D.C. lost yet another LGBTQ nightlife venue on Tuesday with the announcement that Cobalt, located at 1639 R St. NW, has closed its doors for good.
Owner Eric Little confirmed the closure in a message posted to the club’s Facebook page.
“It’s no secret that the building that housed Cobalt and the adjacent property recently sold,” Little wrote. “With the combination of the sale of the buildings, the start of demolition, costly infrastructure repairs and upgrades that we would need to shoulder to remain open for the short remainder of our lease (without an opportunity to extend the lease) along with a slow decline in sales we decided it was the right time to close the business to focus on our other businesses and some personal family needs.”
Even prior to Little’s announcement, speculation about the club’s fate had swirled for weeks, and hit fever-pitch after a photo was posted to Facebook showing the club’s main entrance door with a sign reading “CLOSED FOR WATER PROLBEMS” (sic) posted on the glass.
In the Facebook post, Little thanked the customers and staff who contributed to the club during its two-decade run, saying he was proud of Cobalt’s legacy.
“The gay bar industry has been changing over the past few years with the popularity of dating apps, changing social norms, and pop-up parties/events at non-gay venues and we applaud these evolutions as positive progress,” Little wrote. “And it is our hope that patrons will encourage these businesses to support the greater LGBT community to continue the good work and social change that Cobalt and all of the many other gay bars, restaurants, and businesses (past and present) have worked so hard to achieve.
“We understand the property will be redeveloped into residential use and we wish the new building owners and future residents the best of success and hope that the buildings will bring them all as much joy and happiness as it has brought the entire Cobalt family.”
“We, as human beings, need to dance,” says Luke Howard. “All cultures have dancing and music. Wherever you go in the world, there will be some type of music that will have some kind of dancing to it.
“And DJing is just a contemporary version of that,” he continues, “because back in the day, people would've played fiddles or guitars and drums. And they would've got together, and they would've sang songs and they would've danced around in all cultures. So, basically, all we're doing is continuing that need that we have as human beings to move our body to music that often has a beat to it.”
A Kentucky bill that sought to bar transgender people from teaching has failed.
State Sen. Gex ("Jay") Williams (R-Verona) introduced SB 351 in early March to prevent transgender people from obtaining or keeping teaching certifications.
Under the bill, anyone reported to state education officials as potentially transgender would have been required to undergo medical exams and submit the results to obtain or renew a teaching license.
The bill also would have barred teaching certificates for anyone "who has been treated for or diagnosed with any disorder that is excluded from the American with Disabilities Act of 1990 by a licensed medical professional, as these disorders were defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders at the time."
A Kansas judge has temporarily blocked the state from enforcing its law banning minors from accessing non-surgical transition-related treatments such as hormones or puberty blockers.
On May 15, Judge Carl Folsom III of the State District Court in Douglas County granted a temporary injunction blocking the state from enforcing the law, finding that it likely violated parents' rights to make decisions about their children's health and wellbeing.
In his 117-page ruling, Folsom -- who was appointed by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly -- wrote that transgender children were likely to suffer "irreparable harm" if the ban on transition-related hormonal treatments remained in effect. He also cited testimony asserting that gender-affirming, non-surgical treatments for minors are safe, effective, and medically credible.
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