Austin PBS Celebrates Pride Month

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (Austin, TX)—June 9, 2022— Austin PBS is celebrating the contributions of the LGBTQ+ community during June’s Pride Month by broadcasting a range of programs recognizing LGBTQ+ history, achievement and creators.

“Austin PBS is committed to diversity and inclusion for all Central Texans, year-round,” said Luis Patiño, CEO of Austin PBS. “LGBTQ+ Pride month gives us the opportunity to highlight LGBTQ+ creators, the history and struggle of the LGBTQ+ community and the significant contributions made by the community to culture and the arts–locally, nationally and globally. We look forward to sharing more stories from the LGBTQ+ community during Pride Month and beyond, both on-air and via our on-demand streaming platform.”

Broadcast programming on Austin PBS 18.1, includes Becoming Johanna, the story of a 16-year-old transgender Latina who begins her transition and is kicked out of both home and school before finding a new support system that helps her to thrive, at 7:30 p.m. June 3. Learn about when homosexuality was considered a mental illness to be "cured" at 9 p.m. June 6. Renegade LGBTQ+ activists fought a powerful psychiatry establishment that had things dangerously backwards in Independent Lens: Cured. At 10 p.m. on June 14, follow Dyllón Burnside on a journey across the South to meet members of the LGBTQ community in Prideland. From a lesbian rodeo champ in Texas to an African American mayor ally in Alabama, he discovers how LGBTQ Americans are finding ways to live authentically and with Pride in the modern South.

In addition to on-air programming, Austin PBS offers a range of programs that are free to stream anytime on Austin PBS or the PBS app. Learn more about the nation’s first state-licensed retirement community specifically for LGBTQ+ seniors and their allies in The Lodge. Award-winning author and renowned scholar Lillian Faderman discusses the history of the fight for LGBTQ+ civil rights beginning in the 1950s through the fight for marriage equality and beyond in History with David Rubenstein. See how a roving LGBTQ+ nightclub event in Los Angeles called Mustache Mondays became a creative incubator for today’s leading edge contemporary artists in Artbound: Mustache Mondays.

Austin PBS members can access even more content with PBS Passport. Out in Rural America follows five stories from the LGBTQ+ community as they explore self-doubt, discrimination, acceptance and small-town LGBTQ+ life from a cultural, social, familial and religious perspective. Explore Tony-winning playwright Terrence McNally’s six groundbreaking decades in theater, as well as his LGBTQ activism, triumph over addiction, and the power of the arts to transform society in Terrence McNally: Every Act of Life.

For the full list of programs celebrating LGBTQ+ Pride Month and how to watch, visit https://austinpbs.org/highlight/celebrate-pride-month.

For additional information about Austin PBS, visit: www.austinpbs.org

ABOUT AUSTIN PBS Since 1962, Austin PBS has been a part of Central Texas, delivering programs that educate, entertain, and inspire. As the only locally-owned and operated nonprofit public television station in Central Texas, Austin PBS uses its unique position to serve as a bridge to the community and provide essential services to 3 million potential viewers in more than 20 counties across the region.