Author and journalist Nico Lang’s new book “American Teenager: How Trans Kids Are Surviving Hate and Finding Joy in a Turbulent Era” tells the stories of eight trans and nonbinary teenagers from across the United States, highlighting their triumphs and struggles (interviewed by Daniel Huecias).
And in NewsWrap: about one in 20 Kiwis came out in New Zealand’s first Census to count LGBTQIA+ people, the Toyota Motor Corporation is latest company in the U.S. backpedaling on its DEI policies and withdrawing support from queer events, Colorado rightwing Christian baker Jack Phillips loses a state Supreme Court appeal in another Masterpiece Cakeshop anti-LGBTQ bias lawsuit, Arkansas Christian nationalist Republican politician Jason Rupert says the queer movement is “of the devil,” U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris touts her pro-queer credentials and warns about the tenuous status of LGBTQ rights on a presidential campaign visit with Howard Stern, and more international LGBTQ news reported by John Dyer V and Ava Davis (produced by Brian DeShazor).
All this on the October 14, 2024 edition of This Way Out!
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Complete Program Summary
for the week of October14, 2024
Nico Lang's American Teenager
NewsWrap (full transcript below): One in 20 Kiwis come out for the first time to the New Zealand Census … Toyota becomes the latest weak-kneed company to bow to rightwing social media pressure and abandon its diversity, equity and inclusion policies and programs … the Colorado Supreme Court refuses on procedural grounds to hear Masterpiece Cake Shop owner Jack Phillips’ appeal of lower court rulings that he discriminated against a trans woman by refusing to make a cake celebrating her gender transition … Republican Arkansas State Library Board member Jason Rupert warns anyone who will listen that LGBTQ people are “of the devil” [with audio from a video of his rant that has gone viral] … Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris takes her presidential campaign to Sirius XM radio’s Howard Stern Show, where she warns that rights many have taken for granted, including marriage equality, are on the line [with a snippet from that conversation] (written by GREG GORDON and LUCIA CHAPPELLE, produced by BRIAN DeSHAZOR, reported this week by JOHN DYER V and AVA DAVIS).
Feature: Lies about transgender youth are boosting the Republican campaigns for President of the United States and down ballot races, but who are trans teens really? How much do they have in common with their cis-gender peers? Whether your teenage years are behind you or you’re smack in the middle of them, three things are true regardless of your gender: it’s a time of big changes, it’s a time when your personal changes can change the world of the future, and it’s a time when love and support can make the difference between thriving and failure. If you’re a teenager now, there’s a new book about you. If you’re looking back at being a teenager, listen to find out what you can do to help somebody who’s going through it. “This Way Out’s” DANIEL HUECIAS chats with Nico Lang about his new book American Teenager: How Trans Kids Are Surviving Hate And Finding Joy In A Turbulent Era (with a montage of Republican anti-trans political ads, and music by BLUE DOT SESSIONS and ETHEL CAIN).
[queernewsdaily on Instagram]
Feature: Teases and promo for next week’s feature from David Hunt about the one-of-a-kind Gay Barchives (with quickie comments by curator Art Smith and contributor Daniel Jaffe, and music by SYLVESTER).
NewsWrap
A summary of some of the news in or affecting
global LGBTQ communities
for the week ending October 12th, 2024
Written by Greg Gordon and Lucia Chappelle,
reported this week by John Dyer V and Ava Davis,
produced by Brian DeShazor
About one in 20 Kiwis came out as queer for the New Zealand 2023 Census – the first in history to seek them. Statistics New Zealand counts more than 172,000 people who identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, non-binary or intersex. That constitutes 4.9% of the adult population. A category for other “minority genders or sexual identities” was included in that number. The information was released in early October.
The highest actual number of rainbow people live in Auckland, where they make up 4.9% of the population, the national average. However Wellington beats Auckland as the country’s queerest city, with some 11.3% of its residents identifying as LGBTQIA+. Dunedin came in second at 7.3%. Christchurch, Palmerston North and Hamilton followed with six to about five and a half percent each.
Wellington’s top spot came as no surprise to Tabby Besley of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group InsideOUT. She told the New Zealand Herald, “Wellington has a long history of being a supportive city for Rainbow communities, where people from other parts of the country often move to have an easier life where they are accepted.”
Bisexuals made up 54% of the queers tallied by the Census. Thirty percent said that they were gay or lesbian. About point-seven percent of the population said that they were transgender. Point-four percent identified as intersex, and about the same percentage said they were non-binary.
InsideOUT’s Besley has a word of caution about the New Zealand 2023: remember that it could only count people who were willing to identify as queer. Besley warns, “… it’s definitely important [that] we don’t take it as a fully accurate picture.”
The Toyota Motor Corporation is the latest company in the U.S. to backpedal on its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies.
The carmaker earned a perfect 100 percent score on the Human Rights Campaign’s 2023 Corporate Equity Index. No more. Toyota is withdrawing its participation in that and all such corporate surveys, according to an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg. The October 3rd message to 50,000 Texas-based employees and some 1500 Toyota dealerships halts sponsorships of LGBTQ+ events. Instead it says the company will “narrow [its] community activities to align with STEM education and workforce readiness.”
Social media campaigns against so-called “woke” companies in the U.S. are the specialty of Tennessee-based far-right demagogue Robby Starbuck. A Toyota spokesperson nevertheless denied that Starbuck’s recent attacks had anything to do with the company’s decision to abandon its queer-inclusive workplace diversity policies.
Toyota joins a list of corporations willing to disregard their queer and allied employees and customers. Fellow car-maker Ford, motorcycle-maker Harley Davidson, toolmaker Stanley Black & Decker, whiskey distiller Jack Daniel’s, and farm and home equipment retailers Tractor Supply and John Deere have all bailed.
Running away from programs that promote LGBTQ+-inclusive workplace diversity may turn out to be short-sighted, however. Research conducted by the Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD have each found that more than two in three U.S. consumers are more likely to buy products from companies that support LGBTQ equality. Even more would boycott companies that don’t. More than half of that group also said that they would use social media to urge other people to boycott.
Denver, Colorado’s Masterpiece Cakeshop is embroiled in another anti-LGBTQ discrimination case. This time rightwing Christian baker Jack Phillips saw his appeal of lower court rulings against him rejected by the state Supreme Court. Phillips had been found guilty of discriminating against trans attorney Autumn Scardina. He had refused to create a pink-colored cake with blue frosting to officially celebrate her gender transition. Scardina ordered her cake while Phillips’ original notorious Masterpiece Cake Shop case was in progress. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately backed Phillips’ right to refuse to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple in 2018.
The October 8th state high court majority’s decision was essentially based on procedural grounds. They decided 6-t0-3 only that Scardina had not pursued other legal avenues for redress before filing her lawsuit. As Justice Melissa Hart wrote for the majority, “We express no view on the merits of these claims.”
The three justices in the minority called the majority’s ruling “a procedural pass.” They emphasized that every judicial officer in the state who has heard the case has decided that the baker violated the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act.
Scardina’s lawyer John McHugh agreed. He said, “The Colorado Supreme Court decided to avoid the merits of this issue by inventing an argument no party raised.”
Neither side was happy. Phillips is represented by Jake Warner of the notoriously anti-queer legal group Alliance Defending Freedom. Warner had argued that his client’s free speech rights were at stake. Scardina’s side countered that she had not requested any writing on the cake, so the case was not really about freedom of speech.
It’s not clear what happens next.
[SOUND: Rupert]
Transvestiteism, transgenderism, the LGBTQ movement in the country is of the devil. [audience: that’s right] Period.
Jason Rupert is a Christian nationalist Republican politician in Arkansas. The former state Senator was appointed to the State Library Board by far-right Republican Governor Sarah Huckabee-Sanders in November 2023. The Board oversees the leadership and development of Arkansas’ public libraries. Most importantly, it handles the purse strings. Rupert started his tenure by vowing to enforce the state’s anti-queer book bans. He calls all LGBTQ-related materials “harmful to minors.” Furthermore, he said that he’d push to withhold funding from any library that challenges those laws in court.
Rupert catapulted to nationwide notoriety with a recent rant at a church that Right Wing Watch made sure got to the social media platform formerly known as Twitter:
[SOUND: Rupert]
It’s of the devil. So you don’t need to be supporting people and voting for people that do things of the devil. [audience: that’s right! exactly right! amen!] There’s no way a real Christian can do that. I don’t know if you’re live streaming this or not, I’m telling all of you today, you cannot be a Christian and vote for people that do the devil’s work. [audience: that’s right!] You can’t do it.
Pray for Arkansas State Library Board member Jason Rupert.
Finally, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee for President, spent a few whirlwind days this week being interviewed on several influential media platforms, including the top-rated Call Her Daddy podcast. Harris touted her pro-queer credentials going back to the early 2000s with Howard Stern on his Sirius XM radio show. Stern brought up the tenuous status of LGBTQ rights under the current U.S. Supreme Court.
[SOUND: Stern and Harris]
Stern: Here’s what I worry about. You got a guy who says, ‘Hey, we’re not stopping here’ … you know gay rights are next. You know it!
Harris: Clarence Thomas said it!
Stern: Yep. Who doesn’t have gay people in their life?
Harris: We actually had laws that were treating people based on their sexual orientation differently. We were basically saying that you are a second-class citizen under the law. The Court that Donald Trump created that is …
Stern: It’s insanity!
Harris: … openly talking about what else could be at risk.
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