You are what you eat, says the old adage. For a diverse group like the LGBTQ community, what and where we eat has defined us in myriad ways for generations. Coming out and dining out have long been complementary experiences, helping queer people find love, friendship and fellowship over patty melts, pizza or even lobster thermidor, if you’re in a fancy mood. In his new book, Dining Out, Erik Piepenburg explores the history and influence of America’s gay dining scene.

David Hunt sat down with the author to learn more about his culinary journey and how tastes — and tastebuds — have changed. Dining Out covers a lot of ground, from Walt Whitman’s weekly lunches with his bohemian pals at Pfaff’s Saloon in New York in the mid-nineteenth century, to drag brunch at Hamburger Mary’s in disco-era San Francisco, where regulars included then-mayor Diane Feinstein. From Annie’s Paramount Steakhouse in Washington, D.C., arguably the oldest gay restaurant in the nation, renowned for its hefty steaks and strong cocktails, to Bloodroot in Bridgeport, Connecticut, a feminist salon and bookstore with no cash registers, no wait staff and a seasonal vegetarian menu.

Produced for This Way Out: The International LGBTQ Radio Magazine.

Dining Out is available from Grand Central Publishing.

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David Hunt is an Emmy-winning journalist and documentary producer who has reported on America's culture wars since the 1970s. Explore his blog, Tell Me, David.

The legacy of colonialism weighs heavily on member states of the Commonwealth of Nations, former territories of the British Empire. In the Caribbean Republic of Trinidad and Tobago that legacy is shackled to a 16th century law that bans same-sex intimacy. Efforts to strike down the antigay law were successful in 2018, heralding a new era for Trinidad and Tobago’s 100,000 LGBTQ citizens. But the fight isn’t over. An appeals court reinstated the sodomy law a few weeks ago, setting the stage for the next — and final — round of legal challenges.

Journalist David Hunt talked with Jason Jones, the biracial, binational queer activist leading the fight to win freedom for LGBTQ people in Trinidad and throughout the Commonwealth. Produced for This Way Out: The International LGBTQ Radio Magazine.

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David Hunt is an Emmy-winning journalist and documentary producer who has reported on America's culture wars since the 1970s. Explore his blog, Tell Me, David.

The Trump administration continues to rewrite history, scrubbing official websites of any mention of transgender, queer and gender nonconforming people and causes. Critics have called its efforts a digital book-burning, reminiscent of the public bonfires staged by the Nazis in the 1930s. The latest target of this growing right-wing cancel culture is Pauli Murray, a pioneering human rights leader whose childhood home in Durham, North Carolina, is a National Historic Landmark.

Journalist David Hunt visited the landmark to learn about Murray’s life and work — and to explore a queer legacy the National Park Service is trying to erase. Listen to Hunt's conversation with historian Angela Thorpe Mason, executive director of the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice.

Pauli Murray, who died in 1985, was a pioneering Black legal scholar whose ideas laid the foundation for Supreme Court decisions overturning segregation and outlawing discrimination based on sex. Murray was also a writer, poet, labor organizer and the first queer saint in the Episcopal Church.

Produced for This Way Out: The International LGBTQ Radio Magazine.

Send us a text

David Hunt is an Emmy-winning journalist and documentary producer who has reported on America's culture wars since the 1970s. Explore his blog, Tell Me, David.