Outward: Slate's LGBTQ podcast

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...