supreme court has now swung to the right as neil gorsuch joins the bench and will talk about what to expect another landmark legal decision court in colorado has said that the fa housing act the federal fair housing act protects us on the basis of sexual orientation the spineless national basketball association says it might bring the all star game back to north carolina despite its  creation of anti ole g b t laws although they might change their mind with the latest news and he will review the play that goes wrong and tell us whether or not it does and one that goes right president laughter starring kevin kline ok and we want to alert you to the fact that this sunday morning at st patrick's cathedral here in new york easter sunday th avenue the traditional easter parade will be now to our guest maria sjodin who is the deputy director of outright action international which used to be the international game lesbian human rights commission but now we know what is out right  and you come from the swedish l g b to movement there where you were running the major organization over there but we have a lot of international issues to talk about starting in chechnya everybody's been reading about a concentration camp for  gay men being set up people being beaten murdered what's what is the latest what's the story and what can we do about what is being called from so far is at least one hundred men detained by authorities i think  in different places so it's not just one prison but sometimes just one holocaust center exactly so and they are reportedly being tortured they're trying to get their contacts and their names other names names of others out of them and at least three killings have been confirmed now this evidently started this latest atrocity because  long time russian gay activist and others were putting out of coal around the country for some sort and chechnya said oh wait a minute we should go after these guys i saw that reported in one place as well i don't know if that is true or not i really don't know i haven't seen anyone confirm it so i don't know if that's why it sorted but it's clear that the chechen authorities are really going after well our community housing authorities  trying to act like no this isn't happening and russia says well if it is will look into it what it what is the status of all that i mean basically the church you know it's already so far have said they have denied it well basically they denied the existence of gay to respond they don't have a very good relationship with the chechnya and authorities to begin with today i mean that is russia is the state so they they would have they should have to act i think that's the only way to to look at it whether whether they have a good enough or lay ship or not russia is the state they they have to they have to react they have to respond they have to investigate and they have to make these detentions and killing stop part of hard to get justice and russia they have to be two laws people are not allowed to even talk about these issues publicly because it's supposed to be a bad influence on children but they get worse and worse about these things yes but this i mean i've been active in this for d almost twenty years i think this is so i actually think i want to classify this as the worst thing i've ever heard about it is it really is because of the scale  just of just incarcerating one hundred dollars people from an invisible community so it's not like it's not like they could go to like the tea center over chechnya and just arrest all the people there it's like they have to find the each of these people individually so it's on a massive scale and the violence it's just horrible well there's torturing their actually in a way it's not something that i've seen reported on but of course i mean we can just all imagine how easy it is i mean it's not of course it's not just gay men that they have rounded up i'm sure people have taken son who is in russia as we're taping and we're hoping that he will say something to putin who we met with today where tape you know wednesday afternoons as we do it do you have any confidence that the u s is really giving anything other than lip service to this and will raise this i mean i think it's important all governments speak out and i think that all governments i mean we've been calling on multiple governments to speak out and we're calling on the u n secretary general to make a stand statement condemning this and i think it's essential to have multiple governments speak out because every government have their own relationship to rush out and i am not in a position to know you know what governments would have the most influence on russia i think all of them have to speak out because this is such a horrific or a believer britain as i said thankfully several governments and the european parliament have spoken out so far and i hope this pressure continues to mount because so far we have not seen by show really at least not in a in a way that's publicly discernible respond to this crisis so i hope that the pressure is kept up while russia at the moment is denying that the president of syria is gassing his own people because they're collaborating with him no so i want to segue this into in fact what's happening to  t people more broadly and we have been acutely aware for some time and talked about here the plight of refugees who really you know trump has not only shut the door pretty firmly to refugees from that part of the world but that leaves elegy bt refugees in particular at peril because they're not safe in their own countries or in other contiguous countries like turkey where they might get stuck unable to come here yes and i mean from the european perspective as well i mean over the last three years basically having seen the euro you are one european country come in from the u n system whereas i think most of the european countries they just get the refuse to make it to europe and so the fact that the u s is is you know reducing severely the number of refugees that will be allowed this is going to be it's a serious blow watching trump shed crocodile tears over children being gassed as you know is that this is the st atrocities happen and then shutting the doors to refugees is just the height  a new country you have nothing you're not possibly not allowed to work you don't necessarily speak the same language study people of course only be people or oftentimes more vulnerable i mean all  refugees obviously are vulnerable at the t refuse can be more vulnerable because they may they may not apply with their families they don't have they might be targeted by other refugees who are you know or who might also be homophobic anything like that going on here and elsewhere in the world i mean i think that really unfortunately we see more and more countries just shutting their doors and refugees can and i think maybe a little bit of an exception because they allow  individuals to sponsor refugees i don't know i don't actually know if that's possible in other countries i think it's very it's typically very difficult i think what we need to it's like we need to we need to resist we need to protest we need all of our countr too and who knows where they'll end up to save them no save their lives at the moment think a lot of that will i mean they will be evacuated to other parts of russia well because again it's very hard and it's it's got much harder to for people to move across from the bad news we'll go back to that and a look at the european court of human rights decision this last week on trans people correcting their gender identity that is an extremely important verdict they tell mabel what happened so basically they dealt with a few cases at the same time but basically a lot of the european countries where oftentimes health care can be over sort of the state sponsored system a requirement for a legal gender change which of course as we know should is just paperwork illegal gender change is paperwork right but it has and still does in many countries come fought against us and i think that one way that we shifted the narrative really was to start talking about it as for sterilization it is because until then i think it's it had been a little bit like yeah well many people assumed it was just something that was part of the procedure they thought that this is what everyone would want anyway because they would want to become a real woman or a real man and we managed to sweden and i think this has as i mean this is the way it's gone across europe now to change the narrative and to really start talking about these are forced sterilizations it's not necessary actually trans people might also want to become biological parents and there are many ways to achieve that for they're bound by the by the court decision that twenty two countries in europe you know are still doing that and you know we have a long history of forced sterilization in this country in the south in particular but of poor people people of color  yes yes and i and i i think the mental disability is sort of the category that people understood this as crazy as that was but but that was how they were interpreted now and and it's thrilling th really think that part of that i mean of course of course i think i always think of them sort of sort of being independent though like the public opinion or what the media says in any country but we all know that that is not true and i with trans activists and lawyers in sweden pushed for reparations push for compensation to be paid to anyone who had been forcibly sterilized and the swedish government announced i think last week or the week this was wrong we should have done it well we could go country by country around the world for another six hours but we don't have the time for that so can we sort of generally talk about you talk about a backlash and i think you know we see gay men being arrested for having sex in indonesia we see reports of communities signing up with marine le pen in france and supporting a a right wing agenda  the latest case but what's your sense of working for an international human rights organization about where we're going with all this i think we're going in all directions at the same time and i think that i mean there is a backlash in many countries and the backlash i think also comes through the heightened visibility because if we were all if we'd all just remained on visible and under the radar there wouldn't really be a the need for an anti propaganda law because you know when no one was talking about their liberty issues there was no need to to regulate it and so i think that the old sodomy laws they were they were all about like the kind of sex that people were having which of course is still an issue in a lot of places but we see increasingly how governments also want to regulate other aspects they don't want to talk about they don't want us to organize they don't want us to be visible well i mean a lot of these places where the crack and go we're not  people do not come out of the closet and live openly basically but they read about what's happening around the world same sex marriage europe united states these kinds of things and then for political purposes they say let's crack down on the gays they can't fight back and they pick on the pick of us who are places i mean only the tea communities become scapegoats absolutely oftentimes a way to divert attention from other to the general population actually more much more relevant issues but it's like ok let's focus on these morality issues and get people riled up about that that way they won't you know care about the corruption in the government or or the poverty in the country or all the other problems that might  happened here too and not that long ago all right well we have to call a halt to this now but please come back and keep us updated on these issues because clearly there's a lot to talk about all over the world and i'm going to practice saying l which was used by anti putin activists to condemn him and ridicule him and there it is in activist context well the foreign ministry has now made use of that image illegals so among other things that so way to get arrested in russia but the other thing is the russians bought live during the live journal platform which a lot of bloggers used over the years and they have now you have to sign something that says you're not going to violate russian laws about promoting homosexuality and things like that so it's really put quite a crimp in what everybody's going to do on that platform we need a new one all right in japan good news  is recognizing two men as foster parents that's a good step forward and are you sitting down arrested for blackmailing gay men gay dating after they man they stripped him naked took pictures of him and tried to blackmail him and now they're under arrest before harry is sitting down for this the pope lay let's also show the picture of archaeologists and pompei who for years you know they examined these figures that were coated in ash and preserve these are the human beings who died  not everybody wants to get married but the falklands turns out to be one the only place i've heard of recently that offer is both for both we told you about the people holding hands in the netherlands in support of the gay couple that had been bashed two thousand people held a demonstration in amsterdam holding hands in support of the well this is what you have to do i mean fact you know everybody has to stand up  that would have been the solution to the united airlines crisis everybody on the plane stand up and say stop start us yes exact that's what has to happen folks and we're not moving until you put that guy back on the plane right but people have their own agendas and they don't want to do that in indonesia talk to refer it is to this a little two men twenty three and twenty were arrested having sex in a motel this is in the province which is under they could if they're convicted they could face one hundred dollars lashes with a cane that will kill you right there it was heartbreaking to watch the video we're not showing it to you of watch these guys you know coming in on these guys naked and ramming the bomb you know and case that look sat religious exemptions for businesses to discriminate in a broad fashion and i think that's up there to a good decision as several in the lower courts and the biggest one i guess comes out of colorado where a federal just core says that a land landlord discriminated against a lesbian married couple with two kids and applied the federal fair housing  act prohibition against sex discrimination to this case and said that that sex discrimination prohibition d applies to sexual or so this is going to end up a lot of this stuff is going to up in the supreme court we're going to more and more decisions about this i see our friend art leonard's going to be giving a big speech about it as would be well we now have this housing decision which again brought in sex stereotyping as the basis for why they condemn this we have the decision out of illinois about employment and i i feel like i left out in that case as i was saying that the professor from indiana we're still going to have to go to court to prove her case of what i neglected to  say that the decision by the court that she could sue wanted this d d civil rights title seven sex discrimination provision the fact that they said that was illegitimate means that for all people in those three states illinois indiana and wisconsin employment discrimination on the basis of sex sexual orientation is now illegal yes but it's all it's already but it was already illegal under state law in wisconsin yes and now insurance board to demand that they cover trans state employees and that's another issue we have been getting rulings about trans gender discrimination against transgender people being sex discrimination so yes that is something we need to continue to make progress on in the state of washington the supreme court there the state highest court said that a trial court discriminated against a lesbian mom of three in a custody case against her ex husband and ordered a new trial and they said that the lower court was really horribly stereotypical and condemning her as a lesbian no if any of these cases do get to the supreme court we've still got a five for pro l to majority that we know about but again kennedy is like he's going to be eighty one this year ruth bader ginsburg is going to be eighty four this year and stephen push after even brier is seventy nine  it's fragile and they've got to hang on until we can get rid of trump and get some and we need now we're going to need a democratic majority in the senate if we're going to confirm any of these judges in virginia the th circuit court i had to say to gavin graham the trans high school student that he is not going to be able to use the boy's restroom before he graduates in june but they wrote this eloquent decision that was  totally unnecessary praising him for refusing to accept quietly the injustices that were perpetrated against him like so many others in the civil rights movement etc it was a very it's a beautiful ruling and really is we should provide no unfortunately does not take us forward but that decision that they wrote is really what i want some good people on the bench and they're being replaced by bad people from the federalist society and the last court decision i have is from nebraska where the supreme court there rejected the state's appeal of an earlier ruling that struck down the ban on gay foster and adoptive parents they court said that to allow that  ban to stand would be like putting up whites only signs at businesses this was the only state in the country with such a ban still in place ok so some let's go back to the trumpet  were targeted on the basis of there's a gotcha locked office of personnel management overtly said he wanted to get rid of gay people and this is very key administration at division because it does handle these employment things and he scott bloch ran into a lot of trouble because of this but this guy was a major player and now he's working for the trump administration so it's bad and all right other and they went ahead and a point in our nominated that hideous tennessee state senator mark green to be the secretary of the army he does need senate approval so i suspect some of this will come up in his confirmation as you know i was just politics i'm here to serve the country you have a lot of l d t members of the army and how are you going to treat them after you spent your career in tennessee trying to overtly discriminate against them with laws you were preparing said heinous things when he was doing it heinous and he's replacing eric friending who was the st gay secretary of the army ironic yeah discussed this is absolutely discussed also disgusting is the shameless legislature of north carolina which now after repealing h b two so that they could substitute basically the same law under a different number and thereby hoodwink as people have been boycotting was a day you know we're talking about you know the n c a a want to get ready to go back to the n b a ready to go back you know i'd say not sure so then north carolina no legislature steps forward and says we want to ban same sex marriage otoh no no no the title of the bill is uphold historical and i urge all polled historical build on the sandy foundation well hadrian and there are plenty of historical examples but they said the supreme court of the united states had overstepped by legalizing same sex marriage two years ago and so they are going to pass a constitutional amendment in north carolina for their state to outlaw same sex marriage they're not going to get away with this the supreme court is not going to reverse its ruling the the bad you know also a presbyterian church in north carolina has booted the boy scouts in the come scouts out of their church and that many scout troop are sponsored by churches because the boy scouts and cub scouts decided finally to accept gay and trans scouts so the church says this is a sin we cannot accept that we're going to be like the mega church down the street we're going to kick them out well so that's the charitable christian attitude in north carolina and we should let you know that there are a lot of states and localities that are keeping up their boycotts of  north carolina yes horton oregon portland maine wilton manors florida pub springs and then you've got cities like in the state of minnesota new york city state washington d c san francisco seattle los angeles oakland face cincinnati and salt lake city because they can see through that nonsense yes well the other places don't want to see through it all right you were talking about students there's a new report that says these anti trans laws are having a devastating effect on trance children that's obviously not hard to understand both democrats and republicans in the house of representatives have sponsored they reintroduction of that the safe schools improvement act which is an anti bulleen bill proposed at the federal level no expectation that this is going to get anywhere in the u s congress which has no interest in passing things but at the tra s log cabin republicans are pushing a bill with a big unacceptable religious exemption and so we really need to urge our representatives should the republicans try to pull something and put it on the floor to vote against it to filibuster it because we still have a filibuster on legislation we don't have it on court nominations anymore it's the equality act or bust and i'm sick of people saying oh politics the art of compromise you know you got to forget that republican they join california new jersey washington d c or illinois vermont and the canadian province of ontario in banning conversion therapy one licensed professionals in colorado the legislature has added sexual orientation and gender identity to their hate crimes law there it's now awaiting the governor's signature i don't think they'll be any problem with that in hawaii a gay couple sean smith and his husband are  they had to pay more than twenty thousand dollars for term of the treatments for a surrogate mother and if you were heterosexual couple they could have saved up money they had this is covered by insurance so this is a whole the whole issue of since we  companies are highly resistant to this because they don't cover surrogacy at all d it would be for heterosexuals have been waiting for a real life manifestation of the movie twins where arnold schwarzenegger and danny de vito yeah i think technically there is something well look at look at what they did no man can lactate well look what they did in texas where they have all these anti abortion bills so the feminist legislators introduced an anti masturbation bill yes saying you're wasting seniors you know this going to stuff you need  people have been elected to the local assembly they're the st out gay people in alaska to a new position california's got a bill to allow a rd gender on birth certificates and driver's licenses that may be th do that this is not allowed by our state department yet as a marker on our passports and paying it's been an issue that has been adjudicated since our at least litigated with the state department  wing activists contingent in the state of washington they have been trying to get stuff on the ballot to d discriminate for years they have failed at that and they've gone after adam reproduce periodic way they went after him when he st ran for mayor and and had these charges that he had had inappropriate sexual relations with a teenager when he was younger but not a teenager when he was like thirty and they never proved that and charges were withdrawn and whatever and and they're the right wing lawyer withdrew from their case which is never a good sign when it comes back with this now and they're making new charges and finally noosed lawsuits with the same old complainant and a couple of new ones who say that they d were paid for sex by am unexploited so he has now gone to a doctor to have his janet taylor examined because they made some specific charges that included descriptions of his jetta taylor yeah and he has had a doctor certify that his actual genitalia do not match the we'll keep you up to date well what happens with that but it's also been noted that this is a lection season and that may have something to do with it and of course we have the standard right wing groups involved in your thinking these charges well as long as we're talking about some you know some charges against homosexual people how about some heterosexual people about as indicted former governor going bentley yeah now you know he's out now because of the movie was recorded with all these this marriage yeah so his he male lieutenant governor has taken over has promised to a administration of transparency and honesty we'll see whether that includes us but it's of course lovely shad freud to watch d his head on well i don't i would not classify the sexuality of this guy but that georgia pastor who said that the poles victims got what they deserve baker and a follow up thank you by the way to all d d our viewers who were moved by our tribute to gilbert last week and let us know that when you you know we are immensely moved by gilbert and sorry for his loss and and working on plans for a memorial for him in new york this spring and there are plans in the works for san francisco as well we'll keep you informed of that in new york we're shooting for a flag day which is a wednesday probably be in the evening but so keep your calendars open with because things get busy in pride month but meanwhile one of the things that gilbert was involved with recently was a competition in new york city kind of memorial d in the city to the victims of the pulse massacre and all other victims of hate violence which has been rising markedly across the country in the wake of the election of the proposals were due in november right so so and it's apparently been judged but they haven't announced who the winner is now i know gilbert wanted to put up his as he did in san francisco put up a seventy foot pole with a big rainbow flag on it and make that the memorial so that would wave over us forever yeah so in the end there was a line item in the budget forward for a one million bucks to fill in the state budget in the state budget and the democrats passed it in the assembly and then it came to the came to the senate and it disappeared it wasn't in there so our senator bread hurrell been who was that out gay man stands up on the floor of the think and says this is an outrage this is how  how much do you hate us that you want to take out money for this so he proposed an amendment to reinstate it and every republican voted against it not only that but the eight members of the renegade independent democratic c caucus with republicans to keep that minority in power in new york this is a terrible story new york you know were horrified by it they voted against the amendment now the never excuse no excuse for that so the governor said you know  people said we found a way a with we have some money for the new york jobs program to give a one million bucks to the hudson river park trust to do this and so it's still going forward but it's an outrage now we don't know for sure that this and that gilbert won the competition and you know i did you know we certainly do we haven't seen any of the designs i don't mean to offend anybody right but this new york needs this new york needs this flag pole with a rainbow flag no question about it  i have my own questions about whether we it is appropriate for us to put up a pole memorial d to have a memorial to the oklahoma bombing do we have a memorial to other tragedies around the it's a positive affirmative kind of exactly that we could all get behind the rest seems a little pandering but we'll let you know when we find out whether he did win the competition and whether this is going to be various places around the country and they're well they're well even by that but gilbert's attitude towards the flag is that it was an art a work of art that is not a traditional flag in that sense and that was is and of course it is  yes some of us who are activists and who have various banners of his d will be parading them at this event on sunday in front of st patrick's cathedral on th avenue at eleven thirty  seventy l g b t local students were at the state capitol to lobby for more funding for hiv education the house speaker's office put out a nose notice  couple of violent incidents in new york james johnson forty one years old in brooklyn murdered by his boyfriend and that's sad story and in williamsburg brooklyn two te her needs news yes you know i did the story the new york civil liberties union surveyed students and found out in new york city that i get a good education they're not getting sex education until the last semester of theirs of their senior year the follow up is i called the department of education and said so what do you have compliance thought on this you're supposed to be doing it every grade oh we're dedicated to it for everybody having this i said that's not what i'm asking you i'm asking i want to know qualitatively is that making a difference plus the dig dignity for all students act which is against bullying much fanfare we celebrate when these things are done and then to go donna who sponsored the bill is finding out as the civil liberties finding out kids don't know who their coordinator in their school is a mess and how many bullying incidents are being reported in most schools there are like one thousand five hundred schools one school admitted to fifty one incidents that's good that they would least or documenting these things but in most places kids don't feel free to come forward and report these things system is a mess it's no wonder trump got elected people are sick of it i'm sick of it but i didn't vote for donald trump nor would i but man i'm sick of it do your jobs and do your jobs well here's another business as usual thing that will make no difference representatives barbara lee democrat of california and ileana last lehtinen republican of florida have reintroduce the repeal hiv discrimination act in congress my prediction that will go nowhere oh there is some action at the streams are welcome yeah well and she's the one republican who  b to build the pass now they haven't done anything some same sex marriage and what price of a pain zero well we have to get on the moon we have to get all these other democrats back in line and take power power all right should we turn entertainment news yes interesting case i am quite loyal to the show millions on showtime which i find kind of  yes i don't find him in a killing character i don't find damian lewis an appealing character i don't find almost anybody up there an appealing character accept the person on the right there kate dillon who appears on the show as a non binary person and had to as all of these people do applied to be nominated for an emmy so kate said well you don't have a non binary category and you and you have these binary you know male female and i don't fit into any of this so one of my supposed to do and they said well pick a category do whatever you want and asia cade said well actor is not gendered so i'll declare myself actor but really this is nonsense you don't have binary categories for best director are you ready for drama in the oscars it almost all the award shows it's  you would have the number of awards and people would freak out at this but yet you have an increasing understanding that gender exists along a spectrum and it's going to cause problems but  i hope that agent kate dillon is honored for their portrayal because they're very very very good i mean in the hunt one supporting actress in those days they used to call a category for playing a man got laughs and gasps i guess all of a bully many times watching people get knocked around this but it was a little long and i think a little less might have been better but it's an extremely talented crew and then i saw a president laughter and i've seen  productions bad productions of this no power play from one thousand nine hundred and thirty nine at the this was at the st james now it's with kevin kline he's playing a vain aging actor who's supposed to be forty something changed the age of this one to fifty seven  all right you know so you know but he's you know he's terrific doctor and very easy got a lot more energy than i do and it's a very good ensemble doing this thing and it was you know it was over two and a half hours and i wasn't bored for one minute and i had a great time congratulations to appeal to all critic for the new yorker magazine out gay man he was awarded the pulitzer for his criticism of theater but the thing that i love helping all is writing and he's terrific but the thing that really got to me this year was his review of moonlight which was so emotional and so eloquent and really beautiful and i would urge you to look that up and congratulations to some of the people we know who the upcoming documentary the lavender scare coming to towns around you miami april rd go to their website the lavender scare dot com it's a documentary about the government getting rid of game visible in the fifty's and