Murder in the WAC Pt. 1 | This Way Out Radio Episode #2003
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Part one of Pat Bond’s classic tale of lesbians in the U.S. military during World War II, Murder in the WAC. In the news this week, the first married lesbian couple in Bolivia and the first census to count queers in Australia, Trump policies are stopping federally funded gender-affirming care and blocking the Trevor Project’s crisis lifeline work, and Kansas trans men make good trouble in the toilet.
Featured speakers: Pat Bond, Gia Drew Exec. Dir. Equality Maine, Katie Keith of Georgetown Law.
Credits: Associate Producer/Host Lucia Chappelle, Producer Brian DeShazor, News writer Jeb Backe, Murder in the WAC was recorded and produced by Katherine Davenport and Frieda Werden of WINGS, the Women’s International News Gathering Service.
NewsWrap reporters Nathalie Muñoz and Marcos Najera music: Brittany Luberda (Yankee Doodle Girl (Song Of The Women's Army Corps)
All this on the August 17, 2026 Edition of This Way Out!
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NewsWrap
Program 2003 Distributed 08/17/26
A lesbian couple in Bolivia is now the first in the country to have a civilly recognized same-sex marriage. Fabiana Banzer and Scarlett Rocha first applied for a marriage certificate on October 12th, 2022. The LGBTQ+ rights organization IGUAL Bolivia says the union was recognized after a prolonged administrative process and two constitutional injunctions filed by its team. Article 63 of Bolivia’s Constitution still prohibits non-heterosexual marriages, so the Bolivian constitutional court’s August 7th decision for Banzer and Rocha only applies to their case.
Bolivia’s signing of the 1969 American Convention on Human Rights was central to IGUAL Bolivia’s argument. Under that agreement, governments are obliged to grant same-sex couples access to the existing legal rights given to heterosexual couples. Compliance with the Convention is overseen by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which supported the marriage equality position in an advisory opinion issued in 2018.
Although this week’s ruling only recognizes the marriage between Fabiana Banzer and Scarlett Rocha, it’s another legal precedent on Bolivia’s road to marriage equality. David Aruquipa and Guido Montaño obtained the country’s first "free union" between two people of the same sex in 2020 and dozens of couples have followed suit. A “free union” gives couples similar rights as a civil marriage with respect to the couple’s property and children. However, these civil unions are still in a different category and do not carry the same social recognition and standing as marriage. The Civil Registry Service has recorded dozens of same-sex free unions but never a marriage. Thus making August 7th’s marriage between Fabiana Banzer and Scarlett Rocha a major step for the country.
For the first time in 115 years, the upcoming Australian census will collect information about people’s gender identity and sexual orientation. Citizens will have the option of self-defining as straight, gay, bisexual, or to write in their own term. Census respondents can also identify as man, woman, non-binary, or another term. “Intersex” is not included as an option. Rather than specifically declaring oneself as trans or cis, the census has separate questions for sex recorded at birth, and current gender.
The country’s centre-left Labor Party was successful in getting the identity information added after it was excluded from the 2024census. At the time, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles feared that the revision could “open up divisive debates in the community.”
There are privacy and trust concerns, but the Australian Bureau of Statistics calls the change a step forward in visibility for LGBTQ+ populations. Australian National University demographer Liz Allen, told InDaily: “This moment in time is monumental, not necessarily just for the data, but more so for the signal that it sends to individuals across Australia that we all count, we all matter.”
The Trump administration is cutting funding for gender-affirming care from federal Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. As of October 13th, Medicaid and CHIP will no longer pay for what the new rule calls “sex-rejecting procedures for children under 18.”
Children in lower-income families who utilize Medicaid and CHIP will be the most heavily impacted. Seventeen states currently cover some degree of gender-affirming care. Maine, for example, has a “shield law” protecting access to gender-affirming care. Gia Drew is Executive Director for the LGBTQ+ social services organization, Equality Maine. She spoke to Portland news station WMTW about the federal funding cuts.
[AUDIO- WMTW]
“We're still trying to understand where the funding gap may come from and who's going to cover that but because it's in statute that the state of Maine must cover this care they're required to find the funds to cover this care whatever the federal government doesn't cover. [...] I think Maine is one of those special places that have always been looking out for one another whatever the issue may be but here especially for LGBTQ rights.”
An estimated 724,000 youth in the U.S. identify as transgender, that’s according to a recent study from the UCLA Williams Institute, an independent research group specializing in sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy. Only 40% of those transgender teens live in "shield law” states like Maine, and they’ll now have to fight harder to receive care.
Katie Keith of Georgetown Law told NPR that the rule is unprecedented:
[AUDIO - NPR]
“I'm not aware of any other times that the federal government has prohibited federal funds in this way for a specific patient population with a particular diagnosis.”
Transgender rights advocates are already positioning to challenge the rule in court. Both GLAD Law and the National Health Law Program have released public statements indicating there will be legal battles to prevent the cuts to this healthcare.
Providing transition-related care to all youth experiencing gender dysphoria is affirmed by the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the World Health Organization and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. That recommended transition care rarely includes gender-affirming surgeries. In spite of the administration’s attempt to target trans youth with the rule change, such surgeries are, ironically, more common for cisgender youth, according to 2024 research from the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The Trevor Project is now being excluded from the revived 988 crisis lifeline it helped create. The LGBTQ+ suicide prevention organization once handled roughly half of all calls, texts, and chats routed through the service. That was before the Trump administration abruptly discontinued the program last year. Now that the LGBTQ+ branch of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is going back up, the Trevor Project is ineligible to reapply for its management– this is in spite of the organization’s decades of experience.
First created in 2004, the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline became “988,” or the “Suicide & Crisis Lifeline” in 2022. That’s when the Trevor Project piloted the launch of the program that allowed clients to reach counselors trained in assisting LGBTQ+ youth. That service’s funding was eliminated in 2025.
Congress intervened with an allocation of $33.2 million to bring back LGBTQ+ youth services to the lifeline. That move pushed the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration which runs 988 to admit the underlying reason for its shaky support of the specialized branch. The agency told a bipartisan group of lawmakers that it has to determine how to carry out their directive while remaining in compliance with Trump’s trans exclusionary Executive Order. Last year’s directive blocks federal funds from being used to promote so-called “gender ideology.”
To Trevor Project CEO Jaymes Black, this development “indicates a dangerous step toward degrading the clinical standards to serve high risk groups.” Black told the Associated Press he’s worried that the new iteration of 988’s LGBTQ+ youth services “may exclude transgender and non-binary youth entirely.”
Fortunately, Trevor Project’s own 24/7 crisis lines remain available at trevorproject.org and 1-866-488-7386.
Finally… three Kansas trans men walked into a women’s restroom— and had the police called on them for obeying the law. Senate Bill 244 prohibits transgender people from using public restrooms on government property that align with their gender identity. The self-described “bearded, burly men” in their yellow “SB 244 Compliance Crew” t-shirts were part of a coordinated statewide action on August 8th.
Mostly the trans-masculine Kansans just got dirty looks in the women’s restrooms in Emporia, Great Bend, Garden City, and Dodge City government-operated buildings. However, at the Long Branch Lagoon the “SB 244 Compliance Crew” caught the attention of the manager who allegedly screamed, rushed the children out of the bathroom, and called the police.
That’s the type of reaction the trans men expected. All the men did was use the restroom, wash their hands, and exit a few minutes later. The manager and the police only backed off after the “SB 244 Compliance Crew” members provided what they say were “uncomfortable descriptions of their bodies.” The manager and police reportedly had never heard of SB 244, the law they’re charged to enforce since it was passed in February.
Organizers plan to continue demonstrating in public facilities across Kansas to draw attention to what they describe as the “absurdity of gender policing” and to press for the repeal of SB 244.
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