Twenty years ago this month, Canada’s top court had just ordered marriage equality, civil unions hit the agenda in New Zealand, the U.S. Congress took up a bill to secure rights for lesbians and gays in bi-national relationships, and the long fight for transgender rights was just getting underway. Reports from August 2003 feature U.S. Representatives Jerrold Nadler and Mary Gay Scanlon, New Zealand M.P. Tim Barnett, U.S. President George W. Bush, California State Assemblymember Mark Leno and Shannon Minter of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. (Correspondents: Hugh Young, Jim Waters, Cathy Sanchez and Bryan Goebel)

And in NewsWrap: eight followers of an Islamic splinter group are arrested outside a Kuala Lumpur shopping center for an LGBTQ-supportive protest, a U.S. House subcommittee’s hearing on pediatric gender-affirming care turns into a platform for the Republican majority’s bigotry, U.S. federal appeals courts weigh in on trans rights and drag bans, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt executive orders transgender women out of existence, armed neo-Nazis join Gays Against Groomers to disrupt a Wisconsin town’s Pride in the Park, and more international LGBTQ news reported this week by Michael Taylor-Gray and Sarah Montague (produced by Brian DeShazor). 

All this on the August 7, 2023 edition of This Way Out!

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