Thank You, Langston Hughes | This Way Out Radio Episode #1976

This Way Out
19 hours ago
8 min read

A 1963 conversation with one of the queer pillars of the Harlem Renaissance features Langston Hughes reading his short story, “Thank You, Ma’am” (interviewed by Eve Corey, produced by Brian DeShazor).

Alice Walker’s birthday and notable LGBTQ February events are celebrated in the “Rainbow Rewind.”

And in NewsWrap: the first case against a gay man for violating Uganda’s so-called “Kill the Gays” law is dismissed after the damage has already been done, transgender female athletes receiving hormone therapy have no physical advantage over their cisgender counterparts according to new research, fewer transgender people were murdered around the world between October 2024 and September 2025 with the numbers still alarming, a Christian teacher is fighting a losing battle against the Montgomery County Maryland Public School District’s policy on using the chosen names and pronouns of her trans and nonbinary students, a record number of proud LGBTQ athletes are competing in the 2026 Winter Olympics, thousands hit the streets of Melbourne on February 1st for the 31st annual Midsumma Pride March, and more international LGBTQ news reported this week by Michael Taylor Gray and Tanya Kane-Parry (produced by Brian DeShazor).

All this on the February 9, 2026 edition of This Way Out!

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Complete Program Summary

for the week of February 9, 2026, 2026

Thank you, Langston Hughes

In “NewsWrap” [full transcript below]: A judge in Uganda dismisses charges against a now 25-year-old man for having consensual gay sex with a 41-year-old man, and is the first to be prosecuted under the East African nation’s notorious “Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023” and faced a sentence of life in prison, after the defendant’s lawyer convinces the court that his client has become mentally ill because he’s had to endure more than a year in jail awaiting trial … after reviewing more than 50 studies in Brazil, researchers at the British Journal of Sports Medicine conclude that trans girls and women who’ve had gender-affirming hormone therapy for at least a year do not have a physical advantage over their cisgender counterparts and lament widespread bans on their athletic participation …. according to Trans Murder Monitoring, Brazil once again leads the world in the number of murders of trans people, most often trans women of color, but this year’s numbers in the South American country match a notable decrease in such homicides everywhere else on the planet … the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejects a self-avowed Christian Montgomery County, Maryland substitute teacher’s challenge to the school district’s policy requiring her to honor her trans and nonbinary students’ chosen names and pronouns … a record number of LGBTQ athletes, including some “first-evers,” are competing at the Winter Olympics in Italy … thousands, including the Australian state of Victoria's Premier Jacinta Allan, hit the streets of Melbourne to celebrate Midsumma Pride (written by GREG GORDON and LUCIA CHAPPELLE, produced by BRIAN DeSHAZOR, and reported this week by MICHAEL TAYLOR GRAY and TANYA KANE-PARRY).

Feature: This week’s Rainbow Rewind celebrates the birthday of iconic bisexual writer Alice Walker (includes a snippet of Walker reading from her The Color Purple), and other notable queer events in February (written, produced and co-hosted by SHERI LUNN with BRIAN DeSHAZOR).

Feature: We begin with a brief excerpt from a classic by openly closeted composer Billy Strayhorn, who put the swing into the notoriously heterosexual Duke Ellington’s jazz that lit the Harlem Renaissance of Langston Hughes. Historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr. says that the 1920s and 30s era in New York’s African American community was “surely as gay as it was Black.” Hughes apparently eluded the romantic advances of his gay literary peers Alain Locke and Countee Cullen, and scholars now speculate that the one-time best friend of possibly bi Zora Neal Hurston was asexual. In 1963, the iconic author was the guest of a young reporter named EVE COREY at the studios of WBAI - New York. Enjoy an excerpt of their conversation followed by Hughes reading his short story, Thank You, Ma’am (with intro/transition and outro music from Strayhorn’s composition Take the A Train featuring him on piano with DUKE ELLINGTON AND HIS ORCHESTRA).

NewsWrap

for the week ending 7 February 2026

Program #1975 distributed 9 February 2026

Reported by MICHAEL TAYLOR GRAY and TANYA KANE-PARRY

written by Greg Gordon and Lucia Chappelle

and produced by Brian DeShazor

The first case against a gay man for violating Uganda’s so-called “Kill the Gays” law is dismissed, but the damage has already been done. The defendant’s lawyer proved to the court that his client’s lengthy detention has caused serious mental illnesses, including schizophrenia. He has spent close to a year in prison as his case moved through the East African nation’s legal system.

Attorney Douglas Mawadri told Agence France Presse that the judge found his client to be too “mentally unstable” to understand the trial process.

The unnamed defendant is now 25 years old. The plight of his 41-year-old partner has not been reported. The younger man was accused of “unlawful sexual intercourse” in 2023, just three months after Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed the infamous and overwhelmingly popular Anti-Homosexuality Act.

The law includes the death penalty for what it calls “aggravated homosexuality,” including repeated homosexual acts and sex that transmits HIV/AIDS or other potentially terminal illnesses. Same-gender intercourse with a minor, an elderly person, or a person with disabilities also fall into that category.

Prosecutors never explained why they had lodged the original “aggravated” charges in this case. In January of 2024 they were lowered to “unnatural offenses of having carnal knowledge against the order of nature,” which is punishable by up to life in prison. The judge made sure in his February 3rd ruling that the now mentally incapacitated defendant would not face any charges.

Queer advocates like Richard Lusimbo are outraged that the dismissal took almost two years. He told Agence France Presse, “Detaining someone for over a year without trial is injustice at its worst.”

Transgender female athletes have no physical advantage over their cisgender counterparts if they’ve received one to three years of gender-affirming hormone therapy – this according to new research published this week in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Fifty-two different studies conducted at academic and medical institutions in Brazil were considered. More than 2,900 trans women and about 2,300 trans men were involved, along with more than 560 cis women and more than 660 cis men. Most of the studies focused exclusively on adult athletes, but seven included teens.

The authors’ conclusion is that existing evidence “does not support theories of inherent athletic advantages for transgender women over cisgender(s).”

The academics lamented the relative dearth of top-level studies on trans athletes and called for further research. What they know now is that “the current data does not justify blanket bans” on trans athletes. University of São Paulo physician and coauthor Bruno Gualano told Spanish language newspaper El Pais, “Most of these policies are based on the assumption that transgender women retain inherent physical advantages and would therefore dominate women’s competitions. The data does not support this idea.”

Fewer transgender people were murdered around the world between October 2024 and September 2025 – that’s the good news. The bad news is that there were still 281 trans or gender diverse homicide victims during that time period, according to the global group Trans Murder Monitoring.

Brazil is the worst place on the planet for trans people to live. It’s topped the list ever since worldwide monitoring began in 2008. Seventy-seven murder victims in 2024/25 were trans women or female-presenting. Three were trans men. Eighty-eight percent were Black or of mixed race. Fourteen percent engaged in some form of activism. Those figures were released this week by Brazil’s National Association of Transvestites and Transgender People. The group warns, “The message could not be clearer: lethal violence is now compounded by direct persecution of those who organize, mobilize, and expose injustice.”

The 80 Brazilian victims in 2024/25 are still an improvement over the two previous years. In 2024 there were 122 murders of trans people reported by the Monitoring project, and 145 in 2023. A significant number each year were sex workers.

The South American country’s civil society has tried to stem the tide. Supreme Court rulings have included marriage equality, adoption rights, and the ability of trans people to change their legal name and gender without having to undergo gender-affirming surgery. Homophobia and transphobia are criminal offenses in Brazil as a form of racism. Queer advocates hope those advances have been deterrents.

A Christian teacher is fighting a losing battle against the Montgomery County Maryland Public School District’s policy on using the chosen names and pronouns of her trans and nonbinary students. Kimberly Polk is a substitute teacher in the district, and she claimed that being forced to follow the policy violated her Constitutional religious and first amendment rights. A three-judge panel of the Richmond, Virginia-based Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-to-1 on January 28th to support the school district, upholding lower court rulings.

Judge Robert B. King wrote for the majority, “How a teacher addresses a particular student in a particular classroom – and whether a teacher communicates with a student’s parent – is merely a part of that teacher’s job description.”

Polk’s attorney Rick Claybrook told the Washington Post that he and his client are considering an appeal to the full Fourth Circuit or to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A record number of proud LGBTQ athletes are competing in the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina, Italy. The queer website Outsports.com counts 44, including Amber Glenn, the first publicly out queer women’s figure skater in Winter Olympic history. She’s a top U.S. hope for a figure skating medal. Elis Lundholm of Sweden is the first out transgender competitor in the Winter games. He’ll be flying freestyle downhill on uneven terrain as a Moguls skier.

“Team LGBTQ” includes 34 women and 10 men. The 22 out female hockey players make it the runaway queerest Winter Olympics sport. Six LGBTQ men and one woman will be figure skating. Alpine and freestyle skiing boast six queer competitors each. Speed skating has four, skeleton has two, and there’s one each from snowboarding, curling and biathlon.

Outsports.com’s initial review finds queer Winter Olympians from at least 13 countries: the U.K., the U.S., Canada, Finland, Sweden, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy,

Outsports.com uses a pretty basic methodology: they review social media profiles for dozens of athletes looking for tell-tale clues about their being LGBTQ, and then contact the leading “prospects” to verify.

You can check Outsports.com for more details about a wide range of competitors and updated stats.

The Olympic Opening ceremonies were held on February 6th.

Finally, thousands hit the streets of Melbourne on February 1st for the 31st annual Midsumma Pride March. The event’s CEO Karen Bryant said in a message before the march began “though global rifts threaten us, we celebrate with pride in a way that is meaningful for us all.”

In the words of Victoria’s state Commissioner for LGBTQIA+ Communities Joe Ball, “Firefighters, scouts, nurses, teachers, councils, corporates, health services and schools, every part of our private, public and civil society on motorbikes, using walkers, wheelchairs and prams, we have Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims and many people of all different faiths. Every major political party is represented, standing together, united. All of us gathering under shared values of equality, dignity, freedom and safety, and this is how we do it in Victoria.”

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan was also there with the biggest Midsumma Pride crowd in years. Her social media message read, in part, “Pride is about being able to live your life openly … without fear or apology. … To anyone who has been made to feel different just because of who you are: you will always belong in our Victoria.”