This Way Out – January 1, 2026

This Way Out

This Way Out is the only internationally distributed weekly LGBTQ radio program, currently airing on some 200 local community radio stations around the world. The award-winning half-hour magazine-style program features a summary of some of the major news events in or affecting the queer community (NewsWrap), in-depth coverage of major events, interviews with key queer …

Upcoming Episode

Twenty-twenty-five’s queerest news and feature stories in review; this week’s Rainbow Rewind remembers Frank Kameny, Ma Rainey and key late December happenings; quick-study Kazakh Senators pass a “no promo homo” bill, Trump’s vile war on trans kids escalates, Congressional Republicans criminalize trans kid caregivers, a North Carolina County disbands its library board over a trans kid picture book, and St. Petersburg, Florida counters demolished rainbow crosswalks with multi-colored bike racks…Those stories and more this week, when you choose “This Way Out.”


Poet Steven Reigns’ memorial memoir chronicling his profound six-year friendship with Michael Church who died of AIDS in 2000 (“Outliving Michael,” Moon Tide Press, 2025) is presented in an original sound collage with archival news reports and the friends’ favorite music (produced by Brian DeShazor).

Plus United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has a message of hope for World AIDS Day, despite the disastrous combination of drastic funding cuts and official anti-gender and anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination. (NewsWrap returns next week).


We commemorate the birthday of the renowned gay Irish writer Oscar Wilde with an excerpt from the play he was writing in October, 1891 — a scene from a production directed for Pacifica Radio by a “pre-Spock” Leonard Nimoy (hear the complete performance at thiswayout.org, presented by Brian DeShazor).

Plus: The “Rainbow Rewind” recalls the end of the picket line, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’s” demise, and no room at the National Council of Churches.


For more than two decades, activist, educator, diplomat Jessica Stern has worn a variety of hats in her efforts to advance LGBTQ human rights around the world, always at the forefront — unafraid, unapologetic, speaking truth to power. Currently serving as Senior Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy Fellow at the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights at the Harvard Kennedy School, Stern talks about her pioneering work at the United Nations, her tenure as the top queer diplomat in the U.S. State Department and her advice for standing up for human rights in a hostile world (interviewed by David Hunt).