Transgender journalist Erin Reed is a respected independent voice with a large following on social media. She met with a group trans people and allies to review the growing list of anti-trans executive orders coming out of the Trump White House (produced by David Hunt).
And in NewsWrap: gender-affirming healthcare for Australia’s trans and gender-diverse young people is under review, U.S. President Donald Trump “has blood on his hands” after a blitz of anti-transgender executive orders, the Human Rights Campaign and Lambda Legal take on Trump’s new ban on service in the U.S. military by transgender and gender-diverse enlistees, the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear LGBTQ-related children’s stories that offend some Maryland parents’ religious beliefs, Minnesota’s Twin Cities Pride receives double the amount of major donor Target Stores’ contribution when it parts ways with the retailer that’s abandoning DEI policies, Costo shareholders reject a right-wing sponsored bid to dump its inclusivity initiatives, and more international LGBTQ+ news reported this week by Joe Boehnlein and Tanya Kane-Parry (produced by Brian DeShazor).
All this on the February 3, 2025 edition of This Way Out!
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Complete Program Summary
for the week of February 3. 2025
Erin Reed Reports from the Trans Wars
NewsWrap (full transcript below): Australia’s federal government announces a high-level review of pediatric gender-affirming healthcare and asks the state of Queensland, which had announced its own review a few days previously, to yield to the feds and to also reconsider its intention to pause such care in the interim … just days into his second term, U.S. President Donald Trump issues another barrage of executive orders, this one banning all gender-affirming healthcare for trans and gender diverse patients under the age of 18 … the Human Rights Campaign and Lambda Legal file suit against another Trump executive order that revoked Joe Biden’s presidential order allowing qualified transgender people to serve in the U.S. military … the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear a case by a group of religious parents who want to “shield” their children from Maryland’s Montgomery County Public School’s queer-inclusive elementary school storybooks … Twin Cities Pride in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota rejects a hefty donation from longtime corporate sponsor Target Stores after the giant retailer bows to consumer boycott threats on social media and abandons its DEI (diversity, equity and inclusivity) policies and programs, but gets double the amount of donations from the community … almost all Costco shareholders reject a proposal by far-right challengers demanding that the retail giant dump its DEI policies and programs (written by GREG GORDON and LUCIA CHAPPELLE, produced by BRIAN DeSHAZOR, reported this week by TANYA KANE-PARRY and JOE BOEHNLEIN).
Feature: There’s a target on the back of every transgender person in the United States, and the public policy weapons are in the hands of the MAGA Republicans. The war is personal for transgender journalist Erin Reed. She’s a respected independent voice with a large following on social media, earning more than 250 million views in recent years. Reed met last week with a group of trans people and allies to review the growing list of anti-trans executive orders coming out of the Trump White House. This Way Out’s DAVID HUNT covered the correspondent’s conversation. (with brief intro music by MELANIE SAFKA, and additional music by MICHAEL SHYNES).
Erin Reed - https://www.erininthemorning.com/
GRACE: Gender Research Advisory Council and Education - https://www.grace-now.org/
NewsWrap
A summary of some of the news in or affecting
global LGBTQ communities
for the week ending January 25, 2025
Written by Greg Gordon and Lucia Chappelle,
reported this week by Tanya Kane-Parry & Joe Boehnlein,
and produced by Brian DeShazor
Gender-affirming healthcare for Australia’s trans and gender-diverse young people is under review. The National Health and Medical Research Council will conduct the study, which will include the efficacy of hormone treatments and puberty blockers.
Queensland’s January 29th announcement of its own review moved the federal government to take action two days later. The state plans to pause access to all gender-affirming healthcare for new patients under the age of 18. Australian Health Minister Mark Butler urged Queensland officials to yield to the federal review and allow treatment to continue for the state’s current young trans patients pending those results. He wants treatment guidelines to be “nationally consistent.”
Butler says the committee of experts conducting the review will look at treatment guidelines in other countries. It will include public consultation and, importantly, the lived experiences of young trans and gender diverse patients.
An interim report on the specific use of puberty blockers for young people with gender dysphoria is expected by the middle of 2026. There are no time projections for reports regarding other forms of pediatric gender-affirming care
The antagonistic, grassroots Australian Christian Lobby is urging the government to ensure that the review is “truly independent, free from activist influence, and grounded in medical evidence—not ideology.”
Meanwhile, most LGBTQ advocacy groups are cautiously optimistic about the national review. Equality Australia vows its participation in the process and urges Queensland officials to abandon their temporary pause, so pediatric gender affirming care continues to be delivered to patients across the country. CEO Anna Brown said, "Politicians should not be in the business of making medical decisions for young people and families they have never met and whose experience of life are unimaginable to most of them."
Transcend Australia CEO Jeremy Wiggins expressed the fears of parents in his organization about the review, but hopes, “if this [federal] process remains ethical, draws on evidence, and the right people, including those with lived experience, we are confident the outcome will be positive for trans children and young people.”
U.S. President Donald Trump “has blood on his hands,” in the words of Advocates for Trans Equality executive director Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen. Trump’s latest and perhaps most egregious anti-transgender executive order restricts gender-affirming healthcare for people under the age of 19. Heng-Lehtinen warns, “This executive order not only prohibits but sets the stage for criminalizing medically necessary gender-affirming care, endangering tens of thousands of transgender adolescents.”
The fallacy-ridden screed reads in part, “It is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.” The ban includes hormone therapies and puberty blockers, both of which are reversible. It prohibits pediatric gender-affirming surgery, which is rarely a recommended treatment option. The order halts funding through federally run insurance programs such as Medicaid and the military families’ Tricare.
LGBTQ policy analysts from the Williams Institute at UCLA issued a brief saying that Trump’s order requires further administrative rulemaking. Therefore, it will not take effect immediately. Like many of Trump’s “shock and awe” flurry of edicts, the legality of his ban on gender affirming care for young people will almost certainly be challenged in court.
One Trump executive order is already on its way to court. The Human Rights Campaign and Lambda Legal are taking on the new ban on service in the U.S. military by transgender and gender-diverse enlistees. The same two national queer rights groups successfully blocked the first Trump administration’s attempted military service ban in the 2017 Karnoski v. Trump case. Trump reversed a Biden administration order that had opened service to qualified trans people, then specifically excluded them with another. It affects new recruits, but it could also impact currently serving trans and gender-diverse personnel. In the words of Lambda Legal counsel Sasha Buchert, “Thousands of current service members are transgender, and many have been serving openly, courageously, and successfully in the U.S. military for more than eight years.” HRC vice president of legal Sarah Warbelow says the order “insults their service and puts our national security at risk.”
The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear tales of a family attending an LGBTQ Pride event, a girl meeting her uncle’s husband-to-be, and a prince’s love for a knight as they battle a dragon together. A group of parents in Montgomery County, Maryland
want the right to pull their children from elementary school classes that include such storybooks. They claim that their religious beliefs are being violated if they cannot ‘shield” their kids from LGBTQ content. They’ve already lost in an appeals court.
Lawyers for the Washington, D.C. suburb’s school system had asked the high court to reject the case. They argued that the storybooks being challenged touch on themes of adventure, confronting new emotions and making oneself heard – just like the classics Snow White, Cinderella and Peter Pan. The district wrote, “Parents who chose to send their children to public schools are not deprived of their right to freely exercise their religion simply because their children are exposed to curricular material the parents find offensive.”
The parents are being represented by Eric Baxter, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. He insists that the school district is “cramming down controversial gender ideology on 3-year-olds.”
It’s unclear if the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case before its new term begins in October, according to the Associated Press.
Minneapolis, Minnesota’s Twin Cities Pride is “parting ways” with one of its biggest business sponsors, but it certainly won’t be sorry. The organization broke up with Target Stores in response to the Minneapolis-based giant retailer’s announcement that it would end or scale back programs that promote diversity in the workforce and corporate culture. While it has scored high marks for inclusivity in the past, it’s now ending its participation in the Human Rights Campaign’s annual Corporate Equality Index.
Far-right social media zealot Robby Starbuck was “targeting” Target for potential consumer boycotts against corporate DEI – diversity, equity and inclusion. More than a dozen major companies have bowed to those threats. Executive Director Andi Otto told the Minnesota Star Tribune that Twin Cities Pride would reject Target’s expected 50-to-70-thousand-dollar sponsorship this year to protest the company’s surrender.
As he told the Star Tribune, “Unfortunately, in a time where it’s been a really, really rough week for our community given everything that has come down from the new [Trump] administration, this was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
That “proud” gesture did not go unrewarded. Donations from the community made up for the Target sponsorship in less than 24 hours and doubled it within a few days.
Finally, the day before rival Target Stores joined the trend of corporations abandoning DEI programs, voters representing 98 per cent of Costo shareholders rejected a bid to dump its inclusivity initiatives. The defeated proposal was sponsored by the Robby Starbuck-allied National Center for Public Policy Research.
Costco’s Board of Directors had vigorously defended the company’s DEI policies, proud to proclaim that inclusion is central to their successful business model. The consulting firm GlobalData predicted the vote ahead of the stockholders’ meeting. Its retail division managing director Neil Saunders said, “I think people generally have confidence in Costco’s management, and there’s an attitude of ‘Why rock the boat? It’s sailing very nicely.’”
Costco CEO Ron Vachris praised “The overwhelming support of our shareholders.”
Starbuck lamented the vote in a social media post, saying that “For now, I suggest conservative consumers find other places to spend their money.” He probably shops at Target.
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