welcome to get usa i mean i am in north for a big news this week the united states supreme court has agreed to take three cases that will determine whether discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity  is prohibited under federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in our guest is professor arthur leonard of new york law school who has been tracking the progress of this legal principle for decades and i now i don't want to think all hope is lost there are ways to come back from this if we lose but we'll discuss all that in better news tampa florida has elected the first out l g b team mayor of a major florida city dr richard green a pioneer in the normalization of homosexuality going to big advocate for transgender people has died in eighty two and this terrible story a bullied gay teen has taken his stories including the plight of young lesbians such as herself and andy will have some theater or views beetlejuice burr and this is gary with nathan lane and haiti's town with android to shield but our guest is arthur leonard who is the robert f wagner professor of labor and employment law at new york law school editor of l g b t law and notes online you could read those and a legal writer for the gay city  news you've brought in new york law school since one thousand nine hundred two you've been tracking these cases for decades where do we stand where we stand we're finally in the supreme court which is not where we necessarily wanted to wind up at this point in time and that's a day's justice although we had to admit that eventually this issue was going to be decided by the supreme court it was just a question of when what cases would be the vehicle we were not what i say we i the legal movement was not pushing for this to go to the supreme court the two cases were appealed by the employers who lost in the courts of appeals and one by a local attorney down in georgia representing a gay man whose case was thrown out by the trial judge so they're all different cases two of them deal with sexual orientation we will talk about them and one of them deals with gender identity so that and these will be heard  one the other the sexual orientation case will be consolidated for one hour of argument so the attorneys for those two cases that have to battle out who's going to argue and the gender identity case will be heard separately because the title seven sexual orientation are what you call private cases there between individuals and companies the gender identity case was brought by the equal employment opportunity commission a government agency back in the days of the obama administration that's how long it takes cases to get to the supreme court so this is a case from years ago the e e o c is the agency that interprets and enforces title seven and they decided there was merit to this case it involved a funeral director who told her boss that when she came back from vacation she she'd be coming back as a woman she was hired as a man and that she would comply with the dress code that the funeral home had for its female employees and after thinking it over for a few days the owner of the funeral home said no not on my watch i'm not going to have a man wearing a woman's outfit do i didn't do the funeral director raise religious suggestions yeah he said that actually running a funeral home was his religious calling in life that he felt you know comforting the mourners and everything was a religious obligation and he ran his funeral home on religious principles he had religious tracts available for people but it is of course a business it's not a church but he tried to raise the religious freedom restoration act as a defense in this case and when she filed her claim with the c and they had just recently decided that gender identity cases can be brought under title seven and that they would make this one of the leading test cases so they filed on her behalf in federal district court and the funeral home moved to dismiss the case on the grounds the title seven doesn't cover gender identity claims the district judge said under six circuit precedent at that time it does but only on to the sex stereotyping theory because there have been cases in the six circuit more than ten years before involving a fireman who was transitioning and a police officer was transitioning and of both cases the sixth circuit said that discrimination against a transgender person is discrimination based on failure to conform to gender stereotypes and so it could be brought under title seven so the judge said yes this case can go forward on that theory then they go forward they have discovery they have motions for summary judgment and the judge at that point has to deal with the defenses that the funeral home will raise and they raised the religious freedom restoration act which is a federal statute that says the federal government cannot put a substantial burden on someone's free exercise of religion and lest they have a compelling justification and they using the least restrictive alternative to reach that justification and the trial judge said that the funeral home wins on the religious freedom restoration act where does it say in the bible that you can't treat people who are transgendered decently well it does in the bible say that it's a sin to cross  in the course of that decision they also affirm the trial judge finding that there was a violation of title seven so now it's the funeral home that appealed to the supreme court all right so and on the employment cases we have differing opinions one i point the employer says i don't want you coming out to your customers while you're you know tied to the heaven for bad so now not to make it's not only her boyfriend jack yeah her boy she told her boyfriend and her boyfriend not i'm not to make a joke complicated but to dismiss the claim because they said title seven doesn't cover it and this is a federal district court but they had also file the claim in the federal district court case under the new york human rights law so the judge agreed that title seven doesn't cover it because second circuit precedent at the time would say it didn't cover it but let it go to trial under the new york human rights lawyer and a jury ruled against soda but he decided to appeal not on the jury verdict on the new york state claim but on the judge's refusal to hear the federal claim and so that went up to the second circuit court of appeals and a three judge panel which is the normal size for direct review said second circuit precedent bars this  claim but they filed a petition for reconsideration by the entire circuit that's called bag and the entire circuit heard it and reverse their precedents and agreed with the position that the e e o c has taken in other cases that sex county agency and when they found out he was gay they fired him he claims and he filed a lawsuit federal judge threw it out and said within the eleventh circuit we don't entertain the sexual orientation claims and that i had it and it is not right  well the gender identity cases were going back to the beginning of the century going back ten to fifteen years when court started to accept the argument that discrimination on the basis of gender identity is a form of sex discrimination we have cases the equal credit opportunity act we had cases under the fair housing act we have cases under the violence against women act and finally in around two thousand and four we had the six circuit in a gender identity case saying  involving a firefighter who was can who was transitioning as as far as sexual orientation goes that's a more recent development we didn't start to get those in till just a few years ago so my should guess and writing about this new development  that's i think that's overstating it in the sense that we have protections against discrimination in about twenty states at this point and also a little percent of the population a lot and then you add in all the cities in other states  don't have pennsylvania at the state level but every major city in pennsylvania been sexual in to discrimination issue will be getting back to we have time later in the segment but so a substantial portion of the population is protected where are people not protected in the southeast and in the mountain states in particular but there has been talk that if we lose these cases and i would say what we're at best fifty fifty and this at the moment it could open the door for a lot of challenges to those laws no because this isn't a constitutional case this is a case of interpret in a statute that was passed in one thousand nine hundred sixty four that was proposed in the house of representatives without even listing the total act unpassable yes but the abandon passed the house the next day voted in favor of the act it went to the senate it didn't go to committee in the senate there was a special deal struck to send it directly to the floor because they were afraid all these southern democratic committee chairs would bottle it up in committee and it would never get to the floor it got to the floor it had the longest filibuster in american history up to that time and it finally passed and then title seven which had been amended had sex went into effect in july of sixty five c started to get complaints of sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination and they said we have no jurisdiction in the sex does not mean that and that was their solid position until understand how when you are discriminated against because you are gay or transgender that is because you're not fulfilling a gender role or in a sex law if you're reduce it right down to its heart discrimination against people because of the outlawed but the fact is that the right wing does not agree with that and wants the freedom to discriminate on that basis well and we also have to consider there are some people who take the position they would love it if congress would pass the equality act and outlaw this form of discrimination and put this outside of the courts deciding whether it's covered or not but they said they would say that there's a separation of powers in this country and it's congress that makes the policy and it's the executive branch that enforces the law and that for the e e o c to adopt this interpretation and for the federal courts to adopt this interpretation is to legislate to take something congress adopted in one thousand nine hundred sixty four and to give it meaning th the other day on this case it was written from an entirely political perspective it didn't pay any attention to the question of theories of statutory interpretation how do you interpret a fifty plus year old statute today in the light of our modern life one school of thought dynamic statutory interpretation says you develop statutory language and you adapt it to the times you keep it up to date or as congress would have to be busy amending statutes all the right so let the courts do that let the administrative agencies like the o c do that other people say no it's up to congress if congress doesn't want to change it it has to remain what it meant to nine hundred sixty four and even if we win these cases and even if the  law declared unconstitutional on the grounds that it violates the religious liberty of the first amendment what what they would be looking for is an exemption from compliance yet there are religious grass and the courts have entertained requests for religious exemptions but they treated them rather narrowly the employers that have the strongest claim for religious exemptions are not for profit religious organizations you know churches social service agencies affiliated with churches things of that sort have the strongest constitutional claims but even as to that the supreme court has narrow those exceptions and they've said as a matter of federal constitutional law individuals and businesses do not have a general right based on religious class not to comply with we're talking about now the current court as constructed by trump which may get that the right wing is now in power in a way and in the court potentially that all these passed values may disappear which is why i have said that the judiciary act and other people are talking about this including including people who judge needs to be amended to expand the court and the federal courts to balance again that's that's for it's for a political case but we can't give people some good news in philadelphia where a religious agency has in front of catholic social journalism because what happened was a reporter for the philadelphia inquirer decided it as a project to see whether religious social service agencies in philadelphia were complying with the city's human rights ordinance which prohibits sexual orientation discrimination so they went around and they asked them do you allow mary same sex couples to adopt or be forced or parents do you approve them for that and two agencies out of i think thirty there were religious agencies it's amazing how many agencies the city sub contracts its duties to and so too in all areas two of them catholic social services and bethany said no we don't deal with same sex couples and so they ran an article in the philadelphia inquirer and they were reading that in city hall and city human rights commission said hey we better get in touch with these people because their contract with the city is to provide secular not religious services to provide them consistent with our anti discrimination policy so they get in touch bethany back down and said we will deal with same but that's because the new lesbian attorney general yeah i'd put you know we were doing good on the electoral front yes but catholic social services hung tough they said we have a first amendment right you know to take our religious beliefs into account and the human rights commission said well you know not under a contract with the city we're taxpayer money is coming to you and they have year to year contracts and they said you know we're inclined to let th and in the meantime we're not going to refer anymore kids to you for adoption and foster placement and so the catholic services went to court and they sought an injunction against the city and the trial judge turned them down and this monday third circuit court of appeals turn starting at the beginning of october and they usually do two or three cases a day and you start counting this could be argued as early as sometime late october or early about they like to hold bombshells till june and they could take a lot of our cases between now and then yeah and they  schedule cases for hearing once all the briefing is done and the solicitor general especially this solicitor general is notorious for requesting extensions of time to file was well i and finally could stretch out the court took its time deciding to take this case they delayed that so who do you think is responsible for deciding to take these cases i think this could be unanimous decision by the court to take these cases the reason being that one of the primary reasons to take a petition is when there is a split of authority among the lower courts about what a federal statute means federal statutes i mean the same thing everywhere in the country right it's federal law it should mean some one thing in new york and another thing in the right is why the  an obvious one it was just a question of timing when we arrived very briefly there are two other cases they might take one of us about cake and a wedding and the other is about transgender students where i type transgender parents are suing a school  york law school that's a good way to keep updated day and thank you for coming in thank you ok say a sieve so we did win this case in pennsylvania in philadelphia about catholic social services and the great thing is that the judge in the case said the reason that the city prevailed with its nondiscrimination law over the catholic services religious claim is that the city clearly bored no ill will to the religion w not punishing their religion criticizing their religion was simply applying the law neutrally over for everybody in a warning no government funds and we've been following in michigan similar cases about religious agencies and adoption foster services and there too the catholic agency is resisting but as in philadelphia according to art bethany services has back down and will work with same sex couples so that's good news you know since we last met the reductive more report came out and i you know i'm up with elizabeth warren said about this on c going to not supporting any particular candidate but she said anybody else who did this would be arrested in the jail any other human being i liked her description of reading it she said she was on a plane and i have the report and she just sat there and read the whole thing and by the time she got to the end of it she said it has got to be on page three and i thought that was meaningful and elegant you know i don't know it was you know eugene robinson of the washington post said you know you can't appease the sky no matter what you do whether you do impeachment or you don't do impeachment he's go run roughshod over the law continually and he's a bully and he has to be stopped as a bully has to be stood up to whether you can have an effect on him or not you cannot cave in to a bully will the justice census which will boost again the power of the red states let's get to some of this stuff with the democratic candidates this week i was very disappointed to see that mayor pete was not willing to stand means terrorists could vote but you know do we have a country do we have a constitution we value all our citizens you take away people's freedom you punish them for acts like that but every citizen should have the right to vote no matter where they are you know what i think mayor pete is again a little blind to the issues of racism in this because putting mass incarceration of people of color is another way to do voter suppression and of course until recently there was a lot of vote when i got out and many of the democrats don't even seem to want to address prosecuting trump after he leaves the white house germany was cited is standing up for his great friend mike pence and and pete said well i may not be a master fisherman but i recognize bait when i see it and i'm not going to judge also did advocate interview mostly about gay stuff and you know says when you came out to himself when he was at his twenty's and did tell a good friend he met cheston on something called hinge which i don't know about he refers to himself as the first out queer person to get this far in the process is that where he's moving up in the polls that he is the hot item he asked me to yes you know stop collecting data and hugh kids in foster care and parents because then they might have to pay attention to them but a federal judge blocked the trump title ten gag order that was aimed to destroy planned parenthood asylum and then held in prison for another seven run by ice awful but is now finally out of the united nations the u s joined the axis of evil with russia and china and watering down a resolution combating the use of rape as a weapon of war they stripped it of a formal bucket is them to monitor and report atrocities and trouble refuses to agree to any u n document that refers to sexual reproductive health because he thinks it's implies support for abortion and they oppose the use of the word gender because they see that as an entryway for transgender rights he doesn't he doesn't think anything the family focus on the family tell him what to do and they say this thing did pass with omissions that trump sought but the united kingdom and france and belgium both suffer asli objected to these omissions meanwhile no matter what happens in the supreme court with those employment cases nancy pelosi says the equality act will come to a floor vote in the house next month it better and that will be the end of it for the moment well you know you keep saying there i think if it came to the floor of the senate it might pass because there are a few republicans  possible certainly no trump signature unless he thought that would get him realize i suppose that's possible can we give them some good news from florida jane castor fifty nine years old a picture of her was elected the first i believe first out l g b t q mayor of a of well certainly of temple but of a major florida city it's true she has a long history of leading the south and policies of inclusion she won seventy three percent of the vote what she'd been doing for the last thirty one years she's been a cop and clued in being the police chief down there from two thousand and two thousand and fifteen so this year alone in recent elections we've elected a lesbian marriage chicago a lesbian mayor of madison wisconsin we have a lesbian mayor in seattle washington and we have a runoff for the post in kansas city missouri that includes a lesbian as the chief front runner in the campaigns not to late for a lesbian to run for president now far from it our firm one of the current female candidates to come out as a lesbian and locally new york out city council member jim event bramer who we know very well is running for queens borough president in two thousand and twenty one in kentucky the bowling green city commission by a vote of three to two has rejected a nondiscrimination law for housing and employment they're going to make a second try at this on may seventh but so far we're losers advancing to the governor next week you know one of the main courage of school districts to adopt policies prohibiting trans didn't from using facilities aligned with their gender and now anothe allowing licensed professionals doctors lawyers and accountants to turn away business except in cases of severe injury or risk of death and of course a lot of tech companies and others are opposing because the story i hate the most this week at coachella in california former disgraced corrupt illinois congressman aaron schock second from left known to be gay but not out still very anti gay and his voting record in the u s house of representatives hanging out with a gay crowd in coachella seen kissing man and two guys who are with them have now apologized for hanging out with  considered a mental disorder given all the problems that they seem to have with it this is back in seventy three and he was just quite the pioneer yeah yeah great guy now we have a string of stories then we go to some of the negative stories well in huntsville alabama at huntsville high school  was terribly and was a very sweet guy who was beloved by his friends and family fifteen years old and he ended up taking his own life he was a suicide and the local sheriff there posted on trevor gray yes so he knows that he's described is that tremendously outgoing friendly social straight guy the picture of show a picture of him he goes to a bar he goes and in hanging out with the locals there who did not look so appealing but one of the guys he's hanging out with says that everybody come back to my place so he goes back to their place he doesn't know these people and guess what they ended up calling him a faggot and beating him up breaking his giong ass he didn't want to go to the hospital he's such a nice guy didn't want to go to the was very hard but arrested yeah and so he was attacked for being perceived as gay yes which is unfortunate what happens when there's a lot of home before when you allow homophobia to run rampant now a couple of other stories of violence not in the southeast first of all in alaska at north pole high school very aggressive with the girls in there because they were mad that this transport came into their restroom so one of the girls kicks one of the boys in the growing need simmers up a she gets punished in suspended there is an uproar over this she disciplined they finally discipline the boys there was a whole community meeting about this and basically they they were at first supportive of the with a knife in one hand mistakenly out there and the cops were called by a neighbor and they come and they try to tase him and it doesn't take and he's still walking around with a knife in the stick and they shoot him dead you know in london they throw is a terrible study that shows that same sex borrowers are seventy three percent more likely to be denied mortgages despite being less risky and when approved or hit with higher interest rates this was in the proceedings of the national academy of sciences good news as far as i'm concerned judith clark out lesbian in prison for decades for being a getaway driver on the worked with training guide dogs she did all sorts of magnificent things which she will keep doing and she's finally getting out we have to believe in rehabilitation but i don't think we believe in rehabilitation for the president  i mean this guy is a monster and even monster and some people are paying thirty thousand dollars to suck up to him wow all right better news in madison wisconsin scott anderson was rewarding as the first official out gay presbyterian minister he ordained yet one of the big well he'd been ordained and then he was forced out oh i see so now he is coming back in the priest forever yeah and then he'd have to turn in his stole and get that back and it was this whole thing in virginia oh the appeals court has rejected a request for release of chelsea manning who is in prison because she won't stories in huntsville hyattsville maryland a middle school drama club has been practicing for three months rehearsing to do the twenty fifth annual pot gnome county spelling bee at the last minute some parent complains that the gay parents predicted it per portrayed in the show and they cancel it it was written by a homosexual william fed our friend and then the school lies and says well it's because there's bad language in it only you can remove bad language from these times too often they went to the publishing company and said oh yeah that would have been fine so they're still up in arms they may or may not do some production of it but really it's about and the kids are just furious and they've been worse for  the g s a students complain about discrimination by the administration and she got fired for that and she is now just won a eight hundred fifty thousand dollars settlement the a c l u of southern california was  representing her and that's a good thing because they did a bad thing to her and the international gay rodeo association wants us to know that in may sixth in l a they'll be donating most of their archives to the one national gay and lesbian archives that you see there seeking more memorabilia if you have memorabilia from the gay rodeos they won it and know and i think sure lehrer mickey mickey twenty nine years old extremely popular and admired young lesbian journalist and covering the latest outbreaks of violence and troubles in northern ireland in london and she was at a clash and was shot dead and the entire nation is in mourning who is going to teenage punks from the they've been let go so they're not sure that they did it they arrested these guys but then they were released and i watched the film of the people popping out from behind buildings to shoot at the basically to shoot at the crowd almost unlimited wasn't it you know but she they don't think she was targeted but everybody is so in mourning both sides that they think this might allow for some advance in reconciliation and you know she grew up bullied by her peers and  church she confronted their homophobia and she did a thing which she wrote a letter to her fourteen year old self that was made into a short film and if you get our e mails i will send this to you the link to this film which was quite a touching she didn't ted talk that i watched that was very charming and she spent five years investigating the only rape crisis center in northern ireland that the government efforts to eliminate it so that a journalist sometimes can really make things happen she was seen as someone who is extremely significant and up and coming in expected to have a normally important career and people are just devastated by her loss so we're very sorry to hear about that well  i was challenged by the european parliament over their law to stone gay people to death and they wrote back saying it will safeguard the sanctity of the family lineage in marriage and in our traditional values and they called for tolerance and respect for them for its sovereignty witnesses even numbers honest to god people what kind of world we live well we got a better decision in italy the high court the air issued a pro gay pro we were good ruling about a guy from the ivory coast and at first the immigration agency said that they don't have a law against homosexuality in the ivory coast called and he said they killed by my father killed my boyfriend there my family is going to kill me if i go back and so the high court said you've got to hear his case again in turkey the regional administrative court lifted the we've shown you many pictures and video of people running around istanbul trying to get away from the cops in the middle of pride parades and fire oses and everything else canada has t activists were detained for doing a day of silence protest on the streets they had tape over their mouths and they were just hauled off by the cops in new good the president of the the blamed outsiders for trying to approaching the may twenty fourth deadline two years after the court decision that said they had to legalize same sex marriage they still haven't decided after referenda and other things what to do but one hundred fifty seven couples have planned to marry on may twenty fourth bot the government could still pass a kind of half measure which would just take everything back to court for further adjudication so the pope met a group of  pilgrims who would go gone across europe and to meet with him and at the end of it one of them was a gay comedian to promote britain steven davis who told him that he was gay and the pope said it doesn't matter who you are or who you are or how you live your life you do not lose your dignity and then he said giving more importance to the adjective i guess the word gay rather than the no this is not good there are people that prefer to select  discard people because of the adjective these people don't have a human heart that's from the church that just you know doesn't want to give children to gay people o you know come on the cayman islands is continuing this fight over same sex marriage which of course legalized competing demos in the streets two thousand people rallied against same sex marriage and in japan and they published the court decision that said if you want to change your gender you must have surgery to remove your reproductive capacity that is constitutional because it's too confusing not six million dollars how will ten alone the show raised half a billion dollars blue man well miranda accepted the award do not fall for the republicans promises to cover preexisting conditions including a chevy and their nonexistent  new health care plan it would have no limits on price is it good there could be lifetime limits that make you run out of coverage very fast all of this it's going to be much less than the affordable  k entertainment news you want to listen to some reviews it was a busy week already let me tell you that in san francisco beach blanket babylon is going to close on new year's eve after forty five years it's the one with the big hats and the great show queen elizabeth attended this thing is good and i went to it years ago song parodies about politics and celebrities so get your tickets before dinner so you know they'll be banning the mermaid parade i hope not the brighton beach pride parade edition three for twenty nineteen comes out may nineteenth in brighton beach brooklyn it is a fantastic event because it is just people demonstrating in their community and it's a community event and i highly recommend it we'll tell you more as we get closer so almost every play i saw this week was about death or hell and mostly funny beetlejuice seems to have a built in audience who love the tim burton film it's a musical version unlike starring alex brightman there who is very very funny as the sort of you know the one of the dead  guys but it's a very confusing trip through the land of the living in that other world did the movie burn this this is by the late out gay playwright lanford wilson from one thousand nine hundred seven about it dancer carrie russell morning one of her two gay roommates as she's pursued by a rich suitor david for and then her late friend's brother adam driver who is sort of the star of the show a very funny tour de force performance but the play i would say is very dated and it doesn't really reach the laughing but she disappears very quickly and what it most of it is a back and forth between lame and christine milsom as maids who are cleaning up this mess and then it's every pure beeves to be about the destruction of our society and  how far we've fallen but i got pretty bored after a while with the with a level of screaming at each other about this the whole time note i think if i were use drugs i might have enjoyed it more ok i love hades town in london now all the principal players are back here in new york where it started at the new york theater workshop really shines at the walter cara theater that's on greta she owns there put up again he he opens the show wonderful bass baritone and it's you know it's a tragedy and it's and it's and it's tragic and you know we sort of know what's going to happen after they go to hell and try to come back but this this woman in the front row was not prepared for this she accumulation of wealth with no comment struck me as a bit you are right about that it was still to be a great theatrical experience especially for the first two acts it is it is no question and i i sat there for three hours and twenty minutes if you can go to vet out as bisexual on the cover of the advocate our friend michael musto is going to be doing a gay version of the hollywood squares time squares it's called april twenty sixth and every other friday to june twenty first the by cynthia nixon well it's now in movie form and playing at the trifecta film festival on tuesday april thirtieth at nine forty five at the battery park cinema on stage and you may have seen the boys in the band  comes back for its second season june night and it's going to move up to the eighty's and ninety's and do act up and patti lu pone is going to be a regular character so watch out for that and to one food is being reissued on blu ray with extra material and we'll see whether it holds up in twenty nine t somebody mentioned about about lanford wilson play was nine hundred eighty seven and somebody died but it