This Way Out | 25 Years
25 Years of This Way Out The writers of EILE Magazine’s column, California Dispatch, celebrate 25 years of the LGBT radio programme, This Way Out, which is broadcast on over two hundred radio stations worldwide.
Jon Beaupré gives us a rundown on all of the iconic moments covered by the This Way Out team over 2013 so far. It’s been a year of tremendous celebrations, with marriage equality now the law of the land in nearly a third of the United States, and in all or parts of sixteen other countries. It’s also been a time of setbacks and tragedy, with laws either on the books, or under consideration, that would make LGBT people and their relationships illegal in parts of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Caribbean. To anyone who thinks it is important to get wide-ranging, carefully researched, and fairminded information about LGBT people around the planet, “This Way Out” programs in 2013 included: • Conversations with Russian lesbian journalist Masha Gessen and leading gay activist Nikolai Alekseev; entertainer Leslie Jordan; U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid; gay meat-packing heir/former Ambassador/philanthropist James Hormel; out “Glee” star and filmmaker Chris Colfer; 28 EILE Magazine
now-retired openly gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson; out American opera countertenor David Daniels; venerable gay playwright/performer/activist Harvey Fierstein; trailblazing lesbian singer/songwriter Tret Fure; openly gay Bristol, England Lord Mayor Peter Main; and veteran lesbian human rights activist Urvashi Vaid. • Globetrotting “Sapphic Nomads” Katie Cook and Maggie Young sent us “audio postcards” from the road about LGBT life in Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan and Nepal. • “Queer Life & Literature” Commentator Janet Mason turned the pages of Madhavi Menon’s “Shakesqueer: A Queer Companion to the Complete Works of Shakespeare”; Ellis Avery’s “The Last Nude”; James Baldwin’s recently-reissued “Notes of a Native Son”; Julian E. Farris’ “The Sin Warriors”; and President Obama’s openlygay 2013 inaugural poet Richard Blanco’s latest collection, “Looking for the Gulf Motel”.
• “Rainbow Minutes” profiled U.K. rights pioneer Allan Horsfall, Russian mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya, Canadian artist Steven Walker, and Britain’s King James I.
We charted the development of the cases against California’s Proposition 8, and the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) • We charted the development of the cases against California’s Proposition 8, and the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) at the U.S. Supreme Court, capped off by the high court’s historic pro-gay rulings in late June; we had on-scene reports from the marriage equality debate and its final passage in France, and in the U.S. state of Minnesota; coverage of Congressional hearings on the Employment Non-Discrimination