All too often, companies with pro-LGBTQ public profiles pack up their Pride Month rainbow flags and pay their queer employees harsh reality. That was the experience of trans biotech engineer Alaina Kupec, and queer psychologist Dr. Jenna Brownfield talks about how to deal with the workplace battlefield. (Part 2 of 2 produced by David Hunt.)
And in NewsWrap: South Korea’s Supreme Court orders the National Health Insurance Service to extend spousal coverage to same-gender partners, the cabinet of Burkina Faso’s military junta agrees on legislation to ban homosexuality, the U.S. Republican National Convention re-nominates its iconic felon for president as it attacks LGBTQ people and DEI programs, U.S. farm and garden equipment maker John Deere ends its corporate support for LGBTQ causes, California’s Chino Valley Unified School District sues Governor Gavin Newsom over a bill to protect trans students from being involuntarily outed, far-right figure Elon Musk’s social media platform deletes more than 200 profiles associated with the hashtag ILoveGay, and more international LGBTQ news reported this week by Ava Davis and Joe Boehnlein (produced by Brian DeShazor with technical assistance by Daniel Huecias).
All this on the July 22, 2024 edition of This Way Out!
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Complete Program Summary
for the week of July 22, 2024
Working While Queer (Part 2)
NewsWrap (full transcript below): In a historic ruling, South Korea’s top court orders spousal health insurance coverage for a gay male couple … the military junta running the government of Burkina Faso announces legislation to criminalize homosexuality for the first time in the West African nation’s history … the Chino Valley Unified School District sues California Governor Gavin Newsom for signing a first-in-the-U.S. bill to ban school officials from “outing” transgender students to their families … Elon Musk says he’s moving two of his company headquarters out of the Golden State and to Texas to protest the pro-trans measure … U.S. farm and garden equipment maker John Deere follows Tractor Supply Company earlier this month and caves to a far-right “anti-woke” online campaign that includes its abandonment of queer-supportive activities … lowlights from this week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin that officially nominates for U.S. President unrepentant rapist and convicted felon Donald J. Trump and far-right abortion foe J.D. Vance as Vice President include the party’s usual attacks on diversity, inclusion, and equity (DEI) policies and programs, and LGBTQ people, especially transgender young people [with excerpt from remarks by former PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, FLORIDA GOVERNOR RON DeSANTIS, GEORGIA CONGRESS MEMBER MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE, and WISCONSIN SENATOR RON JOHNSON] … in a story so far without mainstream media coverage, Elon Musk’s social media platform X — what everyone else knows as Twitter — purges LGBTQ voices [reported by DAVID HUNT and with brief comments by Pink Media’s Matt Skallerud] (written this week by GREG GORDON, LUCIA CHAPPELLE and DAVID HUNT, produced by BRIAN DeSHAZOR with production assistance by DANIEL HUECIAS, reported this week by AVA DAVIS and JOE BOEHNLEIN).
Feature: What happens when queer workers expect their employers to keep their Pride Month promises? In the conclusion of his two-part feature, This Way Out’s DAVID HUNT reveals how all too often companies with pro-LGBTQ public profiles pack up the annual rainbow flags and pay out harsh reality to employees who are Working While Queer. (with comments by Dr. Khôra Martel, Alaina Kupec, and Dr. Jenna Brownfield, and music by HUEY LEWIS & THE NEWS, HOTHAM and J.A.K.).
Web links Part 2:
> GoFundMe for Khôra Martel
> Gender Research Advisory Council and Education
> Dr. Jenna Brownfield
NewsWrap
A summary of some of the news in or affecting
global LGBTQ communities
for the week ending July 13th, 2024
Written this week by Greg Gordon , Lucia Chappelle and David Hunt,
reported this week by Ava Davis and Joe Boehnlein,
produced by Brian DeShazor with technical assistance by Daniel Huecias.
South Korea’s Supreme Court is ordering the National Health Insurance Service to extend spousal coverage to same-gender partners. The landmark July 18th ruling gives queer couples benefits equal to those of their heterosexual counterparts.
So Sung-wook and Kim Yong-min filed suit against the Insurance Service in 2021 after it cancelled their coverage. They won their case in Seoul High Court last year.
The nation’s highest court upheld that decision with the unequivocal words of Supreme Court Chief Justice Jo Hee-de. He called the denial of coverage “an act of discrimination that violates human dignity and value, the right to pursue happiness, freedom of privacy and the right to equality before the law, and the degree of violation is serious.”
Jubilant supporters joined the couple chanting “Love wins!” outside the courthouse. Kim Yong-min is positive about the East Asian nation’s future. He told Reuters, “We [now] need to fight harder to legalize same-sex marriage.”
“Henceforth, homosexuality and associated practices will be punished by the law” under Burkina Faso’s military junta. Justice Minister Edasso Rodrigue Bayala announced that their cabinet had agreed on legislation on July 10th, but he neglected to elaborate.
Same-gender sex has never before been illegal in the West African nation. The new law is part of the junta's overhaul of marriage laws. Same-gender marriages have never been recognized. Only religiously sanctioned marriages will be recognized once the junta’s parliament approves the law and leader Ibrahim Traoré signs it.
It's not yet clear how far the anti-queer legislation goes – will it only criminalize private consensual adult same-gender sex … or will there be more draconian prohibitions against public expressions of queer identity? The timetable for passage is also unknown.
National and global human rights groups have roundly condemned the move.
The rights of LGBTQ people and programs and policies to encourage diversity, equity and inclusion were frequent targets at this week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Seventy-eight-year-old unrepentant rapist and convicted felon Donald Trump accepted the presidential nomination of his party for the third time. Of all the bizarre non sequiturs in his meandering 90-plus-minute July 18th speech, this one was easy to miss:
TRUMP: We’re going to get to the cure for cancer and Alzheimer’s and so many other things. We’re so close to doing something great. But we need a leader that will let it be done.
We will not have men playing in women’s sports. That will end immediately. [cheers and applause]
Trump’s pick for Vice President is Junior Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio. His record of far-right positions like a total ban on abortion and climate change denial all but insures an extremist administration if Trump wins election in November.
The plan is laid out clearly in the document Project 2025, a blueprint of right-wing intentions echoed in the Republican Party platform.
Other speakers during the four-day Convention highlighted how those plans are consistent with current legislation targeting trans people in Republican-dominated states across the country:
RON DeSANTIS: They stand for D.E.I., which really means division, exclusion, and indoctrination and it is wrong … They can’t even define what a woman is.
MARJORIE TAYLOR-GREENE: They promised normalcy, and gave us Transgender Visibility Day on Easter Sunday … And let me say this clearly: there are only two genders, and we are made in God’s image … amen.
RON JOHNSON: This fringe agenda includes biological males competing against girls ... and the sexualization and indoctrination of our children…
Republicans understand that Americans don’t want “woke” equity,” they want God-given equality,
At this week’s Republican National Convention, that was Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Georgia Congressmember Marjorie Taylor-Greene, and Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson.
U.S. farm and garden equipment maker John Deere announced the end of its corporate support for LGBTQ causes this week. In a July 16th social media post, the 200-year-old company said, “We will no longer participate in or support external social or cultural awareness parades, festivals, or events.”
Tractor Supply Company had also bowed to the “anti-woke” forces of rightwing activist Robby Starbuck. He took credit for mounting an online campaign that forced Tractor Supply to abandon its queer customers in early July. Starbuck now brags that he is responsible for this week’s John Deere surrender.
To be sure its capitulation was clear, John Deere’s statement added, “the existence of diversity quotas and pronoun identification have never been and are not company policy.”
Southern California’s Chino Valley Unified School District is suing Governor Gavin Newsom for signing a bill to protect trans students from being involuntarily outed. District policy requires school officials to inform students’ families of any transition-related requests. State Attorney General Rob Bonta is already challenging it.
The new law is the first of its kind in the U.S. It bans districts from requiring that parents be notified if their child asks to go by a new name or pronouns, or to use sex-segregated facilities not associated with their birth certificate gender.
Emily Rae is one of the lawyers representing Chino Valley. She insists, “School officials do not have the right to keep secrets from parents, but parents do have a constitutional right to know what their minor children are doing at school.”
A Newsom spokesperson dismissed the lawsuit as “unserious.”
Far-right entrepreneur Elon Musk claims to have warned the governor in advance that he would move his companies out of the Golden State if Newsom signed the bill. Musk has a trans daughter who has severed ties with him. Now Musk is severing ties with Newsom. His social media platform X and SpaceX will become ex-Californians and relocate to Texas.
Finally, Elon Musk was not done making headlines with his divorce from California Governor Gavin Newsom and endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. The national media missed another story involving the billionaire “X-man” — his purge of queer voices from his social media platform. This Way Out’s David Hunt has more.
HUNT: They’re calling it “the Great LGBTQ+ takedown of 2024.” On July 4th the social media platform X — formerly Twitter — deleted hundreds of queer themed profiles. Included in the purge were more than 200 profiles associated with the hashtag ILoveGay.
Matt Skallerud, president of Pink Media, began using the hashtag on Twitter 10 years ago to promote queer people, organizations, companies, events — you name it. In the twitterverse you could follow ILoveGay Travel, ILoveGaySports, ILoveGayNewYorkCity and ILoveGayMusic, to name a few.
Each had its own profile, with content generated by Pink Media to engage niche audiences. It worked. Really well. Better than anything the marketing company was doing on Instagram, Facebook or TikTok.
Matt Skallerud: And the whole thing just grew and blossomed and the next thing you know we have over a million followers … It really just sort of blew all the others out of the water when it came to performance. So that one just ended up growing organically at a far greater rate than, than anything else we were doing.
HUNT: Thanks to the success of the ILoveGay network on X, Pink Media grew from a conventional marketing firm into what Skallerud calls “a hybrid media company,” leveraging its presence on social media to add punch to its advertising and marketing campaigns.
Its promotion of a music video by Kristine W — an outspoken supporter of the LGBTQ community — went viral in June, garnering more than 17 million views.
It’s unclear what’s behind the purge of queer voices on X or how far it will go. The company has also suspended the accounts of several enterprises that used the ILoveGay hashtag, including the Gay Desert Guide in Palm Springs, California, the Visit Gay Britain.
A message to X seeking its side of the story got no reply. Not even a like.
For This Way Out, I’m David Hunt.
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