This Way Out: The International LGBTQ Radio Magazine

Zach Wahls for U.S. Senate

It didn’t take long after his historic 2011 appearance before the Iowa state legislature to testify about his two-mom family for 19-year-old Zach Wahls to take his place as a senator in that body. Now he’s running to represent Iowa in the U.S. Senate (produced by Greg Gordon, archival interview by Steve Pride).

A bouquet of January birthdays and ONE early movement legal victory are remembered in the Rainbow Rewind (produced by Brian DeShazor and Sheri Lunn).

And in NewsWrap: federal guidance on workplace harassment based on sexual orientation and gender identity is eliminated by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, U.S. House Democrats claim victory over a raft of anti-transgender riders to major funding bills for the Departments of Health and Human Services, Education and Labor, right-wing Texas federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk upholds West Texas A&M University’s ban on campus drag shows, financial woes force the closure of the organization that produces Tucson, Arizona’s annual Pride event, the two heartthrobs of the wildly popular TV series “Heated Rivalry” will carry the flame in the Winter Olympics Torch Relay, and more international LGBTQ news reported this week by Tanya Kane-Parry and Joe Boehnlein (produced by Brian DeShazor).

All this on the January, 26 2026 edition of This Way Out!

Join our family of listener-donors today at thiswayout.org/donate/.

Christopher Isherwood’s own stories of pre-War Berlin; remembering Renee Nicole Good; U.S. top court hears trans student sports ban cases, a new survey confirms pediatric transgender healthcare can be life-saving, Malaysian authorities shut down an empty “gay friendly” hotel, the latest Human Rights Campaign U.S. queer quality of life poll finds deterioration under Trump, and billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott donates 45 million dollars to the queer youth crisis intervention and suicide prevention group The Trevor Project.

All that and more this week when you discover “This Way Out”.

Hosted this week by Lucia Chappelle and produced with Greg Gordon. “NewsWrap” reported this week by Michael Taylor Gray and Nico Raquel and produced by Brian DeShazor. Christopher Isherwood feature produced by Brian DeShazor with thanks to the Pacifica Radio Archives. Thanks also to Ann Northrup and Andy Humm of GayUSATV.org. Theme music: Kim Wilson. Additional music: Jethro Tull; Joel Grey; Bronski Beat.

In our 38th year satisfying your weekly minimum requirement of LGBTQ news and culture!

Sophie B. Hawkins performs “Not Beating Around the Bush” (recording of her original song made exclusively for “This Way Out”) and reads an excerpt from “Mrs. Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf. SOPHIE B. HAWKINS is a U.S.-born singer-songwriter whose commercial success has been matched by her passionate advocacy for animal rights, and the equality of women and the queer community. In 1925, VIRGINIA WOOLF introduced the world to “MRS. DALLOWAY”, a groundbreaking novel that explores a single day in the life of an upper-class woman in post-World War I England. With its innovative stream-of-consciousness narrative, “Mrs. Dalloway” remains a landmark in modernist literature.

In “NewsWrap” 106 people are roughly arrested in a late December raid on a gay nightspot in Baku, the capital city of Azerbaijan; ten people in France are convicted of online bullying for “maliciously” claiming that First Lady Brigitte Macron is transgender; a U.S. federal judge rules that teachers or other school officials can out trans students to their parents without their consent; while a different federal judge decides that “devoutly Christian” parents can prevent their children from learning about the mere existence of LGBTQ people in school; under pressure from the Trump administration and a lawsuit filed by “devoutly Christian” foster parent applicants, Massachusetts replaces policies specifically requiring foster parents to support LGBTQ children in their care with the more innocuous “based on their individual identity and needs”; and her wife Becca remembers Renee Nicole Good (written this week by GREG GORDON, edited by TANYA KANE-PARRY, produced by BRIAN DeSHAZOR, and reported by RET and MARCOS NAJERA). (written this week by GREG GORDON and TANYA KANE-PARRY, reported by RET and MARCOS NAJERA, and produced by BRIAN DeSHAZOR).

We continue our review, highlighting of some of the news and feature stories on This Way Out during 2025.

[NOTE: “NewsWrap” and the “Rainbow Rewind” segments return on our week of 12 January 2026.

In our 38th year satisfying your weekly minimum requirement of LGBTQ news and culture!

Now more than ever, your financial support of our U.S. 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit will help keep us in ears around the world! (and we’ll acknowledge your 3-figures-or-more gift on the air if you wish.)

We continue our review of some of the news and feature stories on This Way Out during the past 12 months, including trans lawmakers defending drag and their own dignity, celebrating a venerated Aussie activist, challenging anti-queer laws in the Caribbean, marching for gender rights in the U.K., greeting a drag virtuoso violist, analyzing a major setback at the U.S. Supreme Court, and reviewing the upcoming season at what used to be the The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Those stories and more this week, when you discover “This Way Out.”

[NOTE: “NewsWrap” and the “Rainbow Rewind” segments return on our week of 12 January 2026

Hosted this week by Brian DeShazor and produced by Lucia Chappelle and Greg Gordon. The 2025 Queer News and Features in Review feature was produced by Greg Gordon, with archival news and features reporters David Hunt, Melanie Keller, Tanya Kane-Parry, Michael LeBeau, Barry McKay, John Dyer V, Brian DeShazor, and Ava Davis. Theme music: Kim Wilson. Additional music: the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Choir, No Greater Time Collective, Thorgy Thor, Eric Borchard, and from “Camelot”, “Mrs. Doubtfire: The Musical”, and “Chicago”.

In our 38th year satisfying your weekly minimum requirement of LGBTQ news and culture!

Now more than ever, your financial support of our U.S. 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit will help keep us in ears around the world! (and we’ll acknowledge your 3-figures-or-more gift on the air if you wish.)

Twenty-twenty-five’s queerest news and feature stories in review; this week’s Rainbow Rewind remembers Frank Kameny, Ma Rainey and key late December happenings; quick-study Kazakh Senators pass a “no promo homo” bill, Trump’s vile war on trans kids escalates, Congressional Republicans criminalize trans kid caregivers, a North Carolina County disbands its library board over a trans kid picture book, and St. Petersburg, Florida counters demolished rainbow crosswalks with multi-colored bike racks...

Those stories and more this week, when you choose “This Way Out.”

[NOTE: “NewsWrap” and the “Rainbow Rewind” segments return on our week of 12 January 2026 program.]

Credits: Hosted this week by Brian DeShazor and produced by Lucia Chappelle and Greg Gordon. “Rainbow Rewind” written and hosted by Sheri Lunn and Brian DeShazor and produced by Brian DeShazor, with music by Ma Rainey. The 2025 Queer News and Features in Review feature was produced by Greg Gordon, with archival news reports by Wendy Natividad, David Hunt, John Dyer V and Ava Davis. Theme music: Kim Wilson. Additional music: from “Peter and the Wolf”; and by Triumph, Melanie Safka, and Chappell Roan.

In our 38th year satisfying your weekly minimum requirement of LGBTQ news and culture!

Now more than ever, your financial support of our U.S. 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit will help keep us in ears around the world! (and we’ll acknowledge your 3-figures-or-more gift on the air if you wish.)

Portland, Oregon’s twice monthly live open mic performance event, Slamlandia, yields the work of three queer poets: Joshua Merritt, Evey Rothwell and Ret (produced by Brian DeShazor).

Plus December birthdays including anthropologist Margaret Mead and historic queer moments from the declassification of homosexuality as a disease to the dawn of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” on the Rainbow Rewind (written and produced by Sheri Lunn and Brian DeShazor).

And in NewsWrap: Kazakhstan’s so-called “LGBTQ propaganda” bill is on an indefinite hold while the Senate takes more time to study the measure, Egypt and Iran object when their World Cup teams are chosen to play in host Seattle, Washington’s “Pride Match,” Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony is being charged with allowing and participating in a banned LGBTQ Pride parade, the Arlington, Texas City Council votes to remove “sexual orientation” and “gender identity and expression” from the city’s anti-bias policies to placate the Trump administration, the official portrait of four-star Admiral Rachel Levine in the Health and Human Services Department deadnames the first transgender person ever confirmed by the U.S. Senate, and more international LGBTQ+ news reported this week by Ret and Sarah Montague (produced by Brian DeShazor).

All this on the December 15, 2025 edition of This Way Out!

Join our family of listener-donors today at http://thiswayout.org/donate/

What life is like in the newsrooms and on the beat for LGBTQ+ reporters in a time when there’s too much news and fewer jobs, according to Los Angeles chapter co-presidents Hansen Bursic and Katie Karl of NLGJA: the Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists (in a roundtable with This Way Out’s Lucia Chappelle, interviewed by Brian DeShazor).

Plus the reign of a lesbian queen, two music halls, human rights milestones, Southern Hemisphere civil unions and more in The Rainbow Rewind (produced by Brian DeShazor and Sheri Lunn).

And in NewsWrap: a raid on an alleged “gay male sauna sex party” in Kuala Lumpur another kind of bust when all 200 arrestees are released without charges, all 27 European Union member nations must recognize the civil marriages of same-gender couples legally performed in any other E.U. member nation under a landmark ruling by the Court of Justice, a ruling in Tokyo’s High Court contradicting four previous district court decisions in favor of marriage equality sends the issue to Japan’s Supreme Court, the United Kingdom’s Women’s Institute is being forced to require new and renewing members to confirm that they were documented female at birth, Reverend Dr. Phillippa Phaneuf tells the North Chili United Methodist Church in upstate New York “I’m giving up pretending to be a man,” and more international LGBTQ+ news reported this week by Melanie Keller and John Dyer V (produced by Brian DeShazor).

All this on the December 8, 2025 edition of This Way Out!

Join our family of listener-donors today at http://thiswayout.org/donate/

Poet Steven Reigns’ memorial memoir chronicling his profound six-year friendship with Michael Church who died of AIDS in 2000 (“Outliving Michael,” Moon Tide Press, 2025) is presented in an original sound collage with archival news reports and the friends’ favorite music (produced by Brian DeShazor).

Plus United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has a message of hope for World AIDS Day, despite the disastrous combination of drastic funding cuts and official anti-gender and anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination. (NewsWrap returns next week).

All this on the December 1, 2025 edition of This Way Out!

Join our family of listener-donors today at thiswayout.org/donate/

Poet Steven Reigns’ memorial memoir chronicling his profound six-year friendship with Michael Church who died of AIDS in 2000 (“Outliving Michael,” Moon Tide Press, 2025) is presented in an original sound collage with archival news reports and the friends’ favorite music (produced by Brian DeShazor).

Plus United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has a message of hope for World AIDS Day, despite the disastrous combination of drastic funding cuts and official anti-gender and anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination. (NewsWrap returns next week).

All this on the December 1, 2025 edition of This Way Out!

Join our family of listener-donors today at http://thiswayout.org/donate/