welcome to go usa i'm indeed imam northrup and i'm sixty four now i know i look older but you try to be and get all these years it's tough all right in the news now we get to the new ok be quiet old man i can say that because i'm older than he is we want to say thank you and farewell to station w y b and philadelphia which has carried us for many years there an independent public station there going off the air  they have been just terrific to us for all this time and we really appreciate everything they have done to reach of very wide and loyal audience d in philadelphia we love you there we do and we are scrambling happily and successfully to find a new broadcast held in philadelphia we have this almost finally nailed down we're not going to give you the details yet because because  want to make sure everything is absolutely firm before we do so how can you know the details it would help if you got on our e mail list by going to our website gave us a t v dot org dot org and there's a click there you can sign up for our e mail list you'll get something asking you to confirm you want to be on the list and then you'll get weekly e mails preview previewing the program to place on a website where we post how everybody can see the program everywhere in the country all the different ways and of course if you if we do skip but we can miss a programme you can always go to the website and actually watch the program or listen to the audio podcast so it's always up there and we post it on facebook as well friend us but we expect that we will be near in philadelphia perhaps continuously next week right away also saturday night at seven o'clock where arranging that with our new outlet by way keep you informed oh hey when i did all this great work we thank you i well it takes a village ok on to the news in the news the attorney general the united states jeff sessions testified before the senate and he says he's not sure if federal employees have to serve l g b tea people or not it's just not sure i'll get back to them and i would bang my head against the table but just assume i did  meanwhile trump's favorite anti l g b t pastor is condemning catholics and mormons but trumps just fine with that my catholic bishop has for britain any acknowledgement of a gay spouse at a funeral for a gay married person it's quite a list of stories this week some progress in north carolina but not nearly enough we have three encouraging stories from maine and don't forget as maine goes so goes the nation but more bad news from tanzania and really awful news from catch and a should have been earlier but a georgia state ledge because it's not georg country the georgia state legislature has called for quarantine for people with hiv and when you hear who she is sam smith the very popular singer who did the big hit song stay with me a few years ago now says i'm as much woman as i am and i'm going to review the revival of torch song which is what the condensed torch song trilogy and two and a new show on life with cerebral palsy which if you don't have time to wade through the end to show was terrific and we have a surprise guest at the end of the show it's a surprise because she doesn't know she's been cast but she's just arrived so we're filling her in on that so fix your makeup and hair producer director of the audience award winning best documentary new fast feels meaty film festival for her documentary hot to trot about the same sex ballroom dancing competition so we're going to slip her in here at the end but let's start as we always do with the trumpet minister mostly we start with some of the political tumbled in the country you know all these senators coming out and breaking with trump and then saying and i'm never going to run again and i can't run again because they would lose because steve bannon is manipulating the republican primaries in favor of trump and wacko candidates so that these supposedly establishment republicans cannot win a republican primary anymore and their basic sin is a brake on style they're saying trump is ill mannered they vote for all of his policies well and they're going to keep voting for it no matter how much they've criticized him because they still support these policies but style you know the people who sit around and say oh this is so terrible these people that they're putting up and and these you know wonderful establishment republicans are having to retire you don't get it the people who have put trump in office who are supporting bannon who are supporting these candidates want to overthrow the status quo and they are not open to arguments that we should be supporting the state but the status quo is more for them in the culture they want to be able to say whatever they want about blacks gays and women base yes and that's what trump does yes and that's what his followers and so that's what that's what they want but the main these same people are going to be totally screwed over by the policies that this republican congress and this republican president are passing totally screwed over the beauty of the balance of the moment is that none of that stuff is getting passed because of the paralysis so trump is not having to pay the price for passing those policies he's able to keep these balls in the air and it's quite ingenious juggling act of being able to blame the establishment and rev up the base while not actually getting anything done that with an alienated i just that he's taken to the that has an effect on them but something like what they did this week in terms of you have to say they are protecting the banks of this country and that's that was their big move this week and they needed mike pence his vote to vote for it and they passed it protecting banks from class action lawsuits yeah so that's you know so if we have another financial collapse folks you know it's going to hurt everybody especially the people in the bottom but everybody and that's what they're heading towards with all this deregulation y all right well meanwhile attorney general jeff sessions had to show up and a senate committee hearing because they have an oversight function and he's sort of hard to show up there i guess annually but i don't know periodic way to answer that's from the judiciary committee about what he's doing at the justice department so dick durban democratic senator from illinois says to him well could a social cause they've you know we've told you about all these guidances that the justice department is said saying that basically people have all this kind of religious freedom to discriminate and that gays and lesbians aren't covered and transgender rights so durbin says could a social security administration employee refuse to assist or or accept or process spousal or survivor benefits paperwork for surviving same sex spouses has he been watching  paused groans and then said well that's something i never thought would arise but i would have to give you a written answer if you don't mind i mean  but it's stunning to sit there and say yes maybe the social security administration could discriminate against these people you know obviously it's going to be a situation where people are in the office going to say i'm not touch of this you take care of this give it to that in an emergency what do you think these religious freedom guidelines are all about their about the license to discriminate and we've only been saying that from a one million voices for the last year and yet masterpiece cake shop he doesn't want to create a cake under the st amendment for a same sex wedding so that's going before the supreme court december so the a c l u wants you to write your congressperson and say get on the amicus brief the friend of the court brief on this so this is something everybody in the country can do you don't even have to go to the a c l u you website but you could a c l u dot org and they'll be a direct link in our e mail to how you can write your congress member but just contact your congressman say i want you to get on the front of the court brief for this because this will end civil rights laws as we know them i mean not just for gay people but for everyone you can probably write a personal letter to anthony kennedy to send seems likely to be the swing vote on this and lest you think that our attorney general jeff sessions is so naive about these issues and really hasn't given any consideration to things like destroying civil rights laws and and sanctioning discrimination he will be addressing the heritage foundation this week just as the president and last week they know what they're doing and they and  tony perkins all these people are just sitting there whispering in their ear all day long they know exactly what all of this is about and we have a handful of republicans who are sponsors of federal rights legislation who vote for it include putting john mccain but they're all voting for these judges who we're going to take an absolute committed openly to taking away our rights your i mean who have vicious anti gay records you know s serious about objecting to this kind of discourse from the president in these kinds of actions then put your money where your mouth is and specially if you're not going to be in office after the end of next year and you know some people are saying god i just can't stand another was twenty years ago i'd like to think he's learned but he's shown no evidence of it no one has ever done anything that was friendly to gay people and then there and then there is trump's favorite pastor you've seen this guy robert ss has all these statements about mormons and catholics being cult like pagan religions this is how satan gets a hold of society through these c obama you know he said god damn america nobody how to separate himself from a move a bow these days looking at what the country does it's not a bad quote surely you're not surprised by a double standard well surprise but i mean we have to keep we have to keep wrestling as reporters did in the press room this week and say what the hell's up with this or get in there and in tangential trump administration news you may remember our former secretary of health and human services tom price who had to resign recently because of all his trips on private aircraft bill that exorbitant rates to us he was doing a great job of destroying the affordable secretary of h h s but now he's out because of the private plane trips meanwhile his wife as it turns out is a state representative in georgia from the decatur era we hadn't heard of her no we hadn't but she is a  they the problem is that they this is a direct quote use to da i more readily yes she said it's almost frightening the number of people who are living that that are carriers and the potential to spread what is in the past they did more readily and at that point they're not posing a risk oh interesting so we've got a huge population that's putting us all at risk and and she used the word quarantine yes she did so and john personally from the old john foundation was very upset met her when she was an aide to steve gunderson and anyway now we will remember that the vatican rejected the ambassador from france because yes they just wouldn't accept his credentials right so we'll see if they accept this harl think they should i think would be very entertaining to have calista the vatican meanwhile from the state department which may not exist in iceland or the human rights campaign has filed a freedom of information act request to get it to find out if the state department actually sent a letter to russia complaining about the violence against gay men in chechnya as they claim they did because they refused to release such a letter why they would refuse to release it is a mystery so each are seen as file before requests and we'll talk more about that on the international news meanwhile the state department spokes woman on a completely other note stood up last week on spirit day at the daily press conference and said my colleagues and i are wearing purple in honor of spirit yes  seventeen years old forced trying to force her to have this baby and then finally and appeals court has said no you got a letter have an abortion but they're all tired fighting it and because they're doing a stall they're trying to drive drag this out until it's too late for after twenty weeks she can't in texas meanwhile in arizona eleven trans women from central america who came here seeking asylum and were put into detention have been released pending hearings for gay men who were with them are still being detained the tide has turned at the e e o c the equal employment opportunity commission yes they have been because of the things coming out of the justice department and all this kind of stuff they are ending their three year investigation into the removal of a transgender professor at john f kennedy university and now the professor is having to go through a private right of action in the courts and try to you know protect the christian civic league there for years and was our great nemesis trying to stop all anti discrimination laws so appeal them well he's been making another effort to repeal the sexual orientation on discrimination on main but he has failed to collect enough signatures to get it on the ballot never mind that's good and here's another good story from maine so there was a high school varsity football coach this is great new gloucester coach dwayne greeting and he told his players to taunt the son of a kid known to have two moms on the other side and just keep saying who's your daddy who to do this the kids don't do it and they turn him in and you're fine and that's what happened fantastic stepped up is hope in the younger generation and similarly in new york maine high school students there have a rally for a student who was being bullied there they are out in the streets rallying for this poor kid who is being bullied the school was silent when asked to protect the kid so the students took it upon themselves to go out and support the kid who was being bullied i mean you know the tyler clemente foundation combat it and we have to work on that because kids are just terrified the dying the great exercise it's hurting their grades stop it but the way to stop it of course is for cohorts of people within the school to not stand for it  debating whether to renew yes meanwhile the states one by one or are renewing it themselves so pennsylvania is debating this and about to vote to renew d it but meanwhile one of their legislators slipped in an amendment to the bill an appeals court in pennsylvania says a trans woman must get a hearing on her request for a name change a local philadelphia court said that she had to wait longer because she had a fr conviction in her background she had been convicted she served her time she was out now anyone else in that situation any non trans person is perfectly entitled to do a name change without question but this court said to this trans woman no you have to wait longer so the appeals court says that's on equal treatment and has to go back for an actual hearing we'll see whether the lower court sees the light by the way speaking of bullying you know utah republican lieutenant governor spencer cox who has taken a softer tone on l g b to rights i'm not saying he's great on all our issues and he says he has compassion for the underdog because in school he felt like committing suicide after his parents divorced and he felt like an out of place nerd with big glasses in the school and was but we do all the time so you all feel like that so when some of this is this he may run for governor in three years and maybe the band and people can't do that i'm good news f he talked about how d the l g b t community and l g b t judges had forged a path for him and that his appointment to the court would not have been possible without every one who had gone before and fought so hard the st judge dick fail up and he said i understand i have an obligation for those who come after me yes and that was very good to hear so we'll be we'll be watching your record give us something we can be proud of access to bathrooms there and over the laws d bar on local cities and towns passing nondiscrimination the i was that include sexual orientation or gender identity decree says that under current state law transgender people are not prevented from using their preferred public facilities although we have a case of a six year old trans girl band not just removing you know the restroom that  wants to use but from hugging her fellow students she switch schools so her situation is better now but yes this stuff is going to continue to happen and the even the proposed consent decree  still does not allow for a local nondiscrimination laws the governor has signed an executive order that is a nondiscrimination on gender identity and expression for state agencies over i'm sorry one of the moment to talk about him later but governor roy cooper you know narrowly won a victory there in north carolina which was a rebuke to all these bigots but they maintained a veto proof majority in the legislature and what they're busy doing now is changing the courts to suit their image so that they can control that as well yes well they are diminishing the number of people on the court so that he can appoint new more progressive judges in montana woman in was trying to get into busch gardens the theme park there an engineer in virginia and the guard looks her up and down and says you can't come in here because you're wearing a costume a skirt a costume so this was a there was an internal memo there the bishop trying to tell people how you're supposed to handle it bishop catholic bishop in madison well that's his name anyway how to handle it when you've got a funeral  a somebody who's got a gay spouse and then they basically tell people i got are a same sex spouse well yes all right there have been gay spouses in heterosexual marriage so the title of this memo  memo is consideration of funeral rights for a person in a homosexual civil or notorious union which would be the teamsters under jimmy hoffa the th and so that the surviving partnership should not have any public or prominent role at a funeral right and if they put anything in the newspaper about what's going on the name of the celebrating priest or power should not be listed in any public a bitch rory but also lists the surviving partner this can't happen for obvious reasons is what the memo says so they said oh this is outrageous this was just an internal thing we were telling our priest because most of your priests are gay some of them don't like it and they liked it all of a gay person takes place and his or her same sex spouse is not acknowledged at the funeral the parishioners are supposed to just add friends and mean you know no if you want do it that way tell me in advance because i could go on and it's a real mystery why the family and friends than the spouse would want to hold a service in under those conditions right whatever alternatively morgantown west virginia the city council there has unanimously in every riding and over all of their human rights ordinance added sexual orientation and gender identity and expression to the forbidden discrimination list they are the th west virginia city to do so out about some pretty impressive and impressive work by fairness west virginia which is the l g b t lobbying group there they have been on the ground for many years and they do great work and if you want to see how your city is doing go to h r c dot org the human rights campaign has put out its municipal equality index reading said sixty eight cities a perfect score is now all right we're going to tell you how they're doing on policy but they don't really do a qualitative assessment of how you were implementing these policies and i believe now everything else that they're basically taking a survey of who has what laws in place and guidelines but i do want to give major sea credit and i think this is an indication of their growing power in visibility and some corners they're having their big annual dinner in d c this saturday night pamela harris who has been mentioned prominently as a possible democratic presidential candidate senator from california to all of us yes and it's up to all of us in the midterm elections next year and all the elections that are coming up in the meantime we have elections in a couple of weeks here various yes governor as  very very important races in virginia look i want to get bodies hopes up because remember you know they did of the other side did a great job of redistricting president obama and eric holder are now making this their cause trying to get fair district in this country if we could have that we could have our country back and we'd still have a senate which is two people from rhode island and two people from california but which is not democratic but we would have more a hope of advancing well what makes my and and we have been making progress in interim elections progress steady from the city university of new york of a one thousand men there now coming out a year earlier than they did ten years and it would end some work and the wash the blade is tired of not being called on to press conferences at the white house and they wrote directly to sarah huckabee to sanders or expose the fact that she's just ignoring us at this point while lying to the un to say that she went on and then there's in rochester new york the trigger warning queer and trans get gun club and i was you know i well i mean i think it's curious because they're not saying they're gun lovers they're t have to talk about it but good grief what i want to mention that two things marriage equality usa has and has a new book out and you can get it online for free and you just go to marriage equality dot org backslash book and it's called the people's victory but the grassroots movement and also there's going to be a memorial service for kate milat the great lesbian feminist leader november th from two to four pm at the th universalist  church on central park west i'll put that in the e mail at seventy six street there on november th i'll be there ok international news well we really should start with the horrible this which is that yes twenty five years old went to a family wedding i think in chechnya and came up missing in is believed murdered by the cops in chechnya for being the patrons were harassed and detained it's just it's growing and it's without any means of being stopped not a moment but in one of my ancestral lands in bucharest romania hundreds of people rallied for civil partnerships to be legally recognized as for unmarried cohabitants expanding rights now we still don't know if they're going to have a referendum on same sex marriage they are it's and it's being weighed by the legislature  tanzania thirteen lawyers and activists were arrested at an h i mean meeting they were just having a simple meeting to talk about h i v and they were arrested for promoting homosexuality and this was being run by a very prominent south african feminist lawyer julie and die she bashi and you know she was absolutely shocked that this is that this was taking place and  mr and while jeff sessions our attorney general is that pressing the heritage foundation tony abbott the very right wing former prime minister of australia is coming to the us to address the alliance defending freedom for the  nd time and he's taking time off from the australian campaign well it's almost over and that means on november th seventy five percent have voted already so maybe he holds say three in five will vote have voted yes but the win but they're saying if we when for one hundred days if you want to use one of our big city facilities for your wedding you can have it for free and it's just for gay couples so some people some people are squawking and say i thought this was about  is only in her thirty's now thirty seven dollars over same sex marriage and she's sort of a minority party prime minister the right wing party got more votes but they didn't get a majority so she in cola and with another progressive party has taken power in new zealand and she also wants to liberalize the anti abortion laws they're quite strict over there they have life and health of the mother but that's about it and in the channel islands off of britain the island of older ne which has a population of about two thousand it's a british crown dependency there legislature which evidently consists of ten people as voted all right no one yes nobody no one abstention for same sex marriage rights it needs the approval of the united kingdom privy deeply into it but we know that they're rounding up people gay people using grindr and other apps so grindr is trying to school their members how do we voice entrapment and they're putting this on their website on their on their site their how you how to those in those places ok and congratulations to british singer sam smith very popular with his song stay with me there he is on the cover of i guess the weekend magazine of the sunday times talking about his gender identity he says he came out as gay a couple of years ago and he said you know i don't know i says i feel just as much woman as i am man  he says things like that there was a moment in his life where i didn't own a piece of male clothing really i i would wear full makeup every day in school eyelashes leggings with doc martens and huge for coats for two and a half years says i love i feel i have tons and you know and an alter ego jeremy l but what i found interesting was he wasn't saying he was non binary he wasn't saying he was trans he was saying he was both gender people all this trouble is also neither jew nor greek and i'm an atheist and i know this all right there's a i do i'll send you the link if you are on our email was but there's a new documentary called out north about minnesota l g b t q history which was pretty interesting and i'll put the link in our email ok some theatre reviews yes all right you know it's rare that i see a show where i really want to tremendously recommended and i'm sorry you can't see it anymore but theater guy and broadway guy this is so it's about his life i mean and he can't talk cannot speak so it's through a mechanical device that is whips around on the wheelchair all over the stage and tells about his li and it was you know it's the show starts off he comes out this wheelchair and it's like this and he's thrashing around and you're like oh and you look at he says you're staring at me aren't you he says i hope so i'm the only one up here and so it goes from there it's very clever and mormon he talks about his sexuality and wanting to be with people and he says you know it does even though i've seen you know would think it's all these times i'm not gay and even though it's fun almost my favorite show i'm not a lesbian and he talks about his love for girls but i reviews but mercedes rule is absolutely fantastic going out on her nd half and is wonderful and i think they could have gotten someone younger to play the adopted son that's all i'm going to say he's a good actor but a little younger six and they're making a big deal about this there's been some protests from some from some former playmate some who say you're ruining things but they said we went through this when we had the st black playmate back in  york at the museum of the moving image it looks only seen the trailer looks cute and nice but the movie i did see at new best the l g b t festival in new york is hot to is going to be when the last bastions of homophobia to fall because it is a verbal expression of other people do to my parents finally came out about like when i was thirty i was married you know i try to do you know the right thing you know audience award for best documentary gale is an old colleague of mine from the c b s morning news she went on to produce at sixty minutes and there are major productions all over  and you you produced a film the making of the world trade center memorial correct and then had nothing to do and tell the story and i learned about this fascinating very well known world of same sex competitive ballroom dance decided that there was this intoxicating blend of art and politics and that i was going to tell that story and so i wrote to you you did i did remember me but i was just a cheerleader through this and because i knew that you were terrific producer and that this was a terrific story and in fact you have put it on film in a way that surpassed my expectations and that really captured the audience i was there on sunday when it screen and they rose and and they were really carried away by it it was pretty overwhelming i have to say we because i mean you know it was a five year journey from this idea to actually making it into a finished product and we we followed our characters for four years on and off the dance floor and they're they're back stories are really for me the heart and soul of the film because as i said on sunday in introducing the film they're living the issues rather than working issues and so in a way that i couldn't entirely have invasion when the when the film began it just evolved and got sort of deeper and richer and and it was a thrill to share wit do people want to do this well for one thing in the mainstream dance world same sex couples or are prohibited in fact yeah isn't that insane in two thousand and seventeen i mean as as one of my character says in the film the rules explicitly say that it's a man and a woman and they don't even really bother saying male leader and female follower because they just assume that that's what it would be and they have a lot of out contestants now on dancing with the stars but they're always paired up with an opposite really sex couple and partner yeah that's exactly right and that's i think we're we may help shake that up really nice that would be nice wouldn't it now what the audience really responded to on sunday was the fact that so many of the characters in your film are immigrants that is absolutely true and it wasn't as if we set out to make a statement about immigration per se but it was one of those amazing things that i mean this is us how widespread is that it's worldwide and in fact same six dancing in some ways is probably even more popular in europe than in america although i think it's becoming more so here too but it it so happened one this is telling a story but there was a broadcaster one point that they might be interested in this film excuse me and she looked at the trailer and she said i thirty just plain americans and irving once again how really disgusting we are is a kind of ray that became a you know a message that was intentional and quite marvelous or how how is the dancing any different i remember it we had the choreographer matthew born on her he wanted to do romeo and juliet us or something you know we would have a male and he said he thought it was challenging to try to choreograph that so what does it do different or do you have somebody always leads and follows or how does it work  is the dancers will tell you there's not like a male world in the female world it's lead and follow and what they do within same sex stance is sometimes one person leads in some one person pose because they prefer it but a lot of times they switch it up to mance which  gay world and same sex ballroom dancing as for what i mean you know he would drew me to initially was that it was it was gorgeous it was joyful it was unexpected i think that  q issues are the civil rights issue of our time and i and i i just loved it and why i got as obsessed with it as they did i don't actually i have a terrific answer for except that i just knew that i thought it was i thought it was pretty universal i parental conflicts and the it takes place within this world it could have been a different world and i think the film would have held up with the fact that it was within this what i found just an incredibly fascinating subculture that people haven't explored very much in the mainstream media just clicked for me as for how i was welcomed i was welcomed immediately and that's something that i'm eternally grateful for because it was a privilege to tell their stories and i can't say that i ever wants i mean i'm sure i had to prove myself but i never once felt anything but openness and affection i mean it grew over the years lesbian couples are they just same sex couples our doing most our lead characters are all gay and lesbians but in point of fact not everybody who's does same sex stance is that's actually a really good question there are straight people who do same sex dancing there was a woman actually here in new york who originally i thought might be in the film and she's married to a man they were both dancers and actually ran a studio in their loft in new york and it was very hard to make a living that way so they went off and found other careers but she still likes to dance and she likes delete so she competes she's very active in the whole since extensive i mean how many of them are couples in real life or we're down to our last few seconds so people can see this now in london at the fringe french film festival on sunday november th at two hundred and thirty in the afternoon and beyond and beyond that popular because it is a unique look at the community it's not a predictable venues that we've seen so often so thank you all thank you thank you thank you again to y b w y b n philadelphia our home for many years and we will