Voting While Trans: Meghan Maury-Fox | This Way Out Radio Episode #2012
Access to the ballot is under threat for thousands of US voters, and transgender activists are on the front lines fighting the dangerous new restrictions, Abigail DeRoberts speaks with Meghan Maury-Fox policy director of the Trans Law Center.
In the news Hungary’s recent election is having consequences this week, as Orban’s “no promo homo” state begins to crumble … the denouncements from international rights advocates and UN experts about the anti-LGBTQ crackdowns in Senegal and Turkey seem to have little impact … and there’s political and financial capital to be gained by bending to bias — just ask the English NHS and Facebook! All that and more now that you’ve found This Way Out.
Featured speakers: Trans Law Center policy dir. Meghan Maury-Fox
Credits: Associate Producer / host Lucia Chappelle, Producer Brian DeShazor, News writer Jeb Backe, the feature was produced by Brian DeShazor and Lucia Chappelle, NewsWrap reporters Ava Davis and Michael Taylor Gray. music: Shea Diamond, our theme music was written and performed by Kim Wilson.
All this on the October 19, 2026 Edition of This Way Out!
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This Way Out
NewsWrap
Program 2012 Distributed 10/19/26
The era of former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán seems to be coming to an end. Parliament voted on October 12th to repeal a number of measures that characterized the government of Orbán’s far-right Fidesz Party. That includes the 2021 so-called “child protection” law that banned the "portrayal or promotion of homosexuality or transgenderism.”
Orbán lost a landslide election in May to Prime Minister Péter Magyar. Magyar’s center-right Tisza Party now has a parliamentary supermajority. The new legislation was first submitted last month, and was passed by a vote of 139 to 51. It removes references to homosexuality and gender transition, establishing alleged “protections” only from those materials that could impair youth under 18.
Following the vote, the Council of the European Union agreed to release over €4 billion of frozen funds that have been withheld due to breaches of EU law by Orbán’s government dating back to 2022. The European Commission now deems those issues settled.
Tamás Dombos of civil rights group the Háttér Society was enthused about the legislation’s passage. However, as the Magyar government continues to avoid speaking outwardly about gay and transgender rights, Dombos told the BBC, "We are still knocking on a closed door [...] but at least they are listening on the other side."
The Senegalese LGBTQ+ community continues to face a wave of government repression. Thirty-five were arrested on October 12th in the eastern city of Tambacounda, when police carried out an operation to dismantle what they described as an organized network of suspected homosexuals. Among those taken into custody were students, teachers, healthcare workers, a tailor, and others.
All arrestees were subjected to HIV tests, and the investigators report that only three out of the 13 who tested positive are receiving their antiretroviral treatment. The other ten remain detained without proper medical care in spite of the crackdown’s alleged purpose of improving public health. Public intimidation may be more to the point. That seems to be the message as published by Senenews who alleged that those arrested were in an “organized criminal network specializing in acts against nature.” They wrote, “The investigation is continuing actively under the supervision of the relevant authorities to identify any accomplices and trace contacts, in order to prevent any further spread of the disease.”
Hundreds of arrests have occurred since Senegal’s President Bassirou Diomaye Faye signed a bill that doubled prison sentences for those who have same-sex relations, and criminalized the promotion of homosexuality. Human Rights Watch LGBTQ+ rights researcher Larissa Kojoué condemned the repression. In her words, “LGBT people are being forced to curb their normal activities and to keep from exercising their rights for fear of arrest and increased stigma. [...] Senegal’s government should call a halt to this crackdown, which threatens everyone’s rights.”
England’s National Health Service has published new guidelines barring transgender people from using hospital amenities that align with their gender. The guidance states that single-sex accommodations should be provided on the basis of biological sex. Trans individuals can only receive care in wards according to their sex assigned at birth or in gender-neutral spaces.
The new guidance comes over a year after the UK Supreme Court ruled that the word “woman” under the Equality Act is defined by biological sex. The National Health Service has been criticized by advocates for similar restrictions they’ve placed on trans citizens’ lives, such as the heavy limitations on gender-affirming hormone therapies for youth that went into effect earlier this year.
Trans rights organisations TransActual and Trans+ Solidarity Alliance sounded the alarm for the wellbeing of trans patients in a joint statement saying, “Forcing trans people into spaces for our sex assigned at birth will never be the most clinically appropriate decision, and would push trans people away from accessing care. [...] This guidance will not survive contact with reality in resource-strapped hospitals and will create unworkable operational challenges. The Government failing to get a grip of this legal mess is sadly putting politics over patient care.”
UN human rights experts are denouncing Turkey's anti-LGBTQ+ crackdown. A team appointed by the Human Rights Council issued a statement on October 13th that reads in part, “[Turkey] must end the harassment of LGBTI human rights defenders and organisations and ensure a safe and enabling environment in which they can exercise their rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association and continue their legitimate work without fear of arrest, intimidation, stigmatisation or criminalisation.”
A decade of rule under the right-wing presidency of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has not gone well for LGBTQ+ rights. LGBTQ people have been used as scapegoats for economic-uncertainty and civil unrest. Pride has been outlawed, although activists continue to defy the ban. Since September of this year, Turkish LGBTQ+ groups and individual activists have faced an intensified wave of police raids and arrests. Subsequently hundreds have been detained or arrested according to the UN’s experts in the operation officially called “My Family is Safe” – part of what the administration claims is its mission to protect “children, the institution of the family and the social order.”
The statement criticizes the “framing of LGBTI persons as a threat to families.” While not speaking for the UN itself, the team is demanding “immediate release of persons detained solely for their legitimate human rights work and call on authorities to, in the interim, ensure access to adequate healthcare and medication, legal counsel and effective judicial safeguards, guarantee freedom from torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and fully protect the physical and psychological integrity of all detainees.”
Finally…
Mark Zuckerberg’s company Meta has monetized at least 29 anti-LGBTQ accounts on Facebook— that’s according to the investigative journalism group Uncloseted Media and the independent newsroom The 19th. Two years ago the tech giant Meta released the invite-only program called, “Facebook Content Monetization.” With Facebook’s user base aging and the platform losing users to its competitors, the new program aims to turn things around by offering creators some of the most lucrative financial incentives in social media.
Only creators directly invited by Meta can access the highly profitable feature. Uncloseted Media has identified 29 of the invited accounts that promote anti-LGBTQ+ talking points. These include far-right Black podcaster Candace Owens, who has blamed gay men for child abuse in the Catholic church. Meta also welcomes Turning Point USA, the conservative student group that has been connected to an assault on a queer Arizona State University professor. Two months ago the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that Meta invited accounts promoting white supremacist and neo-Nazi ideologies. Meta did not respond to requests from The 19th and Uncloseted Media for an interview or comment.
The Open Markets Institute is a pro-democracy liberal think tank, and Courtney Radsch is its Director of the Center for Media and Digital Governance. She warns that hateful rhetoric and misinformation like the kinds being monetized by Meta are especially dangerous during an election season. As Radsch told Uncloseted Media and The 19th, "Amplifying and enabling harassment campaigns and centering fringe conspiracy theories through algorithmic curation and monetization opportunities has led to a dissolution of democracy in America [...] This administration is dismantling democratic oversight and increasing authoritarian control. … You can't look at your platform policies on monetization without looking at the context in which this is occurring in the U.S. with rising technofascism.”
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