Lou Chibbaro Jr.

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U.S. Catholic theologians call for LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections

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More than 750 of the nation’s leading Catholic theologians, church leaders, scholars, educators, and writers released a joint statement on Sept. 14 expressing strong support for nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people.

The six-page theological statement, “A Home for All: A Catholic Call for LGBTQ Non-Discrimination,” was scheduled to be published along with the names of its 759 signatories as a four-page advertisement on Sept. 17 in the National Catholic Reporter, a newspaper widely read by Catholic clergy and laypeople.

The statement was initiated by New Ways Ministry, a Mount Rainier, Md., based Catholic group that advocates for equality for LGBTQ people within the church and society at large.

“As Catholic theologians, scholars, church leaders, writers, and ministers, we affirm that Catholic teaching presents a positive case for ending discrimination against LGBTQ people,” the statement says. “We affirm the Second Vatican Council’s demand that ‘any kind of social or cultural discrimination…must be curbed and eradicated,’” it says.

“We affirm that Catholic teaching should not be used to further oppress LGBTQ people by denying rights rooted in their inherent human dignity and in the church’s call for social equality,” the statement adds.

The statement notes that its signers recognize that a “great debate” is currently taking place within the Catholic Church about whether same-gender relationships and transgender identities should be condoned or supported.

“That is a vital discussion for the future of Catholicism, and one to which we are whole-heartedly committed,” the statement continues. “What we are saying in this statement, however, is relatively independent of that debate, and the endorsers of this statement may hold varied, and even opposing, opinions on sexual and gender matters,” it says.

Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministries executive director, said his organization and the signers of the statement feel the issue of nondiscrimination for LGBTQ people can and should be supported by Catholic leaders and the church itself even if some are not yet ready to support same-sex marriage and sexual and gender identity matters.

“LGBTQ non-discrimination is being debated at all levels in our society, and the Catholic perspective on this is often misrepresented, even by some church leaders,” DeBernardo said. “Catholics who have studied and reflected deeply on this topic agree that non-discrimination is the most authentic Catholic position,” he said. 

DeBernardo said those who helped draft the statement decided it would be best to limit it to a theological appeal and argument for LGBTQ equality and non-discrimination and not to call for passage of specific legislation such as the Equality Act, the national LGBTQ civil rights bill pending in the U.S. Congress.

The Equality Act calls for amending existing federal civil rights laws to add nondiscrimination language protecting LGBTQ people in areas such as employment, housing, and public accommodations. The U.S. House approved the legislation, but the Senate has yet to act on it.

“We wanted this to be a theological statement, not a political statement,” DeBernardo said.

He said organizers of the project to prepare the statement plan to send it, among other places, to the Vatican in Rome and to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has expressed opposition to the Equality Act.

Among the key signers of the statement were 242 administrators, faculty, and staff from Sacred Heart University, a Catholic college in Bridgeport, Conn. New Ways Ministries says the statement was circulated by the school’s administration and eight of its top leaders, including President John Petillo, are among the signers.

Some of the prominent writers who signed the statement include Sister Helen Prejean, author of “Dead Man Walking;” Richard Rodriquez, author of “Hunger of Memory;” Gary Wills, author of “Lincoln at Gettysburg;” and Gregory Maguire, author of “Wicked.”

The full text of the statement and its list of signatories can be accessed at the New Ways Ministry website.

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Hong Kong Gay Games postponed for one year

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Officials with Gay Games Hong Kong 2022, the committee organizing the quadrennial international LGBTQ sports event scheduled to take place in Hong Kong in November 2022, announced on Sept. 15 that the Gay Games will be postponed for one year due to concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic.

“After much internal deliberation and in consultation with the Federation of Gay Games (FGG) leadership and board, it has been decided that Gay Games 11, originally scheduled for November 2022, will be postponed to November 2023 in Hong Kong,” a statement released by the organizing committee says.

“This decision has been made primarily due to the unpredictable progression of COVID variants and the corresponding travel restrictions that continue to make it challenging for participants from around the world to make plans to travel to Hong Kong,” the statement says.

“With many parts of the world, including many across Asia, still struggling to contain the virus and facing uneven access to vaccines, we felt that delaying the Games until November 2023 will enhance the likelihood of delivering on our promise to have the Hong Kong Games serve as a beacon of hope for the wider community across the region,” it says.

In 2017, when the U.S.-based Federation of Gay Games selected Hong Kong to host the Games it predicted at least 12,000 athletes would participate in 36 sports at the Hong Kong Games. It also predicted that at least 75,000 spectators from throughout the world would turn out in Hong Kong to watch the games and participate in at least 20 accompanying arts and cultural events.

In its statement this week announcing the one-year postponement, the Gay Games Hong Kong committee also referred to opposition to the event expressed by some officials with the local Hong Kong government who are said to be aligned with China.

The Washington Post reported last month that one pro-Beijing lawmaker called the Gay Games “disgraceful” and a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” that could violate a strict security law imposed on Hong Kong by China that has led to the arrest and imprisonment of many pro-democracy protesters over the past year. Some have expressed concern that Gay Games spectators from Europe, North America or elsewhere could be subjected to arrest if they make statements critical of China during the Gay Games cultural events.

“Anti-inclusion objections to Gay Games Hong Kong from a small but vocal minority have galvanized the resolve of our 300 volunteers, and brought overwhelming support from the general public, business community and establishment legislators,” the Gay Games Hong Kong statement says. “Mrs. Carrie Lam, Hong Kong Chief Executive, has also expressed her support for the spirit of inclusion and diversity of the games,” according to the statement. 

“We would like to thank everyone for their early support and will ride this wave of positivity to the most successful hosting of Gay Games 11 Hong Kong in 2023,” the statement concludes.

D.C. and Guadalajara, Mexico were the two finalist cities competing with Hong Kong to host the 2022 Gay Games. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser traveled to Paris in 2017 to join officials with Team DC, the local LGBTQ sports organization that helped prepare D.C.’s bid to host the Games, to deliver D.C.’s final but unsuccessful presentation before the FGG in support of its bid to host the Games.

Under FGG rules and past practice, the finalist city or cities that competed to host the Gay Games are given an opportunity to reinstate their bid in the unlikely event that the city selected to host the Games can no longer serve as the host city.

Brent Minor, executive director of Team D.C., who served as chair of D.C.’s Gay Games Bid Committee in 2017, did not respond to a request from the Blade for comment on whether Team D.C. would consider renewing its effort to push for D.C. to host the Gay Games if Hong Kong were unable to remain as the host city.

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HIV research sped development of COVID vaccine

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Since 1996, Carl W. Dieffenbach, who holds a Ph.D. in biophysics from John Hopkins University, has served as director of the Division of AIDS at the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, which is an arm of the U.S. National Institutes of Health or NIH.

In a June 10 interview with the Washington Blade, Dieffenbach gave an update on the extensive, ongoing research into the development of an HIV/AIDS vaccine that he has helped to coordinate for many years, including current human trials for a prospective AIDS vaccine taking place in the U.S., South America, and Africa.

One thing he feels passionate about is a development not widely reported in the media reports about the successful development of the COVID-19 vaccine. According to Dieffenbach, the extensive research into an AIDS vaccine in recent and past years, while not yet successful in yielding an effective AIDS vaccine, helped lay the groundwork for the rapid development of the different versions of a COVID vaccine.

“Because my division runs the largest clinical trials program in the word, we jumped in with both feet to help with coronavirus disease for both vaccines and drugs and things like that,” he said. “And the platforms that were used – the way they are making the coronavirus vaccines – the RNA vaccines with Moderna – were first piloted by NIH and Moderna to try to make an HIV vaccine,” Dieffenbach says.

“So, in many ways, the work for the past 25 years that we’ve done in HIV vaccines sped the development of coronavirus vaccines,” he told the Blade. “And now it’s time to take what we’ve learned from coronavirus and take it back to HIV and start afresh or continue with what we have and build upon from what we have learned.”

Dieffenbach says one reason the development of a COVID vaccine came about before an AIDS vaccine, despite more than 20 years of AIDS vaccine research, is that the HIV virus is far more complex than the coronavirus, especially its ability to infect and remain embedded in the infected person for life. 

“Back in 2007 we had the first hint that an AIDS vaccine might be possible with a study called RV144,” Dieffenbach says. “We spent 10 years trying to replicate that, and we just completed that study – a study called HVTN702. And it showed no efficacy,” he said, meaning it did not work.

“So that was a big disappointment to us,” he says “But in the meantime, we had pushed forward with the J&J [Johnson and Johnson pharmaceutical company] vaccine and are pretty far along. We’ll see what happens. We should know in the next several months whether the N26 version of an AIDS vaccine, and HIV vaccine works or not,” he says. “We’re very close to an answer.”

Washington Blade: Where do things stand in the development of an HIV/AIDS vaccine in light of Dr. Fauci’s statement a few weeks ago that the development of a COVID-19 vaccine could provide a boost to developing an AIDS vaccine?

Carl Dieffenbach: Sure. So, maybe I can start by introducing myself to you as a way of putting this into a context.

So, I’m the director of the Division of AIDS, which is the largest funder of HIV research in the world. And I report directly to Dr. Fauci. So, I’m responsible for all AIDS, all the time. And that is my passion and purpose in life. Part of that is working toward a safe, effective, and durable HIV vaccine, which has been one of the two most challenging questions left in science today. The other is a cure. They are connected in some ways.

So, with that as background, when coronavirus disease came along – because my division runs the largest clinical trials program in the world – we jumped in with both feet to help with coronavirus disease for both vaccines and drugs and things like that. And the platforms that were used – the way they are making the coronavirus vaccines – the RNA vaccines with Moderna were first piloted by NIH and Moderna to try to make an HIV vaccine. So, we’ve being working on that platform with Moderna for several years.

The leadership at Pfizer used to be part of a group at Penn, where we were also working with them. The J&J vaccine – we currently have in two Phase III clinical trials for HIV, one in sub-Saharan Africa, specifically in young women and the other one in the Americas in men who have sex with men and transgender individuals. Both of those Phase IIIs are moving along. The women’s study is fully enrolled. The men’s study was hit hard by COVID, but we worked through and will be fully enrolled by September.

One other vaccine just to talk about is the Oxford vaccine, the AstraZeneca vaccine. That is also using a platform at Oxford University, which has been used for HIV. So, in many ways, the work for the past 25 years that we’ve done in HIV vaccines sped the development of coronavirus vaccines. And now it’s time to take what we’ve learned from coronavirus and take it back to HIV and start afresh or continue with what we have and build upon from where we have learned.

Blade: That’s very interesting. But can we assume, then, from the clinical trials that have taken place for an HIV vaccine that they did not succeed in providing the immunity needed for an effective vaccine? 

Dieffenbach: So, that’s exactly the problem we have. Back in 2007 we had the first hint that an AIDS vaccine might be possible with a study called RV144. We spent 10 years trying to replicate that, and we just completed that study – a study called HVTN702. And it showed no efficacy. So, that was a big disappointment to us. But in the meantime, we had pushed forward with the J&J vaccine and are pretty far along. We’ll see what happens. We should know in the next several months whether the N26 version of an AIDS vaccine, and HIV vaccine works or not. We’re very close to an answer.

Blade: So, the human trials are ongoing.

Dieffenbach: Oh, again – the study in young women in sub-Sahara Africa is fully enrolled. The men’s study will be fully enrolled in September. So, we have fought through the coronavirus epidemic to maintain, to nurse these trials along to make sure with the $100 million or so we’ve invested, that we didn’t want them to go down the drain literally because we lost too many people for follow-up. So, this was a herculean effort that has gone on all the time trying to do the vaccine studies for coronavirus disease, which we were also incredibly successful in.

Blade: Can we assume all of the people participating in the studies were HIV negative?

Dieffenbach: Yes, they’re HIV negative. They are people who are at risk. And also, in South America, for example, the major countries we’re in are Peru and Brazil. And they’ve had a strong research culture with us, going back more than a decade. For example, both of those countries played big roles in our studies of pre-exposure prophylaxis. A study called I-PREX that demonstrated that in men who have sex with men that [a PrEP drug] works well to prevent HIV acquisition in seronegative men who have sex with men.

So, we’ve been there. This is a really good setup for the countries, for the citizens that are in those countries that want to avail themselves to the research that has benefited everybody.

 Blade: Among those who are participating in these ongoing AIDS vaccine trials, can we assume they cannot be taking the PrEP anti-retroviral drugs that have been shown to be highly effective in preventing HIV infection?

Dieffenbach: So, what we’ve done is we – everything is by conversation. So, when somebody who is interested in the study comes in, we talk to them. What is your chief interest in being in this study? And a lot of people want to be in the study because then they can access PrEP. They want to make it easier to get a hold of pre-exposure prophylaxis. They feel that is the best way that they can protect themselves.

So, in that situation, what we do is we take those people and link them to PrEP services where they can easily get PrEP in their community. So, first it’s taking care of those people. Then there are people who really have no interest in PrEP. And we actually counsel them every time they come in for a study. Are you sure you don’t want to access PrEP? And those are the people we then say, if you’re not interested in PrEP, what do you think about participating in a vaccine trial?

Because they’re the ones who have the most freedom of thought. They don’t have an opinion about the vaccine or about PrEP. So, those are the people we’ve been focusing on and enrolling. So, we’ve been very careful to make sure that if people wanted PrEP they not only have access, but they didn’t feel like somehow having to trade something in order to get it. The freedom to join a study should be a free choice. And it shouldn’t be a coercive thing to get PrEP. So, we just took that off the table and said if you’re truly interested in PrEP we can get you PrEP and make sure that was available. 

Blade: So, in that case, if they choose PrEP they would not be in the vaccine trial?

Dieffenbach: You know, it’s interesting that you ask it in that way. Because you have relationships with your community, many of the investigators have reported that people will say, you know I tried PrEP and it wasn’t for me. It made me gaseous. It upset my stomach. I wasn’t myself. I tried it. I couldn’t make it work for me. I want to stop PrEP. Am I still eligible for the [vaccine] study? And the answer is of course. Many people are very happy on PrEP and they come in for visits occasionally and say this is working for me and just have the relationship with the doctors there, so it works. So, again, it’s about maintaining contact with your communities.

Blade: Can you tell a little about what happens next after people become part of an HIV vaccine trial. Do you have to keep in touch with these people, and do they have to get an HIV test periodically?

Dieffenbach: Exactly. So, the vaccine consists of a series of injections. It’s a mixture of vector systems that delivers a series of encoded HIV genes that are specifically designed to induce very broad immunity. There’s a whole computer-based process to design those components of the vaccine to make sure that it has sequence similarities with all the different versions of HIV circulating in the globe. And then at the end there is a protein boost. And we carry this out.

So, about every three to four months people come in. They get a shot. They fill out questionnaires. They give a blood sample. And they’re tested for HIV and are given a boost or a placebo. And they stay in touch with the clinic. They come in and out of the clinic. And the retention is quite high in these situations because people really like having the attention of the clinic available to them. It’s part of the community.

Blade: So, they go to a clinic for all of this?

Dieffenbach: It’s a research clinic. It’s not like a state-run health clinic. It’s a research clinic. Clinic is just a term for where people are seen.

Blade: Are any of these AIDS vaccine trials that are going on taking place in the United States?

Dieffenbach: Yes. So, the study is called Mosaico. And it’s HVTN706. And we have sites throughout the United States as well as South America. But that study is limited to men who have sex with men – the one in the United States.

Blade: Is it broader than just men who have sex with men in other countries?

Dieffenbach: No, so we decided to really focus on specific at-risk populations. So, in the Americas we chose to focus on men who have sex with men and transgender individuals. And sub-Saharan Africa we focused on young women because that is the target of the study population. So, 705 is all women in sub-Saharan Africa. And in the Americas in North and South America it is all men who have sex with men and transgender individuals.

Blade: Can we assume that the researchers that are doing these studies have a sensitivity of LGBTQ people? Is there still an issue where people worry about being outed as being gay or transgender?

Dieffenbach: So, many of the sites that we work with have been part of our system for over 20 years. And so, they are trusted members of the LGBTQ community within their cities and states. And ‘states’ is a literal term where it’s a state in Colombia or Peru or Brazil. And so, it is part of the fabric of the gay community in these places. Just like in San Francisco the San Francisco health clinic and the DCF clinics are part and parcel of everything the community does there.

And so, the lead physician in San Francisco is Susan Buchbinder. She has been a leader in health in this population for over 25 years or actually closer to 30 years at this point. We’re all getting old. Do you know that? So, we have been at this a very long time. And really have tried to build structures that are durable and therefore are reliable to the community. And that’s where we go back to the same groups time after time.

Blade: Have the locations of the vaccine testing sites been released publicly?

Dieffenbach: Yes, all of that is publicly available on clinicaltrials.gov. If you go into clinicaltrials.gov and search HVTN705 or HVTN706 you will get a version of the protocol, all the times it’s been modified, where we are – the protocol. All of that is public knowledge and available to you. HVTN705 is the women’s study. HVTN706 is the men’s study.

Blade: Is there a timeframe for when these latest vaccine studies might be completed?

Dieffenbach: I think within the next several months. We will get an answer out of the women’s study and then the men’s study is probably a year away. We were slowed a little bit because of COVID. We actually had to pause enrollment for several months. But we’re back on track.

Blade: Isn’t there a parallel research effort for an HIV/AIDS cure?

Dieffenbach: Yes, we have a very large program in cure research. It is a lot earlier in the discovery process and so it’s still very ‘researchy.’ And we have a very large program called the Martin Delany Collaboratories for Cure Research. Martin Delany was an activist who really pushed NIH in so many wonderful ways to really take the need for a cure seriously. His argument was a cure is the next logical step after effective anti-retroviral therapy. You cannot stop with one pill once a day. You’ve got to keep going. And he was pretty persistent. And unfortunately, he died several years go and we just thought the best way to honor him, and his memory was to name a program after him.

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U.N. Agency Says Sex Workers Hit Hard by Coronavirus Pandemic

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The COVID-19 pandemic is causing sex workers throughout the world, including in the U.S. and the D.C. area, to experience hardship, a total loss of income and increased discrimination and harassment, according to the United Nations agency UNAIDS and the Global Network of Sex Work Projects. 

“As sex workers and their clients self-isolate, sex workers are left unprotected, increasingly vulnerable and unable to provide for themselves and their families,” the two international groups said in an April 8 joint statement. 

“Sex worker-led organizations from all regions are reporting a lack of access to national social protection schemes and exclusion from emergency social protection measures being put in place for other workers, particularly where sex work is criminalized,” the statement says. 

“Wherever and whenever possible, sex workers are responsibly self-isolating in response to governments’ calls,” it says. “However, when they are excluded from COVID-19 social protection responses, sex workers are faced with putting their safety, their health and their lives at increased risk just to survive.” 

Cyndee Clay, executive director of the D.C. sex worker advocacy group HIPS, said HIPS is planning to start an emergency fund to help sex workers survive financially at a time when their income has nearly disappeared and they are ineligible for unemployment insurance benefits available to other workers. 

Information about how to contribute to the fund is available on the HIPS website hips.org, Clay said. 

Clay said many HIPS clients are LGBT people who are homeless and do sex work as a means of survival. 

Like other nonprofit organizations and businesses in the D.C. area, Clay said HIPS has had to temporarily close its offices at 906 H St., N.E. due to the coronavirus social distancing requirements. She said the group is operating nearly all of its programs remotely through phone and online services. She said HIPS continues to arrange in-person visits for clients at a table setup on the sidewalk outside the HIPS offices on H Street. 

“We’ve modified our services schedule but everything that we’ve considered kind of essential is still happening,” Clay said.

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Convicted Murderer Sentenced to Death for Being Gay?

Charles Russell Rhines, gay news, Washington Blade

Charles Russell Rhines was convicted of murder in 1993. (Photo via South Dakota Department of Corrections)

The ACLU and four LGBT legal groups are asking a federal appeals court to allow a gay South Dakota man convicted of murder in 1993 to present new evidence showing that anti-gay bias may have motivated the jury to sentence him to death instead of life in prison.

Charles Russell Rhines, 62, has been held on death row in the South Dakota State Penitentiary for 25 years since his conviction and sentencing for the March 1992 stabbing death of a 22-year-old male employee at a Rapid City donut shop.

The Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Sept. 7 denied a motion filed by Rhines’ lawyers asking for a “certificate of appealability” that would allow him to present evidence of juror bias. The lawyers plan to file a second motion urging the court to reconsider the request, according to Ethan Rice, an attorney with Lambda Legal, one of the LGBT groups working on the case.

The other groups joining the ACLU in providing legal help for Rhines include GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and the National LGBT Bar Association.

The latest motion by Rhines’ lawyers came three months after the U.S. Supreme Court turned down a separate request they filed in the form of a petition asking the high court to take on Rhines’ case seeking to have his death sentence overturned on constitutional grounds of juror bias.

Similar to many U.S. death sentence cases, Rhines’ execution has been placed on hold for 25 years while his lawyers have filed multiple appeals in state and federal courts on a wide range of legal grounds.

His current defense team says strong evidence of possible juror bias due to Rhines’ sexual orientation did not surface until last year, when his lawyers tracked down several of the jurors years after the trial.

Some of the jurors signed sworn affidavits saying they considered during their deliberations at the trial in the sentencing phase of the case that as a gay man, sentencing Rhines to life in an all-male prison would be “sending him where he wants to go,” his lawyers stated in a court brief.

“One juror recalled that, during deliberations, there was ‘a lot of disgust’ about the fact that Mr. Rhines was gay,” the Amicus court brief says. “Another said that jurors knew Mr. Rhines was gay and ‘thought that he shouldn’t be able to spend his life with men in prison,’” the brief continues.

The brief says a note that the jurors sent to the judge during their sentencing deliberations “suggests that at least some members of the jury accepted the notion that life in prison without parole would be fun for a gay person – so much so that they felt it was necessary to impose the death sentence instead.”

“Our judicial system has safeguards to prevent bias based on sexual orientation,” said Ria Tabacco Mar, senior staff attorney for the ACLU LGBT & HIV Project in a statement. “Those safeguards failed for Mr. Rhines,” she said.

“Mr. Rhines’ case represents one of the most extreme forms of anti-LGBT bias can take,” said Rice of Lambda Legal. “Evidence suggests that he has been on death row for the past 25 years because he is a gay man.”

Court records show the murder committed by Rhines had nothing to do with his sexual orientation or the sexual orientation of the victim, who was straight. However, during his trial prosecutors disclosed that a young male witness who provided information to police linking Rhines to the donut shop at the time of the murder had been in a relationship with Rhines.

Pennington County, S.D., State’s Attorney Mark Vargo, who was one of the prosecutors during Rhines’ 1993 murder trial, told the Washington Blade this week that prosecutors did all they could to downplay Rhines’ sexual orientation at the trial. But he said prosecutors were required under court procedures to disclose the nature of the witness’s relationship with Rhines.

Vargo said Rhines’ defense attorneys arranged for Rhines’ sister to testify at the sentencing phase of the trial that Rhines “had a rough time as a teenager because he was gay.”  He said that testimony clearly alerted the jury to Rhines’ sexual orientation.

Attorney Shawn Nolan, a federal public defender who is part of Rhines’ current defense team, told the Blade that once Rhines’ defense lawyers learned in advance of the trial that prosecutors planned to disclose the nature of the witness and Rhines’ relationship during the trial, they had to ask each of the potential jurors about their views on homosexuality during the jury selection process.

“They had to do that to try to make sure the jurors would be as impartial as possible,” Nolan said.

Nolan noted that the defense attorneys at the trial arranged for Rhines’ sister to testify about Rhines’ experience growing up gay in response to the prosecution’s raising the issue of Rhines’ relationship with the young male witness.

According to police testimony at Rhines’ trial, the employee at the donut shop that Rhines was charged with fatally stabbing arrived at the shop while Rhines was burglarizing it after it had closed for the day.

Co-workers later found the employee, Donnivan Schaeffer, bound in a storeroom suffering from fatal stab wounds that law enforcement witnesses told the jury were inflicted by Rhines with a hunting knife to prevent the employee from identifying him as the burglar.

Vargo, the State’s Attorney who served as one of the prosecutors during the trial, called the murder a “brutal act” that shattered the lives of the victim’s family and fiancé. Vargo strongly disputes the defense lawyers’ current claims that the jury sentenced Rhines to death because of his sexual orientation.

“The idea that his conviction and sentence were based on anything other than the horrific acts that he committed I believe is ludicrous,” Vargo said in an interview with a Rapid City TV news station.

Defense lawyer Nolan said that if the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals once again denies the defense team’s motion for overturning Rhines’ death sentence the attorneys will take the case back to the U.S. Supreme Court. He said the attorneys would argue that a recent high court decision overturning a conviction on grounds of jurors’ racial bias is applicable to Rhines’ sexual orientation bias case.

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Lesbian Democrat to Challenge Carper for U.S. Senate in Delaware

Kerri Evelyn Harris, gay news, Washington Blade

Kerri Evelyn Harris is challenging Tom Carper in the U.S. Senate race in Delaware. (Photo courtesy of Facebook)

Lesbian Democrat Kerri Evelyn Harris, a community activist and member of the Delaware Human Relations Commission, announced last month that she will challenge Delaware’s incumbent U.S. Senator and longtime LGBT rights supporter Tom Carper in the Democratic primary in June.

In a development not widely reported outside of Delaware, Harris, 38, officially announced her candidacy on Feb. 20, the same day that gay financial services industry executive Eugene Truono, 59, announced he too was running for Carper’s Senate seat as a Republican.

The respective announcements by the two candidates represents the first known time an openly gay or lesbian candidate has run for a U.S. Senate seat in Delaware.

“I come from a diverse, multicultural family that instilled values of equality, opportunity, and respect for all people, regardless of background,” Harris said in a statement on her campaign website.

“My parents were advocates and organizers who taught us the value of public service,” the statement says. “My family history shaped the person I am today, and instilled these core values that continue to drive me.”

Harris told the Delaware News Journal she has been a Delaware resident “on and off” for 15 years. She currently lives in Dover and serves as a community organizer for several progressive advocacy groups, she told newspaper. She told the News Journal she has a seven-year-old daughter.

The write-up on her campaign website says she served in the U.S. Air Force for eight years and was involved with transporting troops from Dover to military bases in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa.

The write-up says she works in Wilmington as director of a program run by the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League called Achievement Matters, which helps disadvantaged middle school students.

Former Delaware Gov. Jack Markell appointed Harris to the state’s Human Relations Commission in October 2016, according to the commission’s records.

The commission, among other things, adjudicates discrimination complaints filed under procedures established by the state’s comprehensive human rights law that bans discrimination based on a wide range of categories, including race, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity.

Harris told the News Journal she declines to characterize herself in her race against Carper in the Democratic primary as a left-leaning progressive candidate compared to Carper’s record as a moderate Democrat. But her positions on a wide range of issues posted on her campaign website, including her support for a government run “single payer” plan for universal health insurance, are consistent with the Democrats’ progressive wing.

She has called Carper “a disconnected career politician who continues to vote against Delaware’s best interests to the benefit of corporate donors,” according to the News Journal.

Carper has disputed such characterizations, saying he has worked diligently for the interests of Delaware’s working class residents on a wide range of issues, including his advocacy for affordable health care. The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT rights organization, has given Carper a rating of 100, its highest rating, on LGBT-related issues.

Gay Democratic activist Peter Schott, who has served as president of Stonewall Democrats of Delaware, an LGBT political group, said he is not aware of Harris being involved with that group or other LGBT groups in the state.

In her statement on her campaign website Harris says she would be a strong advocate for civil and human rights.

“Together, we must work to dismantle structural and institutional discrimination such as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism,” her statement says. “Ending discrimination is not a zero-sum game, and as long as some of our neighbors are suffering from bigotry, none of us are truly free.”

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