Local
Activists hail Gray’s stunning win over Fenty
But mayor carries precincts with high concentrations of LGBT voters
Mayoral candidate, Vince Gray (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
The large contingent of LGBT activists that backed City Council Chair Vincent Gray’s candidacy for mayor called his victory in Tuesday’s Democratic primary a highly positive development and predicted Gray would emerge as one the city’s most gay-supportive mayors.
But early election returns showed that Mayor Adrian Fenty won in most of the voter precincts with a high concentration of LGBT residents.
Final-but-unofficial returns released early today by the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics showed Gray defeating Fenty by a margin of 54 to 45 percent.
Lesser known Democratic mayoral candidate Leo Alexander, who made his support for a ballot measure to overturn the city’s same-sex marriage law an important part of his campaign, received less than 1 percent of the vote. Democratic mayoral contenders Sulaimon Brown and Ernest Johnson, who received a 0 rating from the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance on LGBT issues, also received less than 1 percent of the vote.
Jeffrey Richardson, president of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the city’s largest LGBT political group that endorsed Gray, said many activists favored Gray because he demonstrated a stronger commitment to work with and listen to the problems and concerns of the LGBT community.
“What I believe happened is Vince Gray resonated with and connected with the idea that we not only need a mayor who is going to bring us results but who has a heart for the community and has shown that heart and is willing to be connected to the community and to hear from the citizenry,” Richardson said.
Both Gray and Fenty have strong records of support on LGBT issues. Gray voted for and Fenty signed the city’s historic same-sex marriage law.
Gay Democratic activist Peter Rosenstein was among a number of LGBT advocates who backed Fenty in his landslide victory in the 2006 election and switched their allegiance to Gray this year.
Rosenstein said he believes the gay vote split between Fenty and Gray, with a “large majority” of black gays joining the black community as a whole in voting for Gray. Stein Club Vice President Tim Mahoney is among a number of activists who believe most gay voters based their decision on who to back in the mayor’s race on non-LGBT issues.
In other city races, gay former parks and recreation director Clark Ray was trounced in his uphill challenge to LGBT supportive at-large Council member Phil Mendelson. Mendelson won his bid for the Democratic nomination with 63 percent of the vote, with D.C. shadow senator Michael D. Brown coming in second, with 27 percent and Ray finishing third with just under 9 percent of the vote.
The Stein Club endorsed Mendelson over Ray, calling Mendelson a “champion” on LGBT issues and noting that he led the City Council’s effort to pass the same-sex marriage law in his role as chair of the committee with jurisdiction over the measure.
Election returns also show that Mendelson, who won in all eight wards, beat Ray and Brown with overwhelming margins in the gay identified precincts, including those in Dupont Circle, Logan Circle, Adams Morgan, Capitol Hill, the Southwest Waterfront, and Anacostia.
Gay City Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) won his primary race with 57 percent of the vote. Democratic challengers Jeff Smith and Bryan Weaver each received 21 percent of the vote, according to the latest Board of Elections returns.
LGBT-supportive Council member Kwame Brown (D-At-Large) won the Democratic nomination to replace Gray as City Council chair with 55 percent of the vote. Challenger Vincent Orange, a former Ward 5 Council member who opposed same-sex marriage four years ago before coming out in support of the marriage equality bill this year, received 39 percent of the vote.
Many of the city’s LGBT leaders were especially pleased with Ward 5 Council member Harry Thomas Jr.’s primary victory Tuesday. Same-sex marriage opponents, including the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage, targeted Thomas for defeat in his conservative ward. Many political observers said Thomas’s decision to vote for the same-sex marriage law put his re-election bid in jeopardy due to strong opposition to the law among many of his constituents.
Thomas won the primary with 62 percent of the vote. His lead opponent, Delano Hunter, who spoke out against the marriage equality law and backed a voter initiative to overturn it, received 19 percent of the vote.
The LGBT-supportive group People for the American Way, which keeps track of anti-LGBT groups, pointed to city election finance records showing that the group spent well over $100,000 to support Hunter in Ward 5 and general efforts to oppose Council candidate supportive of same-sex marriage.
“They spent a lot of money and completely failed,” said gay activist Bob Summersgill. “I think NOM has completely misunderstood the attitudes and feelings of the voters in D.C. This is not a place where people are anxious to take away others’ rights.”
LGBT supportive Council members Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) and Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) easily won re-nomination for their respective seats. Cheh ran unopposed and Wells captured 75 percent of the vote against challenger Kelvin Robinson, who said he would have voted against the same-sex marriage law “as written.” He said he now supports the measure as the “law of the land.”
D.C. congressional Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) also won by a lopsided margin. Norton is considered one of the most LGBT-supportive members of Congress.
The only Stein Club-endorsed candidate who lost in Tuesday’s primary was Nate Bennett-Fleming, a 26-year-old law school student and Ward 8 community activist who challenged incumbent D.C. shadow representative Mike Panetta. Bennett-Fleming campaigned aggressively for LGBT support, expressing strong support on virtually all LGBT related issues.
Panetta, who also supports LGBT equality, including same-sex marriage, won the race by a margin of 57 to 41 percent.
In the primary for the city’s tiny Statehood-Green Party, gay minister Darryl Moch lost his bid for the nomination for the at-large Council seat currently held by Mendelson. Statehood-Green Party activist David Schwartzman, a strong supporter of LGBT rights, beat Moch by a margin of 63 percent to 27 percent.
Two gay Republican Party candidates won nomination to City Council seats in unopposed races. Marc Morgan will challenge Graham for the Ward 1 Council seat in the November general election. Gay GOP candidate Tim Day will challenge Thomas for the Ward 5 Council seat in November.
Richardson and other LGBT activists who supported Gray said that similar to their straight counterparts, they believe Fenty — while supportive on LGBT issues — appeared to ignore the concerns they expressed over a number a newly developing issues, including the growing number of anti-LGBT hate crimes.
The local group Gays & Lesbians Opposing Violence joined other groups, including the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance and the D.C. Trans Coalition, in criticizing Fenty for refusing to meet with them or attend LGBT events to discuss pressing issues.
Transgender activists also expressed concern that Fenty was not taking their issues seriously, especially when the mayor’s office startled LGBT activists by proposing to exclude transgender inmates in the city’s correctional system from the D.C. Human Rights Act. Corrections department officials said the exclusion was needed for security reasons and was related to whether trans inmates should be allowed to dress in accordance with their biological gender or the gender to which they were transitioning.
The mayor’s office dropped that proposal following a groundswell of opposition.
Sources familiar with the demographics of the so-called “gay” precincts said they have large numbers of non-gay residents and it is impossible to determine what portion of the gay vote went to Fenty or Gray. The gay-identified precincts are also located in the predominately white sections of the city in Wards 1, 2 and 6, which Fenty won.
Nearly all LGBT activists familiar with voter demographics agreed that black LGBT residents, who are dispersed throughout the city and not concentrated in individual precincts, voted overwhelmingly for Gray.
“Anecdotally, I can’t name five black gays who voted for Fenty,” said gay Democratic activist Phil Pannell, who is active in the city’s predominantly black Ward 8.
Pannell said that the gay vote — like the citywide vote as a whole — appears to have divided along racial lines, with most white voters going for Fenty and most blacks voting for Gray.
“I definitely think Vince Gray is going to bring us all together,” Pannell said. “But it’s still sad to see we are racially divided at the ballot box.”
A number of political observers have said Clark Ray’s loss to Mendelson in Tuesday primary may not be the end of his quest to be the Council’s third out gay member. With Kwame Brown winning the Democratic nomination for the Council chairman’s seat, Brown’s at-large seat is expected to become vacant in January if he wins in the November general election, as expected.
The Board of Elections is expected to call a special election to fill the vacant seat early next year, and Ray has said he would consider running for the vacant seat if he lost to Mendelson. A number of LGBT activists who backed Mendelson have said they would look favorably toward a Ray candidacy for the vacant seat.
Maryland
Supreme Court ruling against conversion therapy bans could affect Md. law
Then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed statute in 2018
By PAMELA WOOD, JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV, and MADELEINE O’NEILL | The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ kids in Colorado, a ruling that also could apply to Maryland’s ban on the discredited practice.
An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide whether it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s majority, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
District of Columbia
As mayor’s race takes shape, candidates endorse LGBTQ equality
Like nearly all recent D.C. elections, LGBTQ voters will be choosing a candidate for mayor in 2026 from a list of mostly strong LGBTQ rights supporters in the city’s June 16 primary.
As of March 30, the D.C. Board of Elections’ list of candidates who submitted the required number of petition signatures for the June 16 primary ballot included 10 mayoral candidates: nine Democrats and one Statehood Green Party candidate.
Among those candidates, six, all Democrats, have issued statements expressing strong support for LGBTQ rights, including the two leading Democratic contenders, former D.C. Council member Kenyan McDuffie and current Council member Janeese Lewis George, who represents Ward 4.
One of the lesser-known Democratic candidates who released an LGBTQ supportive statement, Rini Sampath, a cyber security consultant, told the Washington Blade she identifies as queer, becoming one of the first known LGBTQ D.C. mayoral candidates to gain access to a major party primary ballot.
“We’re living in an extremely diverse community, an extremely unique community,” she told the Blade. “And being able to self-label, self-identify as queer is something that I just want to take pride in.”
Similar to McDuffie and Lewis George, Sampath released statements to the Blade and the Capital Stonewall Democrats, the city’s largest LGBTQ local political group, expressing support for LGBTQ rights and outlining plans for LGBTQ supportive policies if elected mayor.
Although many D.C. LGBTQ activists have said they have yet to decide whom to support for mayor, those who have decided appear to be divided between McDuffie and Lewis George. Most D.C. political observers consider McDuffie and Lewis George to be the two leading candidates in the mayoral race.
The other Democratic mayoral contenders who have released statements expressing support on LGBTQ issues include Gary Goodweather, a local real estate manager and developer who has been actively campaigning at LGBTQ events; Vincent Orange, a former At-Large and Ward 5 D.C. Council member; and Kathy Henderson, a longtime Ward 5 community activist and elected Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner.
The remaining two Democratic mayoral candidates, Hope Solomon, a former U.S. Department of Homeland Security contractor and Dupont Circle civic activist; and Ernest Johnson, a real estate broker and Ward 1 community activist, did not respond to inquiries from the Blade and Capital Stonewall Democrats seeking information about their position on LGBTQ related issues.
Robert Gross, the Statehood Green Party candidate who is running unopposed in the June 16 primary, also didn’t respond to inquires from the Blade about his position on LGBTQ issues.
D.C. Board of Elections records show that at least five Republican candidates filed papers to run for mayor in the June 16 GOP primary, but none of them remained as candidates as of March 30, when the election board issued its updated candidate list.
Just one of the five Republican candidates replied to an email message from the Washington Blade sent to all mayoral candidates in early March seeking their position on LGBTQ issues. That candidate, Esa Muhammad, whose website identifies him as an engineer, consultant, and local business owner, sent a reply expressing opposition to LGBTQ rights.
“Unfortunately, I do not support LGBTQ because The God only created 2 genders (Adam/Eve),” he wrote. “Anyway, I will be fair to you all despite your sick way of looking at life,” he stated.
Capital Stonewall Democrats President Stevie McCarty said his group sent questionnaires to all the Democratic mayoral candidates as well as to Democrats running for other offices such as D.C. Council. Information posted on the group’s website shows only four of the mayoral candidates returned a complete questionnaire: McDuffie, Lewis George, Goodweather, and Sampath.
Each of them provides detailed information of their plans for supporting LGBTQ policies if elected and their record of support on LGBTQ issues. McCarty said the questionnaire responses for all candidates that submitted them can be accessed at outvotedc.org.
He said Capital Stonewall Democrats will hold virtual LGBTQ forums in April, including a mayoral forum on April 8. He said the group’s members will vote on the candidate endorsements online from April 20 through May 11, and the group expects to announce its endorsements May 14.
GLAA DC, formerly known as the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington, has issued candidate ratings for most D.C. elections since the 1970s, and the nonpartisan LGBTQ group was expected to issue ratings for mayoral candidates this year. But like in recent years, the group is expected to base its ratings on mostly non-LGBTQ issues, with a progressive, left-leaning perspective, according to a nine-page “Back to Basics GLAA Policy Brief 2026” that the group released in March.
The LGBTQ activists who are backing McDuffie or Lewis George appear to be gravitating to the two based on their political leanings separate from LGBTQ issues, just like voters in general. Lewis George, who identifies as a democratic socialist, is popular among LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ “progressives.”
McDuffie, who is seen as a more moderate candidate along the lines of current D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, is being supported by LGBTQ activists who hold those views, some of whom currently work in the Bowser administration.
Among Lewis George’s LGBTQ supporters are longtime Ward 8 community leader Philip Pannell and former Capital Stonewall Democrats president Howard Garrett. Among the LGBTQ McDuffie backers are longtime D.C. Democratic activists John Fanning and David Meadows.
Longtime D.C. LGBTQ Democratic Party activist Peter Rosenstein, who is supporting McDuffie, has raised concerns about Lewis George’s backing by the national group Democratic Socialists of America. In Facebook postings, Rosenstein points to the Democratic Socialists of America’s opposition to Israel as a country and said it is viewed by many in the Jewish community as promoting antisemitism. He has criticized Lewis George for not speaking out against that and for accepting the DSA’s endorsement.
In an interview with the Blade, Lewis George strongly disputed that assessment, saying she has been a strong ally and supporter of the Jewish community.
“I’m a member of the Metro DSA here in D.C. that I work with to fight for labor and for tenant rights,” she said. “I’m also a member of the Democratic Party,” she added, saying, “There are things that the Democratic Party does that I don’t agree with. There are things that the national DSA does that I don’t agree with. That’s a group that I work with.”
“But I want to be clear that I am running for mayor to represent all of our community, and that includes our amazing and historical Jewish community here in D.C.,” she said. “I have had the amazing opportunity to spend time at synagogues and talking to Jewish leaders and groups and institutions. And so, there should be no worry here.”
Following are short excerpts from the detailed statements five of the nine Democratic mayoral candidates submitted to the Capital Stonewall Democrats or the Washington Blade.
Kenyan McDuffie: “As mayor, every piece of legislation I sign, craft, or endorse should also encompass the interest and input of the LGBTQ community members and advocates…From housing to health care and everything in between… We have a dire crisis regarding the rise in homelessness especially among the youth in our LGBTQ communities. In my administration that simply cannot be the status quo and will not be…I have been a consistent champion for our LGBTQ community and will remain so as Mayor of D.C.’
Janeese Lewis George: “As mayor, I will protect our LGBTQ+ neighbors against federal attacks on their identity, including their health care…On the Council I have been a strong supporter of pro-LGBTQ+ bills, including making D.C. a sanctuary for people seeking gender-affirming health care as well as addressing discrimination and harassment in nightlife and hospitality…And as mayor, I am prepared to move up and win those fights – a fight for D.C. statehood, a fight for our true economy, and a real opportunity to uplift our Black queer and trans youth.”
Gary Goodweather: “A Goodweather administration will defend every D.C. law protecting LGBTQ residents. I will establish a Defend DC office to coordinate the District’s legal and public response to federal overreach, with LGBTQ+ protections explicitly within its mandate…My affordable D.C. plan will produce 50,000 new homes with 36,000 affordable units, and I will ensure LGBTQ+ youth housing programs are funded as a budget priority.”
Rini Sampath: “I am an immigrant, proud queer woman, and a 10-year resident of Washington, D.C…For me, LGBTQ+ voters including transgender and nonbinary residents, are not a separate or symbolic constituency; they are a core part of a broader, multiracial, cross-ward coalition rooted in in equity and opportunity.”
Vincent Orange: “I have a long and consistent record of supporting LGBTQ+ equality and inclusion in the District of Columbia, grounded in both policy and personal commitment. As the District’s Democratic Committeeman from 2006 to 2015, I publicly supported marriage equality and voted accordingly … During my time on the D.C. Council, I worked to advance protections for LGBTQ+ residents, including authoring and passing legislation to prohibit discrimination against transgender individuals in the workplace.”
Kathy Henderson: Kathy Henderson has maintained a consistent record of treating all members of the community with dignity, compassion, and respect, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, identity, political party, national origin, or ideology. Kathy Henderson embraced the late Wanda Alston as a colleague and good friend…Alston was the first director of the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs and Henderson helped to organize and facilitate the first LGBTQ citizens summit.”
Local
D.C.’s affirming congregations to mark Holy Week, Easter
Dignity Washington among groups holding events
LGBTQ-friendly congregations in the D.C. area this week are marking Easter and Holy Week.
The Metropolitan Community Church of Washington, D.C., located in Mount Vernon Square, holds both online and in-person services.
An online-only Good Friday service will take place on April 3 at 7 p.m. In person or online Resurrection Sunday services will take place on April 5 at 10:30 a.m.
Dignity Washington, an LGBTQ Catholic group, is also holding Holy Week and Easter events.
The group on March 29 held a Palm Sunday prayer event. Dignity Washington on April 5 will hold a Mass at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church at 6 p.m. It will be livestreamed on Facebook.
Foundry United Methodist Church holds two Easter Sunday services at 9 and 11:15 a.m.
Riverside Baptist Church, located in Southwest Washington, is an “Inclusive, Multicultural, Christ-Centered” congregation that also offers Holy Week and Easter activities.
The church on Good Friday at 3 p.m. is holding an outreach period in which they will clean up the neighborhood. Easter Sunday services will be held at 9:45 a.m., starting with a musical prelude, followed by services.
The church offers weekly “Wednesday Witness,” a youth and safety zone drop-in, serving as a safe space for the students of Jefferson Middle School and the community. It takes place from 3-5 p.m.
The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center offers a comprehensive list of inclusive faith communities on its website. The Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists offers a list of churches partnered with their organization that are inclusive and mainly Baptist, but the group does feature churches of other denominations.
The 18th National Rainbow Seder took place at the Human Rights Campaign on March 29. The sold out event is the country’s largest Passover Seder for the Jewish LGBTQ community.
Organizations behind the event included Bet Mishpachah, a local D.C. LGBTQ synagogue that Rabbi Jake Singer-Beilin leads, and GLOE, an Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center program that sponsors events for the queer Jewish community. The theme for this year’s Seder was “Liberation for All Who Journey: Remembering, Resisting, Rebuilding.” Rabbis Atara Cohen, Koach Frazier, and Avigayil Halpern led it.
The Seder honored the late GLOE co-chair Michael Singer. Singer also served on the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center’s board.
“This Seder is both a celebration of how far we have come and a call to continue building a more just and inclusive world.” Bet Mishpachah Executive Director Joshua Maxey told the Washington Blade.
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