World Pride, an annual event held in a different major world city each year, begins in the greater Washington, D.C., region this week. As among its contributions to the global fete, the News-Press is profiling here a long-time LGBTQ activist and staunch cornerstone of the D.C. area’s thriving gay community, senior correspondent for the Washington Blade newspaper, Louis Matthew Chibbaro, Jr., known throughout this region as Lou. 

Chibbaro has been a steady mainstay in the evolution of LGBTQ journalism to this day since he started writing for the Blade as a volunteer and under a pseudonym, as most contributors did back then, in 1974.

Newspapers and safe places to assemble have been of historic importance to the growth of the movement for equal rights and self-esteem since the mid-1960s when the first public demonstrations of openly LGBTQ persons were held in front of the White House in D.C., led by the late Frank Kameny and Lilli Vincenz. Vincenz, a staunch friend of the News-Press in her last decades when her partner, Nancy Davis, was an employee here, is recognized as a co-founder of the Blade in 1969.

Newspapers were recognized in the earliest days of the post-Stonewall Riots gay movement in 1969 as important in this way and their explosion within the community nationwide in the years immediately following reflected that. (On the west coast, this writer as a young seminary graduate was a member of the Berkeley, Calif., collective that produced the first edition of the Gay Sunshine newspaper and wrote its first ever editorial in 1970.)

Chibbaro’s story has been chronicled in a 30-minute made-for-TV documentary, “Lou’s Legacy: A Reporter’s Life at the Washington Blade,” that will be premiered as part of World Pride tonight, Thursday, May 29, at 6:30 p.m. at the Martin Luther King Library in downtown D.C. followed by a panel discussion with Chibbaro, Blade publisher Lynne Browne and the film’s creator, Emmy-nominated director Patrick Sammon. It will be aired on Maryland Public TV and WETA (Saturday, June 21 at 8 p.m. and Monday, June June 23 at 9:30 p.m. next month and also streamed.)

Growing up on Long Island and graduating from the New York State University at  Brockport in 1971, he was an on-campus environmental activist which brought him to D.C. after graduation to gain employment in that advocacy field.

It was here that he first “came out,” acting on his gay impulse to begin seeking out others like himself at the Pier 9 bar, a converted southwest D.C. warehouse, and very soon after he contributed his first article to the Blade, which at the time had just evolved from a single-page mimeographed sheet to a monthly print newspaper that had grown in circulation from about 500 distributed at a dozen sites at its inception to 4,000 distributed at 35 locations in D.C.

It was not until the mid-1980s that Chibbaro came on as a paid staffer at the paper, and in the ensuing years his steady and accurate reporting became an indispensable glue for the LGBTQ community here as it navigated the difficult times of the AIDS pandemic and ongoing institutional opposition. Chibbaro came within the completion of a single course from the achievement of a Master’s Degree in journalism at the American University of D.C.

In an interview with the News-Press last week, he singled out his coverage of the trial of one of the men convicted of murder in the case of the nationally-focused death of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming, in October 1998. While one of the two assailants pleaded guilty, the other, Aaron McKinney, faced trial in October 1999 and was found guilty. 

It was an incredibly emotional scene in the courtroom in Laramie, where Chibbaro was sent by his Blade editors to report, Chibbaro recounted, and the key moment was during the sentencing stage when McKinney faced the prospect of the death penalty. The father of Shepard, Dennis Shepard, took the stand and argued that McKinney be spared the death penalty. McKinney was sentenced to life imprisonment and he along with co-assailant Russell Henderson continue to serve out their terms to this day.

Dennis Shepard’s statement had the entire room spellbound and has remained a powerful testimony to this day as Matthew’s parents, Judy and Dennis Shepard, have carried on a pro-LGBTQ foundation in their son’s memory, Chibbaro pointed out.

Other big stories that Chibbaro has covered include a murder at the Iwo Jima memorial and major movement events, like the first Gay Pride event in D.C. in 1975, along with coverage of seminal events relevant to the LGBTQ community in elections, including memorably for him the 1976 election of Jimmy Carter.

As Chibbaro continues his work to the present, his articles from 1980-2001 have been housed in the Special Collections Research Center of the Gelman Library at the George Washington University in D.C.

Among a heavy schedule of World Pride events was a colorful kickoff concert last weekend of the Gay Men’s Chorus held at the Falls Church Episcopal after a performance scheduled for the Kennedy Center had to be cancelled following a Trump administration takeover of the center leadership.

On July 15, the News-Press’ Benton will be among those feted by the Washington Business Journal at an event at its 2025 LGBTQ+ Business of Pride award nominees and both Chibarro and Benton will be among those honored at an event June 5 for Forever Capital Pride Heroes.

Among the many other events during World Pride Month in this area, an outdoor exhibition open from now through July 6 at the Freedom Plaza in downtown D.C. is now on display that chronicles the local LGBTQ+  Pride movement and how the pickets and and protests of the 1960s led to the vibrant celebrations of the 2020s. According to the Rainbow History Project, organizers of the exhibition, it “disrupts the popularly held belief that the LGBTQ+ rights movement began with the Stonewall Riots in 1969 New York.

“While this pushback to police violence was vital, DC’s LGBTQ+ history of resistance actually predates the Stonewall Riots,” a statement asserts. “The exhibition recognizes a picket, four years before the Stonewall Riots, where 10 members of the Mattachine Society of Washington marched with signs in front of the White House.”

World Pride begins officially with a free concert this Saturday at Nationals Park, gates opening at 5:30 p.m. A parade kicking off at 14th and T and winding to Pennsylvania and 19th will commence at 2 p.m. Saturday, June 7 and a street festival on Pennsylvania Ave. will be held Saturday and Sunday, June 7 and 8.

Numerous other events, including a Pride on the Pier hosted by the Blade Friday June 6 from 3-10 p.m. at 101 District Square at the Wharf in D.C., are also slated. 

This Tuesday night, an even dozen Falls Church citizens came forward to accept a proclamation at the F.C. City Council meeting acknowledging June 2025 as Pride Month in the Little City. It marked the first time that more than one person has accepted the annual declaration from the City Council here.