The Scrubbing of the USNS Harvey Milk | This Way Out Radio Episode #1941
- This Way Out
- 5 days ago
- 8 min read
The U.S. Navy launched a fleet replenishment oiler in honor of assassinated San Francisco Supervisor and Navy vet Harvey Milk in 2021, but a new administration finds the gay icon not “reflective of the Commander-in-Chief's priorities” (produced by Lucia Chappelle).
And in NewsWrap: a heterosexual Ohio woman’s U.S. Supreme Court workplace discrimination win is based on the double-standard for evidence that members of majority groups need to provide rather than the merits of her case, Puerto Rico’s nonbinary and gender non-conforming people should be able to revise their birth certificates with an “X” gender marker according to the U.S. territory’s Supreme Court, anti-LGBTQ Texas Governor Greg Abbott is expected to sign a “Don’t Say Gay” bill that would ban school Gay-Straight Alliance advocacy groups, groundbreaking gay author Edmund White dies at the age of 85, the city of Missoula, Montana defies the state government by adopting the banned Pride flag as its official flag, and more international LGBTQ+ news reported this week by David Hunt and Tanya Kane-Parry (produced by Brian DeShazor).
All this on the June 9, 2025 edition of This Way Out!
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Complete Program Summary
for the week of June 9, 2025
The Scrubbing of the USNS Harvey Milk
NewsWrap (full transcript below): The U.S. Supreme Court sides with a heterosexual Ohio woman who claimed that her gay supervisor discriminated against her by promoting less qualified queer staff members instead of her, opening the door to future lawsuits by members of the majority (such as white or heterosexual workers) claiming bias based on their identity … the Puerto Rico Supreme Court grants non-binary or gender non-conforming residents of the U.S. island territory the right to update their birth certificates with an “X” gender marker … the Republican-controlled Texas state government enacts its own “Don’t Say Gay” law that bans queer-supportive Gay-Straight Alliances on all public school campuses because “we should not have student clubs based on sex” [with comments by Democratic lawmakers Erin Zwiener and Gene Wu] … Edmund White, whose novels and other writing explored gay life for more than five decades — including co-authoring the landmark “how to manual” called The Joy of Gay Sex — dies at the age of 85 … lawmakers in Missoula vote 9-to-2 to declare the LGBTQ rainbow flag to be their official city flag, skirting a just-passed Republican-led Montana state law banning their display on government buildings and public schools — unless it’s a municipality’s official flag (written by GREG GORDON and LUCIA CHAPPELLE, produced by BRIAN DeSHAZOR, reported this week by DAVID HUNT and TANYA KANE-PARRY).
Feature: The U.S. Navy launched a fleet replenishment oiler in honor of assassinated San Francisco Supervisor and Navy vet Harvey Milk in 2021, but a new administration finds the gay icon not “reflective of the Commander-in-Chief's priorities.” Milk’s nephew Stuart and then-Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro spoke about the significance of the USNS Harvey Milk, and Human Rights Campaign National Press Secretary Brandon Wolf reacts to the order to rename the ship (produced by LUCIA CHAPPELLE with music by FELIX JAEHN featuring JHART).
NewsWrap
A summary of some of the news in or affecting
LGBTQ communities around the world
for the week ending June 7th, 2025
Written by Greg Gordon and Lucia Chappelle,
reported this week by DAVID HUNT and TANYA KANE-PARRY,
produced by Brian DeShazor
A heterosexual Ohio woman has won support for her workplace discrimination claim from the United States Supreme Court, although the ruling does not conclude that there was bias against her because she is straight. The unanimous June 5th decision repudiates the “higher standard” of evidence that members of majority groups need to provide to prove such cases in half of the federal court circuits in the U.S. For example, they require white workers claiming bias based on their race, or heterosexual employees claiming bias based on their sexual orientation to present more evidence of bias than minority plaintiffs must show.
Marlean Ames is employed by Ohio’s Department of Youth Services, its juvenile justice agency. She’s charging that in two instances her straight supervisors passed her over for promotions in favor of less qualified queer candidates. She had previously had a fairly positive performance evaluation from a lesbian supervisor. Even in the conservative-leaning 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Ames had lost based on the “higher standard of proof” requirement.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote for all her colleagues that the high court’s case law "makes clear that the standard for proving disparate treatment under Title VII does not vary based on whether or not the plaintiff is a member of a majority group. ... Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone.”
Critics worry that the decision will open the floodgates to members of majority groups claiming job bias because of their identity. It may also weaken workplace protections for LGBTQ employees flowing from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 Bostock decision. The justices then found that queer people are included under the Title VII ban on workplace bias based on sex among a number of other characteristics.
National LGBTQ Task Force Policy Director Allen Morris told The Advocate that the decision "underscores the need for congressional action, and the prioritization of federal non-discrimination protections [for LGBTQ people]. … Congress must act to pass comprehensive, explicit federal non-discrimination protections, including the long-overdue Equality Act."
As for Ames, her lawyers say she is “overjoyed” about the opportunity to prove her case in the lower courts.
Puerto Rico’s nonbinary and gender non-conforming people should be able to revise their birth certificates with an “X” gender marker – that’s the ruling of the U.S. territory’s Supreme Court.
Transgender people in Puerto Rico have been able to update their binary birth certificates since a federal court ruling in 2018, but there was no nonbinary option. Citing the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the June 2nd high court decision calls the request of the six nonbinary plaintiffs “simple: to be permitted to have a gender marker on their birth certificate that reflects their true gender identity, like everyone else.”
The justices noted that at least 17 U.S. states allow “X” gender markers on birth certificates. Their 19-page decision concluded, “even in the absence of specific statutory language regarding nonbinary individuals, courts have interpreted statutes as implying the existence and rights of nonbinary people.”
Puerto Rico Governor Jenniffer González Colón says she’s waiting for recommendations from the territory’s Justice Department about how to best implement the ruling.
A Texas version of “Don’t Say Gay” has galloped through the Republican-dominated state legisture and is expected to be signed by anti-LGBTQ Governor Greg Abbott. The so-called “Parents Bill of Rights” prohibits student groups “based on sexual orientation or gender identity” on all public school campuses. The ban specifically targets the Gay-Straight Alliance advocacy groups popular on junior and senior high school campuses.
Representative Jeff Leach railed, “We’re not going to allow gay clubs, and we’re not going to allow straight clubs. We shouldn’t be sexualizing our kids in public schools, period. We shouldn’t have clubs based on sex.”
The measure also eliminates diversity, equity and inclusion programs in Texas schools, claiming that they call for “differential treatment” based on race.
Bisexual Democratic Representative Erin Zwiener spoke with great feeling about the legislation:
[SOUND: Zwiener]
This is one of the most, maybe the most nakedly hateful bill we have had on the floor of this House. And here's what I want y'all to know: getting silence in schools from the LGBTQ community, which is what this bill is designed to do, will not stop your kids from being gay. … It will make them afraid to tell you when they figure out that they're LGBTQ, and it might damage your relationship with them forever.
Fellow Democrat Gene Wu also took the floor:
[SOUND: Wu]
Every time I think we can't go any lower I'm always impressed. The real monsters are not kids trying to figure out who they are. The monsters are not the teachers who love them and encourage them and support them. They are not the books that provide them with some amount of comfort and information. The real monsters … the real monsters are in here.
If signed, the law is set to take effect in August or September. Advocacy groups are almost certain to challenge its constitutionality.
Edmund White is dead at the age of 85. The famed gay writer’s agent Bill Clegg confirmed his death to The Guardian on June 4th. He said that the writer was waiting for an ambulance after he experienced what his writer husband Michael Carroll described as “a vicious stomach bug.” He is survived by Carroll and his sister Margaret Ann.
White wrote many groundbreaking novels over the past six decades, including the semi-autobiographical A Boy’s Own Story, The Beautiful Room Is Empty, and The Farewell Symphony. He also published five memoirs: My Lives, City Boy, Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris, The Unpublished Vice and The Loves of My Life. That last one chronicled the thousands of men with whom he claimed to have had sex – apparently one of his qualifications for co-authoring the landmark 1977 how-to manual The Joy of Gay Sex. White was also a long-term HIV/AIDS survivor and helped found the nonprofit Gay Men’s Health Crisis with fellow writer Larry Kramer.
White’s biography of the French novelist Jean Genet won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994. His biographies of novelist Marcel Proust and poet Arthur Rimbaud are also deemed outstanding.
In the words of editor-in-chief Paul Baggaley of White’s publisher Bloomsbury, the author wrote “some of the best and bravest novels, biographies, and memoirs of the last fifty years, many of which will remain classics for generations to come. … It is impossible to overstate the importance or influence of his writing, in bringing the gay experience to the widest readership, and always achieved with wit, elegance and sexual candor.”
Finally, the city of Missoula, Montana is at odds with the state government about what flags can appropriately be flown over government property and public schools. Republican Governor Greg Gianforte signed a measure passed by the Republican-dominated legislature in mid-May banning any flags that “represent a political party, race, sexual orientation, gender, or political ideology.” Exceptions were made for the “official” flags of “any county, municipality, special district, or other political subdivision within the state.”
So, on June 2nd the Missoula City Council made the LGBTQ Pride flag their official city flag. The vote was 9-to-2. Bill sponsor Jennifer Savage has a queer daughter. In the Councilmember’s words, “When I see the pride flag, I breathe a little sigh of relief and think my kid is safe here. … The Pride flag symbolizes inclusion. When a public school teacher flies it in his or her classroom, it says to the student that has already come out that they are welcome. It symbolizes to the student who may just be coming to understand their sexual or gender identity that the classroom is a safe space.”
Fourth-grade teacher Petrea Torma was one of the educators who spoke out against the Montana flag ban during the Missoula Council’s public comment period. He said, “They have seen my flag up in my classroom all year, and last Friday, they had to walk in and realize that it’s gone.”
Republican-dominated legislatures in Utah and Idaho have also passed measures specifically banning the display of the LGBTQ rainbow Pride flag. Salt Lake City and Boise have in turn designated Pride flags as official city flags to skirt the laws. It’s unclear whether Confederate flags are exempted from the bans.
Montana State Representative Braxton Mitchell is vowing to amend the law he sponsored in order to thwart Missoula’s “leftist” government. He told NBC News that in the next legislative session he would “make sure no city can make a political symbol their official flag. If they want to fly that flag they can do it at home, not on the taxpayer’s pole.”
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