De Waal: “It Wasn’t Dutch Courage” | This Way Out Radio Episode #1934
- Jason Jenn
- Apr 22
- 7 min read
Decades of LGBTQ+ organizing in Australia are captured in the memoir of Peter De Waal, and the spirit of his book launching at the site of the early movement’s first meetings is captured by Sydney correspondent Barry McKay.
And in NewsWrap: the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court rejects the Scottish government’s argument that transgender women should have full access to women’s services, gender dysphoria is no longer covered by U.S. laws banning discrimination against people with disabilities, a transgender Green Party candidate for the Norwegian parliament believes her country should offer asylum to trans people from the U.S., the parliament dominated by Hungary’s authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán bans LGBTQ Pride events, the authoritarian-leaning administration of would-be U.S. President Donald Trump defunds the museum devoted to Black queer rights activist Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray, and more international LGBTQ+ news reported this week by Marcos Najera and Lucia Chappelle (produced by Brian DeShazor).
All this on the April 21, 2025 edition of This Way Out!
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Complete Program Summary
for the week of April 214, 2025
De Waal: It Wasn’t Dutch Courage
NewsWrap (full transcript below): A five-judge panel of the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court unanimously rules that trans women are not always women … U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. removes gender dysphoria from the categories of disabled people protected from discrimination under federal law … Green Party member Karina Ødegård, who’s running to become the first transgender member of the Norwegian Parliament, calls on her country to offer asylum to U.S. transgender people … Hungarian lawmakers obey autocratic Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s demand to ban LGBTQ Pride events, but thousands hit the streets in protest … the Trump administration cuts a critical multi-year federal grant to Durham, North Carolina’s Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice, which honors the legacy of the Black transgender Southern human rights worker and ordained Episcopal minister [with brief comments by Center Executive Director Angela Thorpe Mason, thanks to DAVID HUNT] (written by GREG GORDON and LUCIA CHAPPELLE, produced by BRIAN DeSHAZOR, reported this week by LUCIA CHAPPELLE and MARCOS NAJERA).
Feature: Survivors of the generation that started the LGBTQ+ movement in Australia are like gold, and mining the life story of Peter De Waal is a rich pursuit. Born in the Netherlands, De Waal in the early 1970s was a founding member of the Sydney organization Campaign Against Moral Persecution, or CAMP. He was there for Australia’s Stonewall at the first Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and was still on the frontlines for the marriage equality struggle. This Way Out’s Barry McKay joined the throng for the March 24th launch of De Waal’s amazing memoir, It Wasn’t Dutch Courage, held at Balmain Town Hall — home of some of the first CAMP events (with intro music by the SYDNEY GAY & LESBIAN CHOIR).
[The YouTube video mentioned in the report is here:
And the book can only be purchased in the U.S. here:
NewsWrap
A summary of some of the news in or affecting
global LGBTQ communities
for the week ending April 19th, 2025
Written by Greg Gordon and Lucia Chappelle,
reported this week by LUCIA CHAPPELLLE and MARCOS NAJERA
(with thanks to David Hunt),
produced by Brian DeShazor
Transgender women in the United Kingdom are not always women – that’s how the Supreme Court ruled on April 16th. The unanimous decision of the high court rejected the Scottish government’s argument that trans women who have obtained a Gender Recognition Certificate should be viewed as women with full access to women’s services. That included trans women being covered under the same statutes that protect women from discrimination. One such statute is the U.K.’s Equality Act 2010. The anti-trans group For Women Scotland demanded clarification of the terms “women” and “sex” in the Act. A lower court determined that the definition of “sex” was not limited to biology.
Scotland’s Gender Recognition Certificates were created in 2004 to allow recipients to change their official gender “for all purposes.” The particular “purpose” that peeved For Women Scotland was the inclusion of transgender women on public sector boards where gender balance is required.
For Women Scotland’s suit argued that the terms “sex” and “women” in the Equality Act strictly refer to gender assigned at birth, which it calls an “immutable biological state.” The Supreme Court agreed, writing that the “concept of sex is binary, a person is either a woman or a man.” The ruling therefore makes intersex and non-binary people “un-sexed” and nonexistent.
As the suit’s anti-trans backers cheered, Judge Patrick Hodge cautioned, “We counsel against reading this judgment as a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another, it is not.” Speaking for the five-judge panel Hodge said, “The Equality Act 2010 gives transgender people protection, not only against discrimination through the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, but also against direct discrimination, indirect discrimination, and harassment in substance in their acquired gender.”
Scottish trans leader Vic Valentine joined a chorus of activists and advocacy groups to denounce the court ruling. Opponents insist that its impact on access to sex-segregated public bathrooms, changing rooms and the like must be resolved.
In Valentine’s words, “This judgment seems to suggest that there will be times where trans people can be excluded from both men’s and women’s spaces and services. It is hard to understand where we would then be expected to go – or how this decision is compatible with a society that is fair and equal for everybody.”
The Edinburgh-based group Scottish Trans is urging its constituents “not to panic.” Their reassuring Bluesky post said, “There will be lots of commentary coming out quickly that is likely to deliberately overstate the impact that this decision is going to have on all trans people's lives."
Scottish First Minister John Swinney once said that he believes transgender women are women. The leader of the ruling center-left Scottish National Party now only promises that the government “will … engage on the implications of the [high court] ruling.”
The Supreme Court ruling can be appealed.
Gender dysphoria is no longer covered by U.S. laws banning discrimination against people with disabilities. Although gender dysphoria is included in the preamble to the Rehabilitation Act, it’s not specifically discussed in the text of the Act that addresses rights of the disabled. Therefore, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Junior declared this week that there are no anti-bias disability protections for many trans and nonbinary people.
Seventeen Republican state attorneys general are already suing the federal government over the Biden administration’s specific addition of gender dysphoria to Section 504, where the classes protected by the Rehabilitation Act are described.
It's unclear whether HHS Secretary Kennedy’s announcement will make the current lawsuit against the inclusion of gender dysphoria mute, but a legal challenge to his edict is inevitable.
Norway should offer asylum to transgender people from the United States, according to a Green Party politician. Karina Ødegård is currently running to become the first out transgender member of the Norwegian parliament. Ødegård compared the plight of trans people under President Donald Trump to that of LGBTQ people in Nazi Germany. She asked, “What would we have done in the 1930s if we knew what was about to happen? That’s where we are now. Then we must act.”
During an interview with the Norwegian news outlet Aftenposten, Ødegård said, “When we see developments in the United States, where rights are being withdrawn through pure legal and political persecution, I believe it should provide grounds for asylum.”
Trans Norwegians enjoy several legal protections. They can legally change their gender by simply sending a notification to the National Population Register.
Norway is one of the European countries that have issued formal travel alerts for its U.S.-bound gender nonconforming citizens. Warning that “The United States only recognizes the applicant’s gender at birth,” they urge trans and nonbinary travelers to check first with the U.S. embassy before departure.
LGBTQ Pride is now banned in Hungary. Parliament passed the bill on April 14th, but it was a foregone conclusion when the authoritarian government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán proposed it earlier this year. The Hungarian autocrat posted on social media, “We won’t let woke ideology endanger our kids.”
Law enforcement can use facial recognition tools to identify anyone who attends a now-banned Pride event. The fine is up to 200,000 forints – about $550 U.S.
Hungarians have not taken the government’s violation of the freedom of assembly lying down. Tens of thousands of people have been hitting the streets of Budapest and in other cities in protest. An April 12th “Gray Pride” march at the Hungarian capital satirized the ban. Gray and black-clad participants waved monochrome flags in mock celebration of sameness.
Budapest Pride organizers call the constitutional amendment “not child protection, this is fascism.” They intend to defy the ban and hold the annual event in late June.
Finally Angela Thorpe Mason saw the Trump administration writing on the wall:
[SOUND: “I first caught wind of this happening with the changes that were made to … the Stonewall National Monument website. And so I figured something was probably gonna come down the pipeline to the Pauli Murray Center.”
Mason is the Executive Director of Durham, North Carolina’s Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice speaking with This Way Out the week of March 21st. Last week the Center was notified that the federal Institute for Museum and Library Services was terminating its multi-year grant of close to $331,000. The Institute itself is targeted for closure.
The letter to the Murray Center stated that the grant “no longer serves the interest of the United States.” Mason responded, “The notion that Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray’s lived experience as a Southerner, and work as a Black, gender non-conforming civil, women’s, and human rights activist is against national interest, [is] essentially un-American.”
A legal scholar and ordained Episcopal priest, biographers consider Pauli Murray to have identified as transgender long before the concept even entered public discourse.
The Trump administration removed online references to Murray's gender identity earlier this year on the Center’s federal U.S. National Park Service website. The words “queer” and “transgender” disappeared from the webpage for the Pauli Murray Family Home in Durham.
Mason told WUNC that the grant represented 20 percent of the Center’s current fiscal year’s budget, and nearly a quarter of next year’s budget. It funded one of only five fulltime staff, a loss Mason says, “has a major impact on both our work and our financial realities." Some community programs and a new exhibition will now be impossible.
Mason told the Raleigh News & Observer that the Center is hoping that alternative forms of giving will make up for the loss of federal funding. In her words the funding cut “only signals that our work is important again, if a small site like ours is being attacked so violently.”
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