PFLAG - Allyship is a Verb | This Way Out Radio Episode #2008
In 1968, one mother’s public support for her gay son helped inspire the founding of PFLAG — Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. Today, PFLAG has hundreds of U.S. chapters and an international network connecting families, friends, and allies for support, education, and advocacy. PFLAG Los Angeles Vice President Anthony Eftimeo speaks with This Way Out’s Lucia Chappelle about what meaningful allyship looks like and how allies can help LGBTQ+ people and their families thrive.
In the news this week, Turkish activists take to the streets as the right-wing government’s anti-queer raids and arrests escalate, but the formerly right-wing Hungarian government will scrap its “no promo homo” law. Fiji sees a spike in HIV infections. There’ll be no gender-affirming care for trans youth in North Dakota, but the city of Seattle, Washington expands civil protections with the times.
Featured speakers: editor-in-chief of the LGBTI+ rights group Kaos GL Yildiz Tar, PFLAGLA VP Anthony Eftimeo, Lucia Chappelle
Credits: Associate Producer Lucia Chappelle, Producer/ host Brian DeShazor, News writer Jeb Backe, the feature was produced by Brian DeShazor and Lucia Chappelle, NewsWrap reporters John Dyer the 5th and Melanie Keller. music: Dolly Parton and theme music was written and performed by Kim Wilson.
All this on the September 21, 2026 Edition of This Way Out!
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This Way Out
NewsWrap
Program #2008 Distributed 09/21/26
Turkish LGBTQ+ groups and individual activists are facing an intensified wave of police raids and arrests. Human Rights Watch says the simultaneous raids on the offices of LGBTQ+ rights organizations and HIV-advocacy groups are the most far-reaching crackdown in recent years.
Police also raided activists’ homes. More than 60 people were arrested on September 13th, according to Amnesty International.
Opposition to the crackdown erupted onto the streets in the days that followed. Hundreds of protestors in İzmir were met with teargas, and at least 150 were detained in Istanbul. Turkey’s justice minister Akın Gürlek called the operation “My Family is Safe.” The raids and arrests, in his words, are intended to, “protect our children, the institution of the family and the social order.” The campaign is linked to president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s so-called “decade of the family and population.”
[DW NEWS - YILDIZ TAR]
“Family here in Turkey is really actually under attack. Yes, but not from LGBTQ people. The family is under attack of poverty, economic crisis. If you want to protect the family, you have to solve these problems. LGBTQ people are not against family. We are sons and daughters and siblings of that families. We are part of that family.”
That’s activist and editor-in-chief of the LGBTI+ rights group Kaos GL, Yildiz Tar speaking to Deutsche Welle News. Kaos GL is one of the oldest and largest LGBT rights organizations in Turkey, and it was among the organizations targeted by the recent crackdown. Their website and social media accounts have been censored for users in Turkey and eight members have been jailed pending trial on September 22nd.
Homosexuality is not illegal in Turkey, though individuals have been charged for vague charges of ill-defined “obscenity.” That’s how Justice Minister Gürlek charged 162 people, nine associations and 13 businesses. Turkey’s Human Rights Watch director Emma Sinclair-Webb says the arrests are proof of the government's intention to criminalize LGBTQ+ persons without enacting new laws.
Hungary’s new government is moving to reform the anti-lgbt laws left behind by the hard-right former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. First to fall will be the 2021 so-called “child protection” law that restricted the “portrayal” or “promotion” of sexual and gender diversity in media accessible to children.
Orbán was replaced in May by Prime Minister Péter Magyar, whose center-right Tisza Party has a parliamentary supermajority. Their new legislation brings Hungary in line with an April judgment by the Court of Justice of the European Union. The court found the country’s restrictions violated EU law by stigmatizing and marginalizing LGBT people. The legislation submitted September 14th would remove references in the 2021 legislation banning the “promotion” or “display” of homosexuality and gender transition to minors. Ideally the measure will prevent the law from equating LGBT visibility with child endangerment.
While applauding this step, Human Rights Watch also criticized the Hungarian government for leaving other discriminatory laws intact. They note that while the current bill would remove the media restrictions, the Family Protection Act and the Freedom of Assembly Act remain unchanged. The Protection Act continues to similarly regulate content accessible to children, and the Freedom of Assembly Act has been used to prohibit Pride and other LGBT-related assemblies. The global human rights watchdog also worries discriminatory language in Hungary’s constitution will remain unchanged.
The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International Hungary join Human Rights Watch in welcoming the proposed changes and urging further amendments to fully dismantle the discriminatory legal framework.
Fiji has declared a national crisis over a rising number of HIV cases. The Pacific island nation first declared an HIV outbreak in January of 2025. Since then, over two thousand new diagnoses were recorded for the year. According to Reuters, last year’s number of new HIV diagnoses in Fiji rose by 27%.
Health officials say they believe that drug use is a key driver of the epidemic. Intravenous drug use has increased in recent years as the island has become a pivotal transit point for narcotics trafficked from the Americas to Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Asia. Needle-sharing and the surging trend of individuals injecting themselves with the blood of fellow users complicate matters. Where a transmission mode was identified in the health statistics, half of new HIV cases in Fiji were among intravenous drug users. Though transgender people only make up a small number of the population, prevalence in that group is second only to those who inject drugs, at around 28%, according to aidsmap. Half contracted the virus through sexual transmission. According to Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre Coordinator Shamima Ali, misconceptions that HIV is a purely “gay disease” has hindered public awareness beyond the queer community.
The same stigma and discrimination that boost the spread of HIV are some of the biggest barriers preventing people from accessing HIV services. A report from Asia Pacific Transgender Network found low levels of testing in Fiji’s trans population. In addition to potential for prejudice against trans and queer people, heterosexual citizens face social stigmas around pre-marital or casual sex are thought to cause fear of being recognized at clinics.
The Fiji Government detailed its response to the national HIV emergency in a September 15th Facebook post.. They vowed to expand access to free HIV testing, prevention services and treatment, including rapid testing, prevention medicine for people at higher risk, harm-reduction measures for people who inject drugs, and free treatment for people diagnosed with HIV.
Fiji is also receiving support from the United Nations, the Global fund, India, Australia, and New Zealand.
UNAIDS welcomed Fiji’s decision to accelerate their response to the epidemic. In the words of UNAIDS regional support director Eamonn Murphy, "The national crisis declaration is a call for action, not fear. HIV is not transmitted through everyday contact, and people on effective treatment with an undetectable viral load do not sexually transmit HIV," Murphy added optimistically, "Fiji still has an opportunity to change the course of this epidemic."
The North Dakota Supreme Court has voted unanimously to uphold a ban on gender-affirming care for minors. House Bill 1254 prohibits the treatments and establishes penalties for healthcare providers who violate the ban. The 2023 law was challenged in October 2025 by pediatric endocrinologist Luis Casas. The district court upheld the ban in the case T.D. v. Wrigley.
Casas and three families affected by the law appealed that ruling in February. They lost again on September 17th when the state’s high court ruled that the ban does not discriminate against trans youth. Justices stated that the law does not violate the constitutional rights of minors because in their words, “minors do not have a fundamental right to a particular course of medical treatment.”
North Dakota’s trans youth have no access to puberty blockers under the state Supreme Court ruling. It also outlaws pediatric gender-affirming surgery, which is already rarely, if ever, performed. In fact, cisgender minors and adults had substantially higher utilization of analogous gender-affirming surgeries than their transgender and gender-diverse counterparts, according to a 2024 study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Trans rights advocates worry that this decision will keep trans children from receiving the more common forms of medical care. The Lawyering Project co-counciled with Gender Justice to challenge North Dakota’s criminalization of this essential health care. Co-director of the Lawyering Project Tanya Pellegrini wrote in a press release after the decision, “When the state can criminalize a doctor for providing a young person with evidence-based medical care, it strips families of the right to make their own medical decisions.”
Finally…
People with diverse sexual orientations and relationship structures have new anti-discrimination protections in Seattle, Washington. The city’s civil rights protections are being updated to include individuals outside of the gender binary, those who identify as “pansexual” and “asexual,” and those with multiple partners. The protections apply to areas such as employment, housing, and more.
The new law is the result of grassroots organizing, in part the work of Jessa Davis. Davis’ partner experienced discrimination at work in August 2024 due to her non-monogamy. This motivated Davis to begin advocating for a bill that would expand civil rights protections. That ultimately led to the Seattle Human Rights Commission penning an open letter in late 2025. It called for a bill to address discrimination “on the basis of family and relationship structure” and to close what it said were “loopholes that currently allow exclusion, harassment, and denial of opportunity to persist unchecked.”
Seattle City Council member Alexis Mercedes Rinck sponsored the bill. She told the Council on September 9th, “We all know that every family is different and we need to be clear that every family receives equal protection under the law.” She added, "This update reflects how people actually live.” The council concurred and Seattle will join municipalities who have all passed similar protections, such as Olympia, Washington, Portland, Oregon, and the California cities of West Hollywood, Oakland and Berkeley.
The Seattle law will go into effect on June 1st 2027.
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