Sixty years ago this month, days before the assassination of Malcolm X and weeks ahead of “Bloody Sunday” on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the University of Cambridge’s historic debate society hosted a face-off between Black gay author, activist and public intellectual James Baldwin and conservative founder of The National Review William F. Buckley, Jr. Baldwin’s presentation is read by multidisciplinary performing artist Paul Outlaw (produced by Brian DeShazor).
And in NewsWrap: the world’s first out gay imam is killed in broad daylight on the streets of the South African city of Gqeberha, 30 young children and adults are traumatized after the invasion into an Auckland, New Zealand drag king story time by some 50 far-right Christians, a federal judge says the claim that trans pronoun use undermines U.S. troop effectiveness is “frankly ridiculous,” the Republican majority in the Kansas legislature overrides the veto of a ban on pediatric gender-affirming healthcare, Maine Governor Janet Mills and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker stand up to Trump’s anti-trans trolling, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts postpones a WorldPride show featuring the Washington. D.C. Gay Men’s Chorus before Trump takes over, and more international LGBTQ+ news reported this week by Michael LeBeau and Melanie Keller (produced by Brian DeShazor).
All this on the February 24, 2025 edition of This Way Out!
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Complete Program Summary
for the week of February 24, 2025
Paul Outlaw: Baldwin’s American Dream/American Negro
NewsWrap (full transcript below): 57-year-old Muhsin Hendricks, considered to be the world’s first openly gay Muslim imam, is shot to death in a broad daylight ambush in South Africa … far-right Christian fundamentalists from New Zealand’s Destiny Church violently invade a Pride week drag king story time at an Auckland library and then try to blockade the city’s Rainbow Parade … D.C. lesbian federal Judge Ana Reyes tips her point of view during hearings challenging the Trump administration’s ban on U.S. military service by transgender people by calling the policy “frankly ridiculous” … the Republican majority in the Kansas state legislature overrides Democratic Governor Laura Kelly’s veto of one of the harshest pediatric gender-affirming healthcare bans in the country … Maine Democratic Governor Janet Mills tells President Donald Trump “see you in court” over his anti-trans in sports executive order … Illinois’ Democratic Governor JB Pritzker skewers the Trump administration’s blatant moves toward authoritarianism during his annual State of the State address [with an audio excerpt] … Pres. Trump names himself the head of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. and fires non-loyalists from the Board of Trustees, which is preceded by the cancellation of the Pride-related A Peacock Among Pigeons concert scheduled for late May starring the city’s Gay Men’s Chorus and the National Symphony Orchestra (written by GREG GORDON and LUCIA CHAPPELLE, produced by BRIAN DeSHAZOR, reported this week by MICHAEL LeBEAU and MELANIE KELLER).
Feature: Sixty years ago this month, Black gay author, activist and public intellectual James Baldwin was invited to be a guest of the Cambridge Union, the University of Cambridge’s historic debate and free speech society. None of the southern segregationist politicians they asked would agree to appear with Baldwin. So the student organizers booked conservative founder of The National Review William F. Buckley, Jr. for the verbal face-off. Baldwin was widely credited with winning the February 18, 1965 debate. Three days later, Malcolm X was assassinated. Baldwin returned to the U.S. for the Selma, Alabama Voting Rights March, and the New York Times published Buckley’s remarks from Cambridge and the version of Baldwin’s words you’ll hear read now on March 7th (The American Dream and The American Negro) — the very day Alabama state troopers beat the marchers trying to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge. In June of 2020 the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers had redoubled the Black Lives Matter movement and brought millions of protesters into the streets around the world. Meanwhile, This Way Out’s BRIAN DeSHAZOR was producing an online Pride Month Global Queer Read-In. Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary performing artist Paul Outlaw resonated with how Baldwin addressed Cambridge’s 1965 debate topic: “The American Dream Is At the Expense of the American Negro.” With the possible exception of the word “Negro,” Baldwin’s speech about Black lives under white supremacy could hardly be more current (with brief intro music sung by JAMES BALDWIN].
NewsWrap
A summary of some of the news in or affecting
global LGBTQ communities
for the week ending February 22nd, 2025
Written by Greg Gordon and Lucia Chappelle,
reported this week by MICHAEL LeBEAU and MELANIE KELLER,
produced by Brian DeShazor
The world’s first out gay imam is dead, killed in broad daylight on the streets of the South African city of Gqeberha. The car Muhsin Hendricks was riding in was blocked off by a pickup truck, as seen on closed-circuit video. Two hooded figures emerged from the truck and opened fire into the back seat where Hendricks was sitting. His driver was uninjured. Eastern Cape police say the motive is unknown and the investigation is ongoing. To South Africa’s second-biggest political party, “the nature of the killing strongly suggests a professional hit,” as a Democratic Alliance representative told the CBC.
The 57-year-old Hendricks came out as gay in 1996. He held his first held meetings in his home, then in a mosque he established where all Muslims could ‘pray without judgement.”
The February 15th murder sent shockwaves throughout the queer Muslim community and local and global equality advocacy groups. The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association called on local authorities “to thoroughly investigate what we fear may be a hate crime.” ILGA World executive director Julia Ehrt called Hendricks’ life “a testament to the healing that solidarity across communities can bring in everyone’s lives.”
The Muslim Judicial Council and the United Ulama Council of South Africa condemned the killing. Both leading South African Muslim organizations consistently criticized Henricks’ efforts at reconciliation. Both maintain the traditional view of Islam that the Quran prohibits romantic same-gender relationships.
His high-profile advocacy made Henricks the frequent target of death threats. In the 2022 documentary The Radical, he said about his coming out, “The need to be authentic was greater than the fear to die.”
Muhsin Hendricks funeral was reportedly held in Cape Town.
About 30 young children and adults are traumatized after the invasion into an Auckland, New Zealand drag king story time by some 50 far-right Christians. Hugo Grrrl’s February 15th event was part of the city’s annual LGBTQ Pride celebration. The disruptive protestors affiliated with the fundamentalist Destiny Church “punched, pushed and shoved their way inside the building,” according to local media accounts. When they refused to leave, the event organizers were eventually forced to cancel.
Auckland police Inspector Simon Walker thinks the protestors “crossed the line.” In his words, “The group’s actions caused considerable distress and concern among [children], library staff and visitors. … [N]obody, especially children, should ever be made to feel unsafe.” Walker says that the investigation is “in the early stages.”
Several hours after the library attack, Destiny Church members broke through barricades and tried to block the Auckland Rainbow Parade. Police forced them to disperse without any physical confrontations. No arrests have been announced.
Judge Ana Reyes says the claim that trans pronoun use undermines troop effectiveness is “frankly ridiculous.” She heard arguments on February 18th in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colombia challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order to ban military service by qualified transgender enlistees. Reyes found some of the government’s arguments “biologically inaccurate” and called them simply evidence of “unadulterated animus” toward trans people. The lesbian jurist demanded, “Can we agree that the greatest fighting force that world history has ever seen is not going to be impacted in any way by less than one percent of the soldiers using a different pronoun than others might want to call them?” Reyes is clearly expected to rule for the plaintiffs.
Jennifer Levi is Senior Director of Transgender and Queer Rights for GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders – or GLAD Law. Her group has joined with the National Center for Lesbian Rights to represent the plaintiffs. Levi told the Washington Blade, “The government cannot justify discharging transgender troops who have honorably served our country for years.”
Judge Reyes still must officially decide whether to issue a temporary restraining order blocking implementation of Trump’s January 27th anti-trans order.
Earlier this month, another group of transgender service members filed a separate challenge to the ban on Fifth and First Amendment grounds in a federal court in Washington state. They’re represented by attorneys from Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign.
Kansas Democratic Governor Laura Kelly tried again, but the third time the overwhelming Republican majority in the state legislature overrode her veto of a measure outlawing pediatric gender-affirming healthcare.
It’s one of the nation’s harshest trans healthcare bans. Providers can be stripped of their medical licenses for “unprofessional conduct” or sued by individuals for treating young trans patients. Even the use of state funds to provide psychological support for transgender youth is prohibited.
Virtually every professional medical and mental health organization in the U.S. endorses pediatric gender-affirming healthcare. Experts agree that for some patients it can literally be lifesaving.
Kansas joins more than half of the states in the country to enact some form of restriction or ban on gender-affirming healthcare for trans young people.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case challenging Tennessee’s ban late last year. It’s expected to announce a ruling before the end of its current term this June.
Other Democratic governors are on the front lines battling the federal anti-LGBTQ+ onslaught. Trump called out Maine Governor Janet Mills over her state’s policy in favor of transgender student athletes at a February 21st White House meeting.
[SOUND: Trump and Mills]
TRUMP: Is Maine here, the governor of Maine?
MILLS: I’m here.
TRUMP: Are you not going to comply with it?
MILLS: I’m complying with state and federal laws.
TRUMP: Well, I'm … we are the federal law, so you better comply …
MILLS: We’re going to follow the law, sir.
TRUMP: … you better comply because otherwise you're not getting any… any federal funding.
MILLS: See you in court.
Governor Janet Mills says she won’t be intimidated by Trump’s threats, or by an investigation into Maine’s policies by the Department of Education.
Illinois’ Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker skewered the Trump administration during his annual State of the State address on February 19th. Reaffirming his state’s safe haven for LGBTQ+ people, Pritzker echoed the stark warnings of Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller about Adolph Hitler’s rise to power, one ostracized group at a time:
[SOUND: Pritzker]
The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here. They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems. I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities—once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends—after that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face—what comes next? All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history then for God’s sake in this moment we’d better be strong enough to learn from it. [faded applause]
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker.
Finally, questions abound about how much “art” will survive at Washington. D.C.’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The former star of The Apprentice has said, “You’re fired!” to the progressive Board of Trustees and installed himself as Chair at the home of the annual Kennedy Center Honors.
Just before what’s seen as a hostile takeover, the Center announced the cancellation of A Peacock Among Pigeons: Celebrating 50 Years of Pride. The special WorldPride performance starring the city’s Gay Men’s Chorus with the National Symphony Orchestra had been scheduled for May 21st. NSO executive director Jean Davidson blamed the postponement on “financial and scheduling factors.” The Center will produce a Pride-honoring performance of The Wizard of Oz to take its place. The Chorus will now perform A Peacock Among Pigeons during WorldPride’s International Choral Festival.
A statement from the Gay Men’s Chorus called the decision “deeply disappointing.” The group vows “to advocate for artistic expression that reflects the depth and diversity of our community and country. We will continue to sing and raise our voices for equality.”
Meanwhile, artists have already launched protest actions around The Kennedy Center.
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