We will always love you (Photo via Bigtsock/DFree)
Paying tribute to longtime LGBTQ ally Dolly Parton, PAGE 10
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Gay-owned Dupont Circle pizzeria burglarized Protest Pizza owners thank community for support By LOU CHIBBARO JR. | lchibbaro@washblade.com
Gay activist Randy Downs said he and his business and life partner Ricky Bennett are grateful for the support they have received from the Dupont Circle community after they released a video showing a suspect breaking into their recently opened pizza shop and taking money from a cash register shortly before 3 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 21. The surveillance video shows a man wearing black clothing with his face covered, smashing the glass front door of Protest Pizza, located at 1633 ½ P St., N.W. The video, which Downs and Bennett provided to D.C. police, also shows the suspect climbing over the bar to get to a cash register, which he opened to take out cash. A D.C. police report obtained by the Washington Blade lists the incident as a Burglary in the Second Degree and says the owners reported “approximately $78 in cash” was taken from the cash register. The report says the incident is not listed as a suspected hate crime. Downs told the Washington Blade that after he and Bennett reported the break-in and theft on social media, they received an overwhelming showing of support from neighbors and others, including business owners, from
From left: Protest Pizza co-owners RICKY BENNETT and RANDY DOWNS. The two say they have received an outpouring of support after Protest Pizza was burglarized on Aug. 21. (Blade photo by Michael Key)
across the nation. “The break-in was upsetting, but it is not what will define Protest Pizza,” Downs said. “What defines us is how quickly people showed up,” he told the Blade. “One person came looking for a cash register; our community saw a gathering place worth protecting. The response reminded us that Protest’s real value was never in the register.” Downs said he and Bennett, who live around the corner on the section of 17th Street, N.W., near several other bars and restaurants, including the gay bar JRs are located, opened Protest Pizza in November 2025. “Ricky and I built Protest Pizza as a positive, welcoming, queer owned neighborhood restaurant and bar — a space for protest and joy,” he said. A D.C. police spokesperson said police offer a reward of up to $1,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction of a suspect responsible for the type of burglary and theft that occurred at Protest Pizza. Police say anyone with information to help solve this type of crime should call the police tipline at 202-727-9099.
Democrat Maureen Madden takes on longtime GOP stronghold in Delaware Out lesbian candidate for state House focused on infrastructure, voting rights By THOMAS WEAVERLING
Democrat Maureen “Mo” Madden is running for the Delaware House of Representatives in the 38th District, seeking to win a seat that has been held by Republicans for more than two decades. MAUREEN ‘MO’ MADDEN The race opened (Photo courtesy of Madden) up after Republican state Rep. Ron Gray announced in April that he would not seek reelection after seven terms in the General Assembly. Gray was first elected in 2012 and represents communities including Bethany Beach, Fenwick Island, Selbyville and Ocean View. Madden, a Dagsboro resident, filed to run for the seat in 2025. Madden is a retired federal civil servant who spent nearly 23 years at NASA and more than seven years at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She holds a master’s degree in physics and previously worked in leadership at NOAA. She said her professional experience taught her the importance of working collaboratively, something she believes would translate to the legislature. “Advocating, negotiating, and collaborating are all skills that a legislator needs,” she said. “You learn to collaborate. You learn to negotiate. You learn to advocate for your budget, for your team, and for your projects.” Madden said her decision to run began after she and her wife moved to the area and she noticed the lack of Democratic candidates on the ballot in her district.
“Somebody’s got to do it, and I’ve got time. I’m retired,” said Madden. She acknowledged the difficulty of running as a Democrat in the district, which has been represented by Republicans since 2002. Madden said one of the biggest concerns she hears from residents is the rapid growth of Sussex County. “We have a massive amount of growth and a massive amount of development,” said Madden. Madden said the growth has placed additional pressure on roads, schools, emergency services, as well as water and sewer infrastructure. “We need to find a way to bring more money down here for the school system and for the infrastructure that we need,” she said. She also raised concerns about the impact of new developments on existing neighborhoods, particularly in regard to flooding and drainage. “Something needs to be done,” said Madden. Madden also pointed to climate change as a factor affecting the region.She said the state will need to work on both addressing development and preparing communities for increasingly severe weather. “We have to work both sides of it,” Madden said. Madden said improving infrastructure would be a priority if she is elected, particularly roads and other infrastructure that affect residents’ daily lives. “I want to increase the safety of my neighbors,” she said. Madden also said she wants to address infrastructure needs related to water and sewer service, as well as the availability of health care in the rapidly growing coastal region.
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Madden said protecting voting rights would be another priority in the legislature. “The right to vote is one of the biggest things that we have here in a democracy,” she said. She said that she supports early voting, mail-in voting, and same-day registration, as well as restoring voting rights to people who have completed felony sentences. “You should not lose a constitutional right because you’ve been in jail,” said Madden. “Protecting the right to vote is how I will defend democracy when I get to the state House,” she said. Madden said she would also support efforts to enshrine certain rights in the Delaware Constitution, including reproductive rights, voting rights, and the right to marriage. “Those three protections of our freedoms that are right now under attack need to be more secure in the Delaware State Constitution,” she said. As an openly lesbian candidate, Madden said LGBTQ+ rights are important to her, particularly the treatment of young transgender people. She said she is concerned about efforts to restrict transgender students’ participation in sports and other policies affecting transgender people. “They are picking on the most vulnerable of the most vulnerable,” said Madden. She said she hopes voters will view LGBTQ+ people as part of their communities rather than as fundamentally different from their neighbors. “We’re your neighbors. We’re your friends. We’re your family,” she said. Madden will face Republican Carlie Carey in the general election on Nov. 3.
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Push to elect more LGBTQ ANC members yields results 31 of 43 known LGBTQ ANC members elected in 2024 seeking re-election By LOU CHIBBARO JR. | lchibbaro@washblade.com
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.
STEVIE MCCARTY, president of Capital Stonewall Democrats, is an incumbent ANC member from Shaw seeking re-election. (Photo courtesy of Stonewall Democrats)
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• 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
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Remembering Dolly Parton Music icon was longtime LGBTQ ally By KAREN OCAMB
I don’t want to say goodbye. To be honest, my first impression of music icon Dolly Parton was similar to the scathing look the demur Jane Fonda gave the boss’s secretary in one of my favorite funny feminist films ever, 9 to 5. Fonda’s aghast up-and-down scrutiny was pure unspoken tisk-tisk condescension toward this bubbly dumb-blond wigged white trash colleague – until she looked down at her own flat chest. For a moment, Fonda suggested a hint of envy, at which we laughed. I felt a sigh of relief at not having to carry around all the weight Dolly Parton’s boobs implied. Those boobs, those big blond country-Western wigs, and her seemingly irrepressible humor were as much a part of Dolly Parton’s brand as was her incomparable voice and the songs she wrote that moved generations. In 1974, I longed to love someone as much as Dolly loved the person for whom she wrote her goodbye, “I Will Always Love You.” Surely, someone with that big a heart was bigger than the tight bodice society forced innovative go-getters like Dolly Parton to squeeze into. In fact, Parton’s difficult backstory of childhood poverty in Sevierville, Tenn., living in a cabin with no running water and 11 siblings – and an ambition infused with a love-your-neighbor Christian upbringing -created a depth of character that used smarts, ingenuity and humor to thwart her stereotype-blinded detractors. “Well, I graduated [high school] on a Friday night and headed out on a Saturday morning,” Parton told ABC News’ Robin Roberts in an extensive interview in advance of the 2019 CMA Awards. “As I make jokes about it with my matching luggage, those four paper bags from the same grocery store. I thought, well, I can’t be any poorer than I already am, and I’m a girl. I’ll find some boy that’ll take me to Shoney’s… I thought I’m not going to go hungry.” Like Billie Jean King and other female professionals, Dolly Parton fought hard to get paid what she was worth. “It’s not all about money,” she said. “I count my blessings more than I count my money, but I need to count my money, too.” Tough times taught her how to be tough and funny. “Well, I don’t think people can live in this world without going through times like that,” Parton told Roberts. “People always look at me; they always say, ‘Oh, you just always seem to be so happy.’ I said, ‘That’s the Botox.’ No, but seriously, I’m a very sensitive person. I feel everything to the core.” That’s what makes her famous 1977 interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters so compelling. Walters had become infamous for making her interview subjects cry after asking tough, prying, sometimes rude questions that she said her audience wanted answered. “You don’t have to look like this; you’re very beautiful. You don’t have to wear the blonde wigs; you don’t have to wear the extreme clothes, right?” Walters asked the brightly dressed Parton. Parton delivered a master class in grace and class. “It’s certainly a choice,” Parton replied. “I don’t like to be like everybody else. I’ve often made the statement that I would never stoop so low as to be fashionable. That’s the easiest thing in the world to do.” Chuckling yet? Parton wanted attention, then she could dazzle them with talent. “Once they got past the shock of the ridiculous way I looked, then they would see there’s parts of me to be appreciated. I’m very real where it counts…and that’s inside,” Dolly Parton told Barbara Walters. “Show business is a money-making joke, and I just always like telling jokes.” Walters then asked Parton – the beloved star with 19 stu-
dio albums and a slew of awards won over a decade in the male-dominated music business: “Do you ever feel like you’re a joke, that people make fun of you?” Parton was the personification of composure. “I know they make fun of me. But actually, all these years people have thought the joke was on me, but it’s actually been on the public. I know exactly what I’m doing, and I can change it at any time. I make more jokes about myself than anybody,” Parton said. “I am sure of myself as a person. I am sure of my talent. I’m sure of my love for life,” Parton said. “And I’m very content. I like the kind of person that I am. So I can afford to piddle around and do-diddle around with make-up and clothes and stuff. Because I am secure with myself.” Game, set, match to Parton. In another ABC interview in 2012, Parton expanded on that over-the-top signature style which she adopted after seeing the town tramp. “There was this woman, we won’t call her names, but she was beautiful,” she told ABC News Nightline. “I had never seen anybody, you know, with the yellow hair all piled up and the red lipstick and the rouge and the high-heeled shoes, and I thought, ‘This is what I want to look like.’” As the image implies, there were constant rumors that she was secretly involved with any male within inches – as well as a secret lesbian life with her oldest childhood pal, Judy Ogle. She denied the rumor – she was married to Carl Dean for 58 years. He died in March 2025. Dolly Parton died peacefully on Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026, at the age of 80 in Nashville after a “brief battle with cancer,” her team wrote in a statement to People. “Our beloved Dolly Parton spent her life and career bringing joy, laughter, hope, and integrity into everything she touched. Her unmatched generosity reached the lives of countless people whom she would never meet, yet she was always there to offer a helping hand,” they wrote. “Whether it be the hundreds of millions of books donated through her invaluable Imagination Library or funding research that helped create a lifesaving vaccine used around the world, Dolly’s unconditional love for all people was the guiding force for her lasting impact. After bravely facing a brief battle with cancer, Dolly departed her Earthly life today at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, surrounded by loved ones,” the statement concluded. The music world is in mourning. And news outlets are overflowing with tributes. Few of them mention us. In fact, one note of criticism for some is a precise example of that “unconditional love for all people” her team talked about. “The ’80s — a decade she kicked off in grand fashion with the working woman’s anthem ‘9 to 5’ — brought Parton some of her greatest mainstream success, but the climate of the times also conspired to reduce her to a punchline and a caricature: The self-made country-pop queen who had pulled herself up by her bra straps. She played along, as an act of self-preservation, but it is a consolation to know that she lived long enough for her reputation as a songwriter to rise considerably in the 21st century,” Lindsay Zoladz wrote in her “appraisal” of Dolly Parton, who “had the Voice, and Concerns, of an Earth Angel” for the New York Times. Damn, bitch! Have you never even seen a Dolly Parton drag queen? There’s almost a cottage industry devoted to Dolly. And Dolly knew – and loved it! She even participated in a Dolly Parton drag contest at a gay LA Bar – which she lost! “They had a bunch of Chers and Dollys that year, so I just over-exaggerated — made my beauty mark bigger, the eyes bigger, the hair bigger, everything,” Parton laughingly told
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DOLLY PARTON died this week at age 80 after a short battle with cancer.
ABC News Nightline. “All these beautiful drag queens had worked for weeks and months getting their clothes. So I just got in the line, and I just walked across, and they just thought I was some little short gay guy… but I got the least applause.” Dolly Parton lost the Dolly Parton look-alike contest in an LA gay bar! But she hasn’t lost the ineffable connection to her fans – whom she understood, felt, and fought for – including protecting “Gay Day” at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tenn. “When it first started, there were people giving us threats; I still get threats,” Parton told ABC News. “But like I said, I’m in business. I just don’t feel like I have to explain myself. I love everybody.” That’s what I saw when Dolly Parton arrived and smiled through an onslaught of paparazzi and gay fanboys at an APLA Commitment to Life event. Oddly though, as a reporter, my fixation was on Parton’s “date,” her gay manager Sandy Gallin, who seemed to rarely show up publicly with his supposed posse, controversially dubbed the “Velvet Gay Mafia.” The late gay AIDS advocate Dana Miller, who was on the APLA Board, wrote a piece for In Los Angeles Magazine about the Four Warriors of AIDS fundraising: David Geffen, Barry Diller, Sandy Gallin, and Jeffrey Katzenberg. “It was the early ’90s, and we were in the second decade of AIDS with absolutely no hope in sight,” Miller wrote. “It was then I discovered the warriors, and it was amazing. Gay and straight, they were the ones who for almost a decade came together in living rooms and storefronts to provide what our government didn’t. My list of warriors is long, yet this is the tale of four particular individuals who, for years, I closely watched working behind the scenes to make a difference in the quality of life of men, women, and children they would never know.” After Gallin died in 2017 at age 76, columnist Billy Masters wrote a tribute in the Los Angeles Blade that expanded on that theme – and included a section on Dolly Parton, with whom he formed Sandollar Productions in 1985. Sandollar Productions, with Howard Rosenman, produced the 1990 Oscar winning documentary Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt that raised global awareness about AIDS. “While Gallin’s client list was vast and varied, he especially loved his divas. A special place in his heart was reserved solely for Dolly Parton. The two met after Dolly asked singer Mac Davis who should help with her career. Davis said, ‘You should talk to Sandy Gallin — he’s my manager.’ Sandy had one goal — to make Dolly a mainstream star. The first thing he did was set up a recording session for the song ‘Here You Come Again,’” Masters wrote. “Dolly was hesitant. She said, ‘A monkey could sing this song and have a hit with it.’ She was very nervous that it would turn off the country market, which she was very loyal to.’ Gallin made a deal with her — if the song wasn’t No. 1 on the pop charts AND the country charts, he’d never get involved in her musical decisions again. Dolly took the deal — and lost,” Masters wrote. “From then on, she and Sandy were inseparable. They considered each other beyond best friends and almost soul mates. ‘My husband didn’t love to travel, and Sandy was gay, and he did,’ said Dolly.” CONTINUES ON PAGE 12
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New data shows record-high LGBTQ population amid Trump attacks 12% of adults — 25.6 million people — identify as part of the community By JOE REBERKENNY | jreberkenny@washblade.com The Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRC Foundation), the public education, research, and policy arm of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ+ advocacy group in the United States, has released new data showing that there are more LGBTQ+ identifying people than ever before, just as the Trump administration continues efforts to minimize LGBTQ+ rights and visibility. The data, released late last week, includes a multitude of updated population estimates for LGBTQ+ identifying people in the United States. It shows that a record-high 12% of U.S. adults — roughly 25.6 million people — identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or gender diverse. The numbers were drawn from more than 2.4 million responses to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey collected between 2021 and 2024. The Household Pulse Survey is one of the last major federal data sources to include a gender identity measure before the Trump administration removed sexual orientation and gender identity questions from roughly 360 federal data collections. HRC President Kelley Robinson spoke about the data, emphasizing that it shows not only that the LGBTQ+ community is bigger than the Trump administration would have Americans believe, but that LGBTQ+ Americans continue to be targeted for no reason other than being different. “LGBTQ+ Americans are everywhere. There are 25 million of us across the country, and we now have critical mass in almost every state in the nation,” Robinson said in a statement. “We’re not a niche constituency, and no campaign, brand, or employer can afford to treat us like one.” The survey also collected other important information about LGBTQ+ Americans. 40: The number of states with an LGBTQ+ population greater than 10%, plus the District of Columbia. This includes electoral battleground states such as Arizona (13.34%), Georgia (11.46%), Michigan (10.95%), New Hampshire (11.88%), North Carolina (10.56%), Ohio (11.29%), Pennsylvania (11.14%), and Texas (12.54%). 25.6 million: Number of U.S. adults who identify as LGBTQ+. 12% : Percentage of the adult population who identify as LGBTQ+. More than half of all LGBTQ+ adults
(53.8%) are between 18 and 34 — a signal of sustained, long-term growth in political and economic power as this generation ages into peak spending and voting years. Other recent studies show that nearly 30% of the adult Gen Z population identifies as LGBTQ+. The data also shows growing diversity across the community. Hispanic adults make up a larger share of the LGBTQ+ population (18%) than of non-LGBTQ+ adults (13%). Black adults make up a smaller share, about 9%, compared to 12%, reinforcing that LGBTQ+ identity cuts across every racial and ethnic community. Bisexual+ people are the largest group, at over 7% of all U.S. adults. Tari Hanneman, HRC Foundation’s senior director of research and education, spoke about how the White House’s recent decision to remove LGBTQ-specific data questions from federal surveys undermines the purpose of federal data collection: to collect data that accurately reflects the U.S. population, regardless of political ideology. “Reliable data are essential for understanding who lives in this country and what our communities need to thrive,” Hanneman said. “Removing sexual orientation and gender identity questions from surveys like the one used for this analysis introduces significant gaps in this understanding. These findings show that LGBTQ+ people are a substantial and growing segment of the population, underscoring the need for our continued inclusion in data collection efforts.” The data also included key demographics about the age of LGBTQ+ people, showing that younger Americans are increasingly more likely to identify as LGBTQ+, while overall, all age groups saw an increase in people self-identifying as LGBTQ+ in the data. More than half of LGBTQ+ adults (approximately 54%) are younger than 35, compared with about 22% of non-LGBTQ+ adults. Adults ages 25–34 constitute roughly onethird of the LGBTQ+ adult population. The data also shows a similar generational pattern within age groups. Nearly 32% of adults ages 18–24 and 22% of adults ages 25–34 identify as LGBTQ+, compared with approximately 12% of adults ages 35–44 and less than 8% of each older age group. The data also included statistics on the education levels of LGBTQ+ Americans, indicat-
ing that they are more likely to have some college education or an associate degree than their non-LGBTQ+ peers. LGBTQ+ adults are more likely (34.57%) to have an associate degree or some college experience and less likely to have only a high school education or less, or a graduate degree. According to a report from the Williams Institute, a research organization dedicated to collecting and explaining data on LGBTQ+ people and related policy, during the first year of the second Trump administration, approximately 360 federal data collections removed at least one sexual orientation or gender identity measure, including 338 that removed gender identity measures and at least 60 that removed sexual orientation measures. The Williams Institute, along with HRC, asserts that these changes diminish the federal government’s capacity to measure LGBTQ+ populations and understand their experiences and needs — something that should be detrimental to federal data collection and assessment, regardless of what political ideology one subscribes to. In 2024, the Census Bureau conducted a large-scale test of questions on sexual orientation and gender identity for possible inclusion in the American Community Survey, the nation’s primary source of detailed demographic data. The test involved nearly half a million households, but the Bureau has not released the promised reports and datasets showing how those questions performed. In September 2025 Democracy Forward filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking their release, alleging that the Census Bureau had unlawfully withheld the records. The HRC Foundation also provided information about the methodology used to produce its estimates. The data uses weighted surveys conducted through its Community Insights research program. Community Insights is an opt-in research panel rather than a probability sample of the U.S. population; demographic benchmarks are used to adjust survey data so that respondents more closely reflect the broader LGBTQ+ adult population. The HRC Foundation selected the Household Pulse Survey due to its large sample size, national probability-based design, detailed demographic data, separate measures for sexual orientation and gender identity, and availability of public-use survey weights.
The analysis includes 37 rounds of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey conducted between 2021 and 2024, yielding 2,452,769 responses before exclusions for missing or imputed data. HRC’s estimate of 12.03% is based on the Census Bureau’s self-administered Household Pulse Survey, while Gallup’s most recent estimate of 9% is based on telephone interviews and a different approach to measuring LGBTQ+ identity. HRC has suggested that self-administered surveys may offer greater privacy when people answer sensitive questions, which may contribute to differences in disclosure. The analysis classifies respondents as lesbian or gay, bisexual+, transgender, or gender-expansive. The bisexual+ category includes respondents who selected bisexual as well as those who selected another sexual identity not represented by the available categories. The transgender or gender-expansive classification is determined using respondents’ reported sex assigned at birth and current gender identity. The move to remove LGBTQ+ people from federal data collection is just one of many things the Trump-Vance administration has taken to minimize — if not hide — LGBTQ+ people in the country. From the anti-transgender military executive order, which attempted to bar new recruits and remove transgender military members already serving, signed in January 2025, to attempts to prohibit gender-affirming medical care in federal health care programs and all but destroy gender-affirming care for minors, the administration has pursued a series of policies affecting LGBTQ+ Americans. The administration has also attempted to make biological sex the only definition of gender on federal paperwork, rolled back DEI programs across the federal government, and taken other steps affecting how LGBTQ+ people are represented and recognized in federal policy and data collection.
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“I really owe him so much,” Parton added. But, contrary to what Dolly Parton sings in “9 to 5,” it’s not all taking and no giving. Dolly Parton told the KKK that she welcomes gay people to Dollywood. And in 1991, when gay men were dying of AIDS by the thousands, and some Southern Christian leaders said AIDS was God’s punishment for homosexuality, Dolly Parton wrote and sang one of the first country songs to include “gay” and Chris-
tianity: “Some are preachers, some are gay… But not a one is turned away when it’s family.” She later got an Oscar nod for “Travelin’ Thru,” a song for the transgender film “Transamerica.” In 2023, after her home state of Tennessee passed anti-trans and anti-drag laws, Parton said she knew how deeply it hurt LGBTQ+ people, including in her own family and life, to be attacked for who they are.
“I know and love them all, and I do not judge,” she said. “They cannot help that any more than I can help being Dolly Parton.” By the end of “9 to 5,” I realized that I had been the judgmental one with stereotype-blinders. I enjoyed learning how to get bold things done while expressing yourself with authentic joy. But unfortunately the theme and song are still applicable today. Thank you, Dolly Parton.
Dolly Parton also talked about Gallin in an interview with Apple Music Country’s Proud Radio: “Sandy and I just clicked like nobody’s business,” Parton told host Hunter Kelly. “He was like my best gay bud. … We [went to] Studio 54. We’d sit on the couch and watch all the craziness. But we were all involved in the fun of it, and it was great.”
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HRC, under President KELLEY ROBINSON, spearheaded the research. (Blade photo by Michael Key)
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Thailand’s first out senator talks marriage equality, more AMSTERDAM — The first openly gay man elected to the Thai Senate says the law that extended marriage rights to same-sex couples in Thailand has positively impacted his country’s global image. “It totally changed how the world perceived Thailand,” Sen. Pornchai Witayalerdpan told the Washington Blade on Aug. 7 during an interview at the World Pride Human Rights Conference in Amsterdam. Thailand on Jan. 23, 2025, became the first country in Southeast Asia to allow samesex couples to legally marry. The marriage equality bill received final legislative approval in June 2024 when the Senate approved it by a 152-130 vote margin. King Maha Vajiralongkorn signed it a few months later. Then-Prime Minister Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra is among those who supported the law. Witayalerdpan was a freelance interpreter before he took office in July 2024. The independent senator noted Thailand’s marriage equality movement began to gain traction with a lawsuit that the Foundation for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Rights and Justice, a Thai advocacy group, filed. The Constitutional Court in 2021 upheld a law that defined marriage as between a man and a woman. MP Tunyawaj Kamolwongwat of the Move Forward Party later introduced the marriage equality bill that became law. “It was a coalition of efforts between the civil society organizations, the LGBTQ organizations, and also the Pride movement in Thailand,” Witayalerdpan told the Blade. Taiwan in 2019 became the first country in Asia to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples. The Nepalese Supreme Court in June issued a landmark ruling that ordered the country’s government to guarantee full marriage rights to same-sex couples. The Japanese Supreme Court in March said it will consider six marriage equality lawsuits that have been filed in the country. The Indian Supreme Court in 2023 ruled against marriage rights for same-sex couples. South Korea is among the other Asian countries in which marriage equality efforts are gaining momentum. Witayalerdpan said Thailand’s marriage equality law could have a direct impact in Japan, which is the only G7 country that does not legally recognize same-sex couples. “It’s been nothing but a positive effect (in Thailand) after the same-sex marriage law (took effect),” he said. InterPride, the organization that coordinates World Pride events, has announced Bangkok and Barcelona, Spain, are the two finalists to host the biennial event in 2030. (World Pride took place in D.C. in 2025.) Witayalerdpan told the Blade that World Pride in Bangkok would further improve Thailand’s global image. He also said his fellow lawmakers, in turn, should pass LGBTQ rights bills — including proposals that would allow transgender people to legally change
their name and gender and enable same-sex couples to have children via surrogates from in vitro fertilization. Witayalerdpan noted the most important bill to him is one that would strengthen Thailand’s LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination law that took effect in 2015. Witayalerdpan also offered advice to activists in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world. “Keep on pushing forward,” he told the Blade. “I Thai Sen. PORNCHAI WITAYALERDPAN at the World Pride Human Rights Conference in Amsterdam on Aug. 7, 2026. know that it’s hard for activ(Blade photo by Michael Key) ists in Thailand as well.” Witayalerdpan acknowledged the loss of U.S. government funding since the Trump-Vance administration took office — which has forced advocacy groups in Asia and elsewhere around the world to close — has “been very hard.” Witayalerdpan noted the global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement in response to these cuts has turned to the European Union, the U.K., Canada, and the Netherlands to help fill the gap. “It’s very good that these countries are providing more funds to the activists in Asia than before because of the Trump situation,” he told the Blade. “It can increase their soft power as well.” Witayalerdpan said American activists should “wish for a positive result in the midterm elections.” “Then there is some resistance,” he added. Witayalerdpan specifically highlighted efforts to fight against the Trump-Vance administration’s efforts to restrict gender-affirming healthcare. A federal court in Massachusetts on Aug. 15 struck down a key provision of a U.S. Department of Health and Human Service rule that would have limited access to gender-affirming care under the Affordable Care Act. Maryland and California are two of the 21 states that sued the Trump-Vance administration over the issue. “You have to show more resistance … to show that we are still here and we will push back when we can,” said Witayalerdpan. MICHAEL K. LAVERS
Canada unveils monument to persecuted LGBTQ citizens A monument that pays tribute to LGBTQ Canadians who suffered government-sanctioned persecution and discrimination officially opened in Ottawa on Aug. 21. Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Governor General Louise Arbour, and Women and Gender Equality Minister Rechie Valdez are among those who attended the ceremony. A Canadian government press release notes Thunderhead, which is located on Parliament Hill, “recognizes the historic discrimination faced by 2SLGBTQI+ (two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, plus) people in Canada, including during the LGBT (lesbiennes, gaies, bisexuelles, trans) Purge.” (French and English are Canada’s official languages.) Trudeau in 2017 formally apologized to Canadians who suffered persecution and discrimination under the country’s anti-LGBTQ laws — including Thunderhead, a monument that acknowledges LGBTQ Canadians and the historic discrimination they faced, was officially unveiled in Ottawa, Ontario, on Aug. 21. those convicted of “gross indecency” before Cana(Photo by LGBT Purge Fund/Mitchel Raphael) da decriminalized consensual same-sex sexual relations — and policies. Trudeau also formally apologized to those who were fired from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the country’s 1 4 • WA SHIN GTO N BLADE.COM • AUGUST 28, 2 0 2 6 • I NT E R NAT I O NA L NE WS
military and civil service from the 1950s to the mid1990s because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. The Canadian government later settled a class action lawsuit that LGBT Purge victims filed. The settlement funded the monument. The Canadian government’s press release notes an “all Canadian team” from Winnipeg, Manitoba, designed it. The monument is also located on the Anishinabe Algonquin Nation’s traditional territory. “It celebrates the resilience and achievements of those who fought for equality, educates visitors, and inspires the change still needed so that everyone can openly love who they love and express and identify themselves as they choose,” reads the press release. “Thunderhead stands as a tribute to the lives, stories, and contributions of 2SLGBTQI+ people across Canada,” said Prime Minister Mark Carney on Facebook. “It’s reminder of the discrimination too many endured — and honors those who fought to build a country where everyone can live freely, safely, and with dignity.” MICHAEL K. LAVERS
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PETER PAPPAS
is an attorney who served in senior positions in the Obama and Clinton administrations.
American democracy on the brink
When Trump threatens voting rights to undermine midterms, we should believe him President Trump’s favorability is at record lows, dragged down by a reckless and unpopular war, soaring food and gas prices, economic instability and a general sense that he is flagrantly corrupt, more focused on vengeance than governing, flailing and mentally unwell. Assuming the elections take place without interference, Democrats are expected to regain control of the House in November, with odds increasing of a Senate takeover as well. In normal times, a rational president facing such headwinds would pursue policies designed to regain public support. But we see no sign of that. Instead, we are seeing a renewed focus on repeating the well-litigated and demonstrably false claims that he won in 2020, and that our elections are rife with voter fraud. He recently devoted most of what was billed as a major speech to the nation on regurgitating these imaginary claims, this time alleging that the Chinese had interfered in the 2020 election, thereby augmenting the pretextual narrative with a national security rationale. Although it is unclear whether Trump believes any of this himself, he has convinced most of his supporters to believe it, and that serves a very important purpose. Those false claims drove thousands to storm the Capitol to prevent the certification of the 2020 election, and he appears again to be setting the stage for what he seems willing to do to avoid defeat at the polls. Since returning to power last year, Trump has systematically fired and replaced personnel at all levels who might not comply with illegal directives and taken other actions to remove the obstacles that constrained him before. He has thoroughly purged the military and the Department of Justice of career professionals and replaced them with die-hard loyalists who will reliably do his bidding. He has totally neutered the Congress, rendering this once-powerful co-equal and independent branch of government totally subservient. And he has cowed much of the judiciary, including the Supreme Court, into a state of complicit compliance. The Department of Justice has been so thoroughly co-opted by him that he routinely and publicly directs the prosecution of his enemies on tenuous or non-existent grounds and indictments soon follow in virtually every case. Trump has also militarized America’s streets through the deployment of a federalized National Guard deployed primarily in Democratic cities under the pretext of a crime epidemic that local authorities could not contain. Trump has unleashed a highly aggressive and unaccountable Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) force of masked gunmen ostensibly to round up and deport people who were in the country illegally. In fact, ICE has acted with such wanton brutality that it has disappeared and summarily deported people, and murdered people, including several American citizens, in broad daylight and on video with no consequences. These troops, who function almost as independent and unaccountable militias of the president, have terrorized segments of the population and acclimated Americans to a menacing armed presence roaming the streets in a manner that Americans have never experienced before. It is not hard to imagine how these forces could be put to use during the election: to intimidate and suppress the vote in Democratic precincts, to seize voting machines or otherwise interfere with the election process, and/or to provoke chaos and unrest to provide a pretext for the president to contest or nullify the election results. This is not theoretical. It is telling that Trump’s two top priorities are premised on the big lie about the 2020 election and
on creating a pretext for interfering in the upcoming election. He has prioritized legislation called the SAVE Act, which would interfere with states’ rights to administer elections by mandating enhanced voter ID requirements in a manner that would disenfranchise voters, particularly those that tend to vote for Democrats. His other top priority is a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund designed to compensate and reward convicted Jan. 6 rioters who, at Trump’s instigation, ransacked the Capitol, brutally assaulting police officers and hunting members of Congress with the intent of killing them. The rationale for this massive slush fund is the fiction that these convicted felons were innocents unfairly subjected to baseless, politically motivated prosecutions. This fund was so controversial that two Republican senators had blocked the nomination of Todd Blanche as attorney general until they received a very dubious written assurance — quickly disavowed by Trump — that the fund would not be deployed. It is also alarming that Trump repeatedly calls for nationalizing the elections process, despite the Constitution specifically vesting these powers with the individual states, and he has demonstrated that he means business. He has pressured states to turn over confidential voter data and taken punitive measures against the non-compliant, including withholding allocated federal funds. He has harassed and intimidated state election officials with threats of criminal prosecution for a variety of specious reasons and has sought confidential personal information about these officials. Notably, he recently abolished the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission, a watchdog agency established by Congress after January 6 to ensure the integrity of our elections. And perhaps most disturbing of all, his servile FBI took the unprecedented step of raiding election offices in Atlanta, Georgia to seize and confiscate voter rolls. There is no reason to believe that he will hesitate to do so again in November. In fact, he recently stated that he may send ICE and National Guard troops to polling places, and some members of Congress and MAGA influencers are calling for him to do just that. Under the right circumstances, which would include accusations of voter fraud and chaos at the polls that could easily be provoked or manufactured, he would have the legal authority to do so. At the same time, Trump has openly mused that the public might prefer a dictatorship and repeatedly hinted that he might seek an unconstitutional third term. At the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last month, he wore a red cap emblazoned with “Trump 2028”, and just this week, he indicated that he is willing to declare a national security emergency to cancel elections. “Stranger things have happened,” he said, seeming to prepare the public for what might be in store. Trump has so successfully inured the public and the media to such incendiary and anti-democratic threats that they no longer induce opprobrium or outrage. This president has repeatedly demonstrated and flexed his authoritarian impulses, admired dictators, and increasingly signaled a determination to seize control of the upcoming election up to and including cancelling it. He tried to stage a coup once and came very close to succeeding. This time his actions are increasingly speaking the quiet part out loud. What should alarm anyone paying attention is that the groundwork for Version 2.0 has been very well laid and that, when Trump signals so clearly that he is determined to win by any means necessary, we should believe him.
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PETER ROSENSTEIN
is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist. He writes regularly for the Blade.
Please join me in supporting the Washington Blade Foundation Fundraiser set for Sept. 12 in Rehoboth Beach
An important event impacting the LGBTQ community will be held on Sept. 12 in Rehoboth Beach, Del. The event is a fundraiser for the Washington Blade Foundation. Whether you can join us in person, or just be with us from a distance, I ask you to seriously consider becoming a sponsor of this event. You may ask why should you care, why is this important, and how the Blade Foundation supports the LGBTQ community. The event will feature an open bar, food catered by the Blue Moon, entertainment, and speeches from Blade staff along with remarks from Rehoboth’s Mayor-elect Susan Stewart and another surprise guest or two. You can buy tickets on Eventbrite; if you’re interested in sponsoring the event, contact Publisher Brian Pitts at bpitts@washblade.com. The Blade Foundation was begun to ensure the history of our community, written in the pages of the Washington Blade, was archived, and never lost. That effort was a success thanks to the support of the DC Public Library. Now the Blade Foundation works to help ensure there will be future LGBTQ journalists working throughout the media, not just for the Blade. By funding interns and fellowships for LGBTQ journalism students, we help make that possible. By helping to fund the international news section of the Blade, the Foundation helps to keep the LGBTQ community around the world connected. In many countries where our community is either still not accepted, or worse, tortured, members of our community living in those places may only get news of their communities by reading the Blade online. I know many of you reading this already know, the Washington Blade newspaper has been in existence, and reporting on the LGBTQ community, for more than 56 years. The paper’s reporting is done by those who are part of the community, and that makes a real difference. The paper is proud of its journalists, and the numerous awards they have won. One is Lou Chibbaro Jr., who recently was the subject of a documentary aired on PBS. He, and others like him, report the news honestly, without bias, but with fervor, because they actually live the stories. In those 50-plus years since Stonewall, the Blade has been reporting on the progress our community has made. The steps forward, the stumbles, those allies who have worked with us, and those people who have tried to stop us from living our lives as who we were born to be. Again, the news is being reported by members of our own community. It is not others writing about us, but us, writing about ourselves. The Blade is followed by many mainstream media outlets, and stories that first only the Blade covered, ignored by mainstream media, were then picked up and reported garnering the widespread coverage they deserve. The Blade is the best place to find out about what the members of our own community are doing, and what others are doing to, and for, us. It is sad that today the Blade has to report we are at a place in history where we are fighting just to keep the strides for equality we have made over the past 50 years. Because of that, it is even more important than ever, that the Washington Blade keeps publishing. Today, the Blade is the only LGBTQ news outlet with a dedicated seat in the White House briefing room. That is important for the Blade, and for all the members of our own community. It is important the Blade be where the action is. The Blade’s international coverage helps us in the United States to understand where we can help those in our community who may be suffering and less fortunate, but also to celebrate with those who are even more free in many ways. The recent stories about World Pride in Amsterdam inspire us to fight even harder for our rights here, so we never again have a president who will work to keep our community from being all it can be. That we will never again have a President who threatens the lives of our trans sisters and brothers, threatens their healthcare, and throws our community’s heroes out of our military. Those news stories are important to write, and they often only get written about fully, in the Blade. So again, I ask you to consider being a sponsor, and joining us in Rehoboth on Sept. 12. Or if you can’t be in Rehoboth, that you support our work from a distance, and support this important event. The Washington Blade Foundation is a 501c(3) non-profit. So, whether you are a business supporting the community, an individual ally, or a member of the community, please dig deep, and help to support the future of LGBTQ journalism, and future LGBTQ journalists. By doing so, you are supporting the future of the LGBTQ community. You can donate online at bladefoundation.org/donate.
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New book examines Trump cuts to LGBTQ healthcare ‘Aftershocks’ details impact of policy shifts on HIV response, broader public health FROM STAFF REPORTS
As LGBTQ and HIV advocates continue to grapple with the Trump administration’s attacks on healthcare, a new book offers a timely look at what happens when public health systems — and the democratic institutions that sustain them — are pushed to their limits. The book, “Aftershocks: Trump 2.0, Public Health, and Our Better Angels,” was written by Dr. José M. Zuniga, president/CEO of Fast-Track Health. Zuniga is a globally recognized public health leader with more than three decades of experience advancing responses to HIV, communicable and non-communicable diseases, and the health impacts of climate change. He is also editor-in-chief of the Journal of Fast-Track Health. The book covers the first year of the second Trump administration. It chronicles the impact of federal policy shifts and budget cuts on the HIV response and public health more broadly, including for LGBTQ communities. Drawing from policy analysis, frontline insight, and lived experience, the author reveal how decades of hard-won progress became vulnerable through Project 2025 and DOGE, but also a paralysis in the HIV and public health communities following the outcome of the 2024 elections. “In other words, we were caught flat-footed when our opposition had a detailed plan to create chaos and disruption,” Zuniga says. “Thus, the book also offers Horizons 2028 as an antidote to Project 2025 as a starting point for a wide-ranging conversation about how we will build back better given the baseline pre-Trump 2.0 was already imperfect.” Below is an excerpt from the book.
What Could Not Be Left Unsaid
Let me begin with a simple truth: I did not set out to write this book. Like many in the public health community, I set out daily to do the work of scaling prevention, expanding access to care, strengthening health systems, and ensuring that dignity, equity, and justice are operational realities. Writing, for me, has always been in service of action: policy briefs to shape decisions, editorials to provoke accountability, reports to document progress or failure, and books to synthesize experience into insight that can guide public health action. But Aftershocks is something different; it is not merely an analysis. Instead, it is a record of rupture, of response, and of what it means to continue when the ground beneath your work begins to shift. This book was written because something changed, and that change came into sharp relief during the beginning days of the second Trump administration, including the erosion of norms, the weaponization of rhetoric, and the recalibration of governance itself. The change was not limited to policy reversals or budget cuts, though there were many. Moreover, it was not confined to rhetoric, though language played a central role. The change was structural and moral: a redefinition of how power understood its obligations to people, to evidence, and to truth itself. And for those of us working in public health, the effects were immediate and personal. We experienced a purposeful disruption of the public health ecosystem and a direct repudiation of the “health for all” principle that guides our work…. Writing this book was, unexpectedly, an act of catharsis. Not because it resolved anything, but because it created space to process what would otherwise have been overwhelming... Amid what many in the public health community experienced as both individual and collective trauma, documenting itself was stabilizing, allowing reflection without detachment and critique without disengagement. But catharsis alone is insufficient. This book is not an exercise in lament; it is also a response. If the period it chronicles is defined by disruption, then its purpose is to offer direction. Where Project 2025 represented a blueprint for ideological capture of institutions, language, and governance, this book offers a counterpoint: Horizons 2028… Horizons 2028 is grounded in a simple premise: that the future of public health – and of democratic governance more broadly – depends on rebuilding systems that are resilient to political volatility. That means strengthening not only federal capacity, but subnational leadership. It means embedding community-led accountability into data systems. It means aligning health outcomes with social determinants and recognizing that equity is not an endpoint but a continuous process of adjustment and correction. It means treating global engagement not as optional, but as essential to national well-being. In other words, it is a roadmap not for returning to what was, but 2 0 • WA SHIN GTO N BLADE.COM • AUGUST 28, 2 0 2 6
for building what is required… I write as an Independent. Not in the sense of detachment, but in the sense of accountability to evidence, to outcomes, and to the people whose lives depend on both… Independence does not mean neutrality in the face of harm; it means refusing to filter reality through partisan allegiance. Importantly, it also means being guided by a consistent commitment to equity, dignity, and justice. These are not abstract values… They are tested in moments of crisis, when the gap between principle and practice becomes most apparent. They demand accountability not only for what is said, but for what is done – and for what is allowed to persist unchallenged. And they require the courage to name harm clearly, even when doing so is inconvenient or politically unwelcome. That commitment shapes the analysis that follows, but it is also what makes the writing difficult. Because to document harm is to confront it. To trace its origins is to name decisions and their consequences. And to do so honestly is to risk being read as partisan in a landscape where truth itself has become politicized. But the alternative – silence, or false equivalence – is not acceptable. Not when the stakes are as high as they are. There is, however, a thread that runs through this book that resists cynicism, is not optimism, at least not in the conventional sense, but is something quieter and more durable: a belief that even in moments of rupture, there remains a capacity – within institutions, within communities, within individuals – to reorient toward something better.
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CALENDAR |
By TINASHE CHINGARANDE
Friday, August 28
Thursday, September 03
GoGay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Community Happy Hour” at 7 p.m. at DIK Bar.This is a chance to relax, make new friends, and enjoy happy hour specials at this classic retro venue. Attendance 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.
The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center’s Fresh Produce Program will be held all day at the Center. 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 free weekly class is a combination of yoga, breath work and meditation that allows LGBTQ+ community members to continue their healing journey with somatic and mindfulness practices. For more details, visit The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center’s website.
Saturday, August 29 GoGay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Community Brunch” at 11 a.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.
Sunday, August 30 “Nellie’s DC Drag Brunch” will be at 12 p.m. at Nellie’s Sports Bar. Come get served like a queen by a queen. Join Sapphire Blue, Deja Diamond and their team of amazing drag performers for the most fun you’ll have all weekend. Tickets cost $58.51 and are available on Eventbrite.
Monday, August 31 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).
Tuesday, September 01 The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center will host a drop-in session to share resources, provide service navigation, connect with community, and gather feedback. For more details, visit the DC Center’s website.
Wednesday, September 02 Job Club will be at 6 p.m. on Zoom upon request. 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. The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center will host “Movement for Healing” at 3 p.m. This trauma- and yoga therapy–informed class is designed to help guests gently reconnect with their body and their breath. Through mindful movement, somatic awareness, and grounding practices, guests will explore how to release tension, increase mobility, and cultivate a deeper sense of safety and ease within. For more details, visit the Center’s website.
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OUT & ABOUT Archuleta to host book signing in Rehoboth Beach David Archuleta will chat with fans and sign his book “Devout: Losing My Faith to Find Myself” on Sunday, Sept. 6 at 2 p.m. at Browseabout Books in Rehoboth Beach. The book is an inspirational account of his transformation from a closeted Mormon teen singer to a pop star who is comfortable with his queer identity. For additional information on this event, go to browseaboutbooks.com. Archuleta will also be in Rehoboth Beach to headline the “Night of Entertainment” on Saturday, Sept. 5 for CAMP Rehoboth’s SUNFESTIVAL weekend, which includes the Night of Dance Sept. 6. Visit camprehoboth.org for more information.
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THEATER
Immersive ‘Nation-State’ imagines a society free of authoritarianism Queer duo brings unique theater experience to Dupont Underground By PATRICK FOLLIARD
A relevant piece replete with borders and passports, La Pluma Theatre’s “Nation-State: A Live Experiment” is immersive, site-specific, and testimonial. With the production, the company’s queer co-founders Victor Salinas and Gabriel de la Cruz pose unique situations and experiences. In lieu of tickets, audience members get passports. What follows are questions and tests, and whether they gain entrance into a nation built to protect its citizens from authoritarianism, resource theft, and colonization remains to be seen. Originally from Mexico and Peru, respectively, Salinas and de la Cruz met at a birthday party in D.C. and instantly clicked as theater makers, sharing outlook and ambition. Reluctant to go it alone, both had been searching for artistic and producing collaboration. That all changed. And while their enterprise is primarily Latino and queer, these professional partners refused to be confined to a box, choosing rather to amplify the voices of all of D.C.’s diverse communities. In line with their plans, “Nation-State” is open to serving many points of view. As director of “Nation-State,” de la Cruz mostly guides the questioning. He’s the right man for the job. Since arriving in the U.S. six years ago, he has been consistently curious about certain things. Who belongs here? How do you make this your home? And who is creating the rules? “But the writing process is shared,” de la Cruz corrects. “I come up with questions. I provide Victor the topic and he goes from there. We’re both writing what happens next.”
He adds, “the most exciting moment for people is when they share something unique. As a questioner, you need to find the confidence and the right moment to ask the question. If you provide the space for that, the actor or audience member will give you something singular.” Since before La Pluma opened in November 2025, its creators have agreed that GABRIEL DE LA CRUZ and VICTOR SALINAS “the most beautiful thing (Photo courtesy of La Pluma Theatre) is when you use theater to fashion something innovative. Theater is the place where you can create new frameworks and rehearse new ways to live.” At just an hour, “Nation-State” is performed in English at Dupont Underground – the company’s historic residence, a once subterranean street car barn located beneath Dupont Circle. For the production, the tunnels serve as boundaries, and its different curved spaces make up a micro nation and welcome different guest actors who will come to share their stories. At certain times, Salinas plays Officer Salinas, Director of N.I.C.E. (Non-Discriminatory, Inclusive Customs Enforcement), a humorous social critic of the system and border patrol. Other
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times, it’s Salinas as himself telling his real-life stories. He says, “it’s a level of vulnerability that I’ve never experienced. The script is my personal life with zero censorship. But I think, if not now in a play that we are pouring our souls into, then when? “As a kid I dreamed of being TV show host and now I am. I will sing and tell my stories. I feel comfortable and ready to do it.” In Spanish, “pluma” means both pen and feather. For the company, it’s the latter, and comes with lively associations. Salinas explains. In mysticism, feathers serve as a portal between the real and spiritual worlds, like that between fact and fiction. And in Spanish and Latin American slang “showing feathers” (in other words, showing queerness). La Pluma encourages a good display of authenticity. And specifically for Salinas, there’s a personal story involving his beloved grandmother with whom he was extremely close. After she died, he has regularly found feathers as if she’s making contact. “A bit romantic, I know. But I think if you’re open you can see these things,” he says. “Nation-State” is challenging but fun. It’s unmistakably La Pluma. In the end, the company wants to build a world where everyone feels safe to tell their own stories, as individuals and performers.
‘Nation-State: A Live Experiment’
Sept. 2-13 | La Pluma Theatre | Dupont Underground | 19 Dupont Circle, N.W. $25-40 | Dupontunderground.org | Industry Night: September 7. Free for all theater makers
Open House on Saturday, August 29, and Sunday, August 30, from 1 to 4 PM
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FILM
‘Teenage Sex and Death’ has never been more entertaining Come for the jump scares, but stay for the tour-de-force filmmaking By JOHN PAUL KING
If any movie title can be said to describe exactly what it is going to show us, “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” would have to be it – and yet, it doesn’t communicate anything to prepare us for what we are going to see. For that, you’d have to already be a fan of the creator behind it – transfeminine, non-binary filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun – and the surreal, dysphoric, and meta-formal nature of their previous work. A horror fan since childhood, Schoenbrun spent their teen years frequenting online message boards for popular horror shows, writing fan fiction, and going to see punk bands in basements; a bachelor’s degree in film from Boston University paved their way into the world of “indie” cinema, and their first directorial effort was an online documentary about the phenomenon of “Slender Man” (look it up), which explored the way media and reality can blend together in the cultural imagination. That blending has continued to permeate their films: their first feature, “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair,” about a lonely teen who is drawn into a creepy online challenge, tells its story entirely through video clips she and the other participants share online; their second, “I Saw the TV Glow,” is an eerie and devastating tale of two teen friends who form a bond over their shared obsession with a paranormal television show and drift apart when it is cancelled, only to be drawn together again when buried memories of it begin to infiltrate their “real” lives. Both are driven by themes of gender identity, social isolation, queer awakening, and transformation – the stuff that resonates deeply with queer and trans audiences – and Schoenbrun didn’t bury the subtext in the story; instead, the subtext was the story. With “Camp Miasma,” their third and (thanks to its win of the “Queer Palm” at Cannes) highest profile feature film to date, they carry their creative obsessions forward into a surreal narrative that exists around the border between reality and media-manufactured fantasy, and brings them into the the world
of queer adulthood. Even more boldly, perhaps, it’s a comedy (albeit a dark and grisly one), a satire of the movie industry itself – which gives the director plenty of cheekily self-referential opportunities to make this their most “meta” film yet. After all, it’s about a young non-binary director working on a horror film, and you can’t get much more “meta” than that.
HANNAH EINBINDER and GILLIAN ANDERSON in ‘Teenage Sex and Death.’ (Image courtesy of Mubi)
The onscreen director who serves as Schoenbrun’s semi-autobiographical avatar is Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder), who has been tasked by a studio with remaking its classic slasher movie from the 1980s (“Camp Miasma”), in hope of generating an updated reboot of the once-lucrative franchise it spawned. Kris, who loves the original film, hopes to coax the actress who starred as its “final girl” – Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson) – into returning to the screen for the new one, though she has been retired from acting and living as a recluse ever since. Managing to get a meeting with her at her secluded home in the Pacific Northwest, Kris arrives in a snowstorm to discover that Billy now lives in the same abandoned campground where “Camp Miasma” was filmed four decades ago. She also has seemingly developed the unsettling eccentricities of an aging once-famous scream queen who has faded into obscurity and spent decades dwelling in memories of the past.
Despite some initial misgivings (on both sides), the two hit it off, and Billy agrees to help Kris develop her ideas for the reboot. As they work, their shared obsessions around the original film and its horrifying mythos draws them closer together into a more intimate kind of relationship – even as Billy’s unconvincingly “tongue-in-cheek” insistence that the franchise’s iconic killer is a real entity, waiting to be reawakened for the next massacre, begins to creep into Kris’s own psyche. Ingeniously mixing fan nostalgia for vintage “Friday the 13th”-style slasher films with the Lynchian surrealism of modern horror cinema and the campy-but-transgressive absurdity of a movie that wants us to be “in” on the joke, “Camp Miasma” takes Schoenbrun’s broodingly ironic Gen-Z sensibilities and spins them into something that works on multiple levels. As a horror film, it relies on the familiarity of its tropes and gleefully manipulates our reactions, yet undercuts its own formula to turn it into a blend of parody and homage that somehow elevates the genre by way of its own deconstruction. As a piece of postmodern cinema, it precludes attempts at analysis by transparently analyzing itself as it goes as part of its own self-aware scenario, turning intellectual interpretation into just another trope of its own. As a queer allegory, it nullifies the standard critical interpretations by wearing them jokingly on its sleeve. As a love-letter to cinema, it brims with callbacks to iconic masterworks like “Sunset Boulevard” and “Psycho.” It uses the irresistible darkness of its milieu as a vehicle through which to express a liberating, sex-positive celebration of queer joy, unencumbered at last by a confrontation with the fear, shame, and insecurity forged by social constructs that are so often used to suppress it. It even works as a romance, turning the age gap between its two leads into a bridge that overpasses any notions of conformity and eliminates false sentiment by framing it as a sexy kind of cross-generational mentoring. CONTINUES AT WASHINGTONBLADE.COM
ADVICE
We’re getting married but our parents object Will their disapproval and shortcomings derail our hopes for a happy life? By MICHAEL RADKOWSKY
Dear Michael, My girlfriend and I are getting married! We’re really excited, but we’ve got some big concerns as well. All of our parents have had multiple marriages. I think 10 between the four of them. So we don’t have much in the way of role models for a successful marriage. Also, we don’t have any parental support. Except for one of my ex-stepmothers whom I’m close to, none of our parents are happy that their daughter is getting married to another woman. That’s an understatement. Religious objections, moral objections, being angry that we’re “embarrassing them,” these are some of the things we’ve been told. We do have some supportive siblings and step-siblings, which is great, although they’re getting pushback from parents about attending our wedding. Given all this, what suggestions do you have for how we can make a go of our marriage? The divorce rate is over 50 percent for everyone. With all this baggage, we’re worried that we have even less of a chance. Thank you.
Michael replies: First, congratulations! Regarding your lack of family support: I’m sorry that you both have to deal with so much criticism, disdain, and judgment. Please don’t let your parents’ negativity influence your own views of yourselves and your relationship. Focus instead on the love and caring you will get from friends, community and the family who are present on your big day (I hope your siblings are brave enough to make it!). Being the recipients of that support is one of the sweetest parts of getting married. Don’t worry about the high divorce rate. While some couples really shouldn’t stay married, lots of people get divorced because they don’t know what is required to have a good marriage, or don’t put in the effort to do so. That does not have to be your fate. Similarly, your parents’ terrible track record doesn’t mean you have to repeat their marital histories. The skills to have a strong marriage are learnable. To that end, here are the best tips I can offer the two of you: If you want a loving marriage, be a loving partner. Don’t
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Our parents are all divorced and they disapprove of gay marriage. What should we do? (Photo via Bigstock/cunaplus)
snipe, sulk, or do the silent treatment when you’re mad. Unconditional love is largely a myth. Even our dogs won’t love us if we are mean to them. Don’t spend much time or effort focusing on what your spouse is doing wrong or how she is letting you down. Doing so leads to resentment and feeling like you’re a powerless victim. Instead, ask yourself what your own contribution is to the problem, and what you can do to make things better. You don’t have much power over your partner, but you have a lot of power over yourself. CONTINUES AT WASHINGTONBLADE.COM
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Advocates honored at Engendered Spirit Awards Annual ceremony held at conclusion of Trans Pride DC (Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
The 2026 SaVanna Wanzer Engendered Spirit Awards ceremony took place at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library on Saturday. The ceremony was held at the conclusion of the day-long Trans Pride DC: Encore. Honorees included D.C. Mayor’s Office of Community Affairs Deputy Director Vida Rangel; the LGBT+ Counseling Collaborative, Inc.; and Connor Keuntje, CLP, CLPC. Speakers at the ceremony included Japer Bowles, director of the D.C. Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs and Bianca Sprague, executive director of D.C. Trans Pride.
Drag performers salute ballads and slow jams at ‘Emote’ New drag show held at Violet Cocktail & Lounge
Former “RuPaul’s Drag Race” contestant Tatianna hosted the new show “Emote” at Violet Cocktail & Lounge (2014 9th Street, N.W.) on Sunday, Aug. 23. Performers included Jade Monroe and Anamosity.
Freedom 250 Grand Prix Streets around the National Mall closed for the Freedom 250 Grand Prix held over the weekend.
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A Full Week of Unforgettable Solo Performances September 1 - 5 Cabarets featuring John McDaniel include VIP front row seating including a private artist meet and greet to follow the show. Limited VIP tickets available!
Sept 1, 7:30pm
Tony Award Winner Matt Doyle with Emmy & Grammy winner John McDaniel
Sep 2, 7:30pm Sep 3, 7:30pm Ian Hawkins Philip Boykin in The Answer is Always Why Not
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August 29, 2pm Tickets $15
Thank you to Summer Cabaret series supporting sponsor
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TICKETS: WWW.CLEARSPACETHEATRE.ORG | (302) 227-2270 AUG UST 2 8 , 2 0 2 6 • WA S H I N GTO N B L A D E.CO M • 3 1