home i'm man northrup merry christmas happy hanukkah happy kwanzaa and happy all holidays and it's hard to be happy of course this is the week when the tax scam bill was passed will explain why but i do have one piece of good news about it good but then we'll get back to the bad news several federal agencies as you may have heard have advised their staff not to use certain words such as transgender diversity science based evidence based and my favorite vulnerable in writing grant proposals several trump nominees have actually been stopped  congress and withdrawn although about a rd of his federal judicial appointments have anti old u b two records we all celebrated that rep more could be entitled you to we all celebrated the election of doug jones to the alabama senate seat last d week but did you know that doesn't jones has an out gay son who has been giving interviews to the gay press will tell you about him in the u s catholic bishops have a christmas present for you on letter trashing transgender identity yet another trans woman of color murdered brandy seers in houston in the now bermuda is continuing to move and another british import the children and we have a very special christmas present for you in the last twenty minutes of the show our old friend and well known author eric marcus a history so he'll be here in the nd half of the show tells all about that trick so you're going to tell me it's been a horrible week tell me what the good news is well i did a little research on this tax bill i have not read the whole thing and no one has but i googled this repeal of the johnson amendment they didn't do it and that's great news it is great but johnson amendment was under lyndon johnson said that if you are a tax exempt organization you can be dorsenne candidates and doing politics trump has been trumpeting for over a year that he's going to get rid of this and that was going to allow major donors to give money to churches get a tax deduction and continue and make it and make the churches do all this political work and i and millions billions could have been funneled through churches right wing evangelical churches to support right wing candidates that was the point and i don't know how the right wing evangelicals let them get away with this but the repeal of the johnson amendment was in the house bill but not in the senate bill and when it came out of the conference committee no repeal of the lottery they cut off twenty dollars out of my out of my taxes but they're going to cut services so badly that your cost of living is going to go up if people have to understand this in order to fight it and they're going to cut medicare and medicaid  and and all these entitlements and then the true nature of this will not be seen until you're filling out your two thousand and eighteen tax returns after the midterm elections and see that in fact you can't  deduct what you can deduct this year and suddenly your tax situation is not as good as you thought it was when you saw that your withholding was low right another good luck to all of us another bad news all these stories started appearing in the washington post about how federal agencies like the c d c centers for disease control and h h s health and human services were being advised by major administrators where known longer going to be using were these words fetus vulnerable transgender entitlement diversity evidence based and science based so obviously it sounds like it's completely being written by the religious right what seems to be behind this is if our agencies are to get the money anymore we can't use these with congress we can't use these with the white house so we're going to stop saying them now the c d c is trying to walk this back a little and say look we all know everybody in the world is conscious says they write budgets or grant proposals or whatever of how they write things and how they describe things and that's all this is but it's not all this is the c d c held a meeting with their staff about how to write these budget proposals and here's the quote that came out of the meeting from the staff are you kidding well the other cause all you need to know that it was coming out of this advisory is that you need to be sensitive to community standards which is all about again appealing to the religious right in these places some people were incredulous credit to the human rights campaign who we sometimes criticize on this program they projected all these words on the trump international hotel that was beautiful absolutely beautiful and it's huge if you go on line i assume it's valuable on the h r c dot org site they did it right on the front of the hotel right over in the doorway of the hotel in huge letters projected around the state department now says it is now advise it gets staff where we don't promote sex education we promote sexual risk avoidance and this is going to go into pepfar documents for aids funding and things  going to be promoting abstinence only there was a somewhat of a cut in that under the obama didn't gratian it's coming bath and the smoking gun is that all of this was laid out on the family research council website as a plan this is part of their whole plan for destroying the government and imposing theocracy in all of that so this didn't just spring up as a natural occurrence in government grant writing your budget writing this is something that the right wing as they did with transgender people in the military this is part of their overall plan and judge lewis powell wrote this plan of the one thousand nine hundred and sixty s and they've been working on it ever since we need to plan to the other thing is that you know h h s health and human services has published a question about policy for softer rules for religious providers of care and how they should be allowed to all sorts of religious and exemptions so they published this for comment and they got over ten thousand comments on this and how many did they publish of these comments eight was up for a federal judgeship and he didn't know anything about the rules of the federal court and that was brought to light by a republican senator john kennedy from louisiana and good on him for exposing that so  there's they say at least that they're starting to get the message that they can't just give them anybody well the other impress even a republican the other impressive thing was that they got a couple of republican votes in committee against scott garrett garrett former new jersey congressman very anti gay to run the export import bank and so they defeated him with those republican votes and all the democratic votes and the reason we care about that is that the axiom bank used to be run by fred hoc seeking to stop trans troops in court we've won all these court decisions that say it's got to go into effect january st you haven't got a good reason but they follow most of the th circuit which is maryland virginia west virginia north carolina south carolina there are no trump against more trump religious freedom rules d on contraceptive coverage she says that the trump attempts to override the affordable care act guarantees of free contraceptive availability is illegal they went too far they they're not allowed to just override a law like bad so contraceptive coverage is back for  women in certain circumstances bunch of attorneys general are in court trying to stop the end of net neutrality puerto rico did something terrible this week they passed a bill in the senate to allow anyone claiming a religious objection to discriminate versus  indiana underpants that ignited such a firestorm and threats of boycott of indiana it's a very broad religious freedom exemption for businesses it has passed by the senate and house in puerto rico and i think the i don't think this guy's going to be as subject to the blowback as pence was they had to rewrite the indiana bill and we're not done with how about this that story of course the republicans and he was attacking roy moore because one moore was attacking people like his daughter and calling them perverts and so he this week appeared on the ellen show when told a very cute story yes he he that sign as you saw was very professionally printed he went to a printer to have the signed on and wasn't something he made himself and the sign is about how doug jones says pervert pedophile and that his daughter was you know victim of people like that and their attitudes and so  went to the sign maker to make this on the sign maker said oh i can't make that sign it's against my religious principles and nathan mathis tells ellen so i said to him well i think that sleeping with  neighbor's wife is against the religious principle that's right out in this maker as someone who is committing adultery he didn't name names he did not but donated twenty five thousand dollars to the trevor project in i love you and i was from back home in alabama he's thrilled with his father's victory saying you their t wins out he's pretty darn cute you know and he campaigned with his dad he took time off to campaign for him and help stamp now my only objection to this is i would rather see a photograph of sally ride in this kind of cheesy picture and they pay well while the other new stamps have picture i have photographs i'm not  would prefer a photograph of the real person but i love the fact that i will be able for the rest of my life to put sally ride stabs at my letters as long as they're forever stamps while they all are these days i just have to buy a big supply all right because i do still use stamps ok we had another murder of a transgender woman of color this time in houston bred d c years twenty six the th trans seals i'm sorry seals i apologize transgender lives in the st place of course well that is the problem i mean the jobs housing education all these things all right and in washington d c at a community center  by a trans woman the center is called casa ruby they have their nd attack from an outsider this year and some guy comes charging into the building with a ca did this week it was pretty horrendous the they issued a letter a joint letter from the u s conference of catholic bishops saying that they they reject transgender reality they because i'm glad they call it reality because god created us male and female now gender and sex cannot be separated so we won compassion but we don't want any affirmation of these people and it's  just you know it's a genocidal statement and the pope is in on this too so it's just i mean it's just a board i'd like to know where they got their science degrees and what makes them such hateful people and well  to put too fine a point on it but you've got your own problems there don't you met the man who where you know dresses and you've got and you know of course it was all pointed out one cardinal bernard law died this week resurrecting the entire  seniors i love this thing paint their own parking spot they can decorate any of that way they want course this lead to someone doing a confederate flag and others doing bible verses and someone doing trump make america great again spot but located where you are painted his window and it was vandalized the principal backed him up about having a rainbow space but the school board voted four to three to began painting a parking spaces and i only they had complaints from some guy parent or a community guy who came to a school board meeting yes so no more painting of parking spaces at marion high school in kansas the entire program has been ended on the harassment front which never rennes the photographer bruce weber has been sued by we have a picture  by a model named jason boyce who says he was asked to rub weber's genitals during the casting session and another model another model there but they're both there  center the chief executive hid for years of sexual harassment charges against an honor doctor their doctor harvey mack and on the board fired him they weren't informed me and weren't told about well that's a bad thing can't hide it now and able so de niro you have an update on him this is the young man in the bronx who was defending himself against that attack and had a knife and ended up killing one of his classmates but he is now suing the more and force their own policies the only thing he's asking for himself is some help getting over six continuous years of bullying and getting some psychological help but he's not suing for damages good news from reading pennsylvania where the city council unanimously has adopted a ban on conversion therapy for minors and in bakersfield california there is another one of these bakeries this is called the taste bakery refuses to make wedding cakes for same sex couples and got sued by the couples the state asked for a restraining order against the bakery  prevent them from making any wedding cakes until the lawsuits are resolved and the court said no we're not going to give a restraining order yet we need more in what they said so they're back in court on february  nd in virginia you probably all right about this or heard about this that this woman won her seat in the house of delegates by one vote and that creates a split between republicans and democrats in the house but there are two more seats that they have not resolved yet that are going to recount so we could still win one or both of those in hawaii there is a strange lesbian divorce child support case going on the lesbian couple they had discussed having children but they hadn't made any particular plans so one of them go is in the military and goes off to war and the one who remains home decides to get pregnant with a sperm donor and then them military one comes home the child is born and she and the couple decide to divorce well now the military one says i never agreed to this i don't want to pay child support blah blah blah blah blah lambda legal as defending the biological mother and saying hey you know you were married this is part of your responsibility and you did discuss and he was giving an interview and he called trump's attacks on trans troops a direct attack on the old g b t community it shows more courage to leave the house as a trans person than trump has ever had to show great quote it is a great quote and i think you know trump and courage are two words that don't belong in the same sentence congratulations to cleveland ohio where they have broken ground for a new and improved l nineteen jerry will likely be in charge well he wanted it specifically because he has experience with trump in new york for many years so he said pietschmann hearings i want to be part of this and he will international news  we can we can get on we can get on to that yes all right well bermuda is the headline because in fact we told you last week that half the legislature had passed a repeal measure for marriage and now the senate has passed it to the picture on the screen is the bermuda governor general john rank and he has to sign the bill that's a formality although the government in britain is being urged to get him to stop it which would create quite a conflict with bermuda who would claim colonialism and then that so look the fact that that guy in that uniform that white guy reviewing the black troops in bermuda is that's why i picked that picture in the st place to bermuda repeals marriage where can you not the bermuda is in the caribbean it's in the atlantic but what about alternatives and there are you know a lot of british territories and dutch territories in the caribbean you can find lists support same sex marriage is legal or where it's ok to go they won't be able to do it on the ships registered in bermuda which was one of the big deals have an ab what it is now it's this marriage repeal goes through and you know the legislators who pass this say well because they repeal the marriage but they're instituting domestic partnership or civil unions or whatever and they're saying look this is the compromise and you'll have all the same right we should should say because i didn't know the yes the supreme court ordered them to do same sex marriage but the supreme court as in new york is the lower court in bermuda there is a high court to appeal all this to and so they were rejecting essentially a lower court decision as mayor bloomberg did here in new york celebrities who are so connected to bermuda michael bloomberg michael douglas where is their being with the bermuda government and what maybe they can get some help from the philippines because president do terror these this guy ninety percent catholic country yes so don't expect that attitude to hold d in australia you know i three lesbian couples have gotten waivers to marry or have their union run or whatever and so the government said well for your parents are spending all that money to come from wales or wherever go ahead and get married will waive the one month requirement and for one of the couples one of the partners fatally ill and expected not to survive til the end of the year so they gave them a waiver to get married on it so in mexico the front running leftist candidate for president on the road manuel lopez  over guardianship of the son they are suing for recognition of their marriage in the mid b s so that they can add to or and leave the country and there and so they're just applying for an employment but they did give them an employment permit temporarily  n indonesia news well st of all the constitutional court in indonesia by a vote of five to four rejected a petition to outlaw homosexuality and extramarital se encouraging but ten gay men who were arrested in may at the atlantis spa in jakarta was sentenced to two to three years in prison now one hundred and forty dollars were arrested in that raid they were charged under the anti porn laws because they don't know well because homosexuality is not illegal in indonesia even though the right wing is trying to make it so and having lost in court they're not going to go to parliament but the government doesn't care whether it's illegal they're harassing everybody and they're arresting interesting report out of florida it turns out that florida by the end of next year a year from now wants to have in place a comprehensive program that is really going to reduce the epidemic in florida they want to have prep pre exposure prophylaxis in the form of truvada or whatever available free at all sixty seven county health departments and they are promoting condom use along with that and i don't know if this all takes  consideration of the new landscape with the tech scam bill and what will happen to fund it well that's true they also are heavily into routine testing for everybody in florida everybody which we think there is not nearly enough and particularly high risk testing for both h i v and s t v s treatment for those newly infected and to make sure those who have been living with h continuing on treatment and at the right levels for that and doing continuing outreach and education it sounds like a very comprehensive program if you have any information about whether they're actually carrying that out yes  well done in t v comedy orange is the new black is nominated for orange is the new black jane fonda lily tomlin nominated for grace and frankie and of the mini series female actor susan sarandon and jessica lange for bet and joan why is that being mentioned on gay usa as it's made by gay people and it's got a gay sensibility yes the number one cable news show in the country now rachel know couple of things two british imports the children by lucy kirkwood of the it's from london's royal court theatre and it has a great cast that's ron cook deborah findlay and francesca agnes you remember when she was  hundred years ago on television now we're all right well you're too young it's it's about what we owe to the next generation and it's combined with a personal sexual drama about infidelity very well done hour  he says to the king he's trying to encourage him you've given us hope and the king says hope is a very great responsibility well i have another operative recommand that is coming here we've mentioned this before and opera called fellow travelers about the lavender scare the government discrimination against gay people in the fifty's and sixty's and it's been you know it's a documentary called the lavender scare it was a book called the lavender scare and now it's an opera called fellow travelers produced in part by our old friend sterling zinn's meyer who is politically active in new york so it i think it opened in cincinnati and we talked about it then well now it's coming to new york for a few performances in january at the john jay theater on th avenue and as part of something called the prototype festival so if you go to prototype festival dot org black man yeah and before we turn to our guest i just want to read you a letter we got from a viewer because it was so heartwarming especially during the holiday season should we include names or not i think not you know we didn't ask did we we did not so this is a guy twenty years old from fulton indiana who says i just wanted to share my story with you st off i'd like to say my father eric watches your show all the time at eighteen years old my life was spiraling out of control and i was going down the wrong path erik and his husband shawn were friends with me on facebook i had just found out that i had to find somewhere to live and eric just happens to message me asked me how i was and i told him everything he then offered me a couch to sleep on and i spent that christmas with them they had seven children two biological in the rest of the also with the st gay couple to get married in portman the other so when i started to stay with them i grew more and more attached and so did their i grew more and more attached and so did their children one year later they adopted me it was the best day of my life since being these men have set me up for success got me back in school to get my ged and have helped me to make better life choices i'm so grateful i wanted to share our story with you and hopes you can share it on your show i want the world to know how amazing these men are and how they have had such an impact on my life thank you for taking the time to read this and thank you for broadcasting helpful and inspiring messages i hope this could be one of them yes it is and thank you for sending it it's always great to hear a terrific story like that sounds like somebody that eric marcus should interview there is a segue come on  to work yeah who's now at sixty minutes he was my boss and i had been my boss and i asked him what kind of quitting to the people of n p r news because he had founded a morning edition and worked them all things considered and i called his colleagues and i bought that equipment and use that so were you thinking even then when you were you knew you were doing a book that you might use it for something else multimedia not that i would because there was no such thing as a podcast there oh and i thought one day a scholar or a student might i thought the stories were important and i was recording stories of people who were older often older and also men who were dying of aids so and not all of the stories made it into the book because a number of pages yes so you in fact have tons of audio interviews with scores and scores of people and now you have turned it into a podcast called making gay history ye gay history dot com yes so we have brief very brief excerpts of several of these and we're going to start with just a very short clip of your audio interview in two thousand and one that's right it's the most recent interview with ellen degenerates so we're going to play the audio and show you a few pictures of ellen over it with any luck and how it mattered to me always it always mattered to me what people thought of me even though i'd forgotten that for a while to say i'm gay and i'm going to say it not on here when anybody thinks i don't care if i lose everything alternately when it comes down to it ok yes now i'm gay and i'm free and then the reality hits like this big way of going we hate you we think you're you know you're you're off the air now we don't want to watch you you know we're going to show you when you're that depressed and people are like you don't how many people you you know you've changed and you know it's like you know but yeah i'm sad you know and they showed her at the end with her mother betty who got very involved with the movement yes so you caught her at a at a down moment ellen degenerates actually working at ricky martin at the time actually lowered the age at which kids realized that they were gay you know because it was so much public information that cover of time magazine and yeah yeah but she was depressed she canceled she was scorned there was all kinds of criticism of her in the press jerry falwell colder ellen degenerate yes yes and she's human so she was affected by it and there were a lot of gay people who were mad at her for coming out yes because they felt it would it would hurt them that kind of that by raising our heads up we're going to get whacked you're spoiling it for us you know it was one photo in that we showed in that sequence of a group of young people really excited that was the university of nebraska it was a listening party for ellen's show so it was all over the country and in new york you could hear people cheering from your apartment you can hear people cheering in the chelsea neighborhood and happen for that coming out moment on her show and it did wind up on the cover of time magazine you know so what is she said give us a little more tease about listening to the podcast yeah what else does she have to say in there where she talks about the experience of coming out and how she didn't expect to come out in the big way that she did because she met someone she doesn't mention the person's name at that time who had a different who was fearless about being open in public and wanting to hold her hand so she said people got to see me grow like a chia pet she was so funny and so dear in the interview and had forgotten i was coming so i'm not kidding so i showed her doorstep i ring the doorbell and she says hello and i stood with a question more and i said hi it's erik marcus and she said yeah and i reminded her and she would greet me at the door in pajamas and was just enter here was we've been mapping and she was as sweet and lovely and human as possible really one she just won my heart i was totally charmed she's become a beloved character on t v and she's done such enormous good and we forget that she wasn't then who she is writing we just forget and most and a lot people don't know she's been on television for so long young people don't know that history and they don't understand what it meant to be on the cover of time magazine in one thousand nine hundred and seven and it's also interesting to me that you know she did the sitcom where she came out then she did the set com that failed but she knew she said at the time i want to do a talk show that's what i'm meant to do and she made that happen and sure enough it has fulfilled her prophecy y almost no one knows who perry walk and what kinds was he died of aids and that's why we probably don't know his story he was drafted in one thousand nine hundred and sixty eight during the vietnam war and was open about being a checked off the homosexual box expecting not to be taken him they took him in and kept him for fifteen years and then they threw him out because he was gay you couldn't you couldn't get out of it just saying you were gay you had to cut out some of your he said he said the white guys got out for me when they checked off homosexuals the black did not  his case was working his way through the courts he eventually one then settled with a military nine hundred and ninety one he's truly a hero but he's forgot we should say that again he won his case before gays a lot of the military he won his candidacy want a case to be reinstated and he took a settlement took back pay it was the best thing for him he was the grand marshal in new york city pride march and then he died the clip we have from your interview with him is about his not being treated well that's right so let's play that and again look at a few pictures of perry walk and says we listened to a brief excerpt from his interview on making gay history dot com basically everybody you know just kind of a their only question was when you give us the names of people you've had sexual relationships the fact that five man sexually assault another man in your barracks is not of interest you our system of justice our system our pictured there with miriam bend shalom it was the lesbian activist in the in the whole thing about integrating the military did you talk to her as well i didn't i didn't interview her now and i don't remember why i didn't but if you have a natural interview so many people i wish i'd interviewed at the time but but didn't there's something that perry had in common with almost everybody i interviewed and it's a phrase that i discussed with frank kaminey one of the real heroes of the movement there are so many heroes was the word radicalized that things happened to people things were done to people that made them angry and it radicalized them i often asked people how they had the courage to do what they did most often people said it had nothing to do with courage they were angry and they and they were compelled to do something and they screwed this group over and then he decided that he was going to stand for it  and he really suffered during the period between when he was thrown out and when he finally had a settlement i joined the movement because a boyfriend dumped me and i want to meet other people and i was very isolated and i went to one of the gay groups and that was the other thing that i found people it was either people were radicalized or they were looking for love you know so this movement was was fueled by anger and by love but it is in all of those cases it's about feeling compelled to do it you know it's not about sitting around one day and say think what i'll do is such insight and then you do it because it's just the natural progression you hear that in and ones interview in particular she talks about how she you have to see as you see someone in the river drowning you jump him and she felt she was born it was boiling over  her she had to have to do it and by the way and reference to what perry walked in and says about being attacked the number of men attacked sexually in the military is larger than the number of men women who are then well it has to do with the fact that there are so many more men in the military d so there is a larger percentage of women but there is actually a larger number real number of men who are sexually attacked in military to this day and this happened to perry just months into his service was it to him or when did this happen and i said i thought it was years and this is st months he tried to get out three times he said i'm going just let me out of here and they wouldn't let him out and he did a great job he had a very successful career in the military so when they finally threw him out he said you can't just throw me you know without without his pension he had five years to go until he could get all of his benefits and they destroyed him financially he lost a relationship  the rd season now we go quite a long time and what you get in these outcast episodes is just a slice of a slice yeah and we have an upcoming episode with morty manford who was with his mother jean cofounded p flag that he was one of the early presidents of the gap to this them because there are all kinds of legal issues involved for people who are no longer alive it's a much easier thing for people who are alive you have to get permission from them as well one day i hope that all of these full length audio these full length interviews is available as a sex worker eleven she said she told eleven beginning at eleven and she talks about that in this in this clip so you hear sylvia at home she's forgotten the tomato sauce for the chili it's a domestic scene and she goes on to talk about what it was like to and they had their hang  lots of conflicts with the movement she was thrown out of the community center but there is the silver or vera law project sylvia's places for homeless and you'd be to you one of the problems with icons is that we don't know them as people and when you crazy you think i'm crazy the world may be crazy and you get to know sylvia and you hear about her life you still understand why she would have drug and alcohol problems while she was homeless she had her heart was in the right place but often she was impossible to deal with and she's in the david france film about johnson and just listening to this time or might and over and over again of how important and special it is to hear people's voices yes we can read about these people forever sometimes we see clips of them in documentaries but these are intimate interviews and that is a unique experience and i have the good fortune to be there in the room with all of those people and now i have the privilege of bringing their stories to life through their own voices i got to do it in the book in print but it's so different actually hearing people speak other a couple of others that you want to tease people with about who's already up there on the site that they could be listening to if they go there now they can listen there are three thousand and thirty episodes and i don't want to favor anybody who asked me who my favorites are almost everybody has a favorite one i didn't like but it's really interesting is how call who's who i'll call took the madison society sort of medicine study one hundred and fifty three from the founders but i love chuck roll and dr evelyn hooker who did the st study comparing gay introduce it i set it up bring you back in time you have a little story and then i do a conclusion to tell you where the person is now i like to think it's you can listen to it in the time it takes to fold your laundry because that's when i listen to it or do you want it stretches and you're my age you have to  photographs so it's great for schools as well really and making gay history dot com eric marcus happy holidays and happy holidays chad to all of you and to you and we'll see you next week thank you for watching