News
LGBT issues discussed at first-of-its-kind U.N. meeting
Funders of global gay initiatives met in NYC, Kerry signs onto declaration
USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah is among those who attended a meeting of global LGBT funders on September 24 during the U.N. General Assembly in New York. (Photo courtesy of USAID.)
USAID, the Swedish International Development Corporation Agency (SIDA,) the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice and the Ford Foundation on Tuesday hosted a meeting of funders of global LGBT advocacy efforts.
USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, SIDA Director General Charlotte Petri Gornitzka and former Planet Out CEO Megan Smith, who is now vice president of Google[x], attended the gathering alongside high level officials from Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Swedish, the United Kingdom, the U.N. Development Program, the State Department and the World Bank.
Representatives from the American Jewish World Service, the Arcus Foundation, the Fund for Global Rights, the Gay & Lesbian Victory Institute, the Dutch foundation Mama Cash, the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, the Open Society Foundation and the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights are among the other groups that took part in the meeting. Organizers said it drew 85 percent of groups around that contribute to global LGBT efforts.
“It was a seminal moment in history because it is the first global meeting where public and private donors for LGBT equality came together to discuss priorities, programs and potential collaboration for ways forward,” senior USAID advisor Claire Lucas told the Washington Blade on Friday.
USAID in April announced the LGBT Global Development Partnership with the Gay & Lesbian Victory Institute, (SIDA) and other groups will contribute $11 million over the next four years to advocacy groups in Honduras and other developing countries. The initiative’s first two trainings took place in the Colombian cities of Cartagena and Bogotá late last month and in the spring respectively.
Denis Dison of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Institute added his organization remains “proud” to “partner in this work” with USAID and Astraea as he discussed Tuesday’s meeting with the Blade.
“This meeting was an important step in recognizing the truly global effort to advance LGBT human rights, and the leadership role now being played by the U.S. is a remarkable turnaround from just a few years ago,” he said.
Funders of global LGBT initiatives met in New York two days before Secretary of State John Kerry and representatives from 10 countries issued a declaration that calls for an end to anti-LGBT violence and discrimination.
Members of the LGBT Core Group at U.N. that includes the European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton and ministers from Argentina, Brazil, Croatia, El Salvador, France, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Norway declared their “strong and determined commitment to eliminating violence and discrimination against individuals based on their sexual orientation and gender identity.”
“We reaffirm our conviction that human rights are the birthright of every human being,” the statement reads. “Those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) must enjoy the same human rights as everyone else.”
Acting Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of International Affairs Dean Pittman told the Blade during an interview from New York on Friday the meeting and the declaration underscores the U.N. and the U.S. are committed to “pursuing and advancing LGBT rights around the world.”
“Everybody’s reinforced the idea that everyone deserves human rights,” Pittman said. “It shouldn’t be a decision of who you are, who you love, what your gender is.”
Pittman further categorized the statement as “really strong, powerful.”
“This really has a ripple effect that sort of goes out through LGBT communities around the world who see this as sort of a vote of confidence,” he told the Blade. “[It] sort of gives them the ability to go into their own communities with the backing of a global organization like the U.N. to pursue some of these human rights issues in their own countries.”
The meeting took place two months after the U.N. officially launched a public campaign that seeks to increase support for LGBT rights around the world. It’s been endorsed by singer Ricky Martin and others.
More than 70 countries around the world continue to criminalize consensual same-sex sexual acts in spite of a 2011 resolution in support of LGBT rights the U.N. Human Rights Council passed. Gambian President Yahya Jammeh on Friday said in his speech during the U.N. General Assembly that homosexuality is among the three “biggest threats to human existence” as the Associated Press reported.
85 countries have also backed a U.N. General Assembly declaration in support of LGBT rights.
President Obama earlier this month met with two Russian LGBT rights advocates during the G-20 summit. Both he and Kerry have also criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin over his country’s LGBT rights record, which includes a law that bans gay propaganda to minors.
Pittman declined to say whether Kerry discussed Russia’s LGBT rights record during his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday during the U.N. General Assembly. He said Jessica Stern, executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, briefed Kerry and other ministers on the country’s gay propaganda law before they issued their declaration.
“This is an issue we’ve raised with the Russians at many levels and repeatedly,” Pittman told the Blade. “It’s obviously unacceptable.
Council for Global Equality Chair Mark Bromley welcomed the meeting and the resolution.
“One would expect Syria and Iran to be on the agenda, but not necessarily human rights for LGBT people,” he told the Blade, referring to the U.N. General Assembly. “For a group of committed foreign ministers to come together during this time, including Sec. Kerry, to pledge collective action to respond to human rights abuses directed at LGBT communities worldwide is unprecedented.”
Chris Johnson contributed to this article.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry participates in an LGBT ministerial event in New York on Thursday during the U.N. General Assembly. (Photo courtesy of the State Department.)
Virginia
DOJ seeks to join lawsuit against Loudoun County over trans student in locker room
Three male high school students suspended after complaining about classmate
The Justice Department has asked to join a federal lawsuit against Loudoun County Public Schools over the way it handled the case of three male high school students who complained about a transgender student in a boys’ locker room.
The Washington Blade earlier this year reported Loudoun County public schools suspended the three boys and launched a Title IX investigation into whether they sexually harassed the student after they said they felt uncomfortable with their classmate in the locker room at Stone Bridge High School in Ashburn.
The parents of two of the boys filed a lawsuit against Loudoun County public schools in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria. The Richmond-based Founding Freedoms Law Center and America First Legal, which White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller co-founded, represent them.
The Justice Department in a Dec. 8 press release announced that “it filed legal action against the Loudoun County (Va.) School Board (Loudoun County) for its denial of equal protection based on religion.”
“The suit alleges that Loudoun County applied Policy 8040, which requires students and faculty to accept and promote gender ideology, to two Christian, male students in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” reads the press release.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in the press release said “students do not shed their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate.”
“Loudoun County’s decision to advance and promote gender ideology tramples on the rights of religious students who cannot embrace ideas that deny biological reality,” said Dhillon.
Outgoing Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and outgoing Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares in May announced an investigation into the case.
The Virginia Department of Education in 2023 announced the new guidelines for trans and nonbinary students for which Youngkin asked. Equality Virginia and other advocacy groups claim they, among other things, forcibly out trans and nonbinary students.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights in February launched an investigation into whether Loudoun County and four other Northern Virginia school districts’ policies in support of trans and nonbinary students violate Title IX and President Donald Trump’s executive order that prohibits federally funded educational institutions from promoting “gender ideology.”
The White House
As house Democrats release Epstein photos, Garcia continues to demand DOJ transparency
Blade this week sat down with gay House Oversight Committee ranking member
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have released new photos from Jeffrey Epstein’s email and computer records, including images highlighting the relationship between President Donald Trump and the convicted sex offender.
Epstein, a wealthy financier, was found guilty of procuring a child for prostitution and sex trafficking, serving a 13-month prison sentence in 2008. At the time of his death in prison under mysterious circumstances, he was facing charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy to traffic minors.
Among those pictured in Epstein’s digital files are Trump, former President Bill Clinton, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, actor and director Woody Allen, economist Larry Summers, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, entrepreneurs Richard Branson and Bill Gates, and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
One photo shows Trump alongside Epstein and a woman at a Victoria’s Secret party in New York in 1997. American media outlets have published the image, while Getty Images identified the woman as model Ingrid Seynhaeve.
Oversight Committee Democrats are reviewing the full set of photos and plan to release additional images to the public in the coming days and weeks, emphasizing their commitment to protecting survivors’ identities.
With just a week left for the Justice Department to publish all files related to Epstein following the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which requires the Justice Department to release most records connected to Epstein investigations, the Washington Blade sat down with U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the ranking member on the Oversight Committee to discuss the current push the release of more documents.
Garcia highlighted the committee’s commitment to transparency and accountability.
“We’ve said anything that we get we’re going to put out. We don’t care who is in the files … if you’ve harmed women and girls, then we’ve got to hold you accountable.”
He noted ongoing questions surrounding Trump’s relationship with Epstein, given their long history and the apparent break in friendship once Trump assumed public office.
“There’s been a lot of questions about … Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. They were best friends for 10 years … met women there and girls.”
Prior to Trump’s presidency, it was widely reported that the two were friends who visited each other’s properties regularly. Additional reporting shows they socialized frequently throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, attending parties at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and Epstein’s residences. Flight logs from an associate’s trial indicate Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet multiple times, and Epstein claimed Trump first had sex with his future wife, Melania Knauss, aboard the jet.
“We’ve provided evidence … [that leads to] questions about what the relationship was like between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.”
Garcia stressed the need for answers regarding the White House’s role in withholding information, questioning the sudden change in attitude toward releasing the files given Trump’s campaign promises.
“Why is the White House trying to cover this up? So if he’s not covering for himself … he’s covering up for his rich friends,” Garcia said. “Why the cover up? Who are you hiding for? I think that’s the question.”
He confirmed that Trump is definitively in the Epstein files, though the extent remains unknown, but will be uncovered soon.
“We know that Trump’s in them. Yeah, he’s been told. We know that Trump’s in them in some way. As far as the extent of it … we don’t know.”
Garcia emphasized accountability for all powerful figures implicated, regardless of financial status, political party, or personal connections.
“All these powerful men that are walking around right now … after abusing, in some cases, 14‑ and 15‑year‑old girls, they have to be held accountable,” he said. “There has to be justice for those survivors and the American public deserves the truth about who was involved in that.”
He added that while he is the ranking member, he will ensure the oversight committee will use all available political tools, including subpoenas — potentially even for the president.
“We want to subpoena anyone that we can … everyone’s kind of on the table.”
He also emphasized accountability for all powerful figures implicated, regardless of financial status, political party, or relationship with the president.
“For me, they’re about justice and doing the right thing,” Garcia said. “This is about women who … were girls and children when they were being abused, trafficked, in some cases, raped. And these women deserve justice.”
“The survivors are strong.”
Deputy White House Press Secretary Abigail Jackson issued a statement regarding the release the photos, echoing previous comments from Republicans on the timing and framing of the photos by the Oversight Committee.
“Once again, House Democrats are selectively releasing cherry-picked photos with random redactions to try and create a false narrative,” Jackson said.
“The Democrat hoax against President Trump has been repeatedly debunked and the Trump administration has done more for Epstein’s victims than Democrats ever have by repeatedly calling for transparency, releasing thousands of pages of documents, and calling for further investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends,”
In a press release on Friday, Garcia called for immediate DOJ action:
“It is time to end this White House cover-up and bring justice to the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful friends. These disturbing photos raise even more questions about Epstein and his relationships with some of the most powerful men in the world. We will not rest until the American people get the truth. The Department of Justice must release all the files, NOW.”
(Photo courtesy of the U.S. House Oversight Committee)
District of Columbia
Capital Pride announces change in date for 2026 D.C. Pride parade and festival
Events related to U.S. 250th anniversary and Trump birthday cited as reasons for change
The Capital Pride Alliance, the D.C. based group that organizes the city’s annual LGBTQ Pride events, has announced it is changing the dates for the 2026 Capital Pride Parade and Festival from the second weekend in June to the third weekend.
“For over a decade, Capital Pride has taken place during the second weekend in June, but in 2026, we are shifting our dates in response to the city’s capacity due to major events and preparations for the 250th anniversary of the United States,” according to a Dec. 9 statement released by Capital Pride Alliance.
The statement says the parade will take place on Saturday, June 20, 2026, with the festival and related concert taking place on June 21.
“This change ensures our community can gather safely and without unnecessary barriers,” the statement says. “By moving the celebration, we are protecting our space and preserving Pride as a powerful act of visibility, solidarity, and resistance,” it says.
Ryan Bos, the Capital Pride Alliance CEO and President, told the Washington Blade the change in dates came after the group conferred with D.C. government officials regarding plans for a number of events in the city on the second weekend in June. Among them, he noted, is a planned White House celebration of President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday and other events related to the U.S. 250th anniversary, which are expected to take place from early June through Independence Day on July 4.
The White House has announced plans for a large June 14, 2026 celebration on the White House south lawn of Trump’s 80th birthday that will include a large-scale Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event involving boxing and wrestling competition.
Bos said the Capital Pride Parade will take place along the same route it has in the past number of years, starting at 14th and T Streets, N.W. and traveling along 14th Street to Pennsylvania Ave., where it will end. He said the festival set for the following day will also take place at its usual location on Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., between 2nd Street near the U.S. Capitol, to around 7th Street, N.W.
“Our Pride events thrive because of the passion and support of the community,” Capital Pride Board Chair Anna Jinkerson said in the statement. “In 2026, your involvement is more important than ever,” she said.
PHOTOS: The Holiday Show
The best books to give this holiday season
Studio’s ‘Mother Play’ draws from lesbian playwright’s past
Choose U ambassadors share lived experiences with HIV, personal reflections, and insights
DOJ seeks to join lawsuit against Loudoun County over trans student in locker room
EXCLUSIVE: George Santos speaks out on prison, Trump pardon, and more
Victory Institute honors transgender Spanish senator in D.C.
The beginning of the fall of Trump
Markey reintroduces International Human Rights Act in Senate
