judge has thrown out charges against men who had sex with men at an adult bookstore attention pennsylvania you can now make complaints about discrimination against you on the basis of sexual intention to gender identity and that's a big step forward it's going to be they consider it sex discrimination and we will celebrate the life this week of timothy mccarthy a really beloved activist in provincetown library and film to self doing it chelsea manning has finally had gender confirmation surgery while things are terrible here your guy passed a sweeping transgender rights bill  we can ask gillian about that too and three thousand people marched in paris this weekend after a new wave of anti l g b t violence and today when we're taping a cobra twenty four that the equality foreman found out  trans people in nother last ditch attempt to gain votes in this midterm election can we read this definition of sex that the ladies on this thing was this memo that was uncovered by the new york times and this is done at before birth the sex listed on the person's birth certificate as originally issued shall constitute definitive proof of a person sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence we have a lot to talk about about this  at the white house at the white house why how you can see the h r c flags and lots of signs lots of people turned out about three hundred and several hundred in new york in the freezing cold on sunday night right after the story came out and the a c l u which has promised to pursue effort by the federal government and and the lives they lead so we thought you would like to see the a c l u xm radio ben we will talk to our guest every day transit non binary people are struggling to survive and the truck and ministration ha taken yet another step to attack us i have you had a sense changes are asking me all these questions which you know is there to get my finger x rayed i think i was also mostly desensitized to it because i knew that something like that was probably going to happen i was once examined  topless and having a procedure where i needed to have a needle inserted directly into my nipple repeatedly with the door open because the person didn't want to be alone with me the constant having to explain yourself getting this like subtle look of disgust i was also told that when i couldn't not show that i was experiencing pain that if i really wanted to be a man that i would be tough for her about it being non b curiosity rather than a person who's interacting with someone so many doctors have turned me away asked invasive questions about my body that were completely irrelevant and that makes you feel like a freak not a patient the idea that i have  see a doctor to like reaffirm every couple of months i still try and it's still happening in order to get a refill is something that makes me uncomfortable but i know i have to do is really toiling and really just stigmatizing and pushes people from care it's really a life or death situation for people because you just don't go you know in those stretches of time when i am going without my hormones i can like i can feel my mental health deteriorated and i'll say also that like most of what i experienced was you know as a white person as a class perfect person and good hospitals good insurance like and you start stripping any of those things away and it just becomes pretty unimaginable i've been  of the administration is trying to sell a false narrative that our health care isn't real or that it's not medically necessary but that is completely untrue there is the medical consensus that health care lead to gender comes a lot of political change and social change in our i would say to trans people that you are so wonderful and so brave and so resilient i see you i firmly you i'm here for you you are well it's nice to see people given a venue to talk for themselves rather than being talked about in jail in your legendary lawyer around the transgender law center for a year is an hour well it's extremely upsetting obviously you had concerning i will say that it's not really new news you know we've known about this effort for quite a long time at least advocates who are working on these issues have known you know this was a memo that was leaked to the new york times i mean you know we're not really sure exactly you know was is this a plan they have is it someone's good idea is this something they're moving forward on are they going to try to impose these regulations  we have known since the new administration came in that the rules under the obama administration that had said that sex discrimination under the affordable care act was prohibited and that that would include transgender people and when the new administration came in they wanted to change that and it's been a running fight for the last twenty years about you know what is sex discrimination mean you know their argument is well it's not sex discrimination because you're just you're changing sex it's not you know but if i was changing my religion would that not be religious discrimination and you know they're they're just trying to roll the clock back and you know the attempts like this have been occurring in the states for years i mean i think mississippi passed a law like this some years ago so you know those of us who have been working on this and fighting for rights are not surprised  again you know we don't know exactly what this portends but we've been making a lot of progress in the courts for really decades of trying to get them to understand sex discrimination in a much broader way than what the law first came into effect  d but we're now up against a supreme court that we think is unsympathetic to this and right now the administration is differing about what case to bring there because they would like to get sex just defined as just  there well that's a good question and of course you know knowing about the fight that just took place with regard to supreme court and now we have a kind of five four majority in favor of conservatives but the question is what does it mean to be a conservative on this issue you know one of the things that conservatives have been touting for years is that they believe in a judicial philosophy called textual ism where we don't really care what the legislators intended what we care is what are the provisions of the law i mean part of the reason for that is historically this is how they kind of try to get around new deal legislation that in light but you know now they have some legislation that talks about sex discrimination i mean the idea that sex doesn't include the gender you know that we're going to say that now women can be fired because they're not sufficiently feminine oh you know who are discriminating based on their biology you know we can't be put back in the bottle surely you are not accusing the conservatives of hypocrisy and you know why isn't this all based on a desire to because it doesn't make sense to me you know why would they even care but this is all based on a desire to solidify the support of the even jellicoe olds who are so upset at what they see is a violation of their biblical mandates which is crazy to me but that seems to it seems to be sort of niche advertising by the administration we're going to shore up this voting bloc and this voting bloc and and this time it's the evangelicals two weeks before the election we'll i mean you know i'm not sure what how the time came about the new york times you know got this  they're not there they won't overlook any possibility of getting a vote here and there i think so while they're accusing the refugees from central america of including middle eastern terrorists which is just mind blowing that they would even purport to believe that they're also scapegoating you and the entire community well one thing that's fascinating is that story came out people all that much i understand but what this was is there's a judge in texas who's very very conservative in the northern district of texas you know there's and there's one guy there another federal district there's many judges you might get anybody there the there's  one guy basically and you super conservative and so you know people attorneys general from various states brought a case particularly the court to title mine in education that was when the gavin grimm case was big and so on and they basically said you know you you cannot we cannot allow the obama administration to interpret sex discrimination to include transgender people and so we're going to bring a case and they brought it to this super conservative judge and surprise surprise he said you're right this only means biology and so there was a nationwide injunction imposed on enforcing this law which is kind of mind boggling but in any event you know that was going up  appeal to the fifth circuit you know i mean essentially the trumpet ministration didn't want to continue the fight they wanted to let this guy and then they can blame it on the judge made an order we'll take care of the law they're usually very long decision because there are a lot of other point but then there was another case that was brought with regard to the affordable care act and there was an injunction in that case so you know it's kind of a little bit of a legal nightmare let's get down to what they're really trying to do here because this is a concern coordinated effort according to her story at the  it's not just h h s it's the four big agencies and they want to do this to the point that this is going to have to be accepted across the federal government in terms of medicaid and medicare and affordable care and it and everything this could  posting and notice period and commentary it takes time to put a regulation in place and it takes time to remove a regulation they can be blocked by court action when the regulation is fairly clear violation of law i'm sure that you know when and if regulations like this are imposed down the road because it's not something that can happen tomorrow that there will be court challenges and they very well may be blocked because i think that you know any judge who understands you know anything about the situation when presented with evidence that sex is not a simple matter of biology i mean this is been accepted by the court since the one nine hundred eighty s there have been decisions ruling in favor of transgender people you know they're going to say you can't really do this it's like saying well you know we're regulating motor vehicles but this kind of we're not going to call that a car so you can pollute as much as you want like you know at some point it just gets ridiculous can they carve these things out constitutional i would agree with you across the board in every court except the supreme court and they're going to have the final word well i mean yes and we have midterms coming up you know so we don't know quite what's going to happen and what twists and turns this will take we know the court is you know the court is but you know things could happen on the seriously because it's ridiculous that we live up to the security of of a court which has been packed but back to this well let's talk about the reaction because in fact when this came out whether it's new or not whether mean i don't remember a time when people actually cared that much about what was happening the transgender people because bad stuff been happening to us for ever and this is the first time that i can remember where like the public is kind of in an uproar and  that's the most shocking thing to me not the memo but the reaction to it and i think that's wonderful i think it's great that people are recognizing that we are human beings entitle to civil rights and to dignity and you know i think that it will  you know help not only transgender people but i think you know all civil rights movements for people to begin to recognise that when an administration begins to chip away people at certain groups that maybe they don't know about or th their standard they don't care that much about that they're next down the road and they're not going to be willing to let that happen but if we look back the congress of the presidency we can change all the regulations and we can change the laws and overcome even bad court decisions that way at three hundred fifty mayors have signed on and say we have your backs but if these mayors and localities are told well the regulations say we're not going to get any federal funding if we don't comply with the regulation well i mean you know i mean we're  going down the road not that that couldn't happen i'm not saying that you know we should be unconcerned but you know i think it would take a lot to do that and i also want to mention that we have a federal system where there's federal and state many states have passed laws protecting people and those will not be changed and you know people living in those states will be protected and so if you could provoke more state laws well absolutely i think one states see that the administration is kind of intent on creating these and ridiculous laws that are going to affect a lot of people i mean look it's not just transgender people if you worry about they have to worry about the parents now of transgender people some of whom are amazing advocates and you know you get an angry mom you know who's going to come at you in the in the elevator or wherever it may be you know at some point you realize like oh this isn't just this group that we don't really understand this is other people are affected by this and this is an issue that has to be addressed that's one of our new slogans you know we're not an angry mob we have angry moms but all right well i mean you're in private practice hand handling l g b to discrimination what kinds of what kinds of what's coming to you there well what are people dealing with mostly i do employment discrimination i do handle some insurance discrimination issues and you know what's happening i mean this is been happening for a long time the cases that i'm dealing with things that happened in two thousand and fourteen and twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen you know i also have some clients who had some recent issues as well but it's not new that we have discrimination and that's why we have anti discrimination laws and so what's happening you know with the kinds of cases i have you know somebody new management comes in everything was fine you know it's a gay man not an issue new management comes in starts to kind of criticize everything they do and so on makes a few comments to  people you know or a transgender person is working at an organization that is very very favorable in terms of its policies but you know on the ground dealing with a particular manager you know all of a sudden they find that nothing they can do is right and they're totally incompetent even though they an amazing employee for years and years you know these are the kinds of things that that people have to endure harassment and you know being fired being demoted you know and as we saw in the a c l u video just  personal treatment in doctors offices or in daily life it's just absolutely i've had doctors you know back away from me saying oh i just always say that ten years ago ok well you say we've lived through worse and that's that's one of the things you said we're going to we're going to provide your whole blog post on this when we send out the e mail and tell people how to get in touch with your firm and everything but i mean you say we've been through worse well absolutely i mean when i transition in the late one nine hundred ninety s i mean the advice that was given to me was basically plan on ending your career not seeing any of your family members or friends again having no money you should move to another city and just you know take a different name and just start all over again and you know when i tell young people today that when i transitioned you know lost my job as a lawyer and i worked as a secretary there outrage to like what do you mean i'm like what do you mean what do you mean this is what we have been dealing  with but you know the truth is this is the world we've been working for that the young people don't have to remember we will remind them you know me but you know that they don't have to live with that as a reality that their life is destroyed when you read these polls about young people and like  only half identify as it's just strictly head research yes i read that about that study interesting well and you know what this is very important for companies nowadays because if they don't have friendly policies to l g b t people young people even straight young people do not want to work there because they just look like dinosaurs and they're not progressive and they don't want to deal with it are you optimistic that the massachusetts non discrimination law for gender identity will be upheld in the election in two weeks i'm cautiously optimistic as that and you know one of the heartbreaking things is to see all this taking place and all this hate from the administration in the context of all the murders of particularly trans women particularly trans women of color that we report on every week on the show for years and years and it's just unfathomable that they would the administration would see fit to make this bill or of their well look al you want to one of the reasons that trans women of color are particularly in a very vulnerable position is because it is the intersection of a number of different kinds of oppression and racial gender  you know economic and that forces people into much more dangerous situations you know and people in the trans communities of color are extremely resilient you know they are you know have lived their  lives as trans people forever and have you know wonderful communities but you know these things tend to happen more when you don't have that safety net that other people with privilege have and so you know the fact that this is now happening to people with because i think that's a little more optimistic you know what i want to say is we are ready we will fight and that's the thing that people need to know that they're not going to roll over us bad things may happen but we're ready to stop them going to november sixth as gloria steinem says the least we could do is vote exactly we have to do a lot more than that and we have to support transgender organizations i hope it raises consciousness about that and more money is starting lawsuits to contest every seat when one correct albert einstein said nationalism is an infant tile disease it is the measles of mankind well and then staying on the administration you  know and on brett kavanaugh the new justice you know how they made all these ethical violations against him that have been lodged in the chief justice didn't do anything about it until after he was confirmed what about it yeah so they referred to colorado the colorado chie judge out there who is the same guy that cavanaugh went to bat for because he was the solicitor general of colorado who argued the amendment to case against us self perpetuating hierarchy well but that that's a big conflict i would say and i should say his name timothy to give it oh i'll counter act that by going back for one second to the transgender thing to thank the director of the centers for disease control robert rent field who said that passing the regulations that limit trans people existence is not in the interest of public health right out of the public health i mean there was that situation in michigan where this catholic pharmacist this woman came in she was going to have a miscarriage so we're dr rid of this prescription she was on vacation yeah and she goes there and he says as a catholic male i think you're really trying to have an abortion and i'm not going to give it to you and she says will come i have to get get somebody else to fill the prescription i got to have it because otherwise i'm three hours away from where i need to be and i will have to have a surgical procedure if you don't give this to me you wouldn't so she drove three has to get somewhere else and at least the other guy took the prescription because it was written to this pharmacy by the supermarket chain well they didn't fire him they just said he no longer works here you know this this is what is going to happen in this country and it is happening and i just want to elaborate on something you referred to in the interview which is that the u s labor department is going to propose this religious freedom regulations for government contractors any business doing business with the government will be allowed to fire people on the grounds that they have a religious objection giving them no quarter is this everybody who cites a religious that well this is based on the hobby lobby decision and you know religiously minded business owners private business owners who express a religious objection to something and the masterpiece cake shop decision which of course did not decide that the cake shop had a right to discriminate it simply decided that the colorado commissioners had been hateful in the the case and meanwhile everyone misinterprets it and in fact the court and the supreme court decision explicitly said that the nondiscrimination laws could stand and so long as we're on that subject let's talk about what they're doing  folks from sweet cakes by melissa yes this was the baker who lost her case and had to pay her oregon oregon state case now because of the new court with kavanagh gorsuch and everything they want to bring it to the supreme court but they don't just want the right to refuse a wedding cake to a gay couple they based on the gorsuch concurrence of masterpiece they want the supreme court to overturn i meant in ninety skilled opinion that if you look at religious people do this and by and you know ignore civil laws we're going to have chaos of this country scalia we will no longer have a civil law and we will be turned into a theocracy that's  is something called first liberty a texas law firm that is bringing the sweet cakes by melissa case from oregon to the supreme they were not the supreme court to decide whether simply baking a cake expressive con conduct now we've all said you know you want the right new thing on a cake that you don't want to write in and we were we were you agree with that we're down with that but not just selling a cake a wedding cake to somebody here's another reason to vote for democrats for the house of representatives not to mention the senate nancy pelosi has reminded us that if the democrats take back the house and you know bless us the senate then we can america have nondiscrimination laws that cover sexual orientation and gender and in many cities in the states that don't cover us and in pennsylvania we have this development where the pennsylvania what is it called the state human relations commission just like t c is now going to accept complaints of discrimination based on sexual intention and gender identity based on prohibitions on sex discrimination and that is what the traffic ministration is now trying to get rid of because they do not want any of us included in the sex discrimination laws by the way we mentioned last week or so ago about politics because this is how we're all preparing to vote or many of you are voting we mentioned stacy abrams was the first candidate for governor ever in georgia pride got a picture of her doing that there she is my goodness what a wonderful human being she is yeah and of course you know she's up against all this voter suppression by her opponent who was the secretary of state etc i have no idea what you're talking about i'm not suppressing manager is a lesbian and mostly people of color and it's a really great crew that is trying to get her selected anything more on georgia no ok governor around  has tried to act once and he's a republican but he tries to act once once in a while like he's not told a total pig and he's running against democrat j b pretty and but he is depicting pritzker in his ads as being of the same sex  you have just made me sorry hard to make me speechless because well i'm a little speechless at what they heritage foundation has been doing to another little revelation on the front page of the new york times it turns out that the heritage foundation had this little scheme going where they would contact a recent law school graduates who were going to clerk for federal judges and they would bring him into a training session now everybody trains people like this the harvard school of business brings would help heidi heitkamp too but that may be a vain hope and and not all judges are bad in hollywood florida a judge has dismissed charges against one of the men arrested by cops in hollywood florida after having sex in a private room at a place called the pleasure import it's not she said it's not a public place you've got to go through many barriers to get back to where people  the guys pled guilty and they they you know they were put into a diversion program but the lawyers who helped the guys who go on to make a pun who got off the case they are  going to help these other men and try to have their convictions overturned and in san diego the city there has settled a similar case with five men who were illegally arrested in  sex sting is in a local park they they had already been exonerated and they negotiated a settlement with the city where the five of them got a total of one hundred twenty five thousand dollars which i think it's the least they were owed but san diego reputedly came forward and quite willingly reached this settlement so that's a good thing but in iowa in orange city an anti gay extremist recorded himself setting fire to books with l g b t q themes at the town library their children's book shows books he said it's a parade of all kinds of lesbian people it's all very burned them up in like an oil dropped that kind of thing and recorded himself doing this and saving us all from these books his name is paul door he's also a big anti abortion activist yeah and in houston texas  similar people of his ilk are suing the library in houston for running drag queen story hour which is been become popular at libraries across the what they do they have they say that having drag queen story hour violates their freedom of religion good grief and very disturbing in nashville gay bars are receiving fliers picturing trump and d shout out to my beloved boston red sox who not only won the first game of the series as we are recorded in god knows what happens after this but gave two hundred thousand activists there and gave them cameras helped them document their own existence made a very well regarded film about l g s the activists in uganda and dead at sixty one and he said i'm going to try to save the world just a little bit now and of course he worked with our friend david drake who was the artistic director of the provincetown theater company where he was the president and not a gay death but you know you read that story about the group that was told to go blow up this having water plant they didn't know and they regarded it as a suicide mission and they said this saved the what the world from the nazi atomic bomb yeah i mean it's it was it's unbelievably moving because he you know and they went and did it with with the expectation that they would not survive this fascism can be fought and needs to be all right international news well  disturbed to read the new zealand which has the supposedly progressive government you've got a fifty year wait for publicly funded transition related surgery well there are one hundred five people on the waiting list now but we are talking about publicly funded transition surgery i don't know what their health care system is probably better than that there they have a quota doing for publicly funded transitions surgeries every two years three trans women one trans man every two years two years of course surgeries two years so yeah there they are looking at this and thinking maybe they ought to liberalize that policy  in europe why the parliament has passed a trans rights bill that is actually quite amazing the government will provide surgery and hormones for everybody public jobs for cover in new york that usually it's about violence but the people the transfer say we need jobs we need health care and that's what we're not providing they're also going to provide pensions for those who were persecuted of religious leaders in sydney australia the anglicans there are pondering the anglicans in sydney australia know activities on church property no activities on church property that have anything to do with same sex marriage you know god that includes hindu chant trans slogan was be yourself without fear government ministers participated and the mayor has called for a collective awakening about this because this is this right wing violence i was heartened to see that in jamaica which can be a very very and dangerous place for l g b t people a long time activist maurice tomlinson led a march of a hundred people with twenty five cops guarding them which actually is revolutionary because the cops are usually go on after the l they marched on a deserted street near monte go back a to be able to have a public march and i see we skipped over the picture of chelsea manning which we hadn't done yet chelsea manning finally had confirmation surgery there and posted a picture of herself in the hospital yes and has been through a lot over the last ten years how to fight fight fight not just with the army in the united states but with the insurance companies to get this covered now all right  little confusing about what's going on about bosnia and herzegovina they seem to be moving towards domestic partnerships or marriage unclear but they want to conform to european union standards of middle east terrorists in the care of bad from central america he said there is no proof of anything anywhere any time things continued to deteriorate in indonesia two men were arrested for running just a face book page for gay people they were accused of transmitting pornographic content which were not even allowed to do on facebook they face six years in prison the group had four thousand members  well there's an interesting new study out of the university of new south wales in australia and it shows that new age hiv infections are down one third for those using just down one third and they attribute this to the use of truvada as prep two or in this is among gay and bisexual men world wide which is pretty astonishing well can get ahold of it of course outside of the united states it's much easier to get the generic version yet the generic version has been approved here but it's not being made available it costs one thousand dollars a year versus eighteen thousand dollars a year relationships but never marry and never marry but rosie is not going to see daniel's husband this weekend which is about a couple of gay couple where one objects to the whole idea of marriage and just marriage in general as we feminists and they they do portray the other the other actors portraying people like flo kennedy and wilma mankiller who was the head of the cherokee nation and bella abzug and others and i was very moved by yes of course they have this talking circle at the i was very moved by the play it was in tears and so were most of the people in the audience but afterwards they have a talking circle and the real roff feelings that that women especially but everybody are feeling mean you were we were being sort of asked to like talk about your reactions to the play but people just talked about what the what they were feeling about what we're going through these days and gloria helped everybody through that and helped us t to each other and things she also said she wants to be a stand up comedian you heard her joke she is eighty four years all eighty four everybody else in the play portrayed is dead and she says i've got my she did as a child and the play shows when she was a bunny she knows that she's known for that she wrote that undercover story about being a bunny but it was when she talked about her abortion when she talked about her relationship with her mother it's all pretreated there you know i was very moved by wanted to save her lungs and her voice for acting oscar winner christine lahti they always let us know of course it was for a documentary film that she made i was going to say what was that you know all right well this week the bt film festival is opening here in new york in fact i think opening night is tonight as we're taping but it runs through the weekend with hundreds hundreds of films and i saw five a guy who's in new york a gay hiv positive comes home to his very conservative religious family in texas and he hasn't told them any of this and i wasn't thrilled with the whole movie it took them to the last five minutes to tell and it's all about his it's very lagu bria said meets up with an old kind of girlfriend and she tries to come on doing men and his brother and his parents and i just didn't buy it on the other hand i want to see a screening of boy erased which is getting tomorrow night and is opening shortly mation wide because this stars russell crowe as a as a pastor a fundamentalist pastor and the cold to conversion therapy and this one i mean i'm very nervous about these films and how they portray all this stuff yeah but again i was deeply moved by this it was very well handled better than i am like the miseducation of know russell crowe is a sincere christian pastor who doesn't want to go to hell and they they grapple with this and there are no easy pat answers in it and the coal kidman is the wife and how do you know she takes it takes him to the conversion therapy and stays with them and of course joel edgerton who is the director is playing the guy running the place you know the deprogramming center you get a real sense of it wow well i'm going to see two movies in the festival which i am looking forward to a lot one is the kenyan lesbian movie that was a big hit it can bandon kenya and then they convinced the kenyan government play for a week so it could be submitted for an oscar nomination so that that's supposed to be really hot and dykes camera action and a documentary about all the lesbian filmmakers over the years she's now directing like episodes of star on fox and you know it's crazy where these people and my friend out to the johns to the actor who most jumps around of his underwear and covers himself with blood and you know what performance art is now a writer on the alan cumming detective series there is also going to be a film about monk every cliff that i'm sorry i'm not going to see and there you know showing some old films art we've talked about an hour and a maple thorpe film a documentary that i think should be really good so that's all happening this weekend in new york and we're continuing to try to by working on putting together a civil rights march a human rights and social justice march for june thirtieth twenty nineteen instead of  the corporate extravaganza proffer a absolutely i think that's what most people if they had their choice that's what they would like to do and so we're reaching out to you and asking you do you know go to the reclaim pride website claim pride