Outward: Slate's LGBTQ podcast

Eight years ago, Slate editor Bryan Lowder and writer Christina Cauterucci, with the help of producer June Thomas, kick-started a new podcast that aimed to enrich and expand the conversation around the biggest cultural and political stories affecting the LGBTQ community. Whether it was marriage equality, trans visibility, or gays buying guns, nothing was off limits. For this final episode, Bryan a...

Slate and the team at Eureka Street Productions are so honored by this award and want to thank everyone who has listened to and supported the show. This series tells the story of the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco, one of the first gay-positive churches in America, and how its congregation faced the AIDS epidemic, including the deaths of hundreds of its members. At the heart of the...

Our friends at Selects bring you this documentary from 2010 looking at the debate among LGBTQ folks in San Francisco around the fight for gay marriage and the cost of that fight borne by other parts of the broader community.  The Selects Podcast is a free, twice-monthly show that is bringing you unearthed audio works that we’ve found buried in web archives, radio streams, and early podcasts....

As When We All Get to Heaven wraps up, Christina sits down with series host Lynne Gerber and producer Siri Colom. They discuss how the church has changed, the value of fleeting queer spaces, and what a decade or more spent working on this story has meant to—and taught—them. Get more Outward with Slate Plus! Join for weekly bonus episodes of Outward and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate...

In the final episode of When We All Get to Heaven, we catch up on what’s happened in the many years between the emergence of effective treatment for AIDS in the late ‘90s and the fall of 2025, when we recorded this episode. We linger on a moment back in June 1999, when Jim was still pastor and called on the church to remember that AIDS wasn’t over. Because—advances notwithstanding—it still isn’t o...

In 1996 everything changed. With the introduction of antiretroviral medications called the “AIDS cocktail,” people started getting better – some dramatically – and surviving AIDS became a real possibility. In the wake of these changes, MCC found itself taking stock of what they lost to AIDS and using what they learned to address larger social issues– from medical marijuana to homelessness. Sometim...

In 1995 Rev. Jim Mitulski became HIV positive -- what's known as seroconversion. It was 14 years into the epidemic and people knew what HIV/AIDS was, how you got it, and how you could prevent it. And when Jim got sick, he got very sick. What was it like to become ill so publicly? How would the church and the community respond? And what could Jim possibly preach about on his first Sunday back? “My...

Scott and Bruce were the hottest couple in church. Scott, a hula dancer, seemed destined for Bruce, the hunky “lumbersexual,” and the church delighted when they got together. Their brief love affair sparkled before Bruce got sick and died. Their story is one of multiple “dress rehearsals”– when friends, family and lovers went through AIDS with their loved ones wondering who would be next and somet...

The Sunday after Magic Johnson announced his HIV-status, Jim Mitulski preached a sermon on being tired of people dying. We’re sharing it as an interlude, a pause, and an immersion into one moment in AIDS’ bleak midwinter.  For images and links about this episode visit https://www.heavenpodcast.org/interlude. In the sermon Rev. Mitulski refers to ARC. That means AIDS-Related Complex, a diagnostic c...

San Francisco’s gay/lesbian community in the 1980s wasn’t just facing an AIDS crisis, they also struggled against ongoing  anti-gay violence. In 1989, in the midst of a campaign to legally establish anti-gay violence as a hate crime, MCC San Francisco made headlines when their AIDS minister was attacked in her home. The city, the police department, and the LGBTQ community rallied around the church...

When Rev. Ron Russell Coons got diagnosed with AIDS he thought a lot about what healing meant when death was certain. He pursued it in his strained and broken family relationships and he preached about it from the pulpit. Though he knew, without a doubt, that he would die from AIDS, Ron claimed that he believed in and had experienced healing. What does healing mean when everybody knows it can’t me...

As MCC grew as a denomination, they tried to figure out if and how to relate to other churches. Would any befriend a queer church? And if so, would that friendship help other churches shift their perspective on homosexuality? These questions got harder as AIDS numbers grew—it made people more afraid yet friendship more vital. But sometimes friendship emerges in the most unlikely of places. Like wh...

In the late ‘80s, two MCC San Francisco ministers wrote an article called “We Are the Church Alive, the Church with AIDS.” We wanted to know how a gay/lesbian church came to call itself “a church with AIDS.” The answers lie in the years before our audio archive begins. So we started asking people. We explore two stories in what’s likely a more complicated shift. One story is about a pair of religi...

Why would an out queer person in the Gay Liberation Days of the 1970s go to church? What church would they go to? And why would they stay? In the 1960s, and ‘70s, the separation between God and gays was not as vast as it seemed. Rev. Troy Perry started the first Metropolitan Community Church in his Los Angeles living room. Tired of flying to LA every week, a Navy veteran started the second one in...

As Outward proudly presents the 10-episode series When We All Get to Heaven, from Eureka Street Productions, Christina and Bryan had the privilege of sitting down with series host Lynne Gerber. Lynne explains how 1,200 cassette tapes became a wealth of archival audio that infuses this series with so much vitality, joy, and shared mourning of queer churches during a devastating epidemic. Get more O...

In 1993, more than 10 years into the AIDS epidemic, the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco (MCC-SF) tries to remember all they’ve lost. We think about remembering too after encountering an archive of 1,200 cassette recordings of this queer church’s services during the height of the epidemic. Whether you’re a regular church goer or would never step into one, we invite you to spend time...

When We All Get to Heaven tells the story of one of the first LGBTQ-positive churches, the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco (MCC-SF), and how it faced the personal, social, and political trials of the AIDS epidemic, including the deaths of hundreds of its members. This 10-episode series uses historical tapes rescued from the church to bring listeners into the heart of a community str...

Trans rights and access to health care have been under attack on the state level for years, but the second Trump administration and the Supreme Court have accelerated a chilling effect at clinics across the country. Guest: Grace Byron , author of “ The Grim State of Trans Health Care ” and “ The Bureaucratic Nightmares of Being Trans Under Trump ” for the New Yorker.  Want more What Next? Subscrib...

Outward is going on a little summer break, in the meantime we’re leaving you with a delightfully queer episode of Slate’s Hit Parade with Chris Molanphy called Mighty Real. This is part two—catch part one in our previous episode. Little Richard was rock ‘n’ roll’s flamboyant architect. Lesley Gore sang that no one owned her. Sylvester was a gender-fluid icon who helped define disco. Freddie Mercur...

Outward is going on a little summer break, in the meantime we’re leaving you with a delightfully queer episode of Slate’s Hit Parade with Chris Molanphy : Little Richard was rock ‘n’ roll’s flamboyant architect. Lesley Gore sang that no one owned her. Sylvester was a gender-fluid icon who helped define disco. Freddie Mercury made rock operatic, and George Michael demanded freedom. What all of thes...

This week, Bryan is joined by theologian, activist, and ballroom historian Michael Roberson to discuss his new book, Ballroom: A History, A Movement, A Celebration. Roberson traces the rich legacy of the ballroom scene—from its origins in resistance and survival, to its role in shaping public health responses during the height of the AIDS crisis and beyond, to its ongoing significance as a spiritu...

In this episode of Outward , Bryan talks with Slate legal reporter Mark Joseph Stern about a federal judge’s sweeping and controversial ruling in United States v. Skrmetti , which could have massive consequences for access to gender-affirming care. Then, Christina sits down with Congresswoman Becca Balint to talk about what it means to advocate for trans rights inside a Congress where culture war...

This week, Bryan talks with Christina about her new piece for Slate The Conservative Wave Is Having a Very Unexpected Effect on Pride which covers the power and politics of small-town Pride. Then, in the second half, they're joined by Van Knapp, co-founder of Canyon County Pride in Idaho, to talk about building queer joy in unlikely places. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more informati...

This week, Christina Cauterucci is joined by Erik Piepenburg, author of Dining Out , a new book that explores the history of gay restaurants in the United States. Piepenburg traces how restaurants have long served as essential spaces for queer people as places to gather, connect, and express themselves at a time when most public spaces were hostile or unsafe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy...

Outward’s Bryan Lowder and Christina Cauterucci talk to Alden Jones, editor of the new anthology, Edge of the World . With essays from Alexander Chee, Daisy Hernández, Edmund White, and more, the collection makes clear that queer travel writing isn’t just overdue—it’s transformative. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.