Local
Marriage opponents to head LGBT, AIDS committees
Observers say Alexander, Barry supportive on most other issues
Council Chair Phil Mendelson assigned Council members Marion Barry and Yvette Alexander to key committees related to LGBT and AIDS issues. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
In a development that may surprise some local activists, the two D.C. Council members who voted against the city’s same-sex marriage law have been assigned by Council Chair Phil Mendelson to head committees that oversee all of the city’s LGBT and AIDS-related programs.
Although they emerged in 2009 as the only two on the Council to oppose same-sex marriage, Council members Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) and Yvette Alexander (D-Ward 7) have said they support the LGBT community on most other issues and are committed to efforts to fight AIDS.
“There are always going to be disagreements and things that we’re not going to think the same on,” said Alexander, who replaced gay Council member David Catania (I-At-Large) as chair of the Council’s Committee on Health.
In a phone interview with the Washington Blade, Alexander was asked if she thought LGBT activists burned their bridges with her when the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club endorsed her opponent in last year’s Democratic primary and the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance gave her a rating of -3.5 on LGBT issues on a rating scale of -10 to +10.
“No, that’s a thing where I’m not that kind of person,” she said. “So no one has burned a bridge with me…But we need to just find our commonality. We all want to end the high instance of HIV/AIDS. We want to rid our city of HIV and AIDS and all other diseases that plague our city.”
Barry, who had a strong pro-LGBT record during his years as D.C. mayor, angered many LGBT activists in 2009 when he joined Alexander in voting against the same-sex marriage bill after speaking at an anti-marriage equality rally organized by anti-gay groups.
In his reorganization of the Council’s committee assignments in December, Mendelson changed the committee that Barry chaired in the previous Council session from the Committee on Aging and Community Affairs to the Committee on Workforce and Community Affairs. The change added to the committee’s portfolio more government agencies that deal with work and employment related issues.
Among the agencies that the committee oversees is the D.C. Office of Human Rights and the Commission on Human Rights, which enforce the city’s LGBT non-discrimination law; the Office of GLBT Affairs; and the Mayor’s Advisory Commission on GLBT Affairs.
The Stein Club, the city’s largest LGBT political group, chose not to endorse Barry’s re-election bid last year and GLAA also gave him a -3.5 rating on LGBT issues. Barry, like Alexander, won election to another term by a lopsided margin.
GLAA President Rick Rosendall said that despite GLAA’s strong criticism of Barry during the Council’s 2009 debate over the marriage bill, Barry was friendly toward him when he testified last year before Barry’s committee. Rosendall was one of the witnesses testifying in support of Mayor Vincent Gray’s nomination of transgender activists Earline Budd and Alexandra Beninda to seats on the D.C. Human Rights Commission.
Barry praised Budd and Beninda during the hearing and later joined fellow committee members in voting to approve their nominations.
During his tenure as chair of the Health Committee, Catania has been credited with helping to strengthen the city’s HIV/AIDS programs through aggressive Council oversight hearings examining the workings of the D.C. HIV/AIDS agency. Some AIDS activists have lamented his departure as Health Committee chair, even though Catania remains a member of the committee.
It was in response to Catania’s request that Mendelson appointed him chair of the reorganized Committee on Education, where Catania has vowed to provide aggressive oversight of the city’s troubled public school system.
Catania aide Brendan Williams-Kief, who switched from serving as Catania’s press spokesperson to director of the Committee on Education, said Catania plans to bring up the issue of school bullying, including anti-LGBT bullying, during his first oversight hearing on the schools in late February.
Last year, the Council passed a long awaited anti-bullying bill that requires D.C. public and charter schools to put in place policies to curtail school bullying. Williams-Kief said Catania intends to monitor the public school system’s implementation of the legislation.
Andrew Barnett, executive director of the D.C.-based Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League (SMYAL), said he welcomes efforts by Catania and the Education Committee to monitor the anti-bullying policies.
“I think we still have a ways to go to make sure D.C. public schools are free from bullying and safe for LGBT students,” Barnett said.
LGBT advocates said they are pleased over Mendelson’s appointment of Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) as chair of the Council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, which has jurisdiction over D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department. Wells, a longtime supporter of LGBT rights, has said he would carefully monitor the police handling of anti-LGBT hate crimes.
Gay D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) retained his post as chair of the Committee on Human Services, which, among other things, oversees the Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration (ABRA). Graham was praised by LGBT nightlife advocates for shepherding through a liquor law reform bill last year that eases what hospitality industry representatives said was an overly burdensome and unfair process for bars, restaurants and nightclubs to obtain and renew liquor licenses.
Don Blanchon, executive director of Whitman-Walker Health, which provides medical services for the LGBT community and people with HIV/AIDS, said he looks forward to working with Alexander on upcoming AIDS-related issues.
“We absolutely will be reaching out to her on how we can help her in her new role,” he said. “The Council member has in her ward many of the same health disparities and public health challenges that Whitman-Walker is dealing with every day, which is a still too high prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS, disparities within the African-American community and more so within the African-American LGBT community,” Blanchon said.
Delaware
Delaware fines Rehoboth bar $15,000 for discriminating against trans woman
Hideout told patron she had to use men’s room due to gender marker on driver’s license
The Delaware Human and Civil Rights Commission voted to fine Hideout Arcade Bar & Grille $15,000 last month due to a discrimination complaint filed by a trans woman over her use of the bathroom.
Katie Sorber, a transgender woman, said that on April 5, 2023, she was stopped by employees and told she could only use the men’s bathroom due to the “male” gender marker on her driver’s license. This occurred after Sorber presented her ID upon entering the bar and ordering a drink.
Sorber took to Facebook to complain about her experience at the bar after she was told to use the men’s bathroom.
On April 12, 2023, Sorber returned to the Hideout but was barred from entering due to her post on social media.
Following Sorber’s post, Bryan Derrickson, the owner of Hideout Arcade Bar & Grille, allegedly began enforcing a policy in which patrons had to use the bathroom that corresponded to the gender marker on their ID.
Derrickson was ordered to pay $10,000 to Sorber, $5,000 to the Special Administration Fund, as well as conduct anti-discrimination training with employees, remove the ban on Sorber from the establishment, and revise the bar’s bathroom policy.
The commission ruled that the bar and Derrickson had wrongfully discriminated against Sorber on the basis of her gender.
Derrickson’s explanations for the denial included safety concerns, a third-party patron complaint, and a reference to the health code. The panel found this to be inconsistent and lacking factual support upon cross-examination.
The case was evaluated under the Delaware Equal Accommodations Law, which explicitly prohibits discrimination and retaliation in places of public accommodation based on gender identity.
This was the second time that the bar has been fined for discriminating against a transgender woman. The bar received a $2,000 penalty in September of last year for denying a transgender woman entry in 2023.
Half of the fine went to Kathy Carpenter Brown, the trans woman who experienced the discrimination. Brown is the founder of TransLiance, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group in Delaware.
District of Columbia
Push to elect more LGBTQ ANC members yields results
31 of 43 known LGBTQ ANC members elected in 2024 seeking re-election
A 2026 list of candidates released by the D.C. Board of Elections shows that 31 of the 43 known LGBTQ candidates who won election in 2024 as Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners have filed the required petition signatures to be placed on the ballot this year to run for re-election.
The Washington Blade reported in 2024 that 43 known LGBTQ candidates won election to ANC seats that year in the November election
In a related development, the president of Capital Stonewall Democrats, D.C.’s largest local LGBTQ political group, said the group this year has recruited at least 39 LGBTQ candidates to run for Advisory Neighborhood Commission seats in the city’s Nov. 3 general election.
The group’s president, Stevie McCarty, an incumbent ANC member in the city’s Shaw neighborhood who is running for re-election, said the 39 candidates and possibly more responded to the group’s Queering ANCs campaign launched on July 7 that includes a website with detailed instructions for how best to run for an ANC seat.
“Since launching in early July, the site has drawn more than 20,000 views, and 39 candidates have used it to actually run,” McCarty said in a statement. He said he wasn’t sure if all the 39 candidates wanted to be identified as LGBTQ, and he was reviewing the list of incumbent LGBTQ ANC members who won election in 2024 to determine if any of the 39 candidates recruited were among those incumbents. He said he was not ready to release the names of the 39 candidates he said his group recruited to run for an ANC seat.
If none of the 39 candidates recruited by Capital Stonewall Democrats are among the 31 known LGBTQ ANC incumbents running for re-election, it would mean at least 70 LGBTQ ANC candidates will be on the city’s November election ballot.
McCarty said Capital Stonewall Democrats will send candidate questionnaires to the known LGBTQ ANC candidates as part of its process for endorsing candidates in the November election. He said he expects the group to help campaign for and provide financial support for the ANC candidates it endorses.
The D.C. local government is believed to be unique among U.S. cities in currently having 46 Advisory Neighborhood Commissions consisting of 345 single member districts in neighborhoods throughout the city in which unpaid Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners are elected for two-year terms.
The commissions are charged with considering a wide range of policies and programs impacting their neighborhoods, including traffic, parking, recreation, street improvements, zoning, liquor licenses, and economic development. Although ANCs do not have authority to set or reject policies or actions by city agencies, the agencies are required to give “great weight” to ANC recommendations, according to the law creating the ANCs.
“As an ANC member, I know firsthand how these seats shape our neighborhoods, from housing and public safety to sanitation,” McCarty said in the Capital Stonewall Democrats statement announcing the launch of the Queering ANCs campaign in July. “I’m proud to lead this effort to ensure more LGBTQ+ Washingtonians see themselves as leaders in their communities,” he said.
Some local LGBTQ activists, who asked not to be identified, said they were not aware of a significant boost in new LGBTQ ANC candidates from the Queering ANCs campaign. However, they praised the effort to recruit more LGBTQ ANC candidates and said the campaign could have yielded more candidates if it had started sooner than less than a month before the deadline for becoming a candidate.
McCarty said Capital Stonewall Democrats will continue to recruit LGBTQ D.C. residents to run as write-in candidates for ANC seats, especially in the 45 single member districts in which no candidate will be on the ballot. The Board of Elections candidate list shows many ANC single member districts that have just one candidate running without an opponent.
Following is a list of 33 known LGBTQ ANC candidates running in D.C.’s November 2026 election and the single member districts and neighborhoods in which they are running. All but two – Vita Rangel and J. Swiderski – are incumbents running for re-election. The Washington Blade will update this list if and when more LGBTQ ANC candidates become known.
1A04 – (Columbia Heights) Jeremy Sherman, he/him
1A10 – (Columbia Heights) Vita Rangel, she/ her [non-incumbent candidate]
1B03 – (Columbia Heights/U Street) J. Swiderski, they/he [non-incumbent candidate]
Jamie S. Sycamore, he/him
1B06 – (Columbia Heights/Meridian Hill) Miguel Trindade Deramo, he/him
1B07 – (U Street) Matthew Holden, he/him
1E01 – (Park View) Brad Howard, he/him
2B02 – (Dupont Circle) Jeffrey Rueckgauer, he/him
2B03 – (Dupont Circle) Vincent Slatt, he/him
2C01 – (Penn Quarter) Michael D. Shankle, he/him
2F05 – (Logan Circle) Christopher Dyer, he/him
2F07 – (Logan Circle) Kevin Cataldo, he/him
2G01 – (Shaw)Parker Griffin, he/him Howard Garrett, he/him
2G02 – (Shaw) Alexander ‘Alex’ Padro, he/him
2G04 – (Shaw) Steven McCarty, he/him
3B06 – (Wesley Heights) S. Robert Rodriquez, he/him
3F05 – (Van Ness/Cleveland Park) Adrian Jesus Iglesias, he/him
4B01 – (Takoma) Doug Payton, he/him
4B10 – (Lamond Riggs) Jinin Berry, she/her
4C06 – (Petworth) Christen Boss Hayes, they/them
4E02 – (16th Street Heights) Vince Micone, he/him
5B04 – (Brookland) Ra Amin, he/him
5B05 – (Brookland) Mónica Martínez López, she/her
5D05 – (Trinidad) Salvador Sauceda-Guzman, he/him
5F06 – (Eckington) Joe Bishop-Henchman, he/him
6B03 – (Capitol Hill) David Sobelsohn, he/him
6B09 – (Capitol Hill/Barney Circle) Karen Hughes, she/her
7C01 – (Deanwood) Brian Glover, he/him
7C03 – (Lincoln Heights) Carlos Richardson, he/him
7C04 (Deanwood) Anthony Lorenzo Green
7C08 – (Capitol View) Brandon M. Scott, he/him
8A01 – (Fairlawn) Tom Donohue, he, him
8B06 – (Garfield Heights) Marcus Thomas Hickman, he/him
Congress
Chris Van Hollen says the Democratic Party needs change. Is he the one to lead it?
Senator is backing anti-establishment Democrats across the country
By LEE O. SANDERLIN | The Democratic Party is having something of an identity crisis — losing to President Donald Trump twice in three elections will do that.
Should the party embrace anti-establishment figures who espouse progressive policy ideas like Medicare for all and rhetoric about unrigging the economy for the 1 percent? Or should Democrats try to appeal to moderates who want to return to semi-normalcy in a time of political upheaval?
Although he’s been in Congress since 2002, with key leadership roles throughout his tenure, Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, 67, counts himself firmly in the anti-establishment camp.
The rest of this article can be found on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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