8/13/2012 This Way Out

Program 1271

Hosted by Greg Gordon and produced with Lucia Chappelle

"NewsWrap": Vietnam's Justice Minister issues a surprising same-gender marriage proposal, while LGBT activists celebrate the Asian nation's first-ever Pride festival, and Jerusalem's 10th annual Pride marchers return to their route without the confrontations along the way, as in past years, with homophobic religious extremists; the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announces new policies that will make deporting the foreign same-gender spouses of American citizens a "low priority", while a federal district court in Connecticut becomes the latest to declare the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional, and backers of California's marriage equality-banning Proposition 8, judged to be unconstitutional by a federal appeals court, request a final verdict from the U.S. Supreme Court; the U.S. national rail system promotes its "kids ride for half-off" offer to same-gender couple-headed families (AmtrakRideWithPride.com); and P-FLAG – Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays – disputes the common media wisdom that the controversy over the Chick-fil-A fast-food restaurant chain and its anti-gay rightwing Christian president Dan Cathy is simply about religious freedom and free speech (written by GREG GORDON with thanks to REX WOCKNER, produced by WENZEL JONES and STEVE PRIDE, and reported this week by JENN MAHONEY and RICK WATTS) 

A QUEER AND PLEASANT DANGER" is the title of transgender performance artist-author-activist KATE BORNSTEIN's recently released memoir. "This Way Out" correspondent DIXIE TREICHEL [from "Fresh Fruit" on KFAI-FM in Minneapolis-St. Paul] talks with Bornstein about her continuously transformative transitions. http://katebornstein.typepad.com/about.html

The remarkably long and prolific career of author-essayist-playwright GORE VIDAL has come to an end. Vidal, who died at the age of 86 on July 31st in Los Angeles, was infamous in more than one sector of American letters, from the then-shocking gay and trans characters of his early novels "The City and the Pillar" and "Myra Breckinridge" and his work for the stage and screen – sometimes uncredited – to the biting political polemics that made him a favored – and feared – commentator. But he won special acclaim for his historical writings, which, as he told AMY GOODMAN on "Democracy Now!" in a 2008 interview, he began somewhat reluctantly. He also discussed his friendships with James Baldwin, Eleanor Roosevelt, and his decades-long "friendship" with Howard Austen. www.democracynow.org