.com.

The Comings & Goings column also invites LGBTQ+ college students to share their successes with us. If you have been elected to a student government position, gotten an exciting internship, or are graduating and beginning your career with a great job, let us know so we can share your success.

Congratulations to Danica Roem on being named executive director of Emerge Virginia. Emerge Virginia is the commonwealth’s premier organization recruiting and training Democratic women to run for office. Emerge Virginia has a track record for getting Democratic women elected. Since the organization launched in 2014, the program has equipped 198 women with the skills needed to bring change to their communities; 26 alumnae currently serve in office in Virginia with 12 alumnae serving in the House of Delegates with Roem.

A’shanti F. Gholar, president of Emerge said, “I am incredibly excited to have Danica Roem join us as the next Executive Director of Emerge Virginia. Danica is a

trailblazer with a proven track record. Her journey and leadership have inspired countless Emerge alumnae to step up to run and win, and we know she’s going to bring those skills to empower diverse communities across the commonwealth. Through her efforts, Emerge will reach thousands more women of the New American Majority — women of color, Black, Brown and Indigenous women, young, LGBTQ+ and unmarried women. They will repower political structures, as we reach for our future together. We are proud to add her to our amazing team.”

Upon accepting the position Danica said, “I’m excited to serve as the next executive director of Emerge Virginia while continuing my work representing the people of the 13th District of the Virginia House of Delegates. Most delegates have a second job and this will be mine. I’m staying in office and plan to be on the ballot again in 2023. As executive director, I’ll be able to recruit, train and empower the next generation of women leaders in Virginia who will work alongside my Emerge sisters and me in elected office. Emerge is essential to the future of Virginia and I’m eager to begin the transformative work we will accomplish together.”

Before taking this role, Roem was closely involved with Emerge as an alum using what she learned to run and win in her very first campaign. She became the first out-and-

DANICA ROEM

(Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

seated transgender state legislator in American history, unseating a 13-term anti-LGBTQ incumbent.

Roem is a lifelong Virginian from Manassas. She worked as a community newspaper reporter authoring more than 2,500 news stories about her home community of Prince William County as the lead reporter of the Gainesville Times/Prince William Times. She has worked as the news editor of the Montgomery County Sentinel and also covered state and federal campaigns for The Hotline.

Away from journalism and politics, Roem spent 12 years fronting heavy metal bands and ran her own mobile yoga studio set to a heavy metal soundtrack. She is also the author of her memoir, “Burn the Page.”

Trans group to provide LGBTQ crime victim housing for D.C. courts In a first-of-its-kind development, the D.C. Superior Court’s Crime Victims Compensation Program has arranged for a local LGBTQ organization to provide temporary emergency housing for LGBTQ victims of violent crime.

Douglas Buchanan, a spokesperson for the D.C. Courts, told the Washington Blade that Empowering the Transgender Community, known as ETC, recently entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Crime Victims Compensation Program to serve as a housing provider.

“The Crime Victims Compensation Program is excited about adding ETC as a provider because it demonstrates that the Court is inclusive and promotes diversity,” Buchanan said.

Longtime D.C. transgender rights advocate Earline Budd is the founder and executive director of ETC. Budd told the Blade ETC would be operating a small apartment building with apartments that can accommodate 26 individuals or families. She said the facility will provide emergency temporary housing specifically for LGBTQ crime victims for up to 30 days through its arrangement with the Superior Court housing program.

Budd said she was pleased that court officials understood

‘From what I see when I’m looking at the crime reports, we’re having LGBT victims almost every day,’ said EARLINE BUDD. (Blade file photo by Michael Key)

the need for an LGBTQ specific housing facility due to the significant number of cases in which LGBTQ people are victims of crime that come before the D.C. courts.

A description of the program on the Superior Court website says the program establishes arrangements with housing providers for crime victims who could be subjected to danger if they remain in the residence where they had been living at the time they became victims usually of a crime of violence.

Budd said many of the individuals admitted to the program are victims of domestic violence and are in need of emergency housing. She said some victims may also have been victims of a hate crime.

“From what I see when I’m looking at the crime reports, we’re having LGBT victims almost every day,” Budd said.

Under rules established by the program, the location of all of the emergency housing facilities must remain confidential. Budd said she and ETC understand the need for the confidentiality requirement and will not be publicly disclosing the address or location of the ETC facility other than that it is in D.C. She said ETC is getting the facility ready to begin admitting residents the second week of March.

LOU CHIBBARO JR.

Blade accepting applications for summer fellowships The Blade Foundation announced this week it has opened the application process for its summer 2022 fellowship program.

Each summer, the Blade Foundation hosts two college journalism students who spend 12 weeks with a Blade staff mentor while gaining valuable reporting experience.

The first fellowship covers news of interest to the local D.C.-area LGBTQ 0 6 • WA SHIN GTO N BLADE.COM • MARCH 04, 2 0 2 2 • LO CA L NE WS

community; the second covers queer news in Delaware and is named after Steve Elkins, the founder and longtime head of the CAMP Rehoboth Community Center.

College students may apply by emailing a letter of interest, resume, and links to three writing samples to: Kevin Naff, executive director, Blade Foundation, knaff@washblade.com. No phone calls. Deadline to apply is April 4.

STAFF REPORTS

Gay former police officer running for Ward 1 Council

lead issues he will run on at a time Gay former D.C. police officer Salah when the city’s rising murder rate and Czapary on Feb. 12 announced he is gun violence have alarmed many city running in the city’s June 21 Democratic residents. primary for the Ward 1 D.C. Council “My focus right now is speaking on seat, becoming the second openly the issue of public safety and combating LGBTQ candidate running for a seat on the rise in gun violence and homicides the Council this year as a Democrat. because that impacts all of us, whether In January, transgender Democratic you’re gay, straight, regardless of your activist and Advisory Neighborhood gender, your gender identity or race,” Commissioner Monika Nemeth he said. “That’s impacting all of us.” announced her candidacy for SALAH CZAPARY, who’s gay, He said he served as a uniformed the Ward 3 Council seat. Nemeth is running for Council.

(Screen capture via YouTube) D.C. police officer from 2016 to officially announced her candidacy 2018, where he was assigned to shortly before incumbent Ward 3 the department’s Fourth District that includes part of Councilmember Mary Cheh announced she was Ward 1, before transferring to a civilian position at D.C. withdrawing from her race for re-election to a fifth term police headquarters, where he worked from 2018 until on the Council.

February of this year when he resigned to run for the Czapary, 30, a native of Rockville, Md., states on his Ward 1 Council seat. campaign website that if elected to the Ward 1 Council He told the Blade he is the son of a Palestinian refugee seat he would become the first Arab American to serve mother and a Hungarian immigrant father who raised on the Council and possibly the first openly LGBTQ him and his siblings in the Bahai faith, which he says person to sit on the Council since 2015. embraces diversity.

He was referring to the late former D.C. Councilmember Similar to Nemeth, Czapary said he will be running Jim Graham, who was gay and held the Ward 1 seat until under the city’s Fair Election program, which limits he lost his re-election bid in 2014 to incumbent Ward 1 contributions by individuals to $50 and provides Councilmember Brianne Nadeau, who Czapary is now matching city funds to candidates running under that running against in the June primary. Nadeau has been a program. longtime supporter of LGBTQ rights.

Since Cheh dropped out of the race in Ward 3, Ward 1 Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner and Nemeth became one of seven candidates competing community activist Sabel Harris is also running for the for the seat in the June 21 Democratic primary as of Ward 1 Council seat in the Democratic primary.

Feb. 27, according to a candidate list posted on the D.C. Although his campaign website lists a wide range Board of Elections website. of issues he will be addressing, Czapary told the LOU CHIBBARO JR. Washington Blade that public safety will be among the

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AIDS Healthcare Foundation opens in Falls Church

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the Los Angelesbased global nonprofit organization providing HV/ AIDS medical care in health centers in 43 countries and in at least 15 states and the District of Columbia in the U.S., announced it has opened its newest D.C.-area health center in Falls Church, Va. The Falls Church center, located at 2946 Sleepy Hollow Rd. in the Seven Corners area, began seeing patients on Jan. 24 and will hold its official grand opening ceremony on March 10. It is AHF’s first health care center in Virginia and will join the organization’s two existing healthcare centers in D.C. and two in Maryland.

“AHF has 35 years of expertise in providing HIV medical care to individuals regardless of their ability to pay,” said Mike McVicker-Weaver, AHF’s D.C.-area regional director. “We are very proud to bring our expertise to Northern Virginia.”

“Based on the most recent Virginia Department of Health surveillance data from 2020, 57% of all people living with HIV in Northern Virginia are not in routine care,” McVicker-Weaver said. “That’s 4,190 people with unmanaged HIV and indicates a 3% increase from the prior year,” he said. “Local stakeholders attribute this to there being too few healthcare providers for low-income individuals.”

Like most of AHF’s other heath care centers, the newly opened center will provide primary care and HIV care services, PrEP HIV prevention availability services, pharmaceutical services, medical case management, and free walk-in HIV testing.

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Concerns for LGBTQ Ukrainians mount as war drags on Activists across the country remain defiant

By MICHAEL K. LAVERS | mlavers@washblade.com

“The Ukrainian Jewish and LGBTQ communities face A Biden administration official has told the particularly acute vulnerabilities,” reads the groups’ Washington Blade the U.S. has “engaged directly” with statement. “They have historically been marginalized LGBTQ Ukrainians and other groups that Russia may and continue to face ongoing discrimination. We target if it gains control of their country. are deeply concerned that LGBTQ people overall “We have engaged directly with these populations and LGBTQ Jews, in particular, will be subject to to direct them to programs that offer emergency scapegoating in what may become a vast humanitarian assistance to address relocation, medical expenses crisis.” or other unexpected costs,” the official told the LGBTQ Victory Institute President Annise Parker in Washington Blade on Feb. 25 in an email. “And we have her own statement in response to the invasion echoed engaged with allies and partners to try to ensure that calls for the U.S. to protect LGBTQ Ukrainian activists those who must flee Ukraine have somewhere to go.” and other vulnerable groups.

The official noted that “based on Russia’s past “We call on the United States and our allies to ensure behavior, it is reasonable to expect that Russia’s the unique vulnerabilities of Ukrainian LGBTQ leaders authorities would target those who oppose or are and civil society are part of all diplomatic talks and perceived to oppose the Russian government’s negotiations. Their safety must be paramount,” said actions or policies, and/or belong to groups of Parker. “The future of Ukrainian democracy depends persons targeted for repression inside Russia. The on it.” aforementioned would include leading Ukrainian Nash Mir, a Ukrainian LGBTQ advocacy organization officials, Russian and Belarusian dissidents in exile that has offices in Kyiv, the country’s capital, and in in Ukraine, independent journalists, anti-corruption other cities across the country, has acknowledged activists, vulnerable populations such as members these concerns. of some religious and ethnic groups, and LGBTQI+ “The Free World opposes the Russian world, persons.” freedom and democracy oppose its traditional values,” “We are also concerned about the safety of persons wrote Nash Mir in a statement it posted to its Facebook with disabilities in any conflict situation,” said the page on Feb. 24. “Propaganda and protection of official. these ‘traditional values,’ among which homophobia “We have warned and will continue to warn groups occupies an honorable place, is a direct aid to the in the categories we think could be targeted based Russian world. This is the ideological justification of the on our understanding of Russia’s past behavior and Russian aggression. This is a direct assistance to our our knowledge of Russia’s plans in order to enable mortal enemy.” them to protect themselves or move to places where they might be safer,” added the official. “We’ve been A Budapest Pride supporter protests outside the Situation for LGBTQ Ukrainians ‘dire’ warning the Ukrainian government of all that may be Russian Embassy in Budapest, Hungary, on Feb. 24. coming, as well.”

Anna Sharyhina is the co-founder of the Sphere (Photo courtesy of Budapest Pride/Twitter) The official spoke with the Blade less than two days Women’s Association, which is based in Kharkiv, the after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. country’s second-largest city that is less than 30 miles The U.S. in a letter it sent to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle from the Russian border in eastern Ukraine.

Bachelet before the invasion said Russia plans to target LGBTQ Ukrainians and other Sharyhina in an email she sent to supporters on Feb. 27 described the situation for vulnerable groups the Biden administration official noted to the Blade. A Russian “activists, human rights defenders, the LGBT+ community and the entire Ukraine” as government spokesperson described the claim to the Blade as “propaganda.” “dire.” Sharyhina further noted the Sphere Women’s Association has begun to raise The Congressional LGBTQ+ Equality and Ukraine Caucuses in a letter they sent to funds to provide housing, food, personal hygiene products to LGBTQ people and to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday said they are “particularly concerned for relocate them if necessary. the well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) Ukrainians and “With sincere faith in freedom, democracy and human rights in Ukraine,” ends the other marginalized groups in Ukraine.” email.

“There is an impending humanitarian emergency in Ukraine and Ukraine’s partners Other Ukrainian LGBTQ rights groups struck a similar tone.

— including the U.S. — must take action to protect Ukrainian lives, with a particular focus “We need to show how powerful we are all together, and Putin will stand no chance,” on minority communities,” reads the letter. “LGBTQ Ukrainians as well as Ukrainians with said Kyiv Pride in a tweet after the invasion began. disabilities, the elderly, and other marginalized groups face greater hurdles in seeking “We have left the past to which (Putin) seeks to draw us far behind,” added Kyiv safety as a Russian incursion into Ukraine begins.”

Pride. “We are a country that has chosen the values of human rights, humanity, life and “We must safeguard the rights of marginalized people in Ukraine and ensure they are personality. Putin lives in the past.” protected as this crisis unfolds,” it adds.

Groups around the world rally behind LGBTQ Ukrainians The caucuses’ letter notes Ukraine in recent years “has made great strides towards securing equality for LGBTQ people within its borders and is a regional leader in LGBTQ Advocacy groups around the world have also condemned the invasion and expressed rights.” These advances include a ban on workplace discrimination based on sexual solidarity with their Ukrainian counterparts. orientation and gender identity and efforts to protect Pride parades.

“We are ready to host LGBT+ people from Ukraine here,” Anastasia Danilova, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last November pledged his country would executive director of Genderdoc-M, an LGBTQ rights group in Moldova, which borders continue to fight anti-LGBTQ discrimination after he met with President Biden at the Ukraine, told the Washington Blade on Feb. 27. “We will provide all necessary support: White House.

Accommodation, meals, counseling and medical support.”

“LGBTQ civil society in Ukraine is robust and visible with numerous LGBTQ groups Kampania Przeciw Homofobii (Campaign Against Homophobia), an LGBTQ rights officially registered as non-governmental entities,” reads the letter to Blinken. “While group in Poland, which also borders Ukraine, has also urged their members and there is still work to do, these advancements stand in stark contrast to Russia’s positions supporters to help LGBTQ Ukrainians. Mozaika, an LGBTQ rights group in Latvia, a Baltic on LGBTQ equality. Increased Russian government influence on the lives of Ukrainians is country that borders Russia, through its online Diversity Shop is selling Ukraine-specific likely to be incredibly harmful to the rights of LGBTQ people in Ukraine.” t-shirts and other clothes to raise money for the country’s LGBTQ rights groups.

A Wider Bridge and more than a dozen other LGBTQ Jewish organizations in the U.S. OutRight Action International has raised more than $192,000 for LGBTQ Ukrainians and around the world in a statement they released on Feb. 25 also expressed concerned through a fund it created after Russia launched its invasion of the country. A EuroPride for LGBTQ Ukrainians and other groups, including Jewish Ukrainians, inside Ukraine. fundraiser has raised €32,500 ($36,023) for Kyiv Pride and Kharkiv Pride.

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Biden nominates Brown Jackson to Supreme Court Former public defender would be first Black woman on bench

By CHRIS JOHNSON | cjohnson@washblade.com

In a ceremony in the Great Cross-Hall outside of the Blue Room at the White House last Friday, President Joe Biden formally announced Ketanji Brown Jackson, currently a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, as his choice for the U.S. Supreme Court. The president’s choice of Jackson as the first Black woman to serve on the bench is historic.

Jackson, 51, is a favorite among progressives because of her background as a former public defender in D.C. and former clerk for U.S. Associate Justice Breyer, whose seat she would fill after his announced retirement this year if confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Joni Madison, interim president for the Human Rights Campaign, hailed the choice of Jackson for her “integrity, professionalism and unwavering commitment to the Constitution.”

“Her tenure on the bench provides ample evidence that she is both prepared and trustworthy of this highest privilege, and responsibility, that comes with sitting on our highest court,” Madison said.

Madison declared the Human Rights Campaign supports Jackson: “After a careful review of her record, it is clear that Jackson’s demonstrated fidelity to the principles of our Constitution instills confidence that she will continue Justice Breyer’s legacy as a champion of equality.”

In terms of LGBTQ issues, however, Jackson’s record is not without its blemishes. She once worked as an adviser for a Baptist school in the Maryland suburbs that had a mission statement against LGBTQ people and abortion.

The now-defunct school, known as Montrose Christian School, had a statement on its website condemning

homosexuality and abortion consistent with its religious views, as documented by the conservative Washington Examiner at the time of Jackson’s confirmation process for her current seat on the D.C. Court of Appeals.

The mission statement urged students to uphold a “Christian character,” which among other things in the views of the school, meant they should oppose “all forms of sexual immorality, including adultery, homosexuality, and pornography.” Abortion is also implicitly condemned in the mission statement: “We should speak on behalf of the unborn and contend for the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death.”

Upon Jackson’s nomination, conservatives smarting from attacks on now U.S. Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett during her confirmation process over her ties to religious groups with anti-LGBTQ views, as well as her affiliation with the anti-LGBTQ legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, may cynically highlight Jackson’s past affiliation with the school as a reason to attack her or progressives as hypocrites for not opposing her confirmation.

Jackson addressed her past work with the school during the confirmation process for her current job in response to questions from Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) , maintaining her role on the advisory board for Montrose Baptist Church was limited and she was unaware of its position statement.

“I was aware that Montrose Christian School was affiliated with Montrose Baptist Church,” Jackson said. “I was not aware that the school had a public website or that any statement of beliefs was posted on the school’s website at the time of my service. My service on the advisory school

President Biden named KETANJI BROWN JACKSON as his choice for the U.S. Supreme Court last week. (Photo public domain)

board primarily involved planning for school fundraising activities for the benefit of enrolled students. I did not receive any compensation for my service.”

Nan Hunter, an emeritus law professor at Georgetown University who has written about LGBTQ issues, previously downplayed in an email to the Blade Jackson’s affiliation with Montrose Christian School as evidence she would be hostile to LGBTQ people as a Supreme Court justice.

“Judge Jackson apparently volunteered for a year to help raise money for student services at a Christian school in the D.C. suburbs,” Hunter said. “There is no indication anywhere in her professional record or personal experience that she shares anti-gay views. In my opinion, her lifelong commitment to equality more than outweighs any concern that she might be biased against LGBT rights.”

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Biden renews call to pass Equality Act in State of the Union Pledge to have the backs of trans kids echoed in speech

By CHRIS JOHNSON | cjohnson@washblade.com

continued rise in inflation that has increased the cost of goods from gasoline to groceries.

In a State of the Union address front-loaded with calls to challenge Vladimir Putin’s Biden, however, made a point to include inflation in his speech, saying enacting his domestic invasion of Ukraine, President Biden on Tuesday called for assistance from Congress in agenda could alleviate rising prices. enacting his domestic agenda — and renewed his call for passage of the Equality Act to “But with all the bright spots in our economy, record job growth and higher wages, too advance LGBTQ rights. many families are struggling to keep up with the bills,” Biden said. “Inflation is robbing them “And for our LGBTQ+ Americans, let’s finally get the bipartisan Equality Act to my desk,” of the gains they might otherwise feel. I get it. That’s why my top priority is getting prices Biden said, making his strongest push yet for legislation that has been pending in the U.S. under control.”

Senate for nearly a year despite Biden’s campaign promise to sign it into law within his first The most prominent component of 100 days in office.

Biden’s speech, as Russia continues to Echoing remarks he made in his assault Ukraine, was efforts to contain speech to Congress last year in support of Russia through economic sanctions, transgender youth, Biden also denounced including an announcement the United anti-transgender bills in state legislatures, States would join other countries in many of which seek to restrict access to refusing to let Russian aircraft enter the transition-related care for youth and to United States. Biden also made clear the keep transgender kids out of school sports.

United States would stick to its obligation “The onslaught of state laws targeting to defend allied nations in NATO, transgender Americans and their families pledging to “defend every inch of territory is wrong,” Biden said. “As I said last year, of NATO countries with the full force of our especially to our younger transgender collective power.”

Americans, I will always have your back as “In the battle between democracy and your president, so you can be yourself and autocracy, democracies are rising to the reach your God-given potential.” moment, and the world is clearly choosing Despite Biden’s renewed call to pass the the side of peace and security,” Biden said.

Equality Act, the legislation is all but dead “This is a real test. It’s going to take time. So after the U.S. House passed it in March of let us continue to draw inspiration from the last year as opponents have twisted the iron will of the Ukrainian people.” measure as a threat to sex-segregated Seated with Jill Biden in the first lady’s spaces for women and the biological box above the floor of the House was definition of gender. Biden’s words, PRESIDENT BIDEN renewed his call to pass the Equality Act in his State of the Union speech.

Oksana Markarova, Ukraine’s ambassador however, coincide with a recently launched (Screen capture via YouTube) to the United States, who waved a small campaign from the Human Rights blue-and-yellow striped flag of her country Campaign highlighting the patchwork of when President Biden mentioned her in his address. Many others present in the House legal protections for LGBTQ people in different states. chamber brought Ukrainian flags to wave and had pins of Ukraine’s colors on their lapels to Biden incorporated the Equality Act in a speech where he included numerous items from show American solidarity with the country under onslaught by Putin. his domestic agenda, such as elements of his Build Back Better plan. Among the items Biden Sarah Kate Ellis, CEO of the LGBTQ group GLAAD, said in a statement after Biden’s ticked off were the ability of Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices and expansion speech his words in support of LGBTQ people come at critical time as Texas Gov. Greg of the child care tax credit. The Build Back Better legislation is also dead in Congress, but Abbott declared in a recent memo parents who provide transition-related care for their kids supporters have held out hope that some components of the package still have a shot. would be prosecuted for child abuse.

Also highlighted in Biden’s speech were measures already signed into law, including the “President Biden has delivered on commitments to include LGBTQ citizens in the promise bipartisan infrastructure package, which Biden cited as evidence of working across the aisle, of America,” Ellis said. “Every lawmaker at every level of government must commit to do the and the American Rescue Plan, which Biden credited with boosting the economic recovery same, especially for LGBTQ families and children under attack. The state of our union is only amid the coronavirus pandemic. Not everyone in Biden’s audience in the joint session of as strong as our action and commitment to ensure no marginalized person is left behind.

Congress agreed with him on the latter bill, however, as evidenced by Republicans booing LGBTQ voters are more motivated than ever to hold elected officials accountable in the the measure. midterms.”

Critics have said Biden’s moves have worsened the economy and instigated the

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HRC launches ‘Reality Flag’ campaign to boost Equality Act Removal of 29 stars symbolizes states that lack LGBTQ protections

By LOU CHIBBARO JR. | lchibbaro@washblade.com

The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights organization, announced it is launching a nationwide multimedia campaign to promote the approval

by Congress of the LGBTQ nondiscrimination legislation known as the Equality Act. In a Feb. 23 statement HRC says the campaign, among other things, will include a series of “powerful” video ads for social media and TV created by Emmy Award-winning director Joey Soloway that tell stories of how individual LGBTQ people are adversely impacted by discrimination.

At the center of the campaign as depicted in the videos is an American flag with 29 of the 50 stars removed to draw attention to the 29 states that do not have comprehensive legal protections for LGBTQ people that HRC is calling the “Reality Flag.”

In its official launch of the campaign on Feb. 23 HRC unveiled an 85-foot-long version of the Reality Flag on the outer wall of its headquarters building in D.C. that HRC points out is located just six blocks from the White House.

“The Reality Flag campaign is designed to point out the inequalities LGBTQ+ individuals face every day – in our own voice,” said Joni Madison, HRC’s interim president. “From housing and educational discrimination to denial of government and health services, LGBTQ+ people are confronted by hurdles to simply exist every day,” Madison said in a statement.

“This needs to change,” she said. “The Reality Flag not only calls out the 29 states where basic freedoms are still missing for millions of people but stands as a symbol of hope that communities can rally behind to enact meaningful change.”

HRC’s Reality Flag campaign comes at a time when most political observers unaffiliated with the Equality Act’s staunch supporters and opponents believe the bill has no chance of passing in the U.S. Senate any time soon, even though it passed in the U.S. House in February 2021 by a vote of 224 to 206. In the House vote, only three Republicans joined all 221 Democrats in voting for the measure.

Observers note that although Democrats have a slim majority in the 50 Democrat-50 Republican Senate with Vice President Kamala Harris set to break a tie vote in favor of Democrats, the Senate’s longstanding filibuster rule that Democrats are unable to change means the Equality Act needs a 60-vote majority to pass.

Forty-nine of the 50 Senate Democrats have signed on as co-sponsors of the Equality Act. Maverick Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia emerged as the sole Senate Democrat saying he cannot support the Equality Act in its current version due, in part, to what Manchin says is its provisions related to transgender nondiscrimination in school sports and school bathroom use.

Sources familiar with the Senate told the Washington Blade last May that even if the filibuster rule is eliminated, other Democratic senators from swing states would likely join Manchin in withholding support for the Equality Act due to efforts by some Republicans to turn transgender rights into an inflammatory wedge issue.

The official congressional website Congress.gov states that the Equality Act calls for prohibiting “discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity in areas including public accommodations and facilities, education, federal funding, employment, housing, credit, and the jury system.”

The Congress.gov site adds, “The bill prohibits an individual from being denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual’s gender identity.”

Several moderate GOP senators, including Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), have said they support the principle of protections against discrimination for LGBTQ people and would be willing to vote for a revised Equality Act that includes what they call religious rights protections and some changes in the transgender provisions.

Some Republican observers have said enough Republicans would likely join Democrats to reach the needed 60 votes to pass the Equality Act in the Senate if Democrats agree to the changes proposed by the moderate Republicans.

Other Republicans, however, including the national LGBTQ GOP group Log Cabin Republicans, have said the Equality Act should be discarded altogether following the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2020 known as Bostock v. Clayton County.

The decision declares that Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans sex discrimination, also prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Equality Act supporters have argued that the legislation is still needed to ensure that LGBTQ people are fully protected from discrimination in other areas such as housing and public accommodations.

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Representatives of both sides have said negotiations have been taking place over possible changes in the Equality Act since at least the beginning of last year, but nothing has emerged from those reported negotiations as of this week.

Many LGBTQ advocacy organizations, including HRC, have said the GOP (Screen capture via YouTube) suggested changes to the Equality Act related to “religious freedom,” which the bill’s supporters say means a right to discriminate against LGBTQ people based on religious grounds in a nonreligious setting such as a private business open to the public, are unacceptable.

Most LGBTQ advocacy groups have also declared as unacceptable GOP proposals to weaken or remove protections for transgender people in the legislation, saying such proposals are being promoted by people who have been misled or are themselves misleading others to believe cisgender women in sports and in public restrooms as well as in school bathrooms and showers would be adversely impacted by the current version of the legislation.

With both sides in what most Capitol Hill observers consider to be a complete deadlock, Senate Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), have not indicated a willingness to bring the Equality Act up for a vote in the Senate this year.

Schumer’s office didn’t reply to an inquiry from the Blade last week asking whether Schumer would consider bringing the Equality Act to the Senate floor for a vote this year or next year if Democrats retain control of the Senate in the 2022 midterm elections.

With that as a backdrop, David Stacy, HRC’s Government Affairs Director, told the Blade in a Feb. 25 statement that passage of the Equality Act remains a high priority for HRC and the LGBTQ+ community.

“Getting any legislation through the U.S. Senate is not easy,” Stacy said. “In the meantime, support continues growing for the bill, and we believe the Reality Flag campaign will continue to generate the awareness and education needed to continue growing support and pressure for action,” he said.

“We’ve already seen since our launch people coming out saying they had no idea LGBTQ+ people didn’t already have these protections, and that’s what we aim to do here: educate people and inspire them to take action at the grassroots level across the country – call their senators and make it clear that it’s time we need this done,” Stacy said.

“Some people may be ready to give up. We are not,” he said.

In its three-page statement announcing the launch of its Reality Flag campaign, HRC says the campaign is being produced in partnership with a team of advertising and public relations agencies affiliated with the international marketing and communications company giant WPP. “While the campaign seeks to galvanize public support for the Equality Act and driving audiences to take action at RealityFlag.com, it also underscores the importance of lifting up and showcasing the real stories and lived experiences of LGBTQ+ people impacted by discrimination,” the statement continues.

It says the stories about individual LGTQ people will primarily be featured in “video vignettes” created by TV writer and director Joey Soloway, the Emmy Award-winning creator of “Transparent,” an original Amazon Studios streaming television comedydrama series about a transgender woman and her family. Soloway identifies as nonbinary and gender non-conforming.

“These stories … will be amplified through both an advertising campaign, including partnerships with 20 national media platforms, achieving an anticipated 30 million-plus impressions during launch, including TV, print, display, video, audio, cinema, OOH, social, and search,” the HRC statement says.

Access to some of the video ads slated for the HRC Reality Flag campaign can be found at RealityFlag.com.

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Warlord who persecuted gay Chechens killed in Ukraine fighting Magomed Tushayev died during military clash

By MICHAEL K. LAVERS | mlavers@washblade.com

One of the top warlords and close adviser to Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov was killed Saturday in the battle for Antonov Airport, also known as Hostomel Airport, an international cargo airport and testing facility northwest of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.

Magomed Tushayev, head of the “141 motorized regiment” of the Chechnya National Guard was killed during a skirmish with the Ukrainian military’s elite Alpha Group. His death was confirmed by Illia Ponomarenko, defense reporter for the Kyiv Independent, a Ukrainian news agency, and by a spokesperson for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Tushayev’s death came as Kadyrov, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said on Saturday that Chechen fighters had been deployed to Ukraine and urged Ukrainians to overthrow their government, according to Reuters.

In a video posted online, Kadyrov boasted that Chechen units had so far suffered no losses and said Russian forces could easily take large Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv, but that their task was to avoid loss of life.

“As of today, as of this minute, we do not have one single casualty, or wounded, not a single man has even had a runny nose,” Kadyrov said, denying what he said were false reports of casualties from Ukrainian sources.

“The president (Putin) took the right decision and we will carry out his orders under any circumstances,” said Kadyrov.

Tushayev, who was one of three top advisers and military commanders for Kadyrov, prior to the Ukrainian invasion

by Russian forces, was directly involved in the campaign of terrorizing the LGBTQ community in Chechnya.

Sources with Russian-based human rights organizations confirmed that Tushayev played an unspecified role as recently as May 2021 when human rights activist and a gay man, Ibragim Selimkhanov, was abducted from a subway station in the Novogireyevo District of the Russian capital of Moscow by four Chechen operatives and flown against his

MAGOMED TUSHAYEV (left) and RAMZAN KADYROV

will to the Chechen capital of Grozny.

Selimkhanov was questioned by Chechen security operatives, working for Tushayev, seeking information on human rights activists and independent journalists engaged in assisting LGBTQ people in the North Caucasus region. He later escaped returning to Moscow.

Activists from the Russian LGBT Network pressed the Investigating Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF) of the Russian Ministry of Justice with an official complaint about the kidnapping of Selimkhanov, which in late August 2021, the governmental body refused to take further action.

Since 2017, human and LGBTQ activists noted that

(Photo via Illia Ponomarenko, defense reporter, The Kyiv Independent)

Chechen security operatives and other officials in the Kadyrov regime, including Tushayev sources confirmed, have rounded up dozens of men on suspicion of being gay, held them in unofficial detention facilities for days, humiliated, starved and tortured them, in what has been dubbed Chechnya’s “anti-gay purge.”

The international multiple award-winning film documentary “Welcome to Chechnya,” details the purge and also documents the experience of lesbians, whose horrific ordeals are usually perpetuated by family members in the Muslim-majority region.

Additional reporting by BRODY LEVESQUE and ILLIA PONOMARENKO

4 Ukraine LGBTQ activists attacked inside Kyiv office

An LGBTQ rights group in Ukraine on Tuesday said a group of “bandits” broke into their office in the country’s capital and attacked four activists who were inside.

Nash Mir Coordinator Andriy Maymulakhin in an email to supporters wrote that “some unknown people broke (the) door in our office in” Kyiv where four of his colleagues were living and “brutally beat them and robbed (them.)”

“We do not know who they are,” said Maymulakhin, who noted the assailants had guns. “They humiliated my friends. They are bandits.”

Maymulakhin said his four colleagues are now at a “shelter” in Kyiv.

An LGBTQ activist in the Ukrainian capital with whom the Washington Blade spoke on Tuesday confirmed the Nash Mir staffers who were attacked “are safe.” It is not immediately clear who carried out the attack, but it took place against the backdrop of Russian troops’ continued advance towards Kyiv.

Magomed Tushayev, a Chechen warlord who played a role in the anti-LGBTQ crackdown in his homeland, on Saturday died during a skirmish with the Ukrainian military’s elite Alpha Group outside of Kyiv. A White House official late last week told the Blade the Biden administration has “engaged directly” with LGBTQ Ukrainians and other groups that Russia may target if it gains control of their country.

Olena Shevchenko, chair of Insight, another Ukrainian LGBTQ rights group, in a post to her Facebook page on Tuesday said she heard “powerful explosions nearby” in reference to the destruction of Kyiv’s main TV tower. Shevchenko, who lives in Kyiv, in another Facebook post on Tuesday wrote the city “is under permanent bombing all the

time.”

“It’s the sixth day of this nightmare,” wrote Shevchenko. “Many of my friends are spending all night in the basements or subway stations. My parents told me they put Ukrainian flag on their balcony. They are not going anywhere, it’s their home. I am not going anywhere, it’s my home too. We are staying and continue to help others as much as we can do in these circumstances.”

Anna Sharyhina is the co-founder of the Sphere Women’s Association, which is based in Kharkiv, the country’s second largest city that is less than 30 miles from the Russian border in the eastern part of the country.

Sharyhina on Tuesday posted to her Facebook page a video of a Russian missile strike a regional administration building in Kharkiv that is on the city’s Freedom Square.

“I am in Kharkiv right now with my family in an extended compound,” said Sharyhina on Tuesday in another post to her Facebook page that she wrote in Russian. “We live close to the city center and here a lot of sounds. We go into a room without windows.”

Sharyhina in the same Facebook post pleaded with Russia to stop shelling Kharkiv.

“I know that the European Parliament is meeting now,” wrote Sharyhina. “Everyone asks me what will we be, given the status of a candidate country, and I don’t know what to answer, but let the explosions in Kharkiv stop, so we can at least do something.”

The Sphere Women’s Association, Insight and Nash Mir are all accepting donations through their respective websites.

MICHAEL K. LAVERS

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OLENA SHEVCHENKO

is the chair of Insight, a Ukrainian LGBTQ rights group. Shevchenko lives in Kyiv, Ukraine.

LGBTQ Ukrainians will do our best to resist Russia Putin invading country with ‘traditional values’

Today I woke up at 5 a.m. because of the massive attack on our cities from Russia. Nobody in Ukraine can still believe it is happening right now. I got dozens of messages and calls from different regions, from people who are asking me what to do, and I didn’t have any answers. It took us few hours to collect information on different regions and cities and members of our LGBTQI+ communities there.

We have branches in 11 regions, including Kramatorsk, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro, which are located in eastern Ukraine. We started to collect names of those who must be relocated immediately.

So why it is so dangerous for LGBTQI+ people to stay under possible occupation?

Russia is coming with its “traditional values” and will be hunting us, those who are dangerous for their evil empire. I heard they already have lists of activists who will be persecuted first and am sure that activists are on those lists.

We already had a similar situation in 2014, when Russia occupied our territories and many people were forced to leave their homes. Many of them were LGBTQI+ people, who told us they were hunting them and some were killed or disappeared.

In 2014 we opened a shelter for LGBTQI+ internally displaced persons in Kyiv. This time it seems we do not have any place to go and we want to protect our homeland from occupants. Therefore, the situation is difficult and nobod nows what will be ne t and who will survive.

We are doing what we can do now: Providing psychological support to people, opening a hotline for consultations and asking international communities to somehow help us. But it seems these instruments don’t wor an more in the world and we must fi ht this stupid war on our own.

I think the international community needs to realize that it’s not just some war in Eastern Europe. It is the start of a huge international crisis and possible war all over Europe. The Russian president clearly showed he doesn’t care about international obligations, rules or sanctions anymore. He will continue and never stop.

We are living in very interesting times in which a new story is being made, and this is not only our Ukrainian history, but also in the geopolitical histor of the world. istin international institutions and e istin mechanisms for deterring and maintaining peace have proved imaginar . hen sa ima inar it does not mean that the do not e ist. his means that they are not effective. They help only if you believe in them and hold on to that faith. In essence, we need to rethink this and create other, new and working mechanisms, and here Ukraine must show its strength to others.

Jokes about “deep concern” are no longer funny. We understand that this is the ma imum of what an ima inar democratic world can ive us now. In recent days, our international partners have been writing to me almost every minute, many of them asking if we have a crisis plan in place, and, if not, when will we develop it. I want to tell everyone again: What plan can work in the event of a full-scale invasion? (We do not have planes to take people to a safe place, as you did.) In any case, we remain to defend ourselves and our country and will continue to help people.

Our activists from the LGBTQI+ communities are staying and keep working, providing support to the most marginalized ones. Honestly, I don’t know how long we will be able to resist, but we will do our best for sure. a e care of ourself and our loved ones. ver thin will be fine

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MICHAEL K. LAVERS is the Blade’s international news editor.

Reach him at mlavers@washblade.com.

Dispatch from Honduras

U.S. seeking former president’s extradition on drug charges

I was once again on assignment for the Washington Blade in Honduras from Feb. 6-11. I interviewed Víctor Grajeda, the first openly gay man elected to the Honduran Congress, and met Indyra Mendoza, founder of Cattrachas, a lesbian human rights group, at her office in Tegucigalpa, the country’s capital and largest city. I visited Dunia Orellana and Amílcar Cárcamo of Reportar sin Miedo, the Blade’s media partner in Honduras. I also had more than my share of “granitas de café,” or “iced coffees,” while in the country.

Honduras is one of the most violent and corrupt countries in the Americas.

The situation on the ground last July when I was on assignment in San Pedro Sula, the country’s second largest city, and in the cities of Tela and La Ceiba on Honduras’ Caribbean coast, was tense.

The trip took place against the backdrop of growing concerns over what would happen if the results of the presidential election that was scheduled to take place less than five months later were disputed. A pandemic-related curfew that was in place also added to this sense of uneasiness.

The situation on the ground on this most recent trip to Honduras felt slightly different.

President Xiomara Castro, a member of the leftist Free Party whose husband, former President Manuel Zelaya was removed from office in a 2009 coup, took office on Jan. 27.

Castro defeated Nasry Asfura, a member of now former President Juan Orlando Hernández’s National Party who is Tegucigalpa’s former mayor, in the presidential election’s first round that took place last Nov. 28. Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power are among the foreign dignitaries who attended Castro’s inauguration that took place at Honduras’ national stadium in Tegucigalpa. Grajeda and our Reportar sin Miedo colleagues were also on hand to witness the moment when Honduras’ first female president took office.

“I was there for this historic moment,” said Erick Martínez, a long-time activist who ran for Congress in 2017, during an interview in San Pedro Sula on Feb. 8. “I was crying in this full stadium; crying with pride; with joy; with sadness for the people who were not there.”

Martínez specifically mentioned Walter Tróchez and Erick Martínez Ávila, two Honduran LGBTQ activists who were murdered in December 2009 and May 2012 respectively. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights in a landmark ruling it issued last June said the Honduran state was responsible for the murder of Vicky Hernández, a transgender activist who was killed in San Pedro Sula hours after the 2009 coup.

Juan Orlando Hernández was president of Congress from January 2010 to June 2013. He became the country’s head of state in 2014.

The Supreme Electoral Tribunal declared Hernández the winner of the 2017 presidential election, despite widespread irregularities and criticism that his decision to run for a second term violated the Honduran constitution. The disputed election results sparked widespread protests across the country that left dozens of people dead.

Juan Orlando Hernández did not attend Castro’s inauguration.

I was driving to interview Grajeda in San Pedro Sula when I read a press release from Secretary of State Antony Blinken that announced the U.S. had sanctioned Juan Orlando Hernández for corruption.

Honduran authorities on Feb. 15 arrested Juan Orlando Hernández at his Tegucigalpa home after the U.S. asked for his extradition on drug and weapons charges. Federal prosecutors allege Juan Orlando Hernández used drug trafficking to fund his political campaigns.

Juan Orlando Hernández’s brother, former Congressman Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, is serving a life sentence in the U.S. after a federal jury convicted him of trafficking tons of cocaine into the country. I was driving from San Pedro Sula to Tegucigalpa on Feb. 8 when I heard on the radio that a federal judge in New York had sentenced Geovanny Fuentes Ramírez, a drug trafficker who allegedly bribed Juan Orlando Hernández and other Honduran government officials, to life in prison.

Honduras was certainly a “narco state” when Juan Orlando Hernández was president.

Castro, for her part, has publicly supported marriage equality and backs legal recognition of trans Hondurans and what Grajeda described as “safe spaces” for LGBTQ people.

Six gay men and a trans man have been reported killed in Honduras since Castro took office.

Police continue to face criticism over the investigation into the Jan. 11 murder of Thalía Rodríguez, a prominent trans activist who was shot in front of her Tegucigalpa home. Jerlín, a trans man who I interviewed last July in La Ceiba, fled the country weeks before Castro took office and plans to ask for asylum in the U.S. None of the sources with whom I spoke in Honduras are naive to the many challenges that Castro and her government face. They are also waiting to see whether the new government in Tegucigalpa will have a tangible impact on the lives of LGBTQ Hondurans who continue to face rampant violence and discrimination.

We shall see.

1 6 • WA SHIN GTO N BLADE.COM • MARCH 04, 2 0 2 2 • V I E WP O I NT

PETER ROSENSTEIN

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

We must pray for and actively support Ukraine Trump hails Putin in latest act of treason

As a madman begins the first war in Europe since the end of World War II, President Biden has successfully reunited NATO, our allies and the world. This after four years of Trump trying to destroy it and pull us apart.

The traitor Trump cemented his legacy as a toady to Putin. He did this with his recent comments reported by CNN, “It took only 24 hours for Donald Trump to hail Russian President Vladimir Putin’s dismembering of independent, democratic, sovereign Ukraine as an act of “genius.” The former president often accuses his enemies falsely of treason, but his own giddy rush to side with a foreign leader who is proving to be an enemy of the United States and the West is shocking even by Trump’s self-serving standards.” Trump went on to say, “I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine, of Ukraine, Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful.” This crap must scare the hell out of our allies in Europe and anyone who believes Trump, by any stretch of the imagination, could become president again.

Threats of sanctions did not stop Putin from invading but will eventually bear fruit. The world has united against him and the Ukrainian people are standing strong. Their strength and heroism are amazing. The world can no longer view Putin as rational. He is a sick megalomaniac in the realm of Hitler and Stalin.

President Biden acted quickly in concert with nations around the world imposing harsh sanctions, including on Putin himself. As reported by Axios, “President Biden unveiled new coordinated sanctions against Russia that target Russia’s financial institutions and elite families. In doing so Biden said ‘Putin is the aggressor. Putin chose this war. And now he and his country will bear the consequences.’”

President Biden and his administration have effectively brought together long-standing allies who once again are willing to trust the United States. He has shown the world we moved beyond Trump’s disastrous ‘America First’ policies.

The president has also been honest with the American people. He told us our effort to help save Ukraine from Russia, and moves to protect our NATO allies, will cause us some suffering. Gas prices will go up, inflation won’t be immediately curbed, and Russia may try to disrupt our life with cyber attacks.

He is asking Americans to do what we have always done as a nation, stand up for democracy around the world, and ensure our allies in Europe and around the world we stand with them.

The president also made it very clear we will not be sending our military, men and women, into Ukraine. We will send help, weapons and humanitarian aid, and rally others to do the same. We will use all the sanctions at our command but President Biden has been realistic about what we can do. It is clear threats of sanctions didn’t stop Putin from invading. What we are seeing is the Ukrainian people putting up much more of a resistance than Putin expected.

It is a country of 44 million people who believe in their own democracy. This is their war in the streets and the trenches and we are seeing many acts of bravery. Even if Putin manages to install a puppet government in Kyiv, he will never contain the resistance without occupying the entire country and that will not be easy.

What makes this so unreal is we didn’t believe after 70 years of relative peace in Europe this could happen again. We in the United States are watching this war live-streamed making it even more unreal. We sit drinking our morning coffee, going to work, going out to dinner, going to concerts and the theater, all while watching bombs fall on Kyiv on our cell phones and on TV. Our hearts and minds must be with the people of Ukraine. We must give full support to our government, to President Biden, believing they are doing all America can to help the Ukrainian people in their time of greatest need.

Black gay male ballet company to debut at local festival Black Leaves Project to premiere piece that navigates paths to freedom

By TINASHE CHINGARANDE

A Black contemporary ballet company based in D.C. will debut at the Intersections Festival hosted by the Atlas Performing Arts Center with new work on Saturday, March 5.

Black Leaves Project, currently comprised of Black gay men, will perform a project titled “Labyrinth: The Journey.”

The work will feature a group of dancers navigating the paths of a maze in search of freedom, against a backdrop of storytelling that explores anecdotes common among Black men such as drug addiction, wrongful incarceration, and love.

The performance will also hark to tenets of Black history such as the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, the Harlem Renaissance, and the dawn of gospel music in the South in the early 17th century.

“You can’t move forward without looking to the past,” said Camal Pugh, assistant artistic director, choreographer, and board of directors member. Pugh, who is based in Los Angeles but is in D.C. for the performance, has been with Black Leaves Project since its inception.

“This project is a story of perseverance, hope, and love,” he said. “You will feel something.”

“Labyrinth: The Journey” was born out of the company’s ethos — a desire to immerse the audience in the passion and love of Black men who express themselves and their life stories through contemporary and classical dance.

The company’s members cherish representation, and therefore perceive visibility within the dance world as a cure to the famine of Black perspectives.

“I started dancing at 14 in Connecticut and was the only Black male in the room,” said Stephen Wilson, founder and artistic director. “Even as I trained at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the Dance Theater of Harlem in college, I rarely saw stories I related to.”

Wilson’s attitude isn’t uncommon among Black dancers in the classical world.

The Washington Post reports that the lack of diversity and inclusion in ballet has birthed companies such as the Dance Institute of Washington committed to improving the lives of underserved children of color in the district.

The New York Times also featured “Stare Decisis (To Stand by Things Decided),” a work choreographed

by Robert Garland, resident choreographer of Dance Theater of Harlem, as a contribution to conversations about the implicit bias and lack of diversity within ballet.

Like his counterparts, Wilson created Black Leaves Project as a safe space for Black male dancers to learn dance technique and empower

The Black Leaves Project will perform a project titled ‘Labyrinth: The Journey.’

(Photo courtesy Black Leaves Project)

communities to understand the vastness of Black men’s journeys outside of clichéd European works such as “The Nutcracker” and “Swan Lake.”

“What have you seen as an American classic that is Black,” he asked. “I want for Black choreographers to assimilate ballet to blackness.”

As the company prepares for its debut on Saturday, rehearsals are focused on emphasizing the spirit of community and belonging.

“We want our dancers to know that their artistic life, struggles, and battles matter,” said Antwain Donté Hill, president of the company’s board of directors. “We want that inner boy inside every gay man to know they can have it.”

Each rehearsal session begins with the dancers reciting affirmations and basking in what Pugh said will be their “moment to be in the sun.”

“You will see the passion and love of dance,” he said.

After Saturday’s performance, the company looks to schedule more shows of the work in the summer and

fall. It will also film a recording of the work and concept videos that will be used to pitch to prominent dance festivals such as Jacob’s Pillow.

“Labyrinth: The Journey” will also expand into “Caged,” a work that narrates Black women’s viewpoints. This project will be spearheaded by Janet Hobson, the board of directors vice president.

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CALENDAR |

By TINASHE CHINGARANDE

Friday, March 04

Friday Tea Time and social hour for Older LGBTQ+ adults will be at 2 p.m. on Zoom. Feel free to bring your beverage of choice. For the Zoom link or more information, contact Justin (justin@thedccenter.org).

First Friday LGBTQ+ Social will be at 7 p.m. at The Commentary. This free event is ideal for making new friends, professional networking, idea-sharing, and community building. Or just to unwind and enjoy the extended happy hour. Visit Eventbrite for more details.

Saturday, March 05 LGBTQ People of Color Support Group will be at 1 p.m. on Zoom. This peer support group is an outlet for LGBTQ People of Color to come together and talk about anything affecting them in a space that strives to be safe and judgment free. Email supportdesk@thedccenter.org to receive the Zoom information.

Go Gay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Community Brunch” at 10 a.m. at Freddie’s Beach Bar & Restaurant. This event is ideal for those who want a good brunch and conversation with other LGBTQ+ folk. This event is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.

Sunday, March 06 Trauma-Sensitive Gentle Yoga will be at 6 p.m. at Eaton DC. This class offers trauma-informed approaches for an alignment-based, gentle vinyasa (flow) suitable for all levels. Tickets cost $25 and can be purchased on Eventbrite.

Monday, March 07 Center Aging Coffee Drop-In will be at 10 a.m. at the DC Center for the LGBT Community and online on Zoom. LGBT Older Adults — and friends — are invited to enjoy friendly conversations and to discuss any issues you might be dealing with. For more information, visit the Center Aging’s Facebook or Twitter.

Not Another Drag Show will be at 8 p.m. at Dupont Italian Kitchen. This free event will be hosted by Logan Stone along with a rotating cast of local DMV performers. For more information, visit Eventbrite.

Tuesday, March 08 Coming Out Discussion Group will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This is a peer-facilitated discussion group.

It is a safe space to share experiences about coming out and discuss topics as it relates to doing so. For more information, visit the Coming Out Discussion Group Facebook page.

Trans Support Group will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This support group is intended to provide emotionally and physically safe space for trans* people and those who may be questioning their gender identity/ expression to join together in community and learn from one another. For more information, email supportdesk@thedccenter.org.

Wednesday, March 09 Job Club will be at 6 p.m. in person at the DC Center for the LGBT Community and online on Zoom.

The Job Club is a weekly job support program to help job entrants and seekers, including the long-term unemployed, improve self-confidence, motivation, resilience and productivity for effective job searches and networking — allowing participants to move away from being merely “applicants.”

Queer Trivia Night will be at 7 p.m. at the Dew Drop Inn. Guests are encouraged to attend for a good dose of all things nerdy and LGBTQ+. There will be five rounds of seven questions. This event is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.

Thursday, March 10 The DC Center’s Food Pantry Program will be held all day at the DC Center for the LGBT Community.

To be fair with who is receiving boxes, the program is moving to a lottery system. People will be informed on Wednesday at 5 p.m. if they are picked to receive a produce box. No proof of residency or income is required. For more information, email supportdesk@thedccenter.org or call 202-682-2245.

Stockholm’s electronic music tour de force Jeremy Olander returns to Flash at 10 p.m. Some of his music is featured on works such as “Anjunadeep,” “Bedrock” and “Last Night On Earth.” Tickets cost $10 and can be purchased on Eventbrite.

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Author Wayne Hoffman reads from his latest work ‘The End of Her: Racing Against Alzheimer’s to Solve a Murder’ on Friday.

OUT & ABOUT Md. author to read from his newest work

Maryland native Wayne Hoffman will read from his latest work “The End of Her: Racing Against Alzheimer’s to Solve a Murder” on Friday, March 4 at 7:30 p.m. at Lost City Books in Adams Morgan.

His reading will be followed by a question-and-answer session with novelist Aaron Hamburger.

Hoffman has published three novels “Hard,” its sequel “An Older Man” and Stonewall Book Award-winning “Sweet Like Sugar” is published by Kensington Books. He is also a contributor to several anthologies, and his cultural reporting has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Village Voice, The Nation, The Forward, and Billboard. He is currently executive editor of Tablet Magazine.

Tickets for this event cost $5 and can be purchased on Lost City Books’ website.

Washington Wizards to celebrate Pride night The Washing Wizards will host Pride Night on Friday, March 4 at 7 p.m. at Capital One Arena.

Tickets cost between $25 and $105, and each ticket purchased comes with a limited edition Wizards Pride scarf.

For more information about the event and to purchase tickets, visit the Wizards’ website.

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‘Blue Hearts’ beating: an interview with Bob Mould Gay musician brings latest tour to Annapolis

By GREGG SHAPIRO If gay modern rock legend Bob Mould isn’t the hardest-working man in music, he’s definitely one of them. To prove that point, he’s wasted no time in following up 2019’s aptly titled “Sunshine Rock” with the somewhat bluer “Blue Hearts (Merge).” The album is blue in terms of its sexual content (check out “Leather Dreams”) as well as in the liberal political messaging in songs such as “American Crisis,” “Next Generation” and “Heart on my Sleeve.”

As always, the songs are delivered in his trademark crunchy and blazing guitar rock style, with Mould backed by longtime bandmates Jason Narducy on bass and Jon Wurster on drums. I had the pleasure of speaking with Bob about Blue Hearts and the Distortion box sets.

BLADE: Blue Hearts opens with “Heart on my Sleeve,” which begins with the lines, fittingly enough for right now, “The left coast is covered in ash and flames/keep denying the winds of climate change.” The song was written and recorded long before the disastrous wildfire season. How does it feel to you when you listen to or perform that song now?

BOB MOULD: You can’t write this stuff [laughs]. When I started gathering ideas for this record, it was with the idea of being more of a journalist. Trying to make my thoughts known, these are the things that appeared. Specifically, on that line, we’ve been having years of fires out here. Now, it’s just so much worse. They tried to tell people this might happen, but I guess it wasn’t that important to the government to think about climate change until it was too late. So here we are.

BLADE: Has living in California heightened your awareness of the dire state of environmental issues and in what ways do you hope to make an impact?

MOULD: For the better of the last four years I was in Berlin, Germany, where we like to think that Germany and Europe is way more progressive. But even in Germany, coal is such a motivator over there, and the auto industry is so important.

They’ve got issues with (gas pipeline) Nord Stream 2 with the Russians right now. I guess being back in California since November of 2019, I think I have a heightened awareness all the way across the board, not only how climate change is affecting the West Coast, but how the sensationalist mainstream news media, news as entertainment, has affected the psyche of the country and created such great division. For me, the juxtaposition is that in Germany, news is mainly still news. It’s not exciting. There’s nothing titillating about it. It’s just news, which is what news should be. Being back here, I think the over amplifying of things here has created beyond an echo chamber, almost canceling out truth, which is nutty to be thinking about at eight in the morning when I can’t even breathe outside.

BLADE: “Next Generation,” which follows “Heart on my Sleeve,” is also prescient, with the lines “Please pay attention/Take to the streets for your rights,” especially in light of the Black Lives Matter movement’s rise to prominence following the murder of George Floyd and others. Would you agree that the timing of the release of “Blue Hearts” is extraordinary?

MOULD: It was a little unnerving. In life and, for lack of a better term, in entertainment and the arts, timing is key to things. When I set out to write the record it was just a general impression, speaking on 59 years on this planet and seeing what we as people actually need to do. Such as turning away from sensationalist force-fed media and talking to our neighbors, getting out on the street, protesting. Being

in Germany, I don’t think a single week went by where I did not stumble into an organized protest that would take over the main streets of certain neighborhoods in Berlin. It was accepted behavior. To go from years of that and to come back here, writing these words was sort of a reminder to people that this is what we did in America in the `60s. This is not a bunch of radical, left extremists, who are going to loot Bergdorf Goodman. That’s not the intent when people take to the streets for their rights. What I just described is actually looting, which is different [laughs].

BLADE: It’s ironic, don’t you think, that the some of the people who were out there protesting in the streets in the ‘60s, have now, in their dotage, become so conservative, even going so far as to support Trump?

MOULD: It sure feels like that could be the case. I don’t have hard evidence, but I would suggest you may be right [laughs].

BLADE: It’s frightening, because these are the original hippies who are upset about protests.

MOULD: I think people protest when they feel like they’ve lost their voice or they have no means. Means being that they don’t have a large stake in the stock market, which the president speaks about when he says, “I didn’t want to cause panic.” Meaning panic on Wall Street. I worry, because my job is to observe the world through my oddly shaped glasses [laughs] and just report back on what I remember from being a 21, 22-year-old kid who had absolutely nothing but a band and a guitar and an amp with which to do things.

Maybe these people who used to protest when they had nothing, once people get means, once people are invested, maybe they lose sight of the plight of the common person.

BLADE: When I interviewed gay writer David Leavitt about his novel “Shelter in Place,” we talked about the parallels for gay men when it comes to the AIDS crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, similarities including Republicans being in power and the undue influence of evangelicals. “American Crisis,” the blistering first single from “Blue Hearts” shares a similar sentiment. Do you think gay men could teach the rest of the world how to survive a plague, both viral and extremist?

MOULD: I think David is illuminating what I think is a historical parallel, which you just can’t deny. Whether America’s ready to listen to older gay men beyond caricatures on network television, I don’t know. If they are, there are things we can tell them. For me personally, as a young gay man in the `80s, it sort of crushed my development, but I realized that I had to protect other people so I had to do certain things for 35 years until PrEP came along. Why was it not a problem for me for all those years, yet when you ask someone why they don’t wear a mask, it’s because it’s their liberty. What if I had been that cavalier?

BLADE: Right. It was such a simple thing for us to realize that to save our own lives, and the lives of others, you put on a condom, you relearn how to have sex. There’s just no comparison to putting on a mask.

MOULD: Yes, because this is just something that everybody’s doing on their face. When you’re asking people to make emotional sacrifices in moments of intimacy, I think that’s a little bit heavier than having a mask on your doorknob so you put it on your face when you leave your dwelling [laughs].

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Gay musician BOB MOULD plays Rams Head Tavern in Annapolis on Friday. (Photographer Credit: Blake Little Photography)

BLADE: The activist aspect of the album is reflected in that you donated the proceeds from the “American Crisis” single to OutFront Minnesota and Black Visions Collective when it was released a few months ago. Why were those two organizations chosen?

MOULD: That was a split choice. I chose the LGBT group in Minnesota because a lot of the record, as you have seen, speaks from an older gay male perspective. Merge Records donated its half to the Black Lives Matter related situation that was going on in Minnesota. We mutually said that this covers all the things we’re trying to say.

BLADE: “Leather Dreams,” which basically struts out of the speakers like a freeballing stud, manages to be both erotic and thoughtful, with its reference to “Tops and their bottoms, condoms and PrEP.” It’s also the sound of sexual liberation, so was it as liberating to write as it sounds?

MOULD: Yeah! I had a three-day sleepless stretch in January, right before going on the road and then right into the studio with these songs. I had the house to myself. I was writing like a madman. That one just fell out of nowhere. It was so hilarious because clearly these are the experiences of someone [laughs]. It’s really riotous. I don’t think I’ve ever been quite as out front. There were moments on Modulate, back in ’02, but nothing quite as overt. I think it’s outright hilarious. Who is this guy? Who has this life [laughs]?

BLADE: In addition to “Blue Hearts,” there is the massive CD and LP box sets Distortion: 1989-2019 and Distortion: 1989-1995, respectively. What does it mean to you to have these expansive retrospectives available and why was now the time to release them?

MOULD: I had been talking with Demon Music Group about this project for five years on and off. A lot it was a matter of timing. Back in ’16, Patch The Sky was out and I was doing a lot of touring and I kept that record alive for almost two years and then I went right into Sunshine Rock (in 2019).

I thought that after Sunshine Rock wound its way down, I was going to take a longer break. Maybe I’ll take a couple of years. This would be a good time to have the box set.

It will be something in between Sunshine Rock and whatever’s next. Then my head started burning with all this new music. Then I was faced with this interesting dilemma of having a current project and a retrospective at the same time.

It’s weird because the current record sounds like the music that predates the box set [laughs]. That really aggressive simplistic songwriting style. But the box set is really great.

Every time I put out a record, people are like, “Is this your 14th solo album?” and I can never remember; now they’re all in one place.

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Luke Frazier’s latest takes him deep into Broadway’s golden age ‘An Evening with Lerner and Loewe’ to debut on PBS

By PATRICK FOLLIARD

LUKE FRAZIER is founder and conductor of American Pops Orchestra.

(Photo courtesy of Frazier)

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Luke Frazier’s latest musical endeavor takes him deep into Broadway’s golden age, and the out maestro couldn’t be happier.

Frazier, founder and conductor of American Pops Orchestra (APO), is helming “Broadway In Concert,” a four-part PBS television project celebrating iconic American musical theater. The first episode is “An Evening with Lerner Loewe,” a compilation from the legendary team’s work, mostly classics from “My Fair Lady” and “Camelot.”

Rehearsed and filmed over two days at Washington’s historic Meridian House just off 16th Street, the show features Frazier conducting APO’s 30 musicians, a stellar cast of singers including Jenn Colella, Michael Maliakel, and Aisha Jackson, and host Emma Walton Hamilton, whose mother Julie Andrew shot to stage stardom starring in Lerner and Loewe hits.

Frazier says, “These musicals from the 40s and 50s, which by the way is where my heart is (I’m about 85 trapped in a 36-year-old body), are widely beloved. Millions of people heard LPs of the originals and fell in love. We’re going to give them that but with a fresh twist. And that gives new life.”

What’s very different about the show is the blending of the unexpected with the familiar.

“For me,” continues Frazier, who lives in Northwest D.C. with his husband producer Robert Pullen, “I like to pick incredible talents and help them explore new repertoire that maybe they wouldn’t get the chance to ordinarily perform, and pair that with new orchestrations and arrangements.”

For instance, out Broadway star Jenn Colella, typically not a name you’d associate with Lerner and Loewe, is singing a differently arranged “I Could Have Danced All Night,” and “Get Me to The Church On Time” a classic usually sung by a man. The terrific Aisha Jackson sings “If Ever I Would Leave You,” but it’s the Aretha Franklin version.

APO’s flourishing relationship with PBS really kicked off in August 2020 – not an easy time to put out product. “Just when we were being told we couldn’t make art, we did,” says Frazier. “Without federal funding or a grant from the city or PPP, it wasn’t easy. Still, by going above and beyond CDC regulations, there hasn’t been a single case of COVID. And we paid our performers and crew pre-pandemic rates. I don’t know of any other orchestra that stuck to that model.”

And now APO’s work has been seen by 40 million viewers. Their PBS production of “Wicked” garnered ratings second only to “Downton Abbey.”

Frazier has worked with a lot of big names – Chita Rivera, Josh Groban, and Patti Labelle to name a few.

He’s drawn to legends who’ve seen it all, but tries not to get too caught up in the mystique of the person.

Does he get starstruck? He admits to fanboy feelings for Judy Collins. “She’s a poet and still sounds just as glorious as she always did.”

In the orchestral world, a lot of resources don’t go to popular music, yet Frazier spends just as much time finessing a piece whether it’s with Leslie Jordan or Midori, the eminent Japanese American violinist.

In short, he believes in doing what should be done with the music. “I like to approach each piece as best as I possibly can. I’m not worried about working with the next TikTok star so I can become famous. That’s not my focus. If I become well known for doing good and interesting work that’s far more important.”

Frazier brings all of himself to the project. He quotes the title of Broadway’s gayest anthem: “For me, it’s like Jerry Herman’s song, ‘I Am What I Am.’ I’m not one of those people who subscribe to separating out my work and my life. I’m an artist and my life and work meld. I’m lucky to be in a position to be able to do that.”

When making new work and engaging audiences, Frazier considers his daily life, relationships, and the books he reads – everything really. And with 13 PBS shows over two years, broadcast in every national market, it’s a lot. The work is very bound up in who he is, Frazier says, and he takes a lot of pride in that.

But will it play in Peoria? Clearly, yes.

“I’m from West Virginia,” he says. “And I feel like I have strong commitment to small rural communities.

Everywhere I go and what I do there’s the West Virginian in me. I’m about bringing everyone to the table.

I find frequently I’m a minority in that approach, but that’s also very much of who I am.”

“An Evening with Lerner and Loewe” is now streaming for free on PBS.org at: pbs.org/video/an-evening-with-lerner-and-loewe-broadway-in-concert-dshx0v/ Broadcast dates on Maryland Public Television: March 6 on MPT and March 5 and 12 on MPT2.

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Deep-dive docuseries reveals the ‘Warhol’ you never knew You’ll like him for the human being he turns out to have been hiding all along

By JOHN PAUL KING

You might think that more than three decades after his death, there would be no need for another documentary about Andy Warhol.

Arguably the most iconic cultural figure of the late 20th century, his image, as much as his artwork, is so familiar to us that we take his fame for granted – and that’s exactly why we need it. Our familiarity leads us to assimilate the surface details of his life without pondering what lies beneath – something that the aggressively shallow artist himself almost certainly intended. After all, as we are deftly and elegantly reminded by the Ryan Murphy-produced “The Andy Warhol Diaries” (which begins streaming on Netflix March 9), Andy’s greatest and most ambitious work of art was Andy himself.

The titular diaries were published in 1989, two years after Warhol died at 58 from complications after a gall bladder surgery.

He had begun it in 1976, dictating daily entries over the phone for his longtime friend and collaborator Pat Hackett to type up. After his death, she compiled them with minimal notation and published them – something that Warhol had always planned. As Hackett (continuing her role as his editor and envoy) points out onscreen in the documentary that day came much sooner than anyone expected.

When it hit the stands, response to the book was largely lukewarm. Poring through the minutiae of Andy’s daily life for scandalous tidbits about the galaxy of celebrities with whom he surrounded himself, readers with a hunger for gossip may have come away satisfied, but those who were hoping for more insight from behind the plastic curtain of his carefully cultivated public image found themselves sorely disappointed. There were plenty of pithy observations, maybe, and glimpses into the workings of his mind through his thoughts and feelings about people and things, perhaps – but there was no deeper discussion of his inner life, nor any exploration of how it may have expressed itself in the creation of his art.

This seeming dearth of personal revelation was not the only thing going against the book. The art world, which saw his post-1960s output as insignificant in comparison to his earlier work, had developed a dismissive attitude toward all things Warhol, branding him as an exploitative sellout who had sacrificed relevance for commercialism and fame, and his seeming refusal to address the AIDS epidemic – even as so many other queer artists were driven to activism – had disillusioned many of his fans. All these factors combined to result in a general disregard of his diaries as a final piece of glitzy nothingness from a man for whom lack of substance was the cornerstone of a career.

That was 33 years ago, however, and in the intervening time appreciation for Andy Warhol has exploded beyond anything he ever experienced during his lifetime. The influence of his legacy – not just the paintings, photographs, films, tchotchkes and other ephemera he prolifically produced for most of his adult life, but the “taste-making” through which he launched or elevated the careers of countless other legendary figures – has trickled into our cultural landscape over the years and shaped it with all the irresistible force of a glacier, so much that it is perhaps impossible to trace all the interconnected currents that have tangentially sprung from it back to their source.

With the passage of time, and the 20/20 hindsight that comes with it, we can now see things with a widened perspective – and suddenly, Andy’s musings are a lot more revealing than most of us thought.

In the new six-episode miniseries, written and directed by Andrew Rossi, we don’t

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see or hear much about the “Factory Era” that cemented Warhol’s place as an architect of pop culture; those days were long over by the time he started the diary. Instead, the series essentially begins with Warhol’s 1968 shooting by Valerie Solanas – an incident after which the artist said he was always experiencing his life as if he were “watching TV” – and takes us from there through the ‘70s and ‘80s, mostly focused on events referenced in the diary but supplemented by “now-it-can-be-told” illumination from Hackett and a collection of other surviving members of Warhol’s inner circle, who are all on hand to provide their own insights, reactions, and personal reminiscences. It’s this input that helps us to read between the lines and recognize, perhaps for the first time, the true Andy peeking out at us – and he is ANDY WARHOL and JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT in ‘The Andy Warhol Diaries.’ (Photo courtesy Netflix) surprisingly, heartbreakingly human.

The Warhol we meet here is the one he kept hidden during his life.

Though he was never “in the closet,” he wasn’t exactly “out,” either, cultivating an image of asexuality that lingers to this day – yet in the diary his gayness is refreshingly on display. Moreover, though he elides and omits details that might be too revealing for all parties involved, his friends fill in the gaps enough to reveal that he was engaged in at least two long-term relationships – three if you count Jean-Michel Basquiat – that had profound impact on both his life and his work. Though his sometimes glib, often insensitive comments about AIDS may shock us, they are mitigated by his frequent and obsessive complaints about his age and his health, which speak volumes about the omnipresent fear of mortality that haunted him and kept him moored to the Catholic beliefs of his upbringing. Perhaps most humanizing of all, despite the coldness of his demeanor and the distance at which he seemed determined to keep himself, the heartfelt emotions of his former collaborators and companions as they remember him on film provide proof of the deep connections it was possible for him to form with others.

As one might expect from a life as well documented as Warhol’s, much of the diary’s material is comprehensively supplemented by photos, films, drawings, and other archival embellishments; and to make things truly immersive, the diary excerpts are read to us by Andy himself – or rather, by a cutting-edge AI voice reconstruction layered over the voice of gifted performance artist Bill Irwin.

This latter flourish has generated considerable controversy from some critics, who question the authenticity of a documentary that leans so heavily into such elaborate artifice. But Warhol (as the series reminds us, multiple times) famously claimed to wish he was a machine, and there is something about hearing his words through the fusion of mechanism and artistry that lends his words – which are delivered, in true Warhol style, with as little emotion as possible – an augmented sense of meaning. Just like a soup can, their banality is transcended through duplication and presentation.

And what does “The Andy Warhol Diaries” tell us about the artist’s work? Does it offer a key that at last will allow us to decode his creative process and understand how the forces of the turbulent inner life at which it hints revealed themselves in his art? Is such a thing even possible?

You’ll have to watch to find out – and even if you’re already a Warhol superfan, you’ll likely come out the other side liking him, just a little bit more, for the human being he turns out to have been hiding all along.

In ‘Manhunt,’ a virus turns males into monsters Graphic new book will give you nightmares

By TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER

It’s just a little stick in the arm.

Just a poke, a tiny jab, a brief ouch, and you have your opinions about it. On one hand, you hate getting sick; on the other, well, it’s complicated. You don’t even like to see needles on TV but it’s obvious that viruses have a way of upsetting everything. And in the new book “Manhunt” by Gretchen Felker-Martin, this virus will make you howl.

Beth sometimes wondered where it came from.

Spreading the t. rex virus would have been easy, just a matter of leaving an open cannister by a heating vent somewhere or sprinkling it in a crowd. Who would do that, though? Who would release a virus that turned every post-pubescent male into a crazed, deformed, wolf-like killing machine?

Beth idly thought about it, as she and Fran tried to get back to their healer, and safety. Answers might never be knowable but no matter: they were too busy harvesting as many testicles they could get from the men-creatures they eliminated, so their healer could make the estrogen they needed. They had to stay safe and alive. Kill or be killed.

Sometimes, Fran couldn’t help but feel sorry for Beth — and for herself, for that matter. Fran’s transition was almost complete when the virus began spreading, when husbands, sons, and brothers suddenly became monsters. There was no time for bottom surgery but she was almost there, and she looked feminine. She might fool a TERF, but Beth never would. Beth was big, blocky, and still boy-muscled.

Robbie always felt that he was better off on his own. He had supplies and was self-sufficient, as long as the TERFs cisgender women who’d created a fierce army – didn’t catch him. Though he was still menstruating, a trans man was a man.

And to the TERFs, a man, any kind of male no matter what, had to die.

You can take this as a siren, add fireworks: “Manhunt” is not a novel for everyone.

It’s not for anyone who can’t stand gruesomeness, or who hates having their heart seize due to explicit sex, surprises, cringey scenes, or jumpy scares. Don’t hand it off to anyone who can’t tolerate feminism or a happily-never-after.

What this book is, though, is for someone with a deep, affectionate fondness for all of the above plus pockets of plot brilliance, dark humor in a blow-them-all-topieces vein, buckets of blood and gore, and monsters that live among us. Some tolerance for plot holes is also needed for full enjoyment; author Gretchen Felker-Martin leaves readers with a few big WHY?s hanging over her smoking Armageddon, and while they’re mostly forgivable, they may still nag.

This book has the feel of a video game your mother wouldn’t let you have because it might give you nightmares.

In this case, she was right: this truly is a keep-you-up-all-night story with streaks of modern day. Indeed, “Manhunt” is worth a shot.

‘Manhunt’

By Gretchen Felker-Martin c.2022, Macmillan Nightfire $17.99 | 304 pages

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SMYAL for the New Year Fundraiser for LGBTQ youth held at Red Bear Brewing Co. (Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)

The Young Donors Committee hosted the “SMYAL for the New Year” fundraiser at Red Bear Brewing Co. on Feb. 24. The event raised money for the LGBTQ youth services organization SMYAL: Supporting and Mentoring Youth Advocates and Leaders.

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Can I afford anything in D.C. for $350,000?

The surprising answer is yes, especially condos and co-ops

By JOSEPH HUDSON

I recently had a conversation with a client where he was told by his lender that his pre-approval letter was for up to $350,000.

He wants to buy in the District of Columbia and asked me, “Can I even find anything for that amount in D.C.?”

In these days of bidding wars, escalations and multiple offers, I think most people are hearing stories about houses that were priced at $850,000 going for over $1M as people are putting all their available cash and resources into upgrading to a larger home. The pandemic has made homes with yards, outdoor features such as balconies and patios or rooftops, larger kitchens, extra office space highly desirable, which has made them more valuable, and people are spending hundreds of thousands over the asking price for these homes.

What about the person that has the approval letter for $300K or $350K? Is there anything left for them? Well, a quick search online this Monday morning found 197 results. I am seeing results in all four quadrants of D.C. There is even a 2 BR unit in that price range. It is a co-op.

What’s the difference between condo and co-op living? “Coop” is an abbreviation for “cooperative.” What happens in a co-op is that the buyer is buying shares of stock in a corporation that owns the building. There is one tax bill for the entire building that the Cooperative association pays every year, and a portion of that larger tax bill is assigned to each individual unit. The buyer of the co-op gets a “proprietary lease” to occupy the unit. The buyer of the unit can do many of the same things an owner of a condo can do. They can change the countertops, put in new appliances, redo the floors, and maybe even knock down a wall with the association’s permission. They are usually priced a little bit lower than condos because they can be a bit more confusing to understand and therefore may be a bit harder to sell. But they do offer the benefits of homeownership.

Don’t lose faith that there is nothing left in D.C. unless you are a millionaire. Yes, our market here is higher priced than many other markets. The demand for land and property here is high, and in turn the old “supply and demand” principle means that the average sale price here is higher than in many cities. But homeownership is still within reach for many people, as they can utilize programs such as DC Opens Doors or HPAP or EAHP for down payment assistance.

Want to know more? Attend my next homebuyer seminar on Zoom on March 22 or April 12. You can sign up at DCRealEstate.com/seminar.

D.C.’s housing market is pricey, but fear not, as there are options in lower price ranges.

JOSEPH HUDSON

is a Realtor with The Rutstein Group of Compass.

Reach him at joseph@dcrealestate.com or 703-587-0597.

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