Latest / The Roundup / A Gay Son’s Allegations, Trans Troops Fight to Stay and Rainbow Dome Rolls Into Denver

Transcript

A Gay Son’s Allegations, Trans Troops Fight to Stay and Rainbow Dome Rolls Into Denver · The Roundup

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to the Lookout News Roundup, your weekly news podcast from the desert southwest.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm John Washington, filling in for Joseph Jafari this week.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's the last few days of October, and here are the headlines this week.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: We're starting in Arizona per usual, where a fight over a planned gay leather bar has landed in court.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Lookout reports 18 Sack LLC, a company owned by U-Haul family member Stuart Schoen, is asking Maricopa County Superior Court to cancel the liquor license for Barracks Bar Phoenix in the Melrose district.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: The State Liquor Board approved the license in July, but the appeal argues the board denied procedural rights and lacked evidence that owner Matthew Moody is qualified.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Moody says he spent more than$68,000 on lawyers.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Sticking with Arizona, a Queen Creek School Board member is facing allegations from her own son.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Lookout reports 18-year-old Shane Anderson says his mother, Kelly Anderson, isolated and verbally abused him after he came out as gay, and that he left home in June.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: The allegations come from her son as well as two family friends and were verified through text messages and police reports.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Anderson was appointed to the Queen Creek Unified Board in 2025 and is now running to keep her seat.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Also in Arizona, critics say Proposition 318 could reach further than school sports.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uncloseted media reports the measure's restroom language, which covers facilities, quote, integral to athletic engagement, is unclear enough that it could apply to spectators, not just athletes.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Prop 318 would extend Arizona's 2022 school sports ban to private schools, colleges, and private leagues like Little League Baseball.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now over to Colorado, where voters have less than a week to decide on propositions 134 and 135.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: In a first-person essay produced by Lookout with Inside Out Youth Services in Colorado Springs, trans youth writer Jay Mason talks with peers who say no one asked them about the measures written in their name.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: They say the measures would take away opportunity to compete in school sports as well as remove their say over their own medical care.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: And some good news out of Denver.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Denverite reports Rainbow Dome, a$10 million queer-focused roller rink, opened October 23 in a former furniture store in the Sun Valley neighborhood.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Founders Frankie Tone and Taryn Zimmerman started out with pop-up skate events and paid for the building with angel investors, a tax credit from the state, crowdfunding, and foundation grants.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now on to national news.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: In Maryland, the Justice Department is suing a school district over student pronouns.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: The Baltimore Banner reports the department's civil rights division sued the Anne Arundel County Board of Education on October 27, accusing the district of letting students change their names and pronouns at school without telling parents and of keeping records from them.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: The district, which already revised its policy in August after federal threats, says it disagrees and follows federal student privacy law.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: In Texas, a trans rights group is one step closer to finding out who sent fake LGBTQ resource guides to students under its name to inflame Republican voters before the midterms.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: CNN reports a judge ruled October 27 that the Transgender Education Network of Texas, or Tent, can subpoena the Wyoming registered company allegedly behind the mailers and denied the company's attempt to dismiss the case.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Tent says since the mailers went out, it has received threats and has suspended its normal programming.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: In Chicago, a jury has acquitted the man charged in the 2018 killing of a black trans woman.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Windy City Times reports a Cook County jury found 25-year-old Traymon Hill not guilty of first-degree murder in the shooting of 24-year-old DeJanay Stanton in the Bronzeville neighborhood.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Prosecutors relied on phone records and texts, while the defense pointed to a lack of eyewitnesses or physical evidence.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Trans advocates condemned the verdict.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Some trans service members are winning their cases to stay in the military.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: The New York Times reports Navy and Marine Corps separation boards voted to keep transgender troops in nine of twelve cases, cutting against the Trump administration's ban.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: The report shows Army Boards overwhelmingly recommended discharge, and Air Force boards did in every known case.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: A 2025 memo lets commanders override decisions to keep someone.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, a federal appeals court has rebuffed the Justice Department over California mail ballots.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Democracy Docket reports a Ninth Circuit panel voted two to one to dismiss the Department's emergency appeal to make California and Los Angeles County set aside ballots tied to more than 20,000 voters that federal officials call likely non-citizens.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: The majority called the emergency a quote self-constructed one, and state officials question whether the federal list is reliable.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the roundup for this week.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Don't forget, you can get this exact news roundup and more by going to lookoutnews.org and subscribing to our newsletter.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: You'll also get our other newsletters, including our weekly events calendar to help you plan your week, as well as our legislative newsletters covering what's happening in the Capitol in your neck of the woods.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, stay safe, stay informed, and look out for each other.