2/5/2012 This Way Out

Program #1244

Hosted this week by Greg Gordon and produced with Lucia Chappelle

"NewsWrap": 184 Members of the European Parliament take the "Be Bothered Pledge" to advance LGBT rights in the E.U.; Australia's government removes the roadblock to its gay and lesbian citizens' legal marriages overseas; Ecuador's new "out" lesbian Health Minister Carina Vance Mafla vows to shut down so-called "cure" clinics that promise its tortured "patients" salvation from homosexuality through prayer; Bogota, Colombia Mayor Gustavo Petro's appointment of Tatiana Pinero as the Director of Corporate Management in the city's Social Integration Department makes her the capital's first transgender public official; Washington appears poised to become the seventh U.S. state, along with the District of Columbia, to offer marriage equality to its lesbian and gay citizens, while Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley introduces a bill to open civil marriage to his state's same-gender couples; LGBT activists in Maine announce that they have submitted far more than the required number of signatures to put a marriage equality measure back on the state ballot; a bill to replace the state's inferior civil unions with civil marriage advances in New Jersey's Democratically-controlled legislature, but Republican Governor Chris Christie vows a veto, even as he stuns most LGBT activists by nominating openly gay African-American Chatham, New Jersey Republican Mayor Bruce Harris to the state Supreme Court (written by GREG GORDON with thanks to REX WOCKNER, produced by STEVE PRIDE, and reported this week by TANYA KANE-PARRY and JOHN TORRES)

"WALT WHITMAN, THE INSPIRATION" profiles his gay English admirer EDWARD CARPENTER in a "RAINBOW MINUTE" (produced by JUDD PROCTOR & BRIAN BURNS at WRIR-FM in Richmond, Virginia and read by MIKE HINERMAN)

Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Hours" MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM was in Los Angeles recently to discuss his latest work, "BY NIGHTFALL", which our STEVE PRIDE calls "a daring, expansive novel that demonstrates why we love reading Michael Cunningham stories -- because he knows how to tell stories that are powerful and beautiful, self-deprecating and compelling." Steve chats with Michael about his life and work as a writer