WASHINGTON (DC News Now) — One of D.C.’s biggest advocates for the LGBTQ+ community has died.

Bernie Delia was one of the founding members of the Capital Pride Alliance.

For almost two decades he’s been involved in planning Pride, helping shape it into what it is today. It’s one of the reasons his passing is such a big loss for the community.

Delia has been an advocate for decades, one of the first openly gay appointees at the Justice Department during the Clinton administration and later an appellate attorney.

In 2006, he joined Whitman Walker’s Capital Pride planning committee and helped found the Capital Pride Alliance in 2008.

Vincent Slatt, director of archiving with the Rainbow History Project was also a founding member.

“Bernie never tried to flaunt his resume or his years of experience at anybody. He just treated all of us as equal voices at the table,” Slatt said.

Most recently, he served as co-chair for WorldPride 2025, something he envisioned for more than 15 years.    

“Everything that we do on the WorldPride side, we will do that in conjunction or thoughts of what he would be wanting to see, come to fruition,” said Ashley Smith, board president of the Capital Pride Alliance.

Smith said he was a friend and confidant and inspiration to the LGBTQ+ community.

“He would want to want us to always remember that pride is special because for there’s always one person, if not more, that it’s their first Pride, and they will always remember that. And that is something that he lived by,” Smith said.

The Capital Pride Alliance said Delia is reunited with his husband Doug and sweet angel Lani.

“He’s moved us very far along in terms of the Pride movement and our city. And now it’s up to the younger people to carry on in his footsteps,” Slatt said.

A celebration of life will be held soon to properly remember Delia.

He died of natural causes.

As part of its oral history archives, The Rainbow History Project interviewed Delia in January 2022. You can listen to it online or read the transcript.

As a female athlete, I know that my most precious resource is my time. I started swimming at a young age. By age 8, I was swimming competitively, and by late middle school, I was devoting at least 20 hours per week to swimming. I gave up countless Christmas holidays, weekends, and social events to work toward my goal of swimming at the Division I level. My experience is not uncommon or unique. All female athletes have made sacrifices, like I have, in order to be the best at their sport.

So why are so many serious female athletes winding our way around the country on a bus right now to be a part of the Our Bodies, Our Sports coalition? Why are we using our scarce and valuable time this way? Why are we asking people to join us in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday for a rally to Take Back Title IX?

For a couple of years now, the media have occasionally shared stories about men entering and winning women’s athletic competitions. You may have heard about runners in Connecticut, a woman’s fractured skull during a MMA fight, Lia Thomas facing Riley Gaines in the swimming pool. Yet these high-profile examples are just the tip of an already large and growing iceberg. According to SheWon.org, male athletes have entered hundreds of competitions across the country meant for women and taken spots on teams, medals and honors on award podiums, and even scholarships meant for female athletes.

Yet this already bad situation is about to get worse. The Biden administration has just rewritten Title IX, a law that was supposed to ensure that women have equal opportunity in education including athletics, to equate sex with “gender identity.” Basically, the new Title IX will require schools and athletic competitions to allow any athlete to opt into a competition that matches his or her self-proclaimed gender identity. So the best male athlete from last year can switch to competing in the women’s races this year if he wants to.

Claiming that somehow this “inclusion” of men doesn’t threaten female athletes is ridiculous. You don’t need to dig up scientific studies, though there are plenty providing this point. Just check out the world records for women’s and men’s competitions in every sport. You’ll see that men are consistently faster and stronger than women. That’s why there are women’s teams and men’s teams in the first place: If there weren’t, women simply wouldn’t win and often wouldn’t even make the team.

We can’t let the Biden administration’s Title IX rewrite destroy women’s sports. I hear terrible stories of young girls who are coming up in their sports who are questioning whether they should bother playing at all since they expect that they will have to play against boys and those boys will invariably beat them and may even physically injure them far more seriously than any female competitor would.

That makes me furious. It makes me mad enough that I gave up time to travel the nation and to speak out. This isn’t about being anti-transgender or anti-anyone. It’s about being pro-woman and pro-reality.

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I want men who identify as women to be treated with respect. Yet those men should also respect the perspective of women who have different bodies and aptitudes. We don’t get flooded with testosterone during puberty. We get breasts and our periods, which can make competitions harder, not easier. It’s not fair to women to disregard this unchangeable reality of our bodies. Women and girls deserve a level playing field and sports of our own.

I’m joining the Our Bodies, Our Sports Take Back Title IX summer bus tour because I know that, right now, what we are fighting for is bigger than any single competition. We are fighting for the future of women’s sports itself. I won’t stand by and watch as female athletes are pushed aside. And if you care about women and fairness, neither should you. Take a stand to defend women and take back Title IX.

Paula Scanlan is an ambassador with the Independent Women’s Forum and a former swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was a teammate of Lia Thomas.

Bay Area Meets the Bay

When a California couple took over this Kent Island property—which had belonged to the wife’s family—they built a new 7,200-square-foot house with plenty of indoor and outdoor space to continue the tradition of family gatherings.

Erin Paige Pitts, of Erin Paige Pitts Interiors in Annapolis, teamed up with the architecture firm Hammond Wilson and Focus Construction to design a space that’s “so entertaining-oriented,” Pitts says. “One of the unique things is the amount of access and flow from those main living areas, just rolling out onto the lawn.”

The home’s aesthetic reflects elements characteristic of both East and West Coasts. “Since they were moving from Northern California, they wanted a little bit of a California vibe,” Pitts says. She worked to blend that state’s style with Chesapeake touches: The home’s neutral, airy spaces are supplemented with striped textiles, jute rugs, and rope ottomans.

About half of the clients’ sizable wine collection, transported across the country, sits in their new wine room. “They really wanted to embrace the wine experience here,” says Pitts, who designed a modern yet cozy cellar with climatized bottle storage, as well as a tasting room with water­front views. A media room was another must, she says. “They use it all the time.”
 

Going With the Grain

This family compound—on more than 275 acres in Oxford, Maryland, along the Tred Avon River—consists of two houses plus a pool, a pool house, and an art studio, all designed by architect Reggie Gibson, of Reggie Gibson Architects, and constructed by Lundberg Builders in Stevensville.

Interior designer Laura Hodges, of Catonsville’s Laura Hodges Studio, played to the rustic setting by installing pine paneling in the cedar homes, which are less than 2,000 square feet each. So that the natural knots and grain patterning wouldn’t make the pine appear too busy, Hodges suggested two coats of a light whitewash. “We wanted both homes to feel light and airy so your eyes go straight to the view outside,” she says. “They’re on such a pretty piece of land we didn’t want to take away from that.”

The designer wove other natural influences into the two spaces. “The client specifically wanted to celebrate the seasons,” Hodges says. In what she refers to as the main home, she embraced colors and textures more reflective of summertime, including rattan-wrapped furniture. In the other, she opted for “warmer, cozy textures and deeper colors” that represent fall and winter.

Hodges also transformed a former storage building into a “crab shack,” where the homeowners host large gatherings. Custom cabinetry, benches, and dining tables were crafted out of reclaimed wood from the property’s previous structures. The art studio, which has a kitchenette, was built to be used not only by the owners but also by other creatives in their social circle.

Hodges filled the spaces with vintage pieces when possible, to avoid a “brand-new feel.” Sustainability was also a priority: “We don’t have any materials in there that you wouldn’t find in nature. It’s all woven materials and lots of different variations of wood and handcrafted pieces.”
 

Natural Setting

Similar in style to Philip Johnson’s famed Glass House, this Gibson Island, Maryland, home was in need of a range of updates when Jim Rill, the principal of Rill Architects, took over.

Because he says there was “no real sense of entry” upon setting foot in the house, Rill pushed out the foyer with a portico. He then added a screened porch to the back of the house. “The flow from that front-entry portico through the back to the pond beyond really accentuated the connection between the house and its response and homage to nature,” Rill says.

Inside, he gave the kitchen a more “modern, sleek architecture style,” opting for clean lines and bright brass hardware. “We figured that when you’re in the kitchen, you want to be part of the outside and part of the rest of the house,” Rill says, noting that the warm wood finishes in the space are meant to reflect the natural world outside.

The architect also got rid of the home’s drop ceilings, which “inhibited the views and encroached on the floor-to-ceiling glass.” Rill kept the non-glass walls in the home largely devoid of art. “There is no better art,” he says, “than looking out at nature.”
 

Serene and Peaceful

Without moving plumbing or structural elements, interior designer Kate Ballou and architect Colleen Healey worked in tandem to tackle what they call a “replace-in-place project.” They revamped much of the interior of this Wye River, Maryland, home, with a focus on the kitchen, living room, and primary bath-and-closet suite.

The home’s existing French-country detailing didn’t appeal to Ballou and Healey’s clients, both attorneys, who prefer midcentury-modern design. The couple, who live most of the time in the Logan Circle neighborhood, craved a “serene, peaceful getaway from city life,” says Ballou, the founder of Hendrick Interiors in DC.

The architectural alterations included applying a more natural finish to the cherry-wood floors, removing faux beams on the living-room ceiling to draw attention to the windows, and updating the firebox and fireplace surround. Healey, founder of DC’s Colleen Healey Architecture, also replaced the wrought-iron railing on the staircase with one made of glass to maximize the water view. She did opt to keep the arched wooden built-ins in the library: “It was really nice to have a room that you can kind of retreat to at night and watch a movie.”

The female client, who is from California, is “used to a very open and airy feel,” Healey says. Ballou tailored the home’s design to play to the waterfront setting, which is what drew her clients to the property in the first place. Says Healey: “We kept the scale of the furniture low and quiet so that you’re really letting the view of the river be the focal point.”

This article appears in the June 2024 issue of Washingtonian.