Lincoln, “Lover of Men” (Pt. 2) | This Way Out Radio Episode #1959
- This Way Out
- Oct 14
- 7 min read
Updated: Oct 15
Shaun Peterson’s “Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln” goes beyond investigating the love live of the 16th U.S. President to examine how the study of history evolves (interviewed by Brian DeShazor, part 2 of 2).
Plus: The “Rainbow Rewind” crosses generations to find outspoken October-born advocates and digs down to the roots of National Coming Out Day.
And in NewsWrap: the United States Supreme Court hears the case of a Christian licensed therapist who says Colorado’s conversion therapy ban violates her free speech rights, a volleyball league in Colombia’s Antioquia region must reverse its ban on transgender competitors by order of the Constitutional Court, Florida’s war on rainbow crosswalks continues with the bulldozing of an iconic installation on Ocean Drive in Miami Beach, embattled U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel fires a decorated FBI trainee is fired for displaying a rainbow flag on his desktop, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney bears Trump’s anti-trans rant despite having a non-binary child, and more international LGBTQ+ news reported this week by Marcos Najera and Ret (produced by Brian DeShazor).
All this on the October 13, 2025 edition of This Way Out!
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LISTEN TO THE PODCAST EXTENDED EDITION
Complete Program Summary
for the week of October 13, 2025
Lincoln, Lover of Men (Pt. 2)
NewsWrap (full transcript below): The U.S. Supreme Court hears a challenge to Colorado’s ban on so-called “conversion therapy,” and the fate of similar statutes in more than two dozen other states and jurisdictions hangs in the balance — as Linda Robinson, the mother of a suicided son forced into enduring the “quack cure” warns other parents to not fall for false claims [with audio) … a three-judge panel of Colombia’s Constitutional Court orders a regional volleyball regulating organization to dump its recently-enacted ban on trans competitors … Florida’s Department of Transportation, under the direction of Governor Ron DeSantis, continues its war on colorful crossings by bulldozing an iconic rainbow crosswalk on Ocean Drive in Miami Beach … over-his-head U.S. FBI Director Kash Patel exemplifies the Trump administration’s pettiness by firing an agency trainee for having a small rainbow flag on his desk … Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, who has a nonbinary adult child, takes heat for sitting silently as U.S. President Donald Trump veers off course during a supposed meeting to discuss trade issues to rant against transgender Americans [with audio] (written by GREG GORDON and LUCIA CHAPPELLE, produced by BRIAN DeSHAZOR, and reported this week by MARCOS NAJERA and RET).
Feature: More October birthdays and events are recalled in the second installment of a special This Way Out series, The Rainbow Rewind, written and hosted by SHERI LUNN and BRIAN DeSHAZOR and produced by BRIAN DeSHAZOR (this week featuring the late Urvashi Vaid).
Feature: Film documentarian Shaun Peterson believes that “history is evolving”. He chats with This Way Out’s BRIAN DeSHAZOR about his Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln” as an example of historians’ evolving understanding of the 16th President of the United States (with audio clips from the bio-pic) [Part 2 of 2].
is now streaming on Apple TV and Amazon Prime.]
NewsWrap
A summary of some of the news in or affecting
LGBTQ communities around the world
for the week ending October 11th, 2025
Written by Greg Gordon and Lucia Chappelle
reported this week by MARCOS NAJERA and RET,
and produced by BRIAN DeSHAZOR
Conversion therapy is on trial in the United States Supreme Court, which could quash bans against the discredited practice in more than two dozen states. The American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association and literally every professional medical and mental health organization in the country condemns the claim that sexual orientation and gender identity can be changed through counseling and prayer. The United Nations has compared it to torture. However, the high court heard oral arguments on October 7th in a case that defends conversion therapy on free speech grounds.
The specific case involves a Christian licensed therapist backed by the notoriously anti-queer legal assault team the Alliance Defending Freedom. Kaley Chiles counsels clients seeking what she calls “religiously informed care” that comports with traditional biblical understandings of sexuality and gender. Her lawyers argued that a 2019 Colorado law known as the Prohibit Conversion Therapy for a Minor Act violates her First Amendment rights.
The law prohibits and prescribes disciplinary action for what it defines as “efforts to change an individual's sexual orientation, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”
In addition to Colorado, similar bans now stand in more than two dozen other states, Puerto Rico and the District of Colombia.
To most observers the majority of the justices seemed to favor Chiles’ claims that the conversion therapy ban restricts her religious and free speech rights. Far right Justice Samuel Alito flatly called the ban “blatant viewpoint discrimination.” Justice Clarence Thomas doubled down, suggesting that the ban might be a “prior restraint on speech.”
Colorado Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson defended her state’s law. She argued that it protects minors from harmful and discredited practices, that it regulates professional conduct, not speech. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson agreed, seeing the law as consistent with a state’s traditional authority to oversee medical practices.
Several scholars cited by Chiles’ Alliance Defending Freedom lawyers have complained that their research on conversion therapy was deliberately misrepresented as supporting the practice.
Linda Robinson’s 20-year-old son Ryan killed himself after enduring years of conversion therapy. Her story is part of an amicus brief filed by parents of several young conversion therapy victims. Her heart-breaking words on MSNBC have gone viral:
[SOUND: Robinson]
This is not a left or right issue. This is an issue of parents loving their kids and wanting to keep them safe. It was always sold as a way to make a child whole and holy and yet it did the opposite. It completely broke Ryan's confidence, and when we taught Ryan to hate his sexuality, we were teaching him to hate himself. These programs prey on vulnerable parents and they promised things they must know they don't work.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Chiles v. Salazar is expected to be announced in late June 2026.
A volleyball league in Colombia’s Antioquia region must reverse its ban on transgender competitors by order of the Constitutional Court. Emiliana Castrillón Jaramillo is identified by the Edge Media Network as the trans athlete who sued the league. She had participated in matches for more than a decade before the Liga Antioqueña de Voleibol jumped on the anti-trans bandwagon. Suddenly she was banned midway through a tournament. Her long-time participation prior to the ban was cited by a three-judge panel of the high court on October 1st. It decided that the action violated her human and constitutional rights to dignity and equality.
Judges Natalia Ángel Cabo and José Fernando Reyes Cuartos declared that there is no scientific evidence to suggest that trans athletes have an inherent competitive advantage over cisgender athletes. The two judges noted that physical ability is more commonly linked to “body composition,” training and nutrition. They also pointed out that no other players ever complained. Judge Cristina Pardo Schlesinger abstained.
The panel’s majority ordered the regulatory officials to allow Jaramillo to finish competing in the tournament. With help from the Ministry of Sport, they are to change the policy and revoke any measures excluding trans people from participating in their sporting events.
Advocacy groups in Colombia and around the world praise the court’s decision for bucking the trans sports ban trend. Those policies primarily targeting trans girls and women reinforce debasing stereotypes and are often based on pseudoscientific assumptions about “biological advantage.”
Florida’s war on rainbow crosswalks continues even during October’s LGBTQ History Month with the bulldozing of an iconic installation on Ocean Drive in Miami Beach. The city failed to stop the demolition by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and his Department of Transportation in court.
The state claims that it’s simply enforcing bans on public funds being used for political purposes. It offers no evidence for its assertion that the artwork confuses and distracts drivers.
Those arguments are disputed by the only openly queer elected official in Miami Beach. Commissioner Alex Fernandez calls the erasure a "total waste of taxpayer dollars to destroy a crosswalk that has proven to be among the safest on Ocean Drive."
The DeSantis administration is paving over rainbow crosswalks in cities across the state. One of the first to go was at the intersection near the Pulse Nightclub Memorial in Orlando.
Axios reports that the city of Miami Beach plans to fight back by installing rainbow benches across the city, but it's unclear when that might happen.
A decorated FBI trainee is fired for displaying a rainbow flag on his desktop – a victim of embattled U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel and the pettiness of the Trump administration. The popular sacked intern was also known to have displayed a Pride flag at his workstation when he was a field office diversity program coordinator under the Biden administration. Sources say that such displays in the past would not have violated agency policies.
The employee was undergoing new agent training at the FBI’s academy in Quantico, Virginia, when he received a letter from Patel ordering his immediate dismissal. It said that he was being summarily terminated for “poor judgment” and “an inappropriate display of political signage.”
Patel has been purging the agency of any staff members thought to be disloyal to Donald Trump. He recently fired more than a dozen FBI agents who took a knee while conducting crowd control in 2020 during a confrontation with a group of demonstrators in the nation’s capital – an action that appeared to de-escalate the situation but drew sharp criticism from conservatives inside and outside the Bureau.
At least three senior FBI officials are suing the Bureau on charges that their terminations were orchestrated by Trump sycophants.
Finally, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney came to the Oval Office on October 7th for a discussion of trade issues, but ended up enduring an off-topic tirade by President Donald Trump instead:
[SOUND: Trump]
We have no men in women's sports, where … I mean basic things … we're not … we're not gonna take your child away and change the sex of your child. We're not gonna do things like that. What they're doing to the country so incredible, and they got away with it with all their woke crap and now it stopped.
Carney has four children. Sasha Carney is non-binary and spoke in 2019 about their relief at coming out while studying at Yale University in the U.S.
More than 77 percent of Canada’s exports go to the United States, so the Advocate speculated that Carney chose to ignore Trump’s diatribe in furtherance of good trade relations. However
Canadian critics have condemned the P.M. for sitting silently by during Trump’s anti-trans barrage.
Meanwhile critics south of the border continue to normalize the president’s senescent ramblings:
[REPRISE: Trump]
What they're doing to the country so incredible, and they got away with it …
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