Lincoln, “Lover of Men” (Pt. 1) | This Way Out Radio Episode #1958

This Way Out
Oct 7
7 min read

Updated: Oct 15

Shaun Peterson’s film documentary investigates the evidence that Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, would today be considered bisexual or queer (interviewed by Brian DeShazor, part 1 of 2).

Plus: The “Rainbow Rewind” lists notable LGBTQ+ dates in October, and recalls the murder of Matthew Shepard 27 years ago this month.

And in NewsWrap: Slovakia’s legislature approves a constitutional amendment declaring male and female the only two genders that also bans surrogacy and limits adoption to straight married couples, Japan’s government includes same-gender relationships under nine more laws and ordinances that essentially makes them the same as de facto heterosexual marriages, Scotland forces all students and staff to use bathrooms and other sex-segregated campus facilities that match their biological gender, the Canadian government is advising residents with gender-neutral passports to reconsider plans to travel to the United States, 200 gay men looking to hook up in the cruisy toilets of New York City’s Penn Station are caught up in a massive sting operation, Harvard University’s hire of Professor Kareem Khubchandani (aka LaWhore Vagistan) to teach gender and sexuality has the rightwing apoplectic, and more international LGBTQ+ news reported this week by Melanie Keller and Tanya Kane-Parry (produced by Brian DeShazor).

All this on the October 6, 2025 edition of This Way Out!

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LISTEN TO THE PODCAST EXTENDED EDITION

Complete Program Summary

for the week of October 6, 2025

Lincoln, Lover of Men (Pt. 1)

NewsWrap (full transcript below): Slovakia lawmakers amend their Constitution to limit adoption to heterosexual married couples and gender to only male and female … Japan inches closer to marriage equality and now equates same-gender unions with de facto heterosexual couples … the Scottish government orders all public schools to force trans students and staff to use campus bathrooms and other sex-segregated facilities based on the gender marker on their birth certificates … Canada’s government warns citizens with gender-neutral or “X” gender markers on their passports to reconsider traveling to the United States … Amtrak police detain some 200 men in a gay sex sting in restrooms at New York City’s Penn Station, including with ICE's participation at least one legal asylum seeker … social media right-wingers are aghast at Harvard University’s hiring of professor and drag queen LaWhore Vagistan (Kareem Khubchandani) to teach two academic courses on “Queer Ethnography” and “RuPaulitics: Drag, Race, and Desire” (written this week by GREG GORDON and LUCIA CHAPPELLE, produced by BRIAN DeSHAZOR, and reported this week by MELANIE KELLER and TANYA KANE-PARRY).

Feature: Early October birthdays and events are recalled in the debut of a new This Way Out series, Rainbow Rewind, written and hosted by SHERI LUNN and BRIAN DeSHAZOR and produced by BRIAN DeSHAZOR (featuring the late CINDY FRIEDMAN, and with music via a Creative Commons license).

Feature: Was “Honest Abe” bisexual? “This Way Out’s” BRIAN DeSHAZOR chats with documentarian Shaun Peterson, whose recent film Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln investigates some queer evidence about the 16th President of the United States [Part 1 of 2] (with segment intro music performed by THE UNITED STATES ARMY CEREMONIAL BAND and internal music performed by THE UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS BAND).

NewsWrap

A summary of some of the news in or affecting

LGBTQ communities around the world

for the week ending October 4th, 2025

Written by Greg Gordon and Lucia Chappelle

reported this week by MELANIE KELLER and TANYA KANE-PARRY,

and produced by BRIAN DeSHAZOR

Male and female are the only two genders to be recognized in Slovakia. Lawmakers approved a constitutional amendment on September 26th that also bans surrogacy and limits adoption to married couples. A 2014 amendment already defined civil marriage as exclusively heterosexual. Schools will now be required to comply with the “cultural and ethical positions” of the Slovak Constitution.

With a shaky coalition of parties ranging from the far-right to the far-left, Prime Minister Robert Fico strongly supported the amendment. He called it necessary to defend “traditional values” against liberal ideology that was “spreading like cancer” in his country. There had been doubts that Fico’s 78-seat ruling coalition could reach the required three-fifths majority of the 150-seat National Council to pass the law. However, 12 opposition council members helped barely meet that threshold.

Although Slovakia joined the European Union in 2004, the amendment claims the central European nation’s “national sovereignty in cultural and ethical matters.” That could lead to clashes over queer rights like those between the E.U. and Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Slovak P.M. Fico has also angered fellow E.U. member states by meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at least four times in the past year.

“This amendment directly endangers our E.U. membership, bringing us even closer to authoritarian Russia,” according to the Slovak LGBTQ and intersex rights group Iniciatнva Inakosť. The group’s Facebook post called the vote a “violation of human rights and our international obligations” and “one of the most dangerous decisions the Slovak Parliament has ever made.”

Japan’s government is taking nine new baby steps toward full marriage equality. Inclusion under the laws and ordinances such as the Disaster Condolence Grant essentially mean same-gender relationships will be treated the same as de facto heterosexual marriages, as of September 30th. Twenty-four other couples’ statutes were extended to same-gender couples in January, including the Public Housing Act, the Domestic Violence Prevention Act, the Child Abuse Prevention Act and the Land and House Lease Act.

Three of Japan’s eight regional High Courts ruled in 2024 and ‘25 that denying civil marriage to same-gender couples is unconstitutional. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s coalition government has bowed to those decisions in tiny increments. However, the power to open the institution to queer couples rests with the National Diet, the nation’s legislature. Not untypically, lawmakers lag behind the citizenry. Recent polling shows nearly 70 percent of the Japanese public supports full marriage equality.

Even Ishiba has admitted that opening civil marriage to gay and lesbian couples would “make the nation happier.”

There’s nowhere for Scotland’s transgender public school students to relieve themselves anymore – this due to a government order forcing all students and staff to use bathrooms and other sex-segregated campus facilities that match their biological gender. Teachers report that their trans students are now “limiting food and drink” to avoid the situation, according to Pink News.

Gender-neutral bathrooms are an option under the guidance issued on September 29th. However, transgender students are now also barred from participating in sex-segregated physical education classes based on their gender identity.

The U.K.’s Supreme Court controversially ruled in April that only biological women are legally women under the country’s Equality Act. A judge later required six Scottish schools to provide separate bathrooms for male and female pupils. Scotland’s Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth claimed that the new guidance provides "clarity" following those two rulings.

CEO Maya Forstater of the human rights charity Sex Matters disagrees. She calls the new guidance “muddled and ideological …. unlawful and unnecessarily complex.”

The Educational Institute of Scotland represents more than 80 percent of Scotland’s teaching staff. In the words of their press statement the new guidance “falls short of providing clarity and reassurance that the rights of transgender and non-binary pupils will be preserved in the current legal context, and how schools and teachers can continue to balance competing statutory obligations.” The Institute’s General Secretary Andrea Bradley adds, “Decisions will be left up to individual local authorities and schools while the guidance fails to address how significant concerns about the health, safety and wellbeing of transgender pupils will be addressed if pupils cannot use facilities in accordance with their gender identity.”

The Canadian government is advising residents with gender-neutral passports to reconsider plans to travel to the United States. The October 1st Department of Global Affairs update to its U.S. travel advice page warns, “While the Government of Canada issues passports with a ‘X’ gender identifier, it cannot guarantee your entry or transit through other countries.”

An executive order issued soon after Donald Trump’s second presidential term began declared that there are only two legal genders in the U.S. – male and female. Secretary of State Marco Rubio followed with a directive limiting gender markers on passports to only male or female. Lower court rulings have prevented the implementation of those limitations, and the Trump administration is appealing to the Supreme Court.

The Canadian government counts some 3,600 citizens who have chosen the "X" gender marker for their passports, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. That option has been available to Canadians since 2019.

Jennifer Young of the U.S. Embassy in Canada said that they cannot comment on the new travel advisory due to the current U.S. government shutdown.

Gay men looking to hook up in the cruisy toilets of New York City’s Penn Station are being caught up in a massive sting operation. Unencumbered by the city’s sanctuary policy, the federal Amtrak police are working in association with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Two hundred men have reportedly been arrested for public lewdness since June, and at least one legal asylum seeker was detained. He was released after a month in custody.

One man told the independent online publication THE CITY that he was literally just using the urinal while wearing a rainbow wristband when he was arrested and handcuffed to a wall. He says he overheard an Amtrak officer say, “Yeah, we got three more f** pervs.” He was detained there for three hours and the charges were eventually dropped.

New York City Council LGBTQ+ Caucus co-chairs Erik Bottcher and Tiffany Cabán wrote a letter to Amtrak President Roger Harris calling for an immediate end to the sting operation and assurances that such civil rights violations would not be repeated.

Finally, the rightwing U.S. echo chamber is apoplectic over Harvard University’s latest hire: LaWhore Vagistan. That’s the drag queen stage name of Kareem Khubchandani, the F.O. Matthiessen Visiting Professor of Gender and Sexuality. Matthiessen was a highly regarded openly gay Harvard professor. Khubchandani is visiting from Tufts University, where he’s an associate professor of theater, dance and performance studies. At Harvard he’ll be teaching “Queer Ethnography” in the autumn semester and “RuPaulitics: Drag, Race, and Desire” next spring.

Elon Musk’s X was all abuzz with homophobic abuse at Khubchandani and Harvard, belittling the drag performer’s academic worth.

Khubchandani holds a Master’s degree and a PhD in performance studies. His research has focused on the confluence of queer nightlife, global politics, ethnography, the South Asian diaspora and drag. His scholarly work has been published in at least seven academic journals, including the Journal of Asian American Studies and The Scholar and Feminist Online.

The oldest university in the United States has been at loggerheads with the Trump administration for months over its allegedly “too woke” D.E.I. hiring and curriculum.

In an interview with Theatre Topics, Professor Khubchandani talks about lecturing at Northwestern University and the University of Texas at Austin in his drag persona. It’s not clear if he’ll do the same at Harvard, but he told the publication, “You can’t teach in less than six-inch [heels], but then again you can’t do a lot of things with less than six inches.”