Queer News in TikTok Times | This Way Out Radio Episode #1952

This Way Out
20 hours ago
8 min read

As the world turns away from traditional news sources, gay journalist Enrique Anarte is building trust — and an audience — on social media (interviewed by David Hunt).

And in NewsWrap: the United Kingdom’s first transgender judge Victoria McCloud is taking her country’s Supreme Court ruling on the legal definition of “woman” to the European Court of Human Rights, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement must immediately release gay Jamaican refugee Rickardo Anthony Kelly by order of a federal district court judge, a student-sponsored charitable drag show on the campus West Texas A&M University was unconstitutionally banned according to the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, books found to be “suspect” under Florida’s expanded “Don’t Say Gay” law will be returning to classroom and school library shelves by order of a U.S. federal judge, local officials in more than two dozen Florida cities have been ordered to remove their LGBTQ Pride rainbow crosswalks, and more international LGBTQ+ news reported this week by Sarah Montague and David Hunt (produced by Brian DeShazor).

All this on the August 25, 2025 edition of This Way Out!

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Some samples of Enrique Anarte's work https://www.tiktok.com/@enriqueanartelazo

Complete Program Summary

for the week of August 25, 2025

Queer News in TikTok Times

NewsWrap (full transcript below): Victoria McCloud, Britain’s first transgender judge, goes to the European Court of Human Rights to challenge the U.K. Supreme Court’s April ruling that only people declared female at birth are legally women, specifically denying legal “womanhood” to transgender women … a federal judge in Manhattan orders the immediate release from ICE custody of asylum-seeking gay Jamaican Richard Anthony Kelly because the agency violated his due process rights by unlawfully detaining him … the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturns a ban on campus drag shows at West Texas A&M University as a violation of the student organizers’ free speech rights; … a Florida district judge sides with writers, publishers, parents, educators and students in finding that most provisions of the state’s “anti-obscenity” book ban infringe on First Amendment/free speech rights … activists in Orlando restore the rainbow to a crosswalk near the Pulse Nightclub Memorial after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis acts on Trump administration policy to order local officials in the city, and in more than a dozen other locales across the state, to paint over their rainbow crosswalks because “We will not allow our state roads to be commandeered for political purposes” (written by GREG GORDON and LUCIA CHAPPELLE, produced by BRIAN DeSHAZOR, with a cameo by CHUBBY CHECKER, and reported this week by SARAH MONTAGUE and DAVID HUNT).

Feature: The world is turning away from traditional news sources, but it’s not that easy to know what to trust in the changing media environment. This Way Out’s DAVID HUNT kicks off his old disco era platforms to talk about social media platforms like TikTok with Enrique Anarte, one queer journalist who’s learning to build trust — and an audience — online (with intro music by THE WHO and internal music by BRANDER).

[Context = https://www.context.news/;

embedded Anarte videos at thiswayout.org]

NewsWrap

A summary of some of the news in or affecting

LGBTQ communities around the world

for the week ending August 23rd, 2025

Written by Greg Gordon and Lucia Chappelle,

reported this week by SARAH MONTAGUE and DAVID HUNT,

produced by BRIAN DeSHAZOR

The United Kingdom’s first transgender judge is taking her country’s Supreme Court ruling on the legal definition of “woman” to the European Court of Human Rights. The decision that the Equality Act 2010 refers only to ‘biological women” specifically excludes transgender women, even those who have been legally identified as women with formal Gender Recognition Certificates.

Victoria McCloud left the bench last year and is now a litigation strategist at the private law firm W Legal. She’s complaining that the U.K. Supreme Court refused to hear testimony from her or any other trans individuals or advocacy groups before determining in April that only female-assigned-at-birth women are legally women. The justices did consider submissions by several so-called “gender-critical” groups, including For Women Scotland. That’s the group that originally challenged the Scottish government’s recognition of trans women as women in gender quota-required legal panels. Backed by their Supreme Court win, For Women Scotland is now suing the Scottish government for refusing to act on the decision, particularly targeting trans students and prison inmates.

The U.K. government has reacted to the high court decision by drafting legislation to restrict the rights of trans women in several areas of public life.

The Trans Legal Clinic is supporting McCloud with a historic legal team: its founder and executive director Olivia Campbell-Cavendish is the first Black trans lawyer in the country, and Oscar Davies is the first openly non-binary barrister. They’re arguing that the U.K. Supreme Court refusal to hear trans people’s testimony violates the European Convention on Human Rights Article 6 guarantee of a fair trial. They also cite the liberty guarantees in Articles 8 and 14. McCloud says she’s been denied “essentially the rights to respect for who I am, my family, my human existence, my right to a fair trial in matters determining my own freedoms and obligations without discrimination. … We are told we must use dangerous spaces such as male changing rooms and loos when we have female anatomy. … We are searched by male police, to ‘protect’ female police from, I assume, our female anatomy.”

If or when the EuroCourt will hear McCloud’s case remains to be seen.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement must immediately release gay Jamaican refugee Rickardo Anthony Kelly by order of a federal district court judge. ICE agents detained Kelly in New York City while he awaited a routine appointment seeking asylum. He was formally taken into custody after he refused an offer of a thousand dollars to self-deport.

That’s an unsociably small pay-off to return to Jamaica, where Kelly had been shot ten times in an attack motivated by his sexual orientation. In his initial writ of habeus corpus petition, Kelly wrote that he came to the U.S. on a tourist visa in 2021 following that incident and subsequently applied for asylum.

U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres wrote in her August 15th ruling, “In light of the undisputed facts, there is no doubt that [ICE’s] ongoing detention of [Kelly] with no process at all, much less prior notice, no showing of changed circumstances, or an opportunity to respond, violates his due process rights.”

Kelly fears that remaining in custody could lead to “severe and quite possibly fatal” medical complications as a 40-year-old diabetic. He describes the conditions in the ICE facility as “unconscionable,” “inhumane,” and “horrific.”

Judge Torres concluded, “The suggestion that government agents may sweep up any person they wish and hold that person in the conditions in which Kelly was held without consideration of dangerousness or flight risk so long as the person will, at some unknown point in time, be allowed to ask some other official for his or her release offends the ordered system of liberty that is the pillar of the Fifth Amendment.”

Hundreds of almost exclusively non-white asylum-seekers have allegedly been unconstitutionally detained without due process by the Trump administration. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin denies the charge. Like some detainees, Kelly has a pending minor legal offense. When asked about his case, McLaughlin asked a Courthouse News reporter, “Why does the media continue to peddle sob stories of these criminal illegal aliens?”

A student-sponsored charitable drag show on the campus West Texas A&M University was unconstitutionally banned –this according to the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The August 18th decision overturns a lower court endorsement of University President Walter Wendler’s unilateral cancellation of the production mounted by the LGBTQ student group Spectrum WT.

The appeals court wrote, “Because theatrical performances plainly involve expressive conduct within the protection of the First Amendment, we find the plaintiffs’ drag show is protected expression."

Wendler cancelled the fundraiser for queer youth suicide prevention in March of 2023, writing that “drag shows stereotype women in cartoon-like extremes for the amusement of others and discriminate against womanhood."

The lawsuit on behalf of Spectrum WT was filed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. FIRE Supervising Senior Attorney JT Morris told the press, “This is a victory not just for Spectrum WT, but for any public university students at risk of being silenced by campus censors.”

Books found to be “suspect” under Florida’s expanded “Don’t Say Gay” law will be returning to classroom and school library shelves. U.S. federal judge Carlos Mendoza of the U.S. Middle District Court of Florida rejected key provisions of the state’s H.B. 1069, which added books to the original prohibition on classroom discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in public schools through high school. The law banning so-called “obscene literature” is so vaguely worded that some school districts have purged major literary classics – such as works by Shakespeare, and even the dictionary. Disappeared books have also included classics like The Color Purple, Slaughterhouse Five, The Handmaid’s Tale and Beloved. Many of the targeted books explore LGBTQ or racial justice themes. Mendoza plainly said, “none of these books are obscene.”

Penguin Random House leads a consortium of major book publishers, joined by writers’ rights groups PEN America and the Author’s Guild and parents in the Escambia County School District that have challenged the constitutionality of the books ban.

In Judge Mendoza’s words, “The restrictions placed on these books are thus unreasonable in light of the purpose of school libraries.”

Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger’s celebratory press statement said in part, “Book bans don’t just censor words on a page; they silence authors’ lived experiences and deny students access to the stories that help them navigate an increasingly complex world.”

Finally …

[brief audio/Chubby Checker: “How low can you go…”]

… having lost one in the courts, Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis is taking it to the streets. Local officials in more than two dozen cities across the state have been ordered to remove their LGBTQ Pride rainbow crosswalks.

Echoing federal Department of Transportation policy, DeSantis proclaimed, “We will not allow our state roads to be commandeered for political purposes.”

Crews came out in the dead of night to paint over the rainbow crosswalk leading to the Pulse Nightclub memorial in Orlando, where 49 queer and allied patrons were mercilessly gunned down in 2016. Orlando’s Democratic Mayor Buddy Dyer called the rainbow removal a “cruel political act” that has “devasted” the city.

More than a hundred people used chalk to restore the rainbow colors to that crosswalk the following day. Progressive young Florida Democratic U.S. Congressman Maxwell Frost called the state’s action, "… an act of vandalism in the middle of the night, and just like the ICE agents terrorizing our communities wear the masks because they know they're not proud of what they're doing, that's why they did this in the dead of the night.”

Orlando’s state Democratic Senator Carlos Guillermo Smith shared photos on social media of people restoring color to the crosswalk, captioning them simply, “We will NOT be erased.” Smith was encouraged by a cosmic message, posting, "Just a few moments ago, we looked up into the sky, and there was not one, but there were two double rainbows, which is a reminder that the universe is with us."