Fenty Statement
I am committed to results for all District residents. From reforming schools to lowering crime, I believe that over the last three and half years, the District has made great strides towards becoming a city that works for all residents.
Together, we’ve taken historic steps toward inclusion and equality. I have been on the record as a steadfast supporter of marriage equality in every race I have run since 2000. Signing same-sex marriage into law was one of the most significant and meaningful moments of my leadership as Mayor. Ensuring the right to same-sex marriage in the District is a profound achievement, and one of several important steps toward full equality taken under my leadership.
Previous administrations have talked about developing housing for LGBT youth, but we delivered on the creation of the Wanda Alston House, the first transitional housing program for homeless LGBT youth. We released the first-ever comprehensive health report and the first-ever biased-crime report for the lesbian, gay, and bisexual community.
We created a comprehensive health curriculum that includes information about sexual orientation, established a progressive response to bullying in the schools, hosted three LBGT economic development summits that lead to fifteen LGBT-owned businesses gaining access to the supply schedule, and have hosted several events about
LGBT adoption.
The area that we’ve made the most progress in is our fight against HIV/AIDS. We took on a system that was struggling to improve from years of dysfunction and mismanagement in the early 1990s. I am proud of the results that we have delivered, and I am confident that we will continue to make strong advances in reforming our health services agencies. We’ve published three comprehensive state of the art surveillance reports including one that specifically tracks the HIV/AIDS in the gay male community.
We have significantly bolstered our HIV/AIDS prevention efforts by distributing over 3.2 million condoms in 2009 and expect to surpass 4 million in 2010. We have increased the number of people getting into treatment within the first three months of diagnosis, doubled the number of people receiving HIV medication, doubled the number of people taking HIV tests annually and now have 7 out of 8 hospitals offering routine HIV tests as part of emergency care.
I am proud of the many advances my administration has made in advancing LGBT equality and improving the lives of our residents. I look forward to another four years of continued progress.
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