U.N.’s Crucial Queer Rights Vote | This Way Out Radio Episode #1945

Jason Jenn
Jul 8, 2025
8 min read

On the eve of the U.N. Human Rights Council’s vote on whether to renew the Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, Fabiana Leibl of the International Service for Human Rights, trans activist Best Chitsangupong, Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights senior fellow Jessica Stern; and scholar-activist Ignacio Saiz discuss the significance of the position and its chances of passage (interviewed by David Hunt).

And in NewsWrap: as many as 50+ are arrested in Istanbul for defying Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ban on Pride events, at least 30 more women are detained during an apparent second wave in China's continuing crackdown on “danmei” gay male erotica, the U.S. Congress sends the slash-and-burn Budget Reconciliation Bill to be signed by President Donald Trump, two U.S. Supreme Court rulings threaten the rights of transgender people in four states, trans school sports bans will be on the U.S. Supreme Court’s docket next session, Australia’s National Men’s Field Hockey Kookaburras Team took to the pitch wearing rainbow socks to support a gay teammate during Pride month, and more international LGBTQ+ news reported this week by John Dyer V and Ava Davis (produced by Brian DeShazor).

All this on the July 7, 2025 edition of This Way Out!

Join our family of listener-donors today at thiswayout.org/donate/

Complete Program Summary

for the week of July 7, 2025

U.N.’s Crucial Queer Rights Vote

NewsWrap (full transcript below): As many as 50 activists, maybe more, are arrested for “attempted Pride” in Istanbul again as they continue to defy Turkey’s decade-old ban on queer-supportive gatherings … in a revitalized crackdown that began earlier this year, more mostly young women are arrested in China for writing and posting to a Taiwan-based website gay male erotica known as “danmei,” or “boys’ love,” which authorities call “obscene content” … despite united opposition from Democratic lawmakers and opinion polls showing its escalating unpopularity, U.S. President Donald Trump signs a Budget Reconciliation Bill approved by compliant Republicans in the House and Senate that gives millionaires and billionaires huge tax breaks on the backs of millions of people who will lose financial support for Medicaid, often their primary source of healthcare coverage, along with severe cuts to recipients of SNAP, once called “food stamps,” that help feed struggling individuals and families … the U.S. Supreme Court tells appeals courts in Idaho, North Carolina, Oklahoma and West Virginia to reconsider upholding those states’ protections for transgender people … the high court announces that cases they will hear in their 2025-2026 session will include challenges to state bans in Idaho and West Virginia on transgender students competing in school sports … Australia’s National Men’s Field Hockey team, known as the Kookaburras, don rainbow socks to support gay teammate Davis Atkin in their come-from-behind win against England at an international hockey federation Pro League tournament in London (written by GREG GORDON and LUCIA CHAPPELLE, produced by BRIAN DeSHAZOR, and reported this week by AVA DAVIS and JOHN DYER V).

Feature: The global struggle to secure the human rights of LGBTQ people has a powerful advocate at the United Nations, but will that always be so? That advocate’s voice was nearly silenced this week when the time came for the United Nations Human Rights Council to renew its mandate. This Way Out’s DAVID HUNT talks with Fabiana Leibl of the International Service for Human Rights, trans activist Best Chitsangupong, Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights senior fellow Jessica Stern, and scholar-activist Ignacio Saiz, intro music by BILL WITHERS, and internal music by FOSTER and MICHAEL SHYNES ).

[International Service for Human Rights: https://ishr.ch/]

NewsWrap

A summary of some of the news in or affecting

LGBTQ communities around the world

for the week ending July 5th, 2025

Written by Greg Gordon and Lucia Chappelle,

reported this week by Ava Davis and John Dyer V,

produced by Brian DeShazor

Activists “attempted Pride” in Istanbul on June 29th, and as many as 50+ were arrested for it. That’s been the annual exercise since Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan banned Pride events in 2015, a year after he took power: riot gear-clad police block the streets to confront the LGBTQ protesters and their allies trying to march. Police chased down and captured several people in the city center for simply carrying rainbow flags, according to some accounts.

Erdoğan’s anti-queer behavior has only gotten worse over the last decade. He regularly calls LGBTQ people “perverts.” When he declared 2025 to be “The Year of the Family,” he insisted that the very existence of queer people undermines “traditional family values.”

Governor of Istanbul Davut Gül is marching, too -- in lockstep with Erdoğan. To Gül what was once one of the region’s largest peaceful Pride gatherings, “undermines social peace, family structure and moral values.” He declared, “No gathering or march that threatens public order will be tolerated.”

Same-gender sex is not specifically illegal in Turkey. However, strong societal taboos in the Muslim-majority country prevent sexual and gender minorities from gaining any meaningful civil rights protections.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have each charged that the rhetoric and actions by Erdoğan and his subservient government officials virtually endorse discrimination and violence against LGBTQ people.

Meanwhile, queer European advocates are still buzzing about Budapest’s Pride Parade the previous day. An estimated 200,000 people defied a similar ban in authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Hungary.

In China at least 30 more women were detained during an apparent second wave in the continuing crackdown on gay male erotica, known as “danmei,” or ‘boys’ love.” Dozens of women were arrested earlier this year for writing and posting on the Taiwan-based adult fiction site Haitang Literature City. The stories penned mostly by women in their twenties are popular with young female readers seeking to challenge traditional gender roles. To Chinese authorities it’s considered “obscene content.” Two lawyers representing some of the detainees told the New York Times that as many as fifty writers may have been arrested during the past few weeks.

The Haitang Literature website allows some writers to earn modest tips from readers, and Chinese authorities tend to particularly target them for arrest. Punishment often depends on whether writers can repay the money they earned. Some of the site’s top authors have received varying sentences of one to five years in prison.

Homosexuality was decriminalized in China in 1997 and declassified as a mental disorder in 2001. However, the government has continued to deny LGBTQ people basic civil rights, and to suppress positive cultural representations of sexual and gender minorities.

President Donald Trump signed the controversial Budget Reconciliation Bill into law on U.S. Independence Day, July 4th. Republican majorities in both houses of the U.S. Congress complied with their party leader’s wishes despite the opposition of most of the country’s people.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office concluded that what Trump called his “Big Beautiful Bill” gives huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires on the backs of people who access government-sponsored Medicaid health care and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program known as SNAP.

The Williams Institute at the U.C.L.A. School of Law says that close to 13 percent of LGBTQ adults in the country rely on Medicaid as their primary health insurance provider – that’s about 1.8 million people. Many of them will be among the estimated 10 million who will now lose their coverage.

The only silver lining was that the Senate Parliamentarian determined that blocking the use of federal funding to reimburse medical care for transgender young people could not be a part of the bill under the chamber’s legislative rules.

The Williams Institute finds that women and transgender people will be the most affected by cuts to SNAP. The think tank that focuses on public policies impacting LGBTQ people says some 250,000 trans individuals and 1.3 million lesbian and bisexual women were able to access SNAP in the past year. An estimated seven million people in the U.S. will now either lose SNAP benefits entirely, or see their benefit amounts severely reduced.

The law also substantially increases funding for the Defense Department and for Homeland Security, which includes ICE – Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That will put even more of the often masked and unidentified military-style officers on the streets of U.S. cities to detain and disappear people based on little more than racial profiling.

The U.S. Supreme Court capped its 2024/2025 session this week by threatening the rights of transgender people in four more states. Justices told appeals courts with jurisdictions in Idaho, North Carolina, Oklahoma and West Virginia to reconsider rulings in support of trans rights. Their directives follow last week’s Skrmetti decision to uphold Tennessee’s ban on pediatric gender-affirming healthcare.

The high court said that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit needs to reconsider its ruling against an Idaho ban on gender-affirming healthcare for minors. The justices already ruled last year that the state could continue enforcing the law even after that appellate court ruled against it.

Following suit, the Supreme Court majority ordered the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals to review its decisions that neither North Carolina nor West Virginia could deny coverage for gender-affirming healthcare to all transgender individuals.

Justices also told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit to reconsider a decision blocking Oklahoma’s law barring transgender people from changing gender markers on birth certificates and other official government documents.

Ann0uncements on these cases had been postponed pending their ruling in the Tennessee trans healthcare case.

Looking ahead to the next U.S. Supreme Court session, bans on transgender young people participating in school sports programs will be on the docket. Justices announced on July 3rd that they’ll hear two cases filed by trans students, their families and advocates challenging laws that ban their participation.

Idaho’s restrictions require intrusive gender testing to determine a female competitor’s eligibility. In the other case, a transgender middle school athlete is challenging West Virginia’s ban on trans competitors.

Rulings from the high court are expected to be announced in June 2026.

There are similar bans in more than half of the 50 U.S. states.

Republican majorities in both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate have thus far unsuccessfully tried to pass similar laws at the federal level.

Finally, Australia’s National Men’s Field Hockey Team took to the pitch wearing rainbow socks to support a gay teammate during Pride month. Midfielder Davis Atkin was outed to his coach at the University of Canberra by a team psychologist in twenty-twenty-one. Atkin told the queer athletics site Outsports that the incident put him “in a pretty dark place.”

Atkin has now played for the Australian national Kookaburras team close to 20 times. A photo of the team posted on Instagram depicted all of them wearing rainbow socks. The multi-hued hosiery-wearing Kookaburras overcame a two-goal deficit in late June to defeat England during an international hockey federation Pro League tournament in London by the score of 4 to 3.

Atkin posted a photo on social media with a Pride flag draped around his shoulders captioned, “Being able to run out on to the pitch with Pride socks together as a team was something truly special. The inclusivity, the support and the joy in this group made it all feel surreal. You can’t be what you can’t see, and even something as simple as rainbow socks can be a powerful sign to someone out there that they are seen, valid and belong.”