Trying to figure out where you really stand on LGBT issues, or any issue for that matter, is a vexing process.
You say on 60 Minutes, for example, that marriage equality is settled law, yet every name you have mentioned as a possible nominee to the Supreme Court views our community as perverted and deserving of no rights to anything except perhaps to conversion therapy paid for with funds diverted from HIV treatment programs.
David von Storch — File photo
Your Cabinet choices almost to a man (there are a few women — Senator Mitch McConnell’s wife was a smarmy homage to that shining example of cooperation and character that now presides over the U.S. Senate) abhor according any rights to our community or respecting those rights we have fought for far too long to achieve. So while you’re busy tweeting the nonsense that has earned you the distinction as the most unpopular incoming President in modern U.S. history, your Cabinet will no doubt be creating and implementing policies that are likely at every corner to attack us, marginalize us and and demean who we are as human beings. As such I don’t believe anything you say, except for some reason I can’t quite explain, I do believe that your 3 a.m. tweets reflect the inner-workings of your third-grade bully’s soul.
So, while I could go on and on pleading for you to stand up for what you’ve said about those LGBT rights you believe are fair and just, I won’t bother. You’ve shown us who you are by the company that you keep. You are no friend of ours, Mr. Trump, and anyone who says otherwise is buying the orange fool’s gold that you are peddling in the form of $26 cocktails at your new Trump Hotel in my hometown.
Every single day when I get out of bed, I will do my best not to get distracted by your childish prattling and insidious gas lighting. At times my better angels will try to find something positive in the words you read from the TelePrompTer that Kellyanne Conway so artfully crafts. Yet while you and the Republicans in control of Congress drink from that false cup of mandate that makes you drunk with power and hubris, the seeds of our discontent have been firmly sown.
I do have just one request. Please don’t come to Adams Morgan, Dupont Circle, Logan Circle, Shaw, NE, SW, SE or anywhere adjacent. We will try to be civil but it’s a really big ask. When you go out, I’d recommend Georgetown. It’s not Mar a Largo, but it’s the best we can offer.
Enjoy your stay in our town. We are ever-hopeful that in no time you will return full-time to your gilded tower of excess in New York in whose escalators you descended from the heavens to burnish your brand and somehow, through no fault of your own, landed in the most powerful seat in the land.
Welcome to D.C.!
David von Storch
President, UA Companies
VIDA Fitness, Bang Salon, Capitol City Brewing Co. @davidvons
The opinions expressed in these letters are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of their organizations and this magazine, its staff and contributors.
The U.S. Senate parliamentarian blocked several provisions in President Donald Trump's proposed tax and budget bill, including a transgender health care ban that would have prohibited federal funds from covering gender-affirming care.
The provision seeks to block transgender people of all ages -- including adults -- from accessing transition-related care by banning Medicaid, ACA marketplace plans, and the Children's Health Insurance Program from covering the cost.
But Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, who is tasked offering nonpartisan advice to federal lawmakers on Senate rules, declared that the proposed transgender health care ban violates the Byrd Rule, which requires reconciliation bills -- those cobbled together to resolve differences between House and Senate versions -- to only contain provisions that impact the budget or spending, and not any "extraneous" matters.
In a tense House hearing, a pair of congressional Democrats blasted Pentagon officials for stripping gay rights icon Harvey Milk’s name from a Navy ship, accusing the military of erasing LGBTQ history. U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen (D-Ill.), an out gay Democrat, directly confronted Navy Secretary John Phelan over the decision during the June 11 Armed Services Committee meeting.
"I just wanted to take a moment to talk about a veteran who served on a submarine as a diving officer during the Korean War," Sorensen said, referring to Milk's biography before actually naming him.
A Democratic-led coalition has written a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio demanding access to Andry José Hernández Romero, a gay Venezuelan national who was in the process of seeking asylum when he was forcibly deported to El Salvador and imprisoned at a controversial maximum-security prison in that country.
Leading the charge on the letter are U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) and U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), along with U.S. Reps. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.), and Seth Magaziner (D-R.I.).
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