12/23/2012 This Way Out

Hosted by Greg Gordon and produced with Lucia Chappelle

"NewsWrap": The Uruguay House overwhelmingly passes a marriage equality bill that most believe will be approved in the Senate and signed into law by the president in early 2013; pressure grows on the Obama administration to file friend of the court briefs supporting marriage equality in the two cases coming before the Supreme Court next year, while the Republican majority in the U.S. House ups the ante to 2 million taxpayer dollars in its legal defense of the equality-banning Defense of Marriage Act; Western Australia becomes the latest state or territory "Down Under" to have marriage equality on the parliamentary agenda, while honeymooners make tourism phones ring off the hook following the first legal marriage of a gay male couple on the Dutch Caribbean island of Saba; an avowedly anti-gay Ukrainian political party brags about assaulting and gassing a peaceful LGBT rights demonstration in Kyiv, but a court in Chile fines a motel for sexual orientation-based discrimination in the first such case since the enactment of the country's long-languishing anti-bias law earlier this year; Uganda's parliament adjourns, possibly until as late as February 2013, without considering the so-called "Kill the Gays Bill", while the nation's homophobic House Speaker Rebecca Kadaga is ironically blessed by anti-LGBT Pope Benedict XVI at a so-called "human rights conference" in Rome (written by GREG GORDON, produced by STEVE PRIDE, and reported this week by CHRISTOPHER GAAL and PAMELA BROOKS) 

International Latin pop star RICKY MARTIN's coming out in 2010 sounded a significant cultural shift nearly as loudly as did President Barack Obama's endorsement of marriage equality. So Martin definitely made the short list when UNITED NATIONS Secretary General Ban Ki-moon sought artists of global stature to help lead a renewed call to stop anti-LGBT violence and discrimination.  South African singer-activist Yvonne Chaka Chaka and others joined Ban and Martin at a Human Rights Day press conference at the UN on December 10th. Martin's testimony about his personal liberation was a major highlight of the event 

So WHO of note CAME OUT of the closet in 2012? TOM MILLER reviews the roster in this extended "RAINBOW MINUTE" (produced by JUDD PROCTOR & BRIAN BURNS at WRIR-FM in Richmond, Virginia)

Our "Queer Life and Literature" commentator JANET MASON reveals the SAGE wisdom hidden in her "Tea Leaves"

"REMEMBERING THOSE WHO DIED IN 2012" in this extended "RAINBOW MINUTE" (read by MICHAEL MASZAROS & DANIELA WYATT and produced by JUDD PROCTOR & BRIAN BURNS at WRIR-FM in Richmond, Virginia