friend goldberg baker a pioneering gay activist the guy who created the rainbow flag and spread it around the world has died at the age of sixty five we don't usually festoon ourselves with rainbows but in gilbert's honor we two in order to appease the n c a a and other things it's a real harsh showdown there but what better news from other states and that sort of conundrum the nominee to head the air force academy is an out lesbian but trump's pick for secretary of the army is a notorious anti l g b t a bigot and so is the head of the senate in puerto rico who rescinded protections for transgender people th circuit court of appeals has ruled eight to three in a full members of the court ruling that the civil rights act of one thousand nine hundred and sixty four title seven prohibition against sex discrimination does cover sexual orientation discrimination in a quote from the court is that the common sense reality that it is actually impossible to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation without discriminating on the basis of sex now this is an interpretation of the civil rights act that the equal employment opportunity commission has been pushing for the last few years i mean started with transgender people yes and that actually has court that was easier that grass court on a room with country and various circuits but it's been hard to convince courts of the worth of the argument that sexual orientation discrimination is sex discrimination we've had mixed results in lower courts often not very good and often based on precedents nobody was willing to step forward and make this interpretation but this is the case of kimberly hive lee we have a picture of her  she was working at a place called ivy tech community college yes math professor this is in south bend indiana now the thing is indiana is the only part of the th circuit where sexual orientation discrimination is not  indiana does not thus the need to make this groundbreaking win in the courts so the low were the st part of the the district court a three judge panel turned her down and she lost it at that level so she appealed with the help of lambda legal defense this is a huge win for lambda congratulations and thank you to them went to the larger version of the seven circuit the full version the old bank version of eleven judges and they have ruled eight to three in a decision written by chief justice diane wood who was  clinton appointee and was on obama's short list of potential supreme court nominees she has ruled in a fascinating decision that it makes perfect sense that if you are firing someone or not promoting her because she is a lesbian and she was seen kissing her girlfriend in a parking lot of the college that's why she didn't get the job  fact is by definition sex discrimination if she had been kissing a man she would have not been fired so it was the sex of the person she was and now are the tech had until july th through the side with that they were going to appeal t aspect of the case so they said no no we're not going to appeal well what they say is we did not discriminate against her because she's a lesbian we didn't promote her to a full time job and eventually didn't renew her contract because of other reasons we're not in favor of discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation so we're not appealing this ruling what we're going to do because this ruling didn't give a big win to  kimberly what it said was she can go to trial on the basis of being discriminated against because now has to prove that she was discriminated against on the basis of or sexual orientation exactly which the college says is not what they did so that will play out in a trial busy where each side tries to prove the other wrong i now also joining in on this decision  quite a while now yes but riding the dissenting opinion was judge diane sykes who was on and still is on trump's short list of supreme court nominees so if we were not to good course which by some public accommodations or housing which are of a traditional triumvirate but it is an extremely significant decision and it and judge would wrote this decision i thought very cleverly citing supreme court precedents because what other courts have done halves that the supreme court has never said there are other courts have never said this in our circuit but she found some some pretty in court decisions that were analogous that said that for instance gay men had been discriminated against at their jobs for sex stereotyping and things like that some of which scully you know supported well and there was a case that were put on last week where they said you know you can do this on the basis of sex stereotyping but not of the basis of sexual orientation assignments the question said case yes but this is good we've talked about the kimberly high blake case for years hasn't worked its way through the courts h doing now i don't know but i hope you got another job in the lead to i yes and we certainly something i advise everybody to do all they're pursuing a complaint don't wait for the results to take a long time while we sort of you know we knew that her case and other cases were coming along trying to make this argument of sexual orientation discrimination as sex discrimination but there was no particular reason to believe that this was going to turn out to be such a landmark case but it really is this has a bold and some of the legal groups to go back to some of the circuits where we didn't do well at the lower courts to ask for larger rulings from the larger panel they are in the th circuit for instance that center and gives them a roadmap for what cases to cite and how to make the argument say this this only covers employment but you know the civil rights act covers employment public accommodations and everything and if this interpretation sticks we would essentially have a judicial equality act absolutely and we can't pass in the congress well i want someone to go to trump and say what do you think of this decision and have him say well i don't think anybody should be discriminated gorsuch you know gets on which is seems likely with getting rid of the filibuster then we still have a fifty four pro majority with justice kennedy yes but that has been in other kinds of cases there relax but it is it's a great win and a great way for an end certainly it can be expanded but we've got to you know we've got our toe in the door and now we have to bust it wide open the price of liberty is eternal vigilance well vigilance has not helped us in north carolina we fought and fought and donated millions of dollars to gary cooper this democratic governor i met him at a fundraiser in new york  thrown by gay friends i'm with you know discrimination you know so they what you heard going down still in the news was that h p too was repealed the bathroom bill was repealed oh it wasn't i mean they here's what i'm waiting for because they did for a bit the nondiscrimination laws and this after suckering church charlotte into getting rid of its law so i think existing laws another town stand but no new ones can pass until d at least then and as i say i'm not holding d my breath for ever well allowing them but charlotte's is gone and they can't do a new one so then the other thing is the trans bathroom stuff which the state legislature now control so what's going to happen when the state legislature passes a new law any nd now that reinstates the ban on the out of trans people using the bathroom appropriate to their lives her gender identity will be n c devil a say oh i see so they're still doing that we won't go back in there well look the n w c p condemns this deal you know all the major civil rights groups have condemned this deal you know i say bail on them just like bill a you know cooper said it was by the way it wasn't a perfect deal or his preferred solution but you know that they want the other side one of this case all right enough of all that so  really the horrible news this week is the death of gilbert baker friend and friend to the entire world and just an amazing human being and someone we knew and l that's a picture of him at the museum of modern art which is this is the only flag ever required by the museum of modern art and when the election was over they moved that flag to the main entrance hall to as a sign of welcome to everybody w i i was away last week out of town i came home late sunday night listening my phone messages and there was a message from get here because he was always on the case he was always working he was working on stonewall fifty which is and  exhibit in san francisco that was that was planned that it wasn't just the betsy ross of the community you know he he he was a front line activist he he came and held up these banners with us he was at all these demonstrations he never stopped sewing how do you know of course he got his start in san francisco that's where he got the idea for the flag he was an artist and he was asked by i guess cleve jones and harvey milk to make a symbol because he was an artist and he had seen the bicentennial two years earlier with american flags all d over the place and he got the idea that what we needed was a fight i said we're not a nation but we are a people yes and that was his inspiration and when he did it he said he knew this was going to consume his life and that this was going to be the most important thing that he ever did when they put that flag up on gay freedom day on the top of city hall in san francisco and that was one thousand nine hundred and seventy eight the flag is only thirty nine years old as a symbol of the q community and that it feels like it's been around forever if there ever it does but what we're going to tell you a bit more about the story of how it all came about we have a video of gilbert that we'd like to show just so you can hear his voice this is from the p b s series in the life and so here is about five and a half minutes and his story used but that came from the nazis that was put on us and you know had a really horrible negative origin about murder and holocaust i didn't even think twice about what the flag would a rainbow fit us it is from nature it connects us proposal that they needed to do something simple and they proposed doing a fly made at the gay community center in san francisco just an amazing process of you know one thousand yards of cot in charge and the wind was blowing and we were struggling and hooking it to the cords that would take it up and then as we started to to pull on the rope the wind took it and just below it open and it to so i quickly compromise once i went into the flag industry to just six colors for showing those i call it the commercial version when he delivered chose that symbol for the gay and lesbian movement yet it's sort of eclipsed i think any other uses of the rainbow and everybody now really you know connects to the gay lesbian movement when i did the mile long flag in new york city and the amount itself was a big celebration stonewall twenty five in new york it made headlines around the world i think it was the st time that the rainbow flag as a symbol leapt across oceans to other countries i have thought of everything except about what to do with it after it was over so i literally had teams of people running through it with scissors chunking and handing off pieces to of people you know they're indispensable but he really was who will replace them i will take an army and when i would tell people i knew the guy who invented the rainbow flag a foreign concept to them they would think you know this must always have existed in some magical way because he gave it away he didn't profit from it he didn't patent it but he also made sure no one else patented it so that it was freely available to the entire world he had a just unbelievable i mean the one of the new york took five thousand people to carry it five thousand mazing that he was able to get all but troops but that was the way he contributed to all of our demonstrations yes he would make he would pull off there's because we were so offended by russians homophobia and the fact that they had been awarded the olympic games in sochi so a merry band of about a dozen of us reconstituted queer nation which had been a huge along with act up in the early ninety's and we just got together and said all right we're queer nation all over again and but there were only a few of us but gilbert was one of the group and he started making these incredible banners putin's lives you know boycott russian homophobia and we would go all over town with these things and we ended up with worldwide publicity and really just a dozen of us created a worldwide  we went to the new york stock exchange to protest russian businessmen going to the stock exchange and and ended up seeing the president of the stock exchange like sure these russian business meant for about twenty minutes on video for their whole visit because we had been outside there with these huge banners protesting the meadow b and so that it became a symbol that we have a picture of the supreme court of april th two thousand and fifteen while people were awaiting the b fall decision on marriage equality it became everywhere and then while castle and when we won the decision the president lit up the white house and rainbow colors which you've seen by the way we have a picture there of him with president obama as the next picture after the november election last year is the sign of protest gilbert and his death was lobbying for a huge flagpole in greenwich village with the rainbow flag well the purview of the governor has a memorial contest that may become the just like in san francisco where they have a seventy foot pole with the flag flying all the time in harvey milk plaza and that flag by the way is gilbert never one of the flown at half staff  lowered a couple of times but it wasn't lowered for gilbert at his request when they had the memorial service for him and the vigil for him after his death and now gilbert was a consultant on the milk movie and he i would have worn something much more friday to see said well a lot of his artifacts were used in the milk movie and gilbert was part of the world pride celebrations in two thousand at the vatican and guy he was a positive guy the rainbow flag is a positive symbol there are many angry resistance symbols all over the world and that we've all used for many years in many ways but the flag and gilbert o were meant to be positive now gilbert had a what i would call a childlike delight in being celebrated himself this he he would call me regularly and say i'm going to be the graham marshal in wichita  going to be the grand marshal in toronto from kansas yes it was his hometown or or i you know i'm involved in the milk movie or whatever and but it was all it was all very innocent and it was all just joy and he didn't make a penny off the wagon he did he was far from a rich guy who was just a very poor guy who got by day by day and he had a stroke a few years stood and not a major stroke but he had to struggle back from that and he was just it was always wonderful to talk to a more wonderful to work with them very   riffing generous smart guy and i just can't believe that he's gone on i will miss him hugely as a friend and as a human being and the world is just bereft with  in the rainbow flag i like to believe and he said everybody can be an activist but you have to start by being honest with yourself about it about who you are and what this is all about and that you happened here well it's community yes and that's all you have to find other people like yourself i mean did work with  to ok all right back to the regular news let's go to lubbock texas back to court hearings ok we know you may remember the mississippi passed a law that brought religious heinous law yes a so heinous that it was put on hold they succeeded in stopping its implementation but his law license he was the guy who is just as psychotically stalking and harassing harassing a gay guy who was a student official at the university of michigan and the there were two bills passed by the senate the st would ban conversion therapy for old you to use them to the age of eighteen and the other would require specialized training for foster parents of an l g b t child and this actually got some republican support because they said sure everybody should understand what's going on in arkansas the legislative session has ended with none of the bad anti l g b t bills passing including a proposed that it went too far and bar all talk of sexuality by medical professionals i'm not sure whether that was just an excuse or illegitimate intent to see the bill to not recognize same sex protections for people on trial basis of transgender if they work for the senate terrible but in the u s house of representatives representative joe kennedy the rd democrat of massachusetts which ones are which and that's in arizona the in phoenix they were having the annual pride parade and floods interrupted by a group called trans we're well below you can york the annual pride parade organizers have agreed to let protest groups anti trump resistance groups rise and resist act gays against practicality of getting those motorcycles zooming down the street but i you know i think we should put in front what the message that we want to send well and i would go farther than that because the l a pride parade this year is going to be a protest you have canceled it as a pride parade and they're turning the whole thing into a protest march which is what they should do in new york and what they say you went through or new york is to say well we'll make this salary of all our corporate floats at our little group you know hey folks but what the bonding right we're losing the country i mean that we've got to get a little bit more excited about this a little more agitated now i merely know you watch the news every day and you do see you know the trump administration seems to be falling apart but they're doing a tremendous amount of damage which we will get to exactly now the new york pride parade is june th two weeks earlier and there is supposed to be this march on washington on the th which were going to have the washington pride anyways so i think the thing is just turn your turn your politicize your your pride marches because we have a big agenda definitely but i think what they're trying to do is a protest march in washington on the trans community the blue and pink and white and big governor of new york and reach we needed a picture of it well i wish you could get universal health care passed here in new york and handed in the assembly overwhelmingly and it's blocked in the senate here which is even though we have a midterm get into it but i don't know i should get into it we have a majority of democrats but some of them caucus with republicans and that blocks bills governor cuomo you got to stop this if you're the leader of the party so we can universal health insurance in new york military newest contradictory stories in the new head of the air force academy is going to be an out lesbian kristin goodwin got a picture of her with her put in her plane she's a colonel now in this she's been nominated to be a burger dear general so she couldn't have because of me now we don't know anything about her politics but the air force academy has had a lot of it up nonetheless i am astonished that she has been nominated and i have no idea how that was accomplished because they trump administration is rumored to be about to appoint as secretary of the army this state senator from obama executive orders unfair labor practices many of which affect whether yes fair pay stuff yeah exactly so it's just it's just a lie it's a sham but yvonne can't just say yes and i hope it won't last week about the question l g b questions that have been proposed but then not put in the census for two thousand and twenty and the american community survey now they're seven gary gates the williams institute researcher says that that story is a little overblown d that they really weren't those questions weren't in there and there were no i said yeah i mean you know we we don't we had only been working up to this it was scheduled it like to be counted but adams representative adam schiff who you've seen all over the place for as the leading democrat on the intel committee and vesta getting all the russia stuff said found a few minutes in the midst of that to say alaska a couple of stories of violence in brooklyn a gay man was assaulted on the subway not like on his way to work horrible horrible horrible thing and in that case of  the the african american guy who was beat up by the orthodox jews and the guy victim yeah the guy's know out again the guy was convicted of the crime yet is out again on appeal which never happens in a case like this yes  impact on everyone lucky enough to know him we got a lot of e mails about this yeah people who really michael musto was very broken up about this good bye sweetie and thank you for your art and out of five hundred dollars to win a community action award from the atlantic magazine and all state insurance along with twenty thousand dollars a renewal award which is a lot for two alternative community too because it turns out the chechnya and government officials are said to be arresting gay men there more than one hundred dollars people have been vanishing television reporters a waiter they went to say something they finally did the local officials deny it but you know that even the prep with the spokesperson said well you know we don't know how far this information corresponds with reality but we're going to look good to it well yes yeah here's what they said in it and there are no gay people in chechnya and if they were we wouldn't have to be arresting them because their families would be killing them meanwhile here on may th the russian group  gilbert's old anti russian and they brighton beach is a famously russian immigrant community in new york city in brooklyn and the russian l g wants to hold d a pride parade there and i say hey i'm there may th we'll give you details as we get closer to it but i think that's a bold and an important move to go show up in the russian community of brooklyn with this message in a sauce something on the view where non gay men in the in the netherlands are holding hands after a gay bashing to try to you know they read it on line is we did six people  been arrested for viciously beating two gay men who were holding hands they beat them up with a bolt cutter is knocking out four teeth of one of them grilli horrible d attack so this is become an important story in the netherlands and re election and supported by too many conservatives who are against ok they do have civil partnerships that they've had since two thousand and one news trump has proposed slashing three hundred million dollars in a charity aids fun volume about the proposed budget folks so we have to fight it in the congress to get it under control and act up celebrated its th anniversary in new york with a demonstration there is the crowd the demands are thirty years we were there in the beginning yeah and the demands are similar to what they were thirty years ago defending expand access excuse me to health care and coverage and you know find a cure and play reviews share well you know i was very much looking forward to lynn nottage is sweat which is about you know people in the you know in a union town who are you know in a bar but it it's under assault and jobs are going to mexico and all that kind of stuff but i have to say it felt more like a lecture of than a play and i didn't think the language was i didn't feel it was very real and when i wanted to like it and i was asked and i was also disappointed and you know martin sherman  he's got a new play called gently down the stream at the public theater there's harvey firestein and he's a he's in the wall and guy in london who's a piano player and this young guy falls in love with them gabriel liebert you know he never takes much joy in this relationship is always nervous about it because this guy is so much younger and all these kinds of i did nervous to that end and it also it also literally felt like a lecture because they don't come to the front of the stage and just tell stories on the pretext that they were being videoed about gay history and things like that and it has something to do with the up stairs lounge fire but again i just didn't think it worked organically as a play i thought i think the performers are terrific a you know ben was such a sophisticated and nuanced play of man in german concentration camp who fall in love and have sex by just looking at each other when they're both suspended on the other moving rocks across the stage yes when they get their breaks that yes that was but you know so look i was just disappointed and then absolutely well i think everybody's read the reviews it was a very charming love the whole thing but maybe maybe i think i believe everything is going on in the world i am less diverted by the theater and it's very hard in the last few days to be light hearted about anything yes am happy to see that glad at its annual award named moonlight outstanding will my continue to think that was the best film of last year and continue to urge those of you who haven't seen it to see it although i worry that i've oversold it so much that not everybody is going to jump up and i don't some people have recommended to have just loved it and said thank you and others have said i didn't quite think it was i loved it but if you really want to face reality you're recommending that we take a look at h b o on demand and go look at crime from syria i saw a little bit of it it's hard to watch it is but it's so important his special menace which was weird that led to this craziness and is that a good thing and this became a big discussion in society and he thinks it played a big role in the whole opening up of things on gay stuff and whatever  was a couple of years ago when he was tempted all right marty doman historian writer playwright activist is getting an honorary doctorate from columbia university here this springs got a new book out jews biographies of paul robeson and howard zinn i run into him in the neighborhood your bank and he's written several memoirs so congratulations to marty do berman and congratulations to daniel newman actor in the year who came out on you tube if you look him up on you tube he talks quite moving lee about the importance of being out own provide a link to that if you get on our e mail list by going to our web site at w w w dot gay for two seasons i watched the st one and didn't like it so i didn't keep watching it but they had a gay son and it was considered a little cheeky yet not my cup of  he couldn't have been more important to the movement and he lived a full and rich life and will miss him for a time for the rest of us to pick up the slack and we will