Mayor Adrian Fenty will soon have a tough choice to make when it comes to selecting a new director of the Office for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Affairs. But the discussion about the post will probably be less intense than the battle among D.C. gay activists.

Darlene Nipper, who ran the office under Mayor Anthony A. Williams, left her post last week, according to Fenty administration sources. The jockeying within the gay community for Fenty’s attention—and the gay liaison slot—has begun.

Even before Nipper resigned last week, Fenty’s self-proclaimed link to the gay community, fundraiser and activist Peter Rosenstein, was working on a replacement for her. Few expected Nipper to be rehired by the Fenty team.

Weeks ago, the Fenty brain trust thought they had a consensus choice to lead the office: decorated lesbian activist Sheila Alexander-Reid. (Reid works as Washington City Paper’s business development manager.). But Reid decided against taking the job for personal reasons, Nipper was asked to stay on as interim director, and Fenty was left in the lurch.

Now Rosenstein and rival elements in the gay community are facing off.

Sources say Rosenstein is pushing Jeff Marootian, 27, the director of the Metropolitan Police Department’s community partnerships program. Marootian is a former advisory neighborhood commissioner who has been with the D.C. government since 2003.

In an interview, Rosenstein said during his conversations with top Fenty staff he’s discussed only the attributes of a good director, and he’s not recommending anyone for the job.

Others in the gay community who have met with top Fenty officials are pushing Khadijah Tribble, an activist who serves on the board of Women in the Life Association, a nonprofit group started by Reid. Tribble also works with a variety of other boards in the city and previously worked at Covenant House.

Tribble’s detractors are already hard at work trying to undermine her nascent candidacy, pointing out that her commitment to the District has been fairly recent. On her resume, Tribble lists her address on 24th Street SE. But according to public records searches, she has no residence in the District. Bill O’Field, a spokesperson for the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics reports his records search revealed no one named Khadijah Tribble on the D.C. voter rolls.

“I felt very confident that I will meet the requirements of residency,” says Tribble, who claims to have lived in Ward 8 for about a year and a half. “The fact is, I live and work and do my business in the District of Columbia.”

A call placed to the Prince George’s County, Md., number listed for Tribble was answered by a young man, who identified himself as Tribble’s son. “Where I decide to spend my personal time isn’t anyone’s business,” says Tribble.

Funny thing is, the Fenty team is the only one not stressing out about having to decide between Marootian and Tribble. “We haven’t interviewed anyone for the position,” says Carrie S. Brooks, Fenty’s spokesperson.

From The Lavender Scare by David K. Johnson (University of Chicago Press, 294 pp.):

The caption: “Lieutenant Roy Blick, head of the Washington, D.C., vice squad, oversaw the arrest of hundreds of gay men and lesbians. In March 1950 he told a congressional committee that Washington was home to five thousand homosexuals and estimated that three-quarters of them worked for the federal government. (Courtesy AP/Wide World Photos.)”

Yesterday, Mayor Anthony A. Williams asked Bishop Alfred A. Owens Jr. to apologize for recent toxic remarks disparaging gay men. He said a mea culpa was the only way he could allow Owens to remain an honorary member of the mayor’s interfaith council.

Today, the bishop delivered. Sort of.

In a letter in today’s Washington Post, Owens employs the classic I’m-sorry-if-I-offended-anyone apology. The bishop writes that, “During my Palm Sunday sermon, I used words that the D.C. Coalition of Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Men and Women has denounced as offensive. It was not my purpose to wound anyone or discriminate against any group, and I apologize for any offense.”

After outlining efforts by his Greater Mount Calvary Holy Church to address HIV-AIDS prevention and his support for those who wanted help in pursuing a heterosexual orientation, Owens went on to write: “I will not submit my sermons through political filters for fear of recrimination by political or social groups. On any given Sunday, I preach about love, faith and holiness, and, yes, about hell and sin. For that, I offer no apology.”

The way the mayor sees things, Owens hasn’t quite delivered enough. “It was a good first step,” Williams says. “I am very heartened to see that he’s taken the step.” But the mayor stopped short of saying the Bishop is now an honorary Interfaith Council member in good standing. He characterized the letter as, “a little bit ambiguous.”

Williams says that’s why he wants to sit down for a chat with the bishop and repeated his public request for a meeting. The mayor says he has not heard from the bishop about any kind of get-together.

LISTEN
Excerpt from Owens’ April 9 sermon (MP3 format, 3 MB)
(Photo by Darrow Montgomery)

Bishop Alfred A. Owens Jr.—pastor of the Greater Mount Calvary Holy Church, one of the city’s largest congregations—had a clever theme for his April 9 service. His sermon was titled “Fan or Follower!” Owens, who is an honorary member of Mayor Anthony A. Williams’ Interfaith Council, delivered a message urging congregants to be move beyond being fans of the church to becoming followers of the righteous path.

He also made clear that one segment of his congregation is not welcome on that path: gay men.

During a dramatic presentation on how strong men follow the teachings of the church, he pointed out that “real men” for the Lord are straight. “It takes a real man to confess Jesus as Lord and Savior. I’m not talking about no faggot or no sissy,” said Owens on a church tape recording. “Wait a minute! Let all the real men come on down here and take a bow,” he said, inviting them to the front of the church. “All the real men—I’m talking about the straight men,” he preached. “You ain’t funny and you ain’t cranky, but you’re straight. Come on down here and walk around and praise God that you are straight. Thank him that you’re straight. All the straight men that’s proud to be a Christian, that’s proud to be a man of God.”

Owens did not return calls seeking comment.

One attendee of the service, who describes himself as a gay, says the house was packed for the Palm Sunday service. He and “about 20” other closeted gay men in the crowd, he says, felt they had no choice but to join Owens’ spontaneous celebration of straightness.

He calls the bishop’s message “offensive” because it suggests “it is impossible to be gay and serve God.” He also objects to Owens’ use of “faggot” and “sissy” to describe gay men. “If I wasn’t delivered,” he says, “I wouldn’t have been delivered on that day.”

The Bishop’s anti-gay rhetoric is no surprise coming from the No. 2 man in the conservative Mount Calvary Holy Church of America Inc. Gay activists say Owens has a history of homophobic sermons, but add that his congregation include numerous gay members.

Sermons less than welcoming to the gay community are nothing new in D.C. The Rev. Willie Wilson of Anacostia’s Union Temple Baptist Church delivered a strident anti-gay sermon last summer, warning that lesbianism was about to “take over our community.” His comments stoked a outrage in the gay community and prompted many city leaders to denounce the politically powerful minister.

Owens doesn’t share Wilson’s loaded political history, but his sermon celebrating straight men adds fuel to the simmering battle between the city’s conservative churches and the politically powerful gay community.

Owens’ 7,000-member Northeast congregation has long been a regular election-season campaign stop for city politicians, even though most members of the church live in Prince George’s County, Md. Last month, Owens offered up his church as the venue for Ward 5 Councilmember and mayoral candidate Vincent Orange’s “State of Ward 5” address. The D.C. Council also passed the “Bishop Alfred A. Owens Jr. Recognition Resolution” in 2004, for his church’s work in the community on drug treatment and HIV/AIDS prevention.

Ward 8 activist Philip Pannell says the bishop “has a longstanding record of homophobia. I literally will not step in his church,” says Pannell, who is gay.

The mayor’s religious advisor, Dr. Susan Newman, says Owens is a non-voting “honorary member” of the council, based on his leadership post in the national Mount Calvary church. Owens, she says, has not attended a meeting of the council for more than a year. “He’s not one of the high-profile, politically active pastors that you might see on the news,” she says. Newman says the sermons of any Interfaith Council member do not reflect the views of the mayor’s council.

Last Friday, the University of the District of Columbia’s law school held its annual fundraising auction. The items up for bids ranged from the pedestrian—four Capitals tickets, breakfast for two at the Tabard Inn—to the not-so-pedestrian—lunch with Councilmember Phil Mendelson, a tour of Ward 8 led by Philip Pannell, and a citywide gay-bar crawl, also with Pannell.

But the offbeat prizes weren’t exactly a cash cow: Pannell, executive director of the Anacostia Coordinating Council and a former mayoral special assistant for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender affairs, was bummed at the paltry sums his prizes garnered—the Ward 8 tour earned $55 for the school, the club romp $60. “It obviously shows I’m a cheap date,” says Pannell. “I would probably spend as much on gas as the person spent on the tour.”

But no need for Pannell to get too down on himself: The Mendelson lunch netted only $50. Says Pannell: “I beat Phil Mendelson. That’s a good thing, I guess.”