Washington Blade, Volume 56, Issue 43, October 24, 2025

(Washington Blade photos by Caroline Gutman)

On the ground with Ukraine’s LGBTQ war heroes BLADE SPECIAL REPORT:

Meet the brave queer service members, activists fighting for country’s future, PAGES 12 & 14 Also inside: Bet Mishpachah celebrates 50 years, PAGE 06

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Bet Mishpachah celebrates 50 years as D.C.’s LGBTQ synagogue

Oct. 25 ‘gay-la’ to honor and reflect on role as home for queer Jewish community

By LOU CHIBBARO JR. | lchibbaro@washblade.com Leaders and members of Bet Mishpachah, D.C.’s LGBTQ synagogue, have been reflecting on the positive impact it has had on their lives as its 50th anniversary celebration on Oct. 25 is about to take place.

The anniversary celebration, to be held at the Washington Hebrew Congregation’s gathering hall at 3935 Macomb St., N.W., will honor Bet Mishpachah, among other things, for its role as a, “beacon of love, acceptance, and spiritual connection for LGBTQ+ Jews and allies in our nation’s capital and beyond,” according to a statement it released.

“Founded by a small group of visionaries, we quickly grew into a diverse and thriving community that has supported hundreds of individuals and families over the years,” the statement says. “From the early days of meeting in living rooms and small venues, to our current home in the heart of D.C., Bet Mishpachah has remained steadfast in its mission to offer a spiritual home for all who seek it,” the statement continues.

“Throughout these five decades, we have witnessed profound shifts in both Jewish life and LGBTQ+ rights, and we are proud to have played a role in advancing both,” it says.

Joshua Maxey, Bet Mishpachah’s current executive director, said the LGBTQ synagogue has about 190 members and holds its weekly Friday evening Shabbat services at the Edlavitch D.C. Jewish Community Center at 1529 16th St., N.W. Longtime D.C. gay activist Joel Martin, who is one of Bet Mishpachah’s founding members, said like other founding members, he first learned about a fledgling D.C. gay Jewish group through an ad in the then Gay Blade monthly newspaper in 1975 or possibly 1974.

A Blade archives search shows that a small ad appeared in the April 1974 Gay Blade, which stated, “JEWISH GAYS of Greater Washington-Baltimore is forming to help gay Jewish people to develop social contacts. They also intend to do consciousness raising amongst the Jewish Community to the problems of gay people.” The ad included only a post office box number for people to obtain more information about the group. It did not have the name of the person who placed the ad.

In the July 1974 issue of the Gay Blade, an article titled “Gay and Jewish” appeared under the byline of authors Herb Gold and Jen Lib that talked about the group it identified as Jewish Gays of the Baltimore-Washington area.

The article said the group had 35 members and that, “All members prefer that their gayness remain undisclosed for professional and personal reasons.”

Martin told the Washington Blade in an interview this week that he doesn’t recall whether the three or four men he met through the Gay Blade ad were part of this group. But he said they continued to meet at first in someone’s house or apartment in D.C. and decided on the name of Bet Mishpachah, which is a Hebrew phrase for “house of family.”

According to Martin, the group grew in numbers most likely due to additional ads or write-ups in the Gay Blade and soon began looking for a place to hold its meetings and services, which had been taking place in people’s homes. He said one place the group approached was the organization that had started the D.C. Jewish Museum. “And we were told to go away,” he said in recounting the response they received from what was then the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington.

Sarah Levitt, a spokesperson for what is now known as the D.C. Capital Jewish Museum, said the Jewish Historical Society at that time had a policy of not allowing on their premises “congregational services to anybody, so they declined the request on that basis.”

She added, “I can’t speculate on other reasons they might have said no. Certainly Joel and others felt a lot of cold shoulders from Jewish institutional life in that period.”

In a sign of how things have changed, the current Capital Jewish Museum at this time has a special exhibition entitled LGBTQ Jews in the Federal City that includes exhibits about Bet Mishpachah.

Martin said the fledgling Bet Mishpachah group soon was able to arrange to meet and hold its services at D.C.’s First Congregational Church at 10th and G Streets, N.W. Around that same time, First Congregational also allowed the Metropolitan Community Church of Washington, the city’s longtime LGBTQ Christian congregation, to hold its services at their church.

The Capital Jewish Museum’s LGBTQ exhibition shows that Bet Mishpachah held its services at First Congregational Church from 1976 through 1978, when it moved to Christ United Methodist Church along the city’s Southwest waterfront. The exhibition shows that in 1992, Bet Mishpachah moved its services to the National City Christian Church at Thomas Circle before moving in 1997 to its current location at the Jewish Community Center on

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The original ad in the Gay Blade from 1974 seeking Jewish gays to form a new social group.

For more photos from the Blade archive, visit this story at washingtonblade.com.

16th Street, N.W. Bet Mishpachah has prepared a booklet to be handed out on Oct. 25 at the anniversary gala that includes statements from about 25 of its longtime members describing how the LGBTQ synagogue has impacted their lives in a positive way.

It also includes statements from Rabbi Bob Saks, Bet Mishpachah’s first rabbi, and Rabbi Jake Singer-Beili, its current rabbi.

“At the core of Bet Mishpachah’s founding was the idea that one should not have to hide one’s sexuality or identity in a Jewish space, and that all of us are created in the Divine image,” Singer-Beili said in his statement. “Its message was and is this: love is holy, the fullest expression of oneself is essential.”

He added, “We also proclaimed that we will celebrate these things as Jews and people who love Jews, in a dedicated Jewish space where everyone belongs. How awe-inspiring it is that we have made it to our 50th anniversary.”

In his own statement, Bet Mishpachah’s current president, Joseph Pomper, expressed a sentiment like other members about how Bet Mishpachah has helped them reconcile their status as Jewish and LGBTQ. “My history with Bet Mishpachah goes back to 1980 when I moved to Washington, D.C. to go to graduate school,” he stated. “I remember stumbling across an ad for the synagogue in the Washington Blade. I could not believe it was possible for there to be a place where I could be both LGBTQ+ and Jewish,” he said.

“While that may not seem like such a big deal today, back then it was hard to even imagine that a place where one could be both LGBTQ+ and Jewish actually existed,” he wrote. “After much deliberation, I finally summoned up the courage to go to services one Friday, mainly out of curiosity.”

He said he quickly became a regular member and moved later to take on lead-

ership positions. “Perhaps most important, I found my community at Bet Mishpachah,” he wrote, adding that many of the people he met are an “amazing circle of friends” who “remain among my closest friends today, 45 years later.”

Longtime Bet Mishpachah member Stuart Sotsky, who wrote in his statement that he became involved with the group in 1975 as one of its founding members, told of the obstacles that Bet Mishpachah faced in its early years.

“With the major denominations still considering homosexuality as religiously prohibited and unacceptable, no synagogues accepted gay or lesbian people or relationships openly, and no synagogues would have sponsored or hosted our congregation in their facilities,” he wrote.

He told of how Bet Mishpachah evolved into a strong organization that developed ties to the wider Jewish community to fight for the rights of LGBTQ people in the faith community and the secular community.

He said like the wider LGBTQ community, Bet Mishpachah members struggled to comfort those whose loved ones were lost during the height of the AIDS epidemic.

“Yet, as was true for the Jewish people wandering in the desert for forty years after the Exodus from Egypt, we were tested and strengthened as a community by our trials,” he wrote. “We not only survived but we were inspired toward social and political activism in the Gay and women’s liberation movement, and encouraged to risk coming out to our family, friends and co-workers,” he continued.

The statement released by Bet Mishpachah announcing its 50th anniversary gala celebration on Oct. 25 says the event would honor “visionary trailblazers,” including its Rabbi Emeritus Bob Saks and nationally acclaimed LGBTQ rights attorney Evan Wolfson, the founder of Freedom to Marry, the advocacy organization credited with leading the successful campaign to legalize same-sex marriage.

FIND YOUR FAMILY at Bet Mishpachah Washington DC’s only LGBTQ+ Synagogue Since 1975 WWW.BETMISH.ORG

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Ashley Smith resigns as Capital Pride president following ‘claim’ against him Organization opens investigation but declines to disclose details

By LOU CHIBBARO JR. | lchibbaro@washblade.com

Ashley Smith, who since 2017 has served as president of the board of the Capital Pride Alliance, which played a lead role in organizing WorldPride 2025 in D.C., abruptly resigned from his position on Oct. 18, according to a statement released by Capital Pride Alliance.

The brief statement sent to the Washington Blade says Smith “stepped down as Board President” after the organization became aware of a “claim” regarding Smith and it has opened an investigation, but it provided few further details.

“Recently, CPA was made aware of a claim made regarding him,” the statement says. “The organization has retained an independent firm to initiate an investigation and has taken the necessary steps to make available partner service providers for the parties involved,” it says.

“Anna Jinkerson (she\her\hers) has been named interim Board president,” the statement continues. “To protect the integrity of the process and the privacy of all involved, CPA will not be sharing further information at this time,”

ASHLEY SMITH abruptly resigned this week as Capital Pride’s board president. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

the statement concludes, with no additional information.

Smith did not immediately respond to a request by the Washington Blade for comment.

Smith’s LinkedIn page shows he had served as the board president for Capital Pride Alliance since 2017 and prior to that he served on the board as CPA treasurer since March of 2016.

It says he has been involved with the D.C.-based LGBTQ national advocacy group Human Rights Campaign and HRC Foundation in a number of different positions, including on the foundation’s board of directors and national co-chair of the HRC Board of Governors. He has also served on the board of the D.C. Center for the LGBTQ Community, according to his Linked-In page.

His LinkedIn page also says he has worked professionally in the field of hotel management since the early 2000s and that he has served as general manager at the Sheraton Pentagon City Hotel in Arlington since May 2022.

BLAQ Equity Baltimore fights for queer liberation Group recently entered partnership with FreeState Justice

By SHREYA JYOTISHI

Just seven volunteers are behind BLAQ Equity Baltimore, a nonprofit that offers social programs and community events to the city’s Black LGBTQ community.

The independent nonprofit, founded in 2002, presents a wide range of events, including film screenings, celebratory parties, and community service gatherings. In addition, the group hosts monthly town hall meetings for community members to connect with one another and directly voice their thoughts to BLAQ Equity’s leadership.

BLAQ Equity Baltimore fights for queer liberation in Charm City. (Photo by S. Borisov via Bigstock)

The four community leaders who founded BLAQ Equity sought to create a Black-centered space within the predominately white-led LGBTQ movement of the early 2000s. In 2025, the organization has come to host a variety of BLAQ Pride events throughout October alongside the year-long calendar of events.

Christopher Henderson-West and Cody Lopez became the co-executive directors of BLAQ Equity in January.

Henderson-West first got involved in May 2024 after moving to Baltimore following a political career in Washington, aiming to connect with Baltimore’s Black LGBTQ community. Now, Henderson-West focuses on BLAQ Eq-

uity’s day-to-day operations, including program coordination, fundraising, partnerships, branding, and marketing.

He works alongside Lopez, and five board members.

“Oftentimes, as we look at our social structures and things of that nature, Black queer folks tend to be at the bottom,” Henderson-West said. “As it has tended to be proven historically, [when we] fix things from the bottom up, it tends to get better for everybody. And so that is kind of what we are looking to do.”

According to Henderson-West, town halls average around 15 community participants and monthly Pride parties yield between 70-100 attendees. He notes that few town hall attendees “are truly repetitive.”

“It’s normally fresh faces, which also means fresh conversations and fresh voices,” Henderson-West said.

One of BLAQ Equity’s most recent changes includes a new partnership with FreeState Justice that began on Oct. 1.

FreeState Justice is Maryland’s only statewide LGBTQ legal advocacy group and offers free legal services, education, and outreach programs.

The partnership allows BLAQ Equity to share an office space with FreeState Justice. Considering the proximity, BLAQ Equity community members can expect to more easily access legal resources and collaborative programming, according to Henderson-West.

While BLAQ Equity previously had “one-off” collaborations with FreeState Justice, the formal partnership came into fruition in July.

“I think it is striking to me, at least, how much of the Black LGBTQ community feels like the resources that were available through FreeState may not have been available to them,” Henderson-West said. “I think the primary client base for FreeState are predominantly white queer folks, and so in that way, it may feel weird or uncomfortable as a

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Black person to then show up in that space, or to feel like that organization caters to Black queer folk.”

FreeState Justice has similar partnerships with other organizations, allowing closer communication between BLAQ Equity and similarly aligned organizations.

According to Henderson-West, the community’s response has been “very positive.”

“BLAQ Equity Baltimore’s work is rooted in the same values that guide ours — dignity, self-determination, and a refusal to leave anyone behind. By joining forces, we’re investing in the collective liberation of every Blaq individual in Maryland,” said Phillip Westry, the executive director of FreeState Justice.

While Henderson-West maintains the long-term goal of solidifying a permanent community space for multiple organizations to work parallel, he notes that “stabilizing the organization” is BLAQ Equity’s primary goal.

“I think our focus is … making sure that we live up to being community-led and not something that is just community in title or in name, but in actuality,” Henderson-West said.

Henderson-West cites the importance of community support in empowering BLAQ Equity, especially considering that the nonprofit entered 2025 with “little funds.”

“We’re not getting foundational funding or ongoing grant funding, or anything of that nature. It has truly been a product of the community,” Henderson-West said.

In continuing to fuel community gatherings, promote community feedback and take advantage of the FreeState Justice partnership, Henderson-West’s wish for the community is simple: “to come out.”

“It just goes to show that if you allow people to help, and you say that you need help, and that you bring people in on the journey with you, they will support you through the journey,” Henderson-West said.

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Homophobia, racism, Nazis: The dark side of rising GOP leaders

Bobby Walker, former vice chair of the New York The Young Republican National Federation State Young Republicans and former communica(YRNF) — an organization dedicated to politically tions director for New York state Sen. Peter Oberorganizing young conservatives and helping them acker, made at least two homophobic comments, win elected office across the United States — is under including “Stay in the closet faggot,” and, in another fire after thousands of homophobic, sexist, racist, message mocking Padgett, “Adolf Padgette is in the anti-Semitic, and violent Telegram messages from faggotbunker as we speak.” state-level group chats were leaked.

William Hendrix, vice chair of the Kansas Young Politico reviewed nearly 2,900 pages of messages Republicans and former communications assistant exchanged between January and August 2025 by for Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, was also members of state chapters of the YRNF, the youth a frequent participant, posting numerous racist and wing of the Republican Party. Many of those inhomophobic remarks — including, “Missouri doesn’t volved in the chats currently hold or have held posilike fags.” tions in state governments across New York, Kansas, Joe Maligno, who served as general counsel for Arizona, and Vermont. the New York State Young Republicans, said, “Can Participants in the chats used racist, ableist, and we fix the showers? Gas chambers don’t fit the Hitler homophobic slurs 251 times, according to Politico’s aesthetic.” analysis. “Faggots,” “monkeys,” “watermelon peoThere were multiple anti-Semitic dog whistles ple,” and “retards” were just some of the reported used, most notably Dwyer’s use of “1488” in the language used.

Vice President J.D. VANCE said the messages were ‘kids doing stupid things’ chat. The “14” references the 14 words in the white Within the leaked messages, at least six instancdespite multiple of them being in their 30s. (Blade photo by Michael Key) supremacist slogan, “We must secure the existence es of explicitly homophobic language came from of our people and a future for white children,” while some of the youngest leaders in the Republican Par“88” is shorthand for “Heil Hitler,” with “H” being the eighth letter in the alphabet. ty. Much of this rhetoric targeted Hayden Padgett, who recently won election as national In response to the controversy Vice President J.D. Vance downplayed the leak, calling it chair of the Young Republicans. Padgett’s victory came after a bitter contest with Peter an example of “kids doing stupid things” and “telling edgy, offensive jokes.”

Giunta, the former chair of the New York State Young Republicans, who led an “insurgent” Everyone mentioned in the group chat is over the age of 20. Peter Giunta is 31 years faction within the group and has been quoted most frequently in coverage of the leak. old, and Joe Maligno is 35. The ages of the other participants were not specified, but Giunta, who was found to repeatedly say how much he “loved” Hitler in the group chat most accounts indicate they are over 24. and used the N-word multiple times, was reportedly angry over losing the August elecThis leak exposes how some up-and-coming Republican leaders have normalized oftion. He wrote messages such as “Minnesota – faggots,” referring to the state’s Young Refensive and extreme rhetoric, reflecting both the erosion of political and cultural sensitivipublican organization, and “So you mean Hayden faggot wrote the resolution himself?” ty and the influence of Trump and his allies. It also underscores the widening divide within Luke Mosiman, chair of the Arizona Young Republicans, responded with “RAPE the party between its traditional conservative wing and a far-right faction emboldened by HAYDEN” — later joking about Spanish colonizers coming to America and having “sex such rhetoric. with every single woman.” Alex Dwyer, chair of the Kansas Young Republicans, replied, JOE REBERKENNY “Sex is gay.” Mosiman followed with, “Sex? It was rape.”

NBC reduces minority-focused reporting staff

NBC News has significantly scaled back its LGBTQ coverage, along with other identity-focused reporting, as recent layoffs put minority journalism at risk, according to reporting by The Wrap.

Roughly 150 employees—about 7 percent of NBC’s newsroom—have been let go, and the network has dissolved its dedicated editorial teams covering Black, Latino, Asian American, and LGBTQ+ communities. As NBC restructures its newsrooms in the wake of Peacock Network fully splitting from its cable entities, stories about these communities will now be integrated into general daily reporting. Critics warn that such integration often results in fewer stories and diminished focus on marginalized voices.

NBC Out, launched in 2016, was the first major broadcast vertical dedicated to LGBTQ+ issues. It recently earned a GLAAD Media Award for its reporting, including stories like “Friends Remember Nex Benedict, Oklahoma Student Who Died After School Fight, as ‘Fiery Kid,’” by Jo Yurcaba.

Rich Ferraro, GLAAD’s chief communications officer and an executive producer of the GLAAD Media Awards, described NBC’s decision as “part of a dangerous pattern of mainstream media outlets choosing to lose trusted and talented journalists who focus on important LGBTQ news that otherwise is under-reported or not reported at all,”

according to The Advocate.

NBCUniversal chairman Cesar Conde addressed the layoffs in a staff memo last week:

(Photo by SCPhotog/Bigstock)

“Today is a hard day. We have had to make some difficult decisions, including the elimination of positions across NBC News. While these decisions are necessary to remain strong as an industry leader, they are not easy and are never taken lightly. We have sought to minimize the number of affected team members, and our teams’ deci-

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sions should not be seen as a reflection on our colleagues who will be leaving. We will miss them and their valuable contributions.”

The NLGJA, the National Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists, condemned NBC’s decision: “These newsroom cuts do not just impact individual journalists. They erode diversity across the media landscape, and run the risk of reducing the amount of high-quality LGBTQ+ coverage that is available to readers,” wrote NLGJA National Board President Ken Miguel.

“NLGJA urges news leaders to explore alternatives to layoffs and prioritize retaining diverse voices. Financial challenges are real, but they can be addressed through innovative strategies that preserve both sustainability and inclusivity.”

The NBC layoffs are occurring within the broader context of rising anti-minority rhetoric, often framed as opposition to “DEI” (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives.

These efforts, championed by the Trump administration, are increasingly influencing the private sector as well.

From repeated attacks on LGBTQ+ rights—such as bans on trans youth in sports and restrictions on gender-affirming care—to policies targeting immigrants and people of color, GOP-led initiatives have consistently sought to roll back protections for marginalized communities.

JOE REBERKENNY

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EXCLUSIVE: On the ground with Ukraine’s LGBTQ war heroes Building a community amid attacks from inside and outside the country

By ANNA LEVA

(Editor’s note: The International Women’s Media Foundation’s Women on the Ground: Reporting from Ukraine’s Unseen Frontlines Initiative in partnership with the Howard G. Buffett Foundation funded this reporting. This report is exclusive to the Washington Blade.)

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s LGBTQ war heroes have a chance to build a community and share their courage.

Despite Russian drones raining down on the capital, Kyiv’s gay military and veteran community gathers in a freshly redecorated safe space called “K-41.” The club has been a boiling pot this summer — Ukrainian, German, Dutch, and Portuguese DJs played music on warm September nights, guests gathered to dance, listen to lectures, or see a movie in the leafy garden outside.

One of the recent lectures was on “Practices for Non-Discrimination for LGBTQ people in the Workplace.” For many community members, the workplace is now the front, where they continue to fight and defend their country from Russian troops attacking Ukraine’s eastern, northern, and southern regions.

And on rejoining the community for a break, veterans take up a different fight, for their human rights, against discrimination. Their fight does not stop on the front lines.

The number of LGBTQ heroes is growing; so is the number of fallen, sadly.

There is a wall at the center covered in soldiers’ patches.

“Soldiers and veterans pop in and stick their insignias to this wall — we have welcomed more than 700 members into our LGBTQ veteran and military club,” one of the center’s founders, 38-year-old veteran, Victor Pylypenko, told the Washington Blade with pride. Openly gay, he volunteered and fought for his country from 2014-2016 and then again from 2022-2024.

Giving us a tour of the club on a recent night, Pylypenko pointed out a portrait on the wall of another war hero, the newly elected leader of the “Ukrainian LGBT Military Personnel and Veterans for Equal Rights” NGO, Oleksandr Demenko. He is a survivor of the hellish battle for Mariupol and 20 months of horrific imprisonment in Russia.

“I always eat all the edges of the pizza, because I know that my brothers in arms do not have enough food or enough water in jail right now,” Demenko wrote,

sharing his emotions recently with his Facebook readers.

A decorated officer, Demenko was among about 2,500 Ukrainian soldiers defending Azov Steel, a giant Soviet-era steel plant that was surrounded during the battle for the city of Mariupol from February to May, 2022.

Thanks to the British photographer Jesse Glazzard, who followed the lives of Ukrainian gay soldiers, Elton John helped Ukraine’s queer heroes.

“Elton John and his partner, David Furnish, bought a photograph by Glazzard in May and gave funds for our reconstruction of this center,” Pylypenko told the Blade. “We fixed the two rooms of the space nicely, bought furniture and the movie screen for our LGBTQ veterans — the biggest community for a military in Eastern Europe.”

OLEKSANDR DEMENKO, director of Ukrainian LGBT Military Personnel and Veterans for Equal Rights, poses for a portrait, in Kyiv, Ukraine, on September 15, 2025 (Washington Blade photo by Caroline Gutman)

Demenko and his boyfriend recently became engaged, and the fight for the legalization of gay marriage became personal. Both Pylypenko and Demenko came to Kyiv’s Court of Appeals last month to support the first legal marriage.

“Every gay couple in our country hopes for President Zelensky to allow us to marry. This is our human right, along with every citizen,” the decorated veteran Demenko said in a recent interview.

Patches on a wall are added by visiting soldiers at K-41 in Kyiv. (Blade photo by Caroline Gutman)

To most members of this community, the war started in 2014 with Russia annexing the Crimean Peninsula. As many self-defense volunteers, Pylypenko, joined to defend his country in the Eastern regions of Ukraine. He served for nearly two years. There was too much homophobia at the time, so he stayed in the closet during his service. On coming home to Kyiv, Pylypenko tried to reconstruct his peaceful life, went to university and finished a master’s program in technical and scientific translation from English and French.

But the conflict with Russia did not stop; it escalated to Russia’s full-scale invasion early on the morning of Feb. 24, 2022. Pylypenko was visiting his parents in the town of Borodianka, a suburb north of Kyiv. Russian shelling blew up and burned buildings in Borodianka, killing hundreds of civilians.

Without thinking twice, Pylypenko volunteered to defend his country again, this time openly gay.

“At some point, I took out my cell phone with rainbow stickers from K-41 club; and my sergeant asked me if I was gay in front of everybody. I answered yes.

The commander, who was only 22 years old, did not have any problems with that,” Pylypenko said.

During the battle for Kyiv, his platoon was defending the capital from the trenches on freezing cold days and nights, and saved lives of their wounded brothers in arms by evacuating them to hospitals. Pylypenko’s military experience was useful. And after Kyiv, he fought in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions. Some campaigns turned out “disastrous,” he

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said.

Last year, Pylypenko had to resign to take care of his father, who was “like a baby after a stroke.” The law allowed that.

Shortly after his return from the front, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church honored him for “Courage and Love for Ukraine.”

“I thanked the church and Patriarch Filaret, previously famous for stating that gays had created COVID-19. I expressed my hopes that the priest would reject his homophobia; but immediately, the same day he cancelled his medal to me,” Pylypenko said. “Immediately, a flash mob began, soldiers who had previously received that same medal denounced it in solidarity with me. The soldiers’ brotherhood is great.”

The battle for survival during the war is tiring. The battle for human rights in the war-torn country is exhausting. The LGBTQ community is vibrant, active and well-organized in Ukraine. Its activists across the country fight for human rights, judicial reform and against corruption together with prominent civil liberties groups. Olena Shevchenko, 42-year-old leader of Insight, a group focusing on LGBTQ and feminist activism, says there is no time to live: “I have no life. I have a constant fight.”

The Insight community center is a cozy house in the hipster part of Kyiv’s old town, Podil. For nearly four years, Insight activists have been providing aid, legal support and shelter for their community, organizing art exhibits and taking part in anti-corruption and pro-democracy campaigns.

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Meet the gay couple fighting for marriage rights in Ukraine Activists claim U.S. Christian groups are financing attacks on equality

By ANNA LEVA

(Editor’s note: The International Women’s Media Foundation’s Women on the Ground: Reporting from Ukraine’s Unseen Frontlines Initiative in partnership with the Howard G. Buffett Foundation funded this reporting.)

Thirty-one-year-old Timur Levchuk was hurrying downstairs, away from the stuffy courtroom, packed with reporters, members of far-right groups and LGBTQ activists. The court hearing sounded like a duel between ideologies. The word “family” was the target — his family. Levchuk’s opponents from the conservative group Vsi Razom or All Together, initiated the court hearing to dissolve his marriage. He was trying to hold back his emotions.

The war has been breathing death, ruining lives across his country for nearly four years. At any moment, a missile or drone could hit his home. Under martial law, the border was closed for men of Levchuk’s age. He had not been able to move together with his partner, a Ukrainian diplomat, Zoryan Kis, who is posted on a mission abroad. Almost every night, he awakes to air alerts, to Russia’s attacks. And now aggressive right-wing activists were attacking his marriage, his right to be happy, to have a future.

As soon as Levchuk stepped outside, he saw a crowd of his friends from the LGBTQ community cheering and jumping with joy, holding colorful banners in their hands: “Our family is real!” and “Family is above the stereotypes!” Overwhelmed with emotions, Levchuk broke into tears. His partner of 13 years, Kis, quickly walked up to him. They hugged, as their friends cheered the first legal gay marriage victory in Ukraine.

Levchuk’s face was wet, he was crying. The partners see one another just twice a year; but this fight for their official marriage went on and on, it meant a chance to live together.

“Zorian had to travel from Israel for this hearing today, for just one day, and half of our day was stolen from us by this conservative group, which acts just like Russian homophobes,” Kis told the Washington Blade.

Tears continued to run down his face.

“We hear that our opponents from Vsi Razom, the group fighting the court decision recognizing our marriage, is supported by the U.S. fundamental Christian groups. This is shocking. We are attacked on the money from what used to be the world’s best democracy,” Levchuk told the Blade.

A group of right-wing supporters waited by the entrance to the court, too, with a few policemen in between, watching out for any signs of violence, in a country with enough of it already.

“This decision, this process of legalizing my marriage took me so much time, so much effort,” Levchuk continued. “I knew it would be painful. Our opponents, Vsi Razom activists and their leader, Ruslan Kukharchuk, claim they feel offended by the court decision. But it is our feelings and our rights that are being hurt.”

The appealing side, a middle-aged man, Kukharchuk, has been fighting against LGBTQ for more than 20 years. On Sept. 21, 2003, Kukharchuk and his group, called Love is Against Homosexuals, protested on Kyiv’s central square of Maidan with banners that said “Homosexualism is the enemy of family!” “Single sex love does not exist!”, and “You cannot be born gay, you can become gay.” Kukharchuk has been leading dozens of protests against LGBTQ rights. The Ukrainian Parliament voted for a new law criminalizing any reference to homosexuality in the media or public domain in 2012.

Before the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, the absolute majority of Ukrainians, up to 95 percent, did not support the idea of same-sex marriages, according to a social study conducted by GfK Ukraine, a social and market research group. But the revolution, the war in the east and the Russian invasion of Ukraine has dramatically changed the public view on the rights of minorities. Last year, more than 70 percent of Ukrainians said that LGBTQ people should have the same rights as everybody else, according to a survey by the International Institute of Sociology in Kyiv.

But Kukharchuk has not given up.

A fluent English speaker, he talks as if addressing President Donald Trump, en-

TIMUR LEVCHUK (left) and his husband ZORIAN KIS (Blade photo by Caroline Gutman)

couraging America, too, to rise against LGBTQ rights.

“The U.S. government should not repeat the same mistake: not having the right actions behind the right beliefs,” he says on the Evangelical Focus, an outlet that describes its mission as “helping build bridges between evangelical churches and all of society.” He continues to trumpet his cause: “Ukraine unlike many European countries is the country where LGBT flags are still not flown on government buildings, where people are not fined for praying.”

Levchuk and Kis are not against Christian believers. They believe in Ukraine’s tolerance and respect for the rights of minorities. It’s been a thorny and long path for the two longtime LGBTQ activists. To test their hometown of Kyiv for homophobia, the two in 2015 on a summer day strolled around the city center, holding each other’s hands. Their friends were filming public reaction to the gay couple’s open walk.

It seemed peaceful, at first. Pedestrians stared but did not insult the couple until the two sat down on a bench on the central street of Khreshchatyk. Three men attacked them, kicking Levchuk and Kiss, and spraying them with tear gas. The video of the violent attack went viral.

Levchuk and Kis waited for Ukraine to grow more tolerant for years. Kyiv rejected their marriage in 2021, “due to the fact that according to the legislation of Ukraine, the concept of marriage is defined as a family union of a woman and a man.” Last year, Kis was appointed to work in the Ukrainian embassy in Israel; and since all diplomatic families had a right to live together on diplomatic missions, he began to fight in court for his spouse’s right to travel abroad. Men are prohibited from traveling abroad under martial law rules intended to prevent draft dodging. Last year, Kyiv’s court decided to “refuse the proceedings.” But on July 10 this year, Kyiv’s district court recognized the fact of a “one-sex couple of spouses,” giving the couple a legal right to a marriage. That was a first in Ukraine’s history.

That decision was “unacceptable” to Kukharchuk and the Vsi Razom group; they appealed the court decision. When asked what brought him to the Kyiv Court of Appeal on Sept. 10, Kukharchuk said: “We absolutely believe that the Constitution is on our side. It very firmly underlines and emphasizes the definition of marriage — it can only be a union between one man and one woman, so our position in court is very clear.”

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ISAAC AMEND

is a writer based in the D.C. area. He is a transgender man and was featured in National Geographic’s “Gender Revolution” documentary. He serves on the board of the LGBT Democrats of Virginia. Contact him on Instagram at @isaacamend.

Erasure laws are the new frontline of anti-LGBTQ hate

Rendering our identities unspeakable, and therefore, unthinkable In a Tennessee classroom this fall, a teacher was told she could lose her job for displaying a small rainbow sticker on her door. Her offense wasn’t speaking about sexuality or teaching gender theory — it was the mere act of suggesting that LGBTQ students were welcome. The policy that targeted her isn’t officially called an “erasure law,” but that’s what it is: legislation designed not merely to restrict queer life, but to erase it from public existence altogether.

Across the country, right-wing legislators are experimenting with a new kind of weapon in the culture war. Gone are the days when anti-LGBTQ policy came disguised as “religious freedom” or “protecting children.” The new frontier is subtler and more insidious. States like Montana, Florida, and Tennessee have introduced or passed laws that redefine “male” and “female” in statute to exclude gender identity, prohibit the discussion of sexual orientation in classrooms, and mandate the use of birth-assigned pronouns in schools or government documents.

These are not mere bureaucratic adjustments. They are ideological projects—efforts to write queer and trans people out of the law itself.

In Montana, the “Sex Definition Act” passed earlier this year legally defines sex as “immutable biological characteristics at birth,” effectively nullifying any recognition of transgender or intersex individuals in state policy. In Tennessee, a law now prohibits teachers and librarians from displaying symbols or materials that “promote sexual ideology.” Florida’s laws restrict even university departments from using public funds for “programs that advocate for gender ideology.”

The language of these bills is bloodless, almost clinical. But their intent is unmistakably political. They aim to make LGBTQ identity unspeakable, and therefore, unthinkable.

The right has realized that it can’t always win by targeting specific rights like marriage or adoption — issues on which the public has largely moved toward acceptance. Instead, it has shifted the battlefield to language itself: who gets to define “man,” “woman,” “family,” or even “existence.” By redefining sex in law, by banning the words that describe us, these legislators are waging a linguistic purge.

Erasure laws carry devastating consequences for everyday life. A trans woman in Montana may find her driver’s license no longer matches her identity. A nonbinary student in Tennessee can’t ask to be called by their name without their teacher violating a statute. Librarians in Florida are pulling queer books off shelves, fearful of losing their jobs. Even medical systems are confused about what counts as “gender-affirming care,” since the state’s definition of gender itself has been legally rewritten.

The result is a bureaucratic maze built to suffocate. Queer people don’t vanish through violence alone; they vanish through paperwork, through silence, through fear.

Proponents of these laws claim they are merely “clarifying biological reality.” But biology is not what’s at stake — humanity is. These are not clarifications; they are redefinitions meant to 1 6 • WA SHIN GTO N BLADE.COM • OCTOBER 24 , 2 0 2 5 • V I E WP O I NT

justify exclusion. When you erase the word “transgender” from legal language, you erase the protections, the data collection, and the recognition that make life livable.

It’s a strategy with global roots. In Hungary and Poland, authoritarian leaders have pushed near-identical measures redefining sex in law and banning “gender ideology.” It’s part of a transnational campaign that frames queer existence as a threat to the “natural order.” America’s new erasure laws are echoes of that project, dressed in the language of states’ rights and “parental control.”

(Photo via Bigstock/StudioDin)

For LGBTQ Americans, this means the fight has entered a new phase. The frontlines are no longer just in courts or Pride parades — they’re in classrooms, libraries, health databases, and ID offices. Visibility itself has become an act of defiance.

As a transgender man, I know that visibility is a fragile thing.

It’s something we fight to gain and must fight again to keep.

Every pronoun, every rainbow sticker, every acknowledgment of our lives in the public record is a small bulwark against oblivion. When lawmakers move to silence those symbols, they are declaring that our existence is optional—that we can be legislated out of memory.

We cannot let that happen.

Queer people are not abstractions to be edited out of legal code. We are citizens, neighbors, and contributors to the nation’s fabric. The erasure of our presence in language and law is a moral failure, one that history will judge harshly.

Erasure is the first step toward persecution. Before you can target a group, you make them invisible. The rainbow sticker on a classroom door may seem small, but it represents something lawmakers fear most: the undeniable fact of our existence.

They can strike our names from documents, ban our books, and redefine our bodies — but they cannot erase us. We will continue to speak, to write, to love, and to live in the open.

Because visibility is not vanity. It is survival.

HARRY BARBEE

, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Their research and teaching focus on LGBTQ+ health, aging, and public policy.

Supreme Court’s conversion therapy case tests if science matters

Get Covered. Stay Covered.

A ruling against Colorado’s ban would endanger LGBTQ youth

Imagine: A 15-year-old in Colorado confides in his therapist that he might be gay. Instead of finding support, he was told to pray harder, to picture himself with a girl, to imagine God “fixing” him. Weeks later, he stopped showing up for sessions. His parents thought he was improving; in reality, he had learned that honesty carried punishment. He’s one of thousands of LGBTQ young people who entered therapy seeking help and left believing they were broken.

Stories like this are why states banned conversion therapy in the first place, and why the Supreme Court’s latest case could undo those protections.

When the justices heard arguments in Chiles v. Salazar on Oct. 7, they weren’t simply weighing a dispute over counseling. They were deciding whether scientific consensus still counts as fact in American law.

The issue before the Court is Colorado’s 2019 law prohibiting licensed mental health professionals from subjecting minors to so-called conversion therapy – interventions that claim to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Every major medical and public health organization in the United States has rejected these practices as both ineffective and harmful. The American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Medical Association all warn that such interventions increase anxiety, depression, and suicide risk among youth.

Yet several justices appeared more concerned about the “speech rights” of counselors who wish to continue the practice. They suggested that Colorado’s law might represent “viewpoint discrimination,” because it allows therapists to affirm LGBTQ identities but forbids them from trying to change them. In that framing, evidence-based medicine becomes ideology, and ideology becomes protected speech.

This inversion of expertise has become a recurring theme in modern jurisprudence. During the pandemic, the Court restricted states’ ability to enforce public health orders, treating epidemiological evidence as optional. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the Court majority brushed aside decades of medical testimony about the safety of abortion care. Now, in Chiles v. Salazar, the justices are poised to decide whether overwhelming scientific consensus on psychological harm can be reduced to a matter of personal belief.

But medicine is not a marketplace of ideas in which every viewpoint deserves equal weight.

It is a field governed by empirical testing, ethical standards, and the obligation to do no harm.

To call conversion therapy “just speech” is to erase the patient sitting across from the clinician – a vulnerable minor whose trust and health depend on professional integrity. The state’s role in setting those standards is not viewpoint censorship; it is public health in action.

Consider the analogy to prescribing medication. A physician who tells patients that antibiotics cure viral infections is not exercising free speech; she is providing substandard care. A state medical board that disciplines her is not policing ideas; it is enforcing evidence-based practice. Mental-health care should be no different. Words are a therapist’s instruments, and when used to shame or pathologize identity, they can wound as deeply as any physical act.

If the Court strikes down Colorado’s law, it will erode the principle that professional conduct must be guided by evidence. States could find themselves unable to regulate misinformation in clinical settings – from anti-vaccine counseling to denial of gender-affirming care. The ripple effects would reach school-based programs, public health campaigns, and any professional discipline that relies on communication as a form of treatment.

For LGBTQ youth, the consequences would be immediate. The Trevor Project reports that LGBTQ young people who have been subjected to conversion efforts are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide. Legalizing such practices under the guise of “speech” does not protect expression. It protects harm.

Public health policy depends on one fragile norm: that evidence and scientific consensus matters. Once the judiciary treats empirically validated standards as partisan viewpoints, we lose the ability to distinguish expertise from ideology. That threatens LGBTQ youth, but it also threatens every patient who expects the doctor’s office to be a refuge from politics.

Science will survive this Court. But its authority, and the health of the people it protects, may not emerge unscathed. Whatever the ruling, we must be clear that protecting youth from harm is not ideology. It’s care, backed by evidence.

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PETER ROSENSTEIN

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

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Vice President Eyeliner lies, carries water for Trump

Vance defends indefensible Young Republicans’ racist texts

end. Hamas is not disarmed. We know NeIt was Sunday morning and Vice Prestanyahu is opposed to a Palestinian state, ident Eyeliner appeared on all the news and Trump never mentioned that part of his shows. He had to do something, as there plan in his meeting with leaders in Sharm was no funeral he could attend. Clearly el Sheikh. He did however call on the Prime the felon in the White House doesn’t have Professor Byron & Dr. Tsaknis Minister of Pakistan to laud him, saying he him do anything really important. On these would nominate him for the Nobel Peace shows he can repeat all of Trump’s lies, and Prize next year. He said Trump brokered the even add some of his own. deal to stop the fighting between his counI heard him on “Meet the Press,” spouting appointment@citydentaldc.com try and India, which Indian Prime Minister all his usual BS. It is embarrassing to listen 1221 Massachusetts Ave., NW Modi, has already said was not true. to his lies, and obfuscations. He likes “Meet The felon returned from being feted as a the Press” because the host, Kristen Welkhero for ending a war, which is not ended, er, quickly gives up trying to challenge him, and is home where he has declared war on letting him spout his crap. She is a worse American cities. Where he calls his Secremoderator than Chuck Todd was, and many tary of Defense, the Secretary of War. Even thought that was going to be a difficult members of his cult have reminded him thing to find. I missed his appearance with only Congress can change the name of a George Stephanopoulos, but did watch the Cabinet agency. He is facing a closed govrecording. Clearly, George did what a jour(Photo via Bigstock/Kasiutek) ernment, which is his fault, and based on nalist should do, and called him on some of his prior statements he agrees with that. He his BS, and finally just cut him off. Congratis firing more people, playing politics with people’s lives. He ulations George.

Call or email for fired 1,000 from the CDC and then found his clown-car of a Vance always does what he did at the last Cabinet meetFREE INFORMATION government, and his addled Secretary of Health & Human ing. When called on he heaps praise on the felon. Then last on creating your Services, screwed that up, and had to try to rehire many of week, in even more disgusting comments than usual, after them. it was reported ‘Young Republicans’ across the nation had charitable legacy.

So, while his vice president and his Speaker of the House, texted each other vile, racist, anti-Semitic, sexist, comments, Johnson (yes, he owns him lock stock and barrel) blame DemVance suggested they should be forgiven their ‘youthful in202-955-5890 LEGACY@THECOMMUNITYFOUNDATION.ORG ocrats for the government being closed, Congress doesn’t discretion’ and not have their lives hurt. Young Republican act. The Speaker keeps the House out of session to keep chapters are made up of people from 21 to 45. Even Elise them from passing a bill demanding the release of the EpStefanik (R-N.Y.), MAGA congresswoman, called to disband stein files. Trump sits in his gold guilt office figuring out how the New York chapter of the Young Republicans for this. to give $20 billion to Argentina and meddle in their politics.

One thing the felon hasn’t let Vance near is his 20-point He refuses to do anything about keeping down healthcare peace plan to end the Gaza/Israeli war. The president arWWW.T HECO M M U NIT Y FO U NDATIO N.O RG costs for Americans, to the point where even Marjorie Taylor rived in Israel a week ago Monday, to be in pictures welGreene (R-Ga.) a leader of his MAGA cult, has told him he is coming the hostages home. I give him credit for pushing wrong. Then she along with two other MAGA women, Lauren this ceasefire, and for helping to get the remaining 20 living Boebert (R-Colo.), and Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), have joined the hostages home. But it’s important to note, what most media crazy Laura Loomer and attacked Trump for not releasing the don’t mention, there was a ceasefire in place before Biden ADVERTISING PROOF Epstein files. Then Trump announced the insanity of the Qaleft office and he had gotten about 140 hostages released 25-10-24 SALES REPRESENTATIVE: PHIL ROCKSTROH prockstroh@washblade.com taris building an Air Force base in Idaho, which Loomer and before he left office. When Trump took office that ceasefire EW AD FOR COPY AND DESIGN ACCURACY. Revisions must be submitted within 24 hours of the date of a host of MAGA cult members, are attacking him for. Guess . Proof will be considered final and will be submitted for publication if revision is not submitted within 24 was broken, and it took the felon another eight months to s of the date of proof. Revisions will not be accepted after 12:01 pm wednesday, the week of publication. it was the grifter’s way of thanking the Qataris for the plane. n naff pitts omnimedia llc (dba the washington blade) is not responsible for the content and/or design of get to this one. Again, I give him credit for this, and for trying ad. Advertiser is responsible for any legal liability arising out of or relating to the advertisement, and/or material to which users can link through the advertisement. Advertiser represents that its advertisement to get the bodies of the other 28 hostages out. At this time All this is the sickness in the White House being perpetrated ot violate any criminal laws or any rgihts of third parties, including, but not limited to, such violations as ADVERTISER SIGNATURE gement or misapporpriation of any copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret, music, image, or other by the old, demented, sexist, homophobic, racist, felon, now 10 ofyouthose bodies have been By signing this proof are agreeing to your contract obligations with the returned. The issue rietary or propety right, false advertising, unfair competition, defamation, invasion of privacy or rights of only about washington blade newspaper. This includes but is not limited to placement, brity, violation of anti-discrimination law or regulation, or any other right of any person or entity. Advertiser payment and insertionstill schedule. residing there. is Trump calls this a peace deal. So far there is no es to idemnify brown naff pitts omnimedia llc (dba the washington blade) and to hold brown naff pitts I have media llc (dba the washington blade) harmless from any and all liability, loss, damages, claims, or causes tion, including reasonable legal fees and expenses that may be incurred by brown naff pitts omnimedia peace deal signed off by either side. When Trump entered Last Saturday millions of proud, patriotic, Americans, ising out of or related to advertiser’s breach of any of the foregoing representations and warranties. came out to rally in NO KINGS events around the nation, the Knesset to give his speech, he was asked about that, and and the world. It is my hope they will take the next step and he said, “As far as I am concerned this war is over.”

VOTE in their state and local elections, for Democrats, up I hope this is not like the felon’s other issues where he and down the ballot. By doing that they will tell the felon moves on to the next thing without accomplishing what he in no uncertain terms, “We will not allow you to destroy our talked about. It only took until Tuesday morning, when the country. You and your fascist buddies are on your way out. felon returned to D.C., for the IDF to shoot five more PalesWe are taking back our country!” tinians, and as many predicted, this is how the ceasefire will

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Please Don’t Eat Your Children, Part 2 Nicholas F. Benton FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS

“What does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty and above all, it eats creativity. It eats quality and shits quantity.”

— William S. Burroughs I don’t always agree with this author, but in this case, yes.

In the spirit of Ireland’s Jonathan Swift in his 1755 satirical essay, “A Modest Proposal,” advocating the consumption of children to meet the combined concerns of food shortages and a society’s inability to care for its young, the real, not metaphorical, matter of the ritual, societal pulverization of young people as they approach adulthood applies.

This essay could as easily be entitled, “The Misdirected Anger of American Youth.” A huge part of what’s at the root of the MAGA insurgency facing us now owes to this. The mangling, and the spirit suffocating, of the lives of ordinary people as an allegedly necessary part of “growing up” does naturally provoke anger from its victims, especially if they are not born sucking on a proverbial silver spoon. Such anger is not wrong, but can easily be misdirected.

But even those born to riches Kipling prodded his son to enlist in the Great War (World War 1), which son was soon killed, while it led to an outpouring of grief, alas, it was an emotional expression that came far too late. The emotion should have been felt to keep the boy out of the war to begin with.

The powerful World War 1 poet, son of elites, himself, Wilfred Owen, severely pained by the plights of his peers in the trenches, wrote “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” among many others, before being slain, himself, only hours before the armiIn his “Parable of the Old Man and the Young,” he wrote about the horrors of war as Abraham defying God’s order to spare Isaac: “But the old man would not so, but slew his son, and half the seed of Europe, one by one.”

Years later, the British composer Benjamin Britten took

those words from Owen and put them to music in his striking War Requiem oratorio.

To be clear, many sons and daughters of the elites, like those of Yale’s Whiffenpoofs (Baa, nal days of creative freedom as I saw them perform this week, do not yet know of the punishing demands that will be placed on them by their parents’ generation of unyielding task masters then they enter the worlds of law or But for most of us, that transition is even more deadly, if not by gunshots, by drugs, or a combination of a numbing routine and desperate scramble to make student loan or rent payments, and to hang onto tattered threads of marriage, inlaws and children.

This is the powerkeg out of which the MAGA movement has grown, nourished by sinister fascist overlords who’ve deployed the anger arising from these conditions to turn it against those perceived even more vulnerable, racial minorities, women, immigrants and gays. But these MAGA people get nothing out of it, either, except that they’ve demolished any ability they might have had to shape a movement of all their likewise oppressed brothers and sisters against those actually responsible for their suffering.

The problem, you see, is not the anger. It is its misdirection.

How much effort do our overlords put into dismantling the anger they don’t control? How many paeans to inner peace and passivity, how many football games and rock concerts are there in the effort to defuse a righteous anger against how these elites are destroying society, and us, to protect their ways?

In this context, if anything, Jesus Christ called for righteous anger and action, not against our own, but against the rulers who impose their demands on us. Yes, sorry MAGA, but Jesus was very much a progressive, a liberal.

Anyone reading his Sermon on the Mount, considered by keen historical analysis very close to the real words of Jesus, or his parables, can hardly come to any other conclusion.

“Indivisible” is in America’s Pledge of Allegiance, coming after the “under God” phrase that was added during the McCarthy period. Let’s be indivisible.

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New book celebrates gay rights pioneer you’ve never heard of Craig Rodwell was at Stonewall riots, helped start first Pride, and more

By CHARLES GREEN

Craig Rodwell is, sadly, not nearly as well known as he should be, given his accomplishments. He opened the first bookstore devoted to gay and lesbian literature. He led a chant of “Gay power!” at the Stonewall riots and contributed many articles about the struggle for equality and fair treatment. He helped organize the first Pride march. Thankfully, journalist John Van Hoesen’s new book, “Insist that They Love You,” tells Rodwell’s story.

Rodwell was born in Chicago in 1940 and spent his early years at a Christian Science-run children’s home. As a teenager, he roamed the streets, connecting with older men. One of those lovers was arrested and later died by suicide. He moved to New York to study dancing and joined the Mattachine Society, one of the first groups involved in “gay liberation.” He dated Harvey Milk, a challenging relationship, as the older Milk was still closeted while Rodwell was out and deeply involved in the cause. This was when being gay was a crime and public exposure risked getting fired and evicted.

In 1967, he opened the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop (correcting anyone calling it a bookstore), which openly displayed gay and lesbian books and materials. It had large, inviting windows, different from the typical places gay people congregated. Many walked past it, working up the courage to go in. Once they did, they found a welcoming place where they could learn and connect with others. Van Hoesen writes about the diversity of the Bookshop’s employees, gay, lesbian, Black, and white, who all loved the sense of community and purpose Rodwell created.

That same year he helped form the group Homophile Youth Movement in Neighborhood and created their periodical HYMNAL. He wrote many articles for them and later, for QQ Magazine, describing the forces in straight “heterosexist” society, as he termed it, against gay people.

He wrote about mafia-controlled gay bars, including the Stonewall Inn, seedy places that overcharged for watered-down drinks. He decried how the law was used to persecute gay people, describing his arrest for wearing “too-short” swim trunks. He explained what to do if arrested: never speak without a lawyer present and never provide names of other gay people. Van Hoesen helpfully includes these articles in an appendix.

Rodwell’s history of activism is impressive. In 1966, he participated in a “sip-in” protesting a law forbidding bars serving alcohol to homosexuals; it took three attempts before one refused to serve him. He and his partner happened by the Stonewall Inn when the riots began, offering the protesters support. He helped lead a group that picketed Independence Hall in Philadelphia every year as an “Annual Reminder,” arguing with organizer Frank Kameny over the required conservative dress code.

He organized the first Pride march in 1969. One of the biggest challenges was getting all the different gay rights groups, with different objectives, to work together. The police only issued the permit the morning of the march. Among the book’s photos is one of Rodwell and his partner afterwards, looking exhausted but happy.

Rodwell never sought the spotlight for his work, always working with others. Yet he often chaffed against many of the organizations’ philosophies, one of the few Mattachine Society members to use his real name.

He refused to sell pornography in the Bookshop, or work with gay business owners funded by the mob. He even threw some customers out.

Let’s hope this biography shines more attention on this lesser-known leader of the gay rights movement.

“Insist That They Love You: Craig Rodwell and the Fight for Gay Pride”

By John Van Hoesen | c.2025, University of Toronto Press | $36.95 | 432 pages

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Forget what you thought you knew about senior living

A focus on wellness. A wide array of concierge services, an executive pastry chef, and skilled mixologist. Technology baked into mobile apps and smart homes. Luxe touches within the big and small details that matter.

They all come together at The Mather in Tysons, Virgina, a forward-thinking Life Plan Community that upends all the stereotypes of traditional senior living. It’s a residential wellness destination for those 62 and better, consisting of 288 luxury apartment homes. And it’s 90% sold!

Photo (C) Tony Powell. DC Magazine, The Mather May 2025 Feature.

sauna are spaces for aquatic exercise and rejuvenation.

The full-service spa, Marzenia, offers a holistic menu of traditional spa treatments, including the Gharieni’s Welnamis wave bed, which uses sound and vibration to promote deep relaxation, and a Breath Lounge.

Culinary experiences at The Mather rival those of a high-end resort, with multiple on-site restaurants that curate global cuisine, as well as a bakery and pastry kitchen, and a bar+lounge with its own mixologist. Among them are all-day restaurant Maku (Finnish for savor), modern causal restaurant with outdoor seating Saam (Afrikaans for together), refined dinner venue Tashi (Tibetan for good fortune) and bar and social hub Copas (Spanish for drinks).

Staying in for the evening? Choose delivery by Gusta, a robot named for the Italian word for “enjoy,” who’ll bring a meal directly to the doorstep.

Gusta is just one way technology is integrated throughout the community. Each apartment home comes equipped with complimentary Wi-Fi and Alexa devices to control lighting, temperature, window shades, and more.

Residents use digital platforms to reserve tables, request valet service, or schedule housekeeping. Of course, you can always visit, call, or text the concierge, who will personally arrange services from pet care to travel notifications.

Photo (C) Tony Powell. DC Magazine, The Mather May 2025 Feature.

One of the most sought-after residences in Northern Virginia, The Mather is THE destination if you’re focused on aging well. If you want to be immersed in new cultural experiences, art, food and nature. If you expect more out of living well.

At the heart of this award-winning community is wellness, which was embedded in the design from day one. The property features 3-acres of green space with walking trails, a concert lawn and dog park – much of which is accessible to the public. You can wander through sculpture gardens, stroll on walking paths, play bocce or badminton, or linger with friends at one of the fire tables and patios.

Biophilic design throughout connects residents to the outdoors even when inside. The careful inclusion of nature within architecture is proven to nurture well-being. At The Mather, it comes to life through elements such as natural light, greenery, and wood materials which invite a sense of calm that’s often missing from modern indoor spaces. A commitment to using Photo (C) Tony Powell. DC Magazine, The Mather May 2025 Feature. sustainable materials and creating a paperless environment contribute to Connection is encouraged through beautifully designed gathering caring for our planet. spaces such as Kia Ora, a living-room lounge perfect for conversation, as When visiting, take time to explore the fitness center, which is equipped well as a library stocked with books and periodicals. with advanced cardio and strength-training equipment, percussive theraMuch more than a place to live, The Mather is a place to define your path py tools, and an AI-enabled body composition analyzer. to aging well, discover new interests and live boldly.

You might see residents enjoying a group class in Pilates, or practicing If you see yourself here, visit themathertysons.com. yoga or tai chi on the outdoor terrace. A heated indoor pool and infrared PAID ADVERTISING X X • WA SHIN GTO NBLADE.COM • OCTOBER 10 , 2 0 2 5 • B US I NE S S

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CALENDAR |

By TINASHE CHINGARANDE

Friday, October 24

Tuesday, October 28

Wednesday, October 29

“Center Aging Friday Tea Time” will be at 12 p.m. in person at the DC Center for the LGBT Community’s new location at 1827 Wiltberger St., N.W. To RSVP, visit the DC Center’s website or email adam@thedccenter.org.

GoGayDC will host “LGBTQ+ Community Happy Hour” at 7 p.m. at Dupont Italian Kitchen Bar. This event is ideal for making new friends, professional networking, idea sharing, and community building. This event is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.

Trans Discussion Group will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom.

This event is intended to provide an 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 details, email info@thedccenter.org.

Genderqueer DC will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This is a support group for people who identify outside of the gender binary, whether you’re bigender, agender, genderfluid, or just know that you’re not 100% cis. For more details, visit www.genderqueerdc.org or Facebook.

Coming Out Discussion Group will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This is a peer-facilitated discussion group and a safe space to share experiences about coming out and discuss topics as it relates to doing so. Visit Facebook for more details.

Job Club will be at 6 p.m. on Zoom. This is a weekly job support program to help job entrants and seekers, including the long-term unemployed, improve self-confidence, motivation, resilience and productivity for effective job searches and networking — allowing participants to move away from being merely “applicants” toward being “candidates.” For more information, email centercareers@ thedccenter.org or visit www.thedccenter.org/careers.

GoGay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Activism at Woman’s National Democratic Club” at 6 p.m. at The Whittemore House. Guests can join other activists at the WNDC for letter and postcard writing to get out the vote this fall in Virginia and other critical state races. Postcards will be written to women in rural VA and to members of Congress on Home Rule 101 in partnership with the D.C. Democrats Statehood Committee. There will be free pizza, cash bar, a fun raffle and camaraderie. More details are available on Eventbrite.

Saturday, October 25 GoGay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Community Brunch” at 12 p.m. at Freddie’s Beach Bar & Restaurant. This fun weekly event brings the DMV area LGBTQ+ community, including allies, together for delicious food and conversation. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.

“Out N Bad x She Shed x Queer Talk: BOO MANSION DC | QTPOC Halloween Party” will be at 10 p.m. at Mixxed Food and Drinks. This is a multi-level QTPOC takeover that will feature haunted vibes, pounding beats, and mayhem across every floor — each bringing its own world. Tickets cost $13.26 and can be purchased on Eventbrite.

Thursday, October 30 The DC Center’s Fresh Produce Program will be held all day at the DC Center for the LGBT Community. 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.

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

OUT & ABOUT

Sunday, October 26 “Howl-oween Pawty” will be at 3 p.m. at 600 Howard Rd., S.E. Guests are encouraged to bring their dogs along for a Howl-oween Pawty, costume contest, and queer market that will feature several LGBTQ businesses. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.

Monday, October 27 “Center Aging: Monday Coffee Klatch” will be at 10 a.m. on Zoom. This is a social hour for older LGBTQ adults. Guests are encouraged to bring a beverage of choice. For more information, contact Adam (adamheller@thedccenter.org).

Queer Book Club will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This group meets on the fourth Monday of the month to discuss queer books by queer authors. For more details, email info@thedccenter.org.

“Soulfully Queer: LGBTQ+ Emotional Health and Spirituality Drop-In” will be at 3 p.m. at the DC Center for the LGBT Community. This group will meet weekly for eight weeks, providing a series of drop-in sessions designed to offer a safe, welcoming space for open and respectful conversation. Each session invites participants to explore themes of spirituality, identity, and belonging at their own pace, whether they attend regularly or drop in occasionally. For more details visit the DC Center’s website.

High Heel Race returns Oct. 28 D.C.’s 38th annual 17th Street High Heel Race returns Tuesday, Oct. 28, sponsored by the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs. Festivities begin at 6 p.m. on 17th Street between P and S streets, N.W. near Dupont Circle. The event is free.

Thousands of costumed spectators will cheer on the drag queens running the race along 17th Street. If you’re interested in running in the race, fill out a registration form at the tent on R Street at the event.

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Gay historian to host event on queer liberation “Brian T. Blackmore On the Quaker Push for Gay Liberation” will be held on Sunday, Oct. 26 at 12:15 p.m. at The Living Room at Quaker House, Friends Meeting of Washington.

Brian T. Blackmore, Ph.D. is a historian with more than a decade of experience researching the evolution of Quaker attitudes toward LGBTQ people and the role many Quakers played in the advancement of gay rights.

He is author of “To Hear and To Respond: The Quakers’ Groundbreaking Push for Gay Liberation.” For nine years, Blackmore taught courses on Quakerism, peace and conflict, world religions, and gender and sexuality at Westtown School in West Chester, Pa. He serves on the board of the Friends Historical Association and is director of Quaker Engagement at the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC).

For more information, email cdobson46@gamil.com.

The 38th annual High Heel Race is next Tuesday.

(Washington Blade photo by Giuseppe LoPiccolo)

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DINING

Chefs for Equality undergoes dramatic reimagining This year’s event will take place at five different restaurants

By EVAN CAPLAN

In a time of uncertainty, coming together in unity and solidarity is especially important —and along shared tables over bountiful meals even more so. In light of the national mood and local political climate, the Human Rights Campaign has announced its signature Chefs for Equality (CFE), the region’s largest and most star-studded culinary event supporting LGBTQ rights and equality — but with a dramatic reimagining.

This year’s edition (the 13th), dubbed Everything Everywhere All at Once, takes place Monday, Oct. 27, at five restaurants across D.C. Fresh off last year’s CFE event at the National Building Museum, which featured 150 chefs, bakers, mixologists, sommeliers, and restaurateurs across 50 savory and 20 dessert stations, CFE 2025 is going back to its roots and recognizing the deep importance of community with a format that centers restaurants: five exclusive collaborative dinners hosted by some of the DMV’s most celebrated chefs, mixologists, and restaurateurs.

“Chefs for Equality shines a spotlight on the strength and solidarity of the DMV’s vibrant restaurant scene,” says esteemed writer David Hagedorn, the gala’s creator and chair. “This new format is a powerful expression of the resilience and inventive spirit that celebrates culinary excellence while championing equality.”

Hagedorn, a longtime leader of the LGBTQ food community in Washington, D.C., says that given the challenging economic environment in the city, the organizers were looking to scale back the event, and realized that by having dinners at restaurants, they would still be able to collaborate and raise money for the HRC Foundation, as well as “redouble our efforts as a restaurant community to stand up for equality, especially when the government is intent on taking away rights for which LGBTQ and other marginalized people have fought long and hard.”

Each of the five dinners follows the same format: beginning with an extravagant cocktail reception, followed by a multi-course paired dinner and dessert.

New this year as well is an even more open format: everyone in D.C. could participate outside the dinners. From Oct. 27-Nov. 2, select restaurants and bars around the DMV will participate in “Chefs for Equality Promotional Week,” offering specials and donating a portion of those sales to the HRC Foundation. While the dinners take place on just one night, the promotional week signifies that restaurants across town can show their support for equality in a diversity of ways.

HRC Foundation President Kelley Robinson added that, “Food has always been a great unifier — it brings people together across differences and reminds us of our shared humanity. That’s why we are thrilled to once again partner with DC’s culinary leaders. We believe in a world where all LGBTQ+ people feel safe and able to be their authentic selves wherever they show up in their daily lives.”

“It’s an honor to chair this event,’ Hagedorn said.

Chefs for Equality this year will be held in multiple locations.

(Blade file photo by Michael Key)

“I’ve been in Washington since 1976, so I’ve lived through the AIDS years. Chefs for Equality was created in 2012 as a one-off to raise some money for the marriage equality push that was on the ballot in Maryland.

The lesson I learned in the trenches is that our rights can never be taken for granted.”

Chef and co-owner Johanna Hellrigl, of Northern Italian restaurant Ama, has supported Chefs for Equality and the HRC Foundation for many years. She will be at the Duck and the Peach dinner’s opening course, featuring Ligurian Fügassa Focaccia, among other bread items. “I think that the events taking place at restaurants instead of at a venue this year showcases how supportive restaurants are of the community — no matter what obstacle stands in the way, we will find a way to come together and make it happen. It’s a time to spread some love.”

The five collaborative dinners are as follows. Each dinner will include an auction, Chefs for Equality’s signature goody bags, florals by Amaryllis Design House and other surprises.

CUT by Wolfgang Puck – Host Chef Wolfgang Puck in collaboration with Chefs Andrew Ho and Ligia Barros (CUT), Amy Brandwein (Centrolina), Harley Peet (Bas Rouge), and Bryan Voltaggio (Wye Oak Tavern)

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Moon Rabbit – Host Chefs Kevin Tien and Susan Bae, in collaboration with Chefs Rob Rubba (Oyster Oyster), Ryan Ratino (Bresca, Jont) and Ellin Yin (a.kitchen+bar), Satang Ruangsangwatana and Prapavadee Limvatana (Six Ways to Sunday), Seng Luangrath (Baan Mae), and Paolo Dungca (Kaya) The Duck and the Peach – Host Chefs Katarina Petonito and Rochelle Cooper in collaboration with Chefs Johanna Hellrigl (Ama), Matt Adler (Caruso’s Grocery), Carlos Delgado (Causa), Jova Urriolla (Colada Shop), Mike Friedman and Robert Cain (Red Hen), Simon Lam (Tiger Fork), Ria Montes (Fish Shop Bar & Restaurant), and Kareem Queeman (Mr. Bake) Acqua Bistecca – Host Chef Colin Clark in collaboration with Chefs Tatiana Mora and Miguel Guerra (MITA), Ruben Garcia (Casa Teresa), Tony Chittum (Iron Gate, Vermillion), Matt Conroy and Isabel Coss (Pascual) and Scott Drewno (Fried Rice Collective) Perry’s – Host Chef Masako Morishita in collaboration with Audrey Angeles (Forst & Flourish) and David Guas (Neutral Ground). Perry’s has a unique format: it will present “Drag Brunch for Dinner,” a lavish buffet curated by James Beard Award-winning chef Morisita with performances by several of D.C.’s top drag superstars.

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FILM

Romero throws queer twist on father’s legacy with ‘Queens of the Dead’ Drag queens, trans women, femme boys, butch girls battling zombies

By JOHN PAUL KING

It may be hard to believe, but once upon a time, there weren’t really a lot of zombie movies.

Sure, zombies turned up from time to time during the classic era of horror movies, but in those days they were typically only the mindless slaves of a sinister master who has taken control of their consciousness and their will by means of arcane magic – a conception largely invented from racist tropes derived from the misinterpreted voodoo lore of Haiti and other colonized cultures of the Caribbean. These early zombies were not evil in themselves; they chased you because they were following orders, not because they wanted to eat your brains, and they were usually less scary than they were pitiable.

As any fan of horror knows, all that changed in 1968. That was the year that George A. Romero rewrote the playbook on zombies with his low-budget masterpiece, “Night of the Living Dead.” Gone were the shambling mind-controlled somnambulists that once defined them in the popular imagination, replaced instead with relentless walking corpses driven not by voodoo but by a primal and insatiable instinct to devour our flesh, and – perhaps worse – turn us into creatures just like them in the process.

Ever since then, the zombie subgenre has been a perennially popular staple of horror cinema, both through the sequels Romero himself would go on to create and the plentiful imitations and appro-

priations of generations of filmmakers inspired by him, and – like the creatures that inhabit it – just seems to keep going.

Zombies are now a seemingly permanent fixture in our pop entertainment culture; indeed, there are so many movies and TV shows (and spinoffs) revolving around them that it’s easy to let a new one slip by without taking notice.

With “Queens of the Dead,” however, notice should be taken – because while there may be a lot of zombie movies out there already, this one comes from the daughter of the man who reinvented them, and with it, she puts her own unique mark on the family legacy.

A wild and campy ride through the nocturnal world of Brooklyn, Tina Romero’s “zom-com” centers on a group of drag queens and queer club kids in Brooklyn as they prepare for a massive warehouse party. Things are not going smoothly; mere hours ahead of showtime, show producer Dre (Katy O’Brian) is informed that the headliner, a social media-famous drag queen named Yasmine (Dominique Jackson), has cancelled, and the only possibility for a replacement is Sam (Jaquel Spivey) aka “Samonce” – who hasn’t performed since running out on her own sold-out show, years ago. Meanwhile, in the outside world, a sudden and unexplained plague of zombies has begun to spread, with the flesh-eating undead crowd growing larger by the minute; and when the doors open for showtime, Dre and their crew

of queer-and-allied cohorts find themselves forced to overcome all the bickering, backbiting, and “frenemy” rivalries between them in order to survive as the club becomes ground zero in a zombie apocalypse.

Buoyed by an exceptional ensemble cast, Romero’s audacious feature takes her late father’s original formula – an unexplained and unrelenting epidemic of undead cannibals terrorizing a group of mismatched survivors as they try to plan their escape – and spins it into an irreverent, edgy, and deeply macabre comedy which feels almost as indebted to the underground countercultural “trash” cinema of John Waters as to her father’s iconic horror masterpiece, even though it has a slicker veneer than either. At the same time, she builds real relationships between the collection of characters she gathers together, making them all relatably human while also raising the emotional stakes for the horror drama that remains in play throughout and despite the humorous framework. It’s a balancing act that could easily go wrong, but “Queens of the Dead” pulls it off with a blend that takes itself just seriously enough to keep us on edge yet never too much so to kill the fun, offering up moments of genuine horror alongside scenes of absurdist camp without either feeling out of place.

What makes Romero’s twist on her father’s iconic film – for “Queens of the Dead” feels much like a “spiritual remake” at times – especially compelling is

that she manages to keep all of its formulaic integrity intact while re-expressing it through an unapologetically queer lens.

The characters are drag queens, trans women, femme boys, butch girls, lesbians, and yes, even a couple of cisgender heterosexuals. It’s a true “rainbow coalition” of a cast, thrown together to combat an onslaught on their community, and looking fabulous while they do it.

Of course, it’s impossible not to also recognize the thread of social commentary that connects Romero’s film to her father’s original, which, with its Black protagonist, evoked a powerful subtext about racism and mob violence. In “Queens,” she gives us the unmistakably direct allegory of watching a band of queer outsiders forced to fight back against a horde of mindless and malevolent drones, phone-obsessed zombies staring at their screens for distraction as they search for new victims to devour.

At its heart, queer horror stories are always about this: the gnawing fear of the conforming masses, swayed by the lights and color and noise of their propaganda to target and terrorize, and even though she delivers it with a healthy touch of tongue-in-cheek humor, this one carries that message with absolute clarity.

Spivey (Broadway’s “A Strange Loop”) makes for an outstanding unlikely hero/ heroine, and O’Brian brings a winning, sexy swagger as Dre, and Quincy Dunn-Baker makes an impact as the club’s seemingly toxic straight handyman, In addition to Jackson’s scene-stealing performances as diva Yasmine, there’s a superb supporting turn by Margaret Cho as a militant lesbian who unleashes her fury on the zombie hordes, and a host of other memorable performances from the likes of such familiar and talented performers as Riki Lindhome, Jack Haven, Nina West, Tomas Matos, and Cheyenne Jackson.

Entertaining, smart, and surprisingly light-hearted for all its zombie carnage, “Queens of the Dead” is one of those hidden gems of a movie that has all the earmarks of a cult classic. Opening in theaters on Oct. 24, it’s our best pick as your seasonal must-see of the Halloween season.

MARGARET CHO prepares to fight zombies in ‘Queens of the Dead.’

(Image courtesy of Independent Film Company/Shudder)

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BOOKS

Florida’s war on Black, queer lives hidden no more New book ‘American Scare’ exposes truth of decades of erasure, attacks

By CHARLES FRANCIS

“What’s with Florida?,” Bobby Fieseler, disgusted, asked after completing his initial research into the vicious investigation of suspected homosexual teachers by the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee (FLIC) in the 1950s. How did the official animus toward all things queer happen in Florida, Fieseler pitched his publisher. We can be grateful Dutton gave him the green light for “American Scare, Florida’s Hidden Cold War on Black and Queer Lives.”

Fieseler’s book is a masterpiece of archive activism that begins in a rental van escaping Florida with some 20 boxes of historical documents meant to be seen by no one. The cartons contained a secret second copy of materials that had been held back from the jaws of the Florida State Archives in Tallahassee. Soon, more folders would surface with unredacted materials. “There are friends of Dorothy in any system,” he explains his archival detective work with a wink.

What’s with Florida? In the 1950s, it was all about legislators exposing politically helpless homosexuals to justify the committee’s investigations and budgets.

The FLIC documents reveal the names of the accused “perverts,” the cops who raided the restrooms, the terrified queer informants and the professional interview techniques that would extract confessions from the victims. On another level, this was about old-school Southern racists determined to stop integration at all costs with intention to weave lies about Communist infiltration of the NAACP. Finally, Fieseler encountered first-hand an official determination to erase and lock-up this history.

The statewide obsession with erasing history continues to this day. The Florida Department of Transportation this year painted over the community rainbow crosswalk memorial to the Pulse nightclub massacre victims in Orlando.

“American Scare” is such a fully documented investigation of what unfolded, it will be impossible to paint over the magnitude of this assault. The book bears witness in gory detail to the ruination of private people that exceeds in pure perniciousness the more famous “Lavender Scare.” Although the “Lavender Scare” purged many more individuals, it was about the U.S. Department of State firing public officials slimed as “pinstripe twerps.” The Florida investigations were a statewide purge using a dark politics of exposure of schoolteachers leading private lives. Fieseler quotes

Remus Strickland, the head homo-hunter and executive director of the Southern Association of Intelligence Agents formed in response to the Supreme Court’s Brown v.

Board of Education desegregation decision (1954), “If the Committee’s first pursuit (race and Communism) was a mandate, its second pursuit (homosexuals) was an opportunity.” Remus (that’s really this Southerner’s name) explained years later without remorse, “We first looked at the University of Florida for Communists….then we came back and did the homosexual purge.”

Fieseler’s archival research reveals how far-right politicians and investigators like Strickland characterized Communists, African Americans (through the NAACP) and homosexuals as aligned “treasonously in a subversive societal infestation.”

The whole show was the creation of a wily, populist politician — a Florida “Pork Chopper” — Charley Johns, president of the Florida Senate. “Pork Choppers,” the rural, white Northern Florida wing of the old Democratic Party, controlled the state legislature from the 1930s to the 1960s.

They were strongly opposed to integration, Communists, homosexuals, reapportionment and government reform. Johns owned the Charley E. Johns Insurance Agency, which insured state agencies.

Fieseler’s history brings these North Florida politicians into grotesque focus. Their “power had lynched history,” he writes about his passion to excavate how they sealed and redacted the records so they would never face responsibility for their actions.

“American Scare” reveals how these Pork Choppers were willing to crush homosexuals as an instrument to maintain power. Their victims were isolated gay and lesbian teachers who could only plead for mercy, vanish or inform on one another.

They were entrapped by the system itself.

Fieseler tells the story of how Remus Strickland pulled Miss Poston, a physical education teacher out of her classroom surprising her with a tape recorder and a request to give a misdirecting statement about the prevention of child molestation. Suddenly Remus changed the subject: “Miss Poston, in your acts with Miss Bradshaw whom you referred to on this record, would she play the part of the aggressor…..She was known as the butch is that true?....Was there any occasion of any oral copulation?”

He closed in for the kill, “Could there have been more than one time”? Miss Poston

‘American Scare: Florida’s Hidden Cold War on Black and Queer Lives’

By Robert W. Fieseler

caved, “Possibly but if so only one more time.” The reel-to-reel tape is turning.

Concert pianist and music teacher William James Neal received the same taped grilling. Remus begins the interview, “You’re an educated Nigra,” confronting Neal with testimony he was a homosexual “nigra.” Years later, Neal remembered, “He told me I would never teach within the continental limits of the United States.

He said he had proof I was a homosexual.” An African-American concert pianist, Neal had extensively toured the U.S. playing with major orchestras and hosting his own radio program in Florida. Neal had the self-respect and courage to take his illegal termination to the Florida Supreme Court.

In 1962, the court ruled in his favor (Neal v. Bryant) handing Remus Strickland a dev-

astating defeat, writing “The statements accused teachers allegedly made were obviously extracted under a threat of publicity.”

Vindicated, William Neal nonetheless left Florida never to return.

There have been resolutions for an acknowledgment and apology. None have advanced through the Republican-controlled legislature occupied with a slew of “Don’t Say Gay” bills. “American Scare’ is larger than a small-bore history of investigations. It is the story of a Great Florida Teacher’s Purge launched to stop integration. Fieseler is done with redactions. He names names. If there is anything redemptive in this Southern hot mess, it is this: Bobby Fieseler, a queer historian, rescued the boxes and delivers readers their contents with history’s gale force.

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Best of LGBTQ D.C. Awards Party Washington Blade holds annual event at Crush Dance Bar (Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)

The Washington Blade held its 24th annual Best of LGBTQ D.C. Awards Party at Crush Dance Bar on Thursday, Oct. 16.

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On the ground with Ukraine’s LGBTQ war heroes

VICTOR PYLYPENKO, a Ukrainian veteran and co-founder of K-41, poses for a portrait, on Sept. 9, 2025.

(Blade photo by Caroline Gutman)

“Three days ago, homophobes attacked our center in Lviv and before that our center in Ivano-Frankivsk; some thugs stormed our exhibition in the city of Chernovtsy,” Shevchenko told the Blade.

“They come again and again, break windows, spray walls with paint that imitates blood. Their goal is to block our events. They spray tear gas, terrify our activists.”

Shevchenko said that the attacks on the LGBTQ centers around the country are organized by far-right groups.

“One group is called Carpathian Sich, another Brotherhood, led

by Dmytro Korchinsky and various new groups and networks frequently launched, like Tradition and Order,” she said. “We noticed that they received some amount of money about a year ago. They put around homophobic posters and aggressive stickers — we can tell that the money is coming to them. If before, money came from Russia, now they get funded from the U.S. as well.”

In spite of the attacks and risks, the community lives. Shevchenko, as many Ukrainians in the rear, saw her fight for human rights and against corruption as just as important as the fight on the frontline.

“If we don’t fight for democracy, who will do it? Our country would look bad if we stop. This is not just about LGBTQ, this is about freedom, democracy and the spirit that you can fight for something that is right,” she said. “Our government should be reminded about how good we are still at self-organization. We’ll be always here, this our own front. We have to keep track of democracy on all levels.”

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Meet the gay couple fighting for marriage rights in Ukraine To the great joy of all Ukrainian LGBTQ couples, Kyiv’s appeal court confirmed the fact of the two men living in “a family” on Sept. 10. It recognized their marriage. But the victory felt bittersweet. The powers behind their opponents were in the United States, the spouses told the Blade.

“We hear that our opponents from the conservative Vsi Razom group, receive financing from the Christian groups in the U.S.,” Levchuk told the Blade. “It’s hard to comprehend that our right to be happy is being questioned in the country of the best democracy in the world, the United States.”

But Kukharchuk lost the case, at least this time.

“We realize that our fight is not over. It’s hard and it takes forever. Our opponents will surely take the decision to the Supreme Court now,” Kis told the Blade.

TIMUR LEVCHUK (center) and his husband ZORIAN KIS listen to the judges’ decision in the courtroom, in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Sept. 10, 2025.

RUSLAN KUKHARCHUK, leader of Vsi Razom, speaks during Timur Levchuk’s court hearing, in Kyiv, Ukraine, on September 10, 2025. (Blade photo by Caroline Gutman)

(Blade photo by Caroline Gutman)

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REAL ESTATE

LGBTQ home ownership index 2025 Half of queer buyers have experienced or suspected discrimination COURTESY OF GAY REAL ESTATE | For more information visit GayRealEstate.com Half of LGBTQ+ buyers in the United States say they have experienced or suspected discrimination during the housing process, a new survey commissioned by Gay Real Estate has found. That single figure captures the reality behind one of life’s biggest milestones: buying a home is still not an equal journey for everyone.

Discrimination does not just hurt feelings. It limits access to neighborhoods, delays buying decisions, and pushes many to conceal who they are in order to secure housing. These patterns reveal the added weight LGBTQ+ people carry in a process that should be about opportunity and stability.

At Gay Real Estate, our mission is to connect LGBTQ+ individuals with trusted agents who understand these challenges and provide supportive guidance throughout the buying process. To explore this, we put together The LGBTQ+ Home Ownership Index 2025, which draws on new survey data to uncover these challenges, showing how identity influences every stage of the housing journey. From neighborhood choice to financing, here’s the data that highlights both the barriers and the resilience of LGBTQ+ buyers…

[H2] Discrimination Shapes the Homebuying Journey Discrimination does not always take place in obvious forms. It might surface during an initial phone call, a property viewing, or even while negotiating terms. For LGBTQ+ buyers, these moments are often enough to alter decisions about whether to proceed at all. In fact…

• 33% have experienced discrimination due to their LGBTQ+ identity when in the home buying process.

• 17% suspected they were discriminated against, but could not be certain it was due to their identity.

• Combined, this means half of LGBTQ+ buyers report experiencing or suspecting discrimination.

For many, this ongoing risk changes the way they approach each stage of the process. Some hesitate to enquire about certain properties, while others walk away from negotiations when bias appears. These are not isolated frustrations but a pattern that continues to influence housing access nationwide.

Why Many Feel Pressure to Conceal their Identity A striking 67% of the LGBTQ+ people surveyed either have hidden, considered hiding their identity, were pressured to hide their identity, or had limited disclosure of their identity while navigating the housing market. This can occur during property viewings, mortgage applications, or even casual conversations with landlords and neighbors.

This concealment is not about preference but survival.

LGTBQ+ homebuyers weigh the risk of being open against the potential of being denied, steered elsewhere, or subjected to worse terms. The reality is that many feel they must downplay who they are in order to secure something as fundamental as a home.

of these concerns. On top of this, 12% have even decided not to buy at all.

Altogether, 53% report that political or legal conditions have directly shaped when or whether they buy. These delays are not about whether or not they can make the decision, but about careful risk management. Many want assurance that their rights and investments will be protected before taking such a significant financial step.

The Cost of an LGBTQ-Friendly Area For most people, cost is the single biggest factor in choosing where to live, yet 3 in 5 LGBTQ+ buyers are willing to pay more to live in areas they know will be affirming.

Combined, 60% are willing to trade financial savings for the stability and predictability of an affirming environment.

This is not treated as a luxury but as a necessity, one that enables people to live more freely and fully in their own homes.

How Neighborhood Choice is Limited by Discrimination Location is a defining factor in real estate, yet for LGBTQ+ buyers it’s not just about schools, commute times, or amenities. It’s also about whether they feel comfortable walking around the streets, holding a partner’s hand, or participating in local life. The survey results show how deeply these considerations shape decisions: • 22% have avoided certain areas due to fear of LGBTQ+ discrimination.

• 30% would avoid areas in the future for the same reason.

• 24% have at least considered avoiding certain areas.

Feelings of unease extend beyond neighborhoods. Eight in ten report experiencing at least some level of discomfort or risk that changes their behavior. This might mean avoiding viewings at night, skipping certain open houses, or limiting their search to areas perceived as more welcoming.

Politics, Legislation, and Timing The decision to buy a home often comes with timing questions about jobs, interest rates, and personal finances.

For LGBTQ+ buyers, the political and legal climate can be just as influential, with 24% reporting that they have delayed buying a home, and 17% are considering delaying because

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LGBTQ-Friendly States and Cities When it comes to LGBTQ+ friendly places to buy a home, certain U.S. states and cities stand out. Our recent survey of 700 respondents revealed which areas are top of mind for prospective LGBTQ+ homeowners.

California Leading the way, California was cited by 17.6% of respondents. Homebuyers here highlight strong legal protections, vibrant communities, and the availability of LGBTQ+-friendly real estate agents in California as key factors when deciding on timing and location.

New York Close behind is The Big Apple, with 16.7% of respondents naming the state. Buyers appreciate its inclusive neighborhoods and the broad choice of agents experienced in supporting LGBTQ+ clients, making the process smoother and safer.

San Francisco At the city level, San Francisco was mentioned by 9.7% of respondents. The city’s historic LGBTQ+ culture and welcoming communities make it a top pick for those seeking both social connection and secure homeownership.

Los Angeles Cited by 7% of respondents, LA offers diverse neighborhoods and a strong network of supportive real estate professionals, helping buyers feel confident in their timing and choices.

CONTINUES AT WASHINGTONBLADE.COM

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LEGAL NOTICE

SUPERIOR COURT OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PROBATE DIVISION 2025 ADM 001053 Doris M. Gilliam, Name of Decedent

Attorney: James Barrett, Esq. 1325 G Street NW, Suite 500, Washington DC 20005

Notice of Appointment, Notice to Creditors and Notice to Unknown Heirs Markeda Gilliam, whose address is 1014 6th St NE, Washington, DC 20002 was appointed Personal Representative of the estate of Doris M. Gilliam who died on 02/15/2025 with a Will and will serve without Court supervision. All unknown heirs and heirs whose whereabouts are unknown shall enter their appearance in this proceeding. Objections to such appointment (or to the probate of decedents Will) shall be filed with the Register of Wills, D.C., Building A, 515 5th Street NW, 3rd Floor, Washington, D.C. 20001 on or before 04/10/2026. Claims against the decedent shall be presented to the undersigned with a copy to the Register of Wills or. filed with the Register of Wills with a copy to the undersigned on or before 04/10/2026 or be forever barred. Persons believed to be heirs or legatees of the decedent who do not receive a copy of this notice by mail within 25 days of its publication shall so inform the Register of Wills, including name, address, and relationship.

Date of first publication: October 10, 2025 /s/Markeda Gilliam, 227-229-5485 A True Test Copy/s/Nicole Stevens, Register of Wills.

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