in depth conversation which of course you don't get anywhere else on these issues meanwhile congressional democrats are promising to fight over the transgender ban and agree just silly anti l g b trump a nominee to federal court again in plano texas is arrested for using grindr to attack and rob gay men and a gang of us evangelical leader is attacking all the  the current schedule and if you miss a show you can always catch us on line at gave us a t v dot org and enjoy and while you can because she is going to be gone for the next two weeks i'll be joined by chris cooper but we better get to our montrose center which i believe is working to help specifically members of our community and others so you can look for that if you want to be of help down there but the big headline this week for us is of course trumps attempt to keep transgender people out of the u s military keep new ones from signing up throw out the ones who are there just mess with people's lives completely so we really want to both of you to be here to discuss this jillian weiss executive director of the transgender legal defense and education fund obviously working on these issues for years james essex director of context that this sort it comes in to because just to sort of set the scene the military for years starting in the early eighty's had a ban on transgender people serving in the  military it wasn't based on a lot of science was based on stereotype and myth and fear and there were efforts out of the efforts during the obama administration by many different organizations in our community to get them to change the rules and to get them to get rid the department defense undertook a year long of valuation they said there was a lot about as the st but then in july of fifteen they said we're going to we're going to take this seriously we're going to stop kicking anybody out of the military because they're trans and we're going to look seriously at whether there's any reason not to provide not to let transgendered people serve their country and in june of sixteen they said changing the policy all of those fears are completely baseless baseless there's no there's not to be any negative impact on good order and discipline is not going to be any problem with to play ability of troops and there's not going to be any serious cost issue here so those are the main things that people have raised and not a not this i have no concerns about the the ability of these troops as opposed to the other troops to kill people when they need to be killed if that's what we're not celebrating killing by you know body but but that's part of the job of the military and so the idea that that there's a problem with legality because of trends people serving the military is is ridiculous and i know you weren't suggesting otherwise but so this is the context in which this new policy arises because what happens is the president decides as everybody knows back in july to just tweet out that he's changing policy but he didn't wake up one day and decide to do this this came at the behest of the far right wing this st was an argument in the house of representatives where a couple of right wing crazy members of congress wanted to add a ban on new trans service members and any medical help currently serving trans members to a defense  department funding bill and they got defeated much to our shock and amazement when a number of republicans a couple dozen republicans joined the democrats out of the secretary of defense yes but then you know tony perkins and these right wing members of congress started hammering on trump and pence and went to trump and said ah you know we've got to stop these horrible people and that's when he did that spontaneous yes and so i think i think you're right i think the motivation actual you know sort of the situational of factors here were that he wanted to get his the funding bill that would include funding for the wall passed yet in the process he has no problem kicking out thousands and thousands of transgendered people who have been serving in the united states military many of them for many years decades even though he makes these speeches in the last couple of weeks about how wonderful the military is because it's so diverse an ad great all the service members are for serving their country and he is kicking all these people out jillian you for an across this in some of your work and come up close with some of these people who are serving sure i mean this is a simple matter of political expediency this has nothing to do with the actual qualifications of transgender people to be in the military and regardless of what your position is on the military once you say we're going to exclude this entire group as was true with excluding gay and lesbian troops you're essentially saying these are nd class citizens they're not entitled to serve our country and so you know my background includes representing veterans who were looking to take on jobs going to deployable areas and you know my research disclosed that basically there's no issue with this and there's been transgender people serving in these deployable areas for many many many years and it's really not been an issue i think they're just kind of looking for anything that they can use to kind of find the most vulnerable population and use that as a wedge or a way to score points and that's what they're doing with transgender people so before we get into all the legal issues and we do want to what is the human effect of this not just on transgender service members who you're representing but on the whole transgender people living in a society where the president states and you know this is just happening and they're being singled out you know i mean the effect is basically st st of all the families of those transgender service members are also affected you know spouses and children and so on but the effect is to basically say you know you're not wanted you're not qualified you're not able there's something wrong with you you're spoiled in some way you know you're too filled with stigma for us to acknowledge your presence in our military and the fact is that transgender troops have been serving with distinction for a very long time so you know transgender people now have to go and defend themselves yet again while we were trying to kind of get housing and find jobs and get health care access and you know survive the bullying that happens in educational settings so it's just another thing that's being heaped on top of the burden that transgender people already have now james the service members i think five are active duty and one's in the guard and they are they are all individuals who came out to the military as trans a year ago after  the rules change that it was ok to do that and these are people who have served in various services for ten years eleven years more in the air force in the navy in the army doing serious amounts of time and money in terms of training them and it makes no sense to just say oh these are people who you know we need to take out the reason that i'm very optimistic about the  or cases in maryland i think all three cases are have a very good shot here for the simple reason that we talked about earlier the military did this study over the course of a year to the side or the really problems is there any reason that we can't allow transgender folks to serve openly and they said they end up saying there's no reason and the president doesn't is not pointing to some of the study to some other factual basis for saying nope they got it wrong just like i don't want these people here that i've but so i think what you're left with is there's no sort of military policy based reason for this and so what do you left with you left with animists prejudice discrimination this is this new directive requires the military to discriminate against transgender people and this era answering a question that's been on my mind and that i've talked about here and i think you've changed my mind on this i've always been concerned that the courts have historically given enormous deference to the military to make it sound decisions about things and so i figured you know we may see there this action is unconstitutional and discriminatory and having no basis but if the military goes into court and says we want this isn't the court going to say well you know we always defer to the military and look i mean this  will obviously we'll see what the court does but you're right that in general the courts have a policy a practice of deferring to the judgments by the military about military stuff and you know a decision a judgment about whether having trans people in the military or not is going to allow them to do their job and have their missions be effective or not that is the military judgment but they made that judgment and i don't lou we'll see what they come up with and some folks who have to like come up with a reason will come up with some reason we'll see what they say i think a judge is going to be able to see i think all three judges in this in these cases are going be able to see through whatever sort of post h rationalization and somebody comes up with to try to explain what i think everyone can see is just like we've got a commander in chief who decided to throw away a bunch of people for no reason you know one thing i just want to point out is  that when we had don't ask don't tell there were a number of cases broadly including in the th circuit where you know the lambda legal case is pending and you know the courts indicated that time that they thought this was unconstitutional i mean they didn't go through with it because  statute was repealed and so on but i think there is precedent to indicate that this is absolutely constitutional for a gay person a lesbian person or a transgender person and a bisexual there's our i've got at least three things on my mind  i want to explore with this but let's start with the public reaction and the political reaction i mean were church shelby of alabama orrin hatch of utah john mccain mccain people all over including these conservative republicans are saying this is nonsense that is that is shocking to you as it is to us well it was surprising certainly but i think in politics you know it makes strange bedfellows and the enemy of my enemy is my friend and so i mean i think there's a lot of dissatisfaction with the president and things that he's been doing and i think this is another example of kind of arbitrary action that has gone against  republicans and what they're looking to do and so i think that they're recognizing even though there may not necessarily a friend of transgender people but they're recognizing that this is gone too far even for them do you think congress will take action  to talk about congress but i want to pick up on what's really just said if i could if i could joe was talking earlier about the consequences of this military rule for transgender people you know in civilian life and just in general to to live in a world where there is express or express requirement of school nation by the government you know in an important part of society and i think without minimizing any of the harms that she listed i was completely right about that i think this is an opportunity for our movement if you think about you know like the discussion in the country about the the humanity of transgender people over the course of the last at least two years certainly since the vote in houston in the fall i think of fifteen was a you know over the nomination ordinance they are where we are so i got killed on a you know quote no man in women's restrooms but i think so we did not do a good job then our community all together has done a very good job i think since then of directing the conversation in a better way of putting transgender people front and center and helping transfer ensure the trans people can tell their stories and i think that is having an effect on the country's understanding of who transfer people are on the as i said of the common humanity of trans people and when you have this moment with the government picking on trans people there's no other way to describe it that's a mild way to describe it you get a situation where prominent conservatives are like you know what i'm not going to let myself with that that's need that is that's just going to tory that's bigoted like the speaker of the house in texas who said i don't want to responsible for people's suicide so i'm not saying this bill that you're demanding i simply national session on public and later on that that's a perfect example of this all of these things you roll it all up and this is how a public opinion change happens and what we need to do is we need to keep finding all the fronts that we can find on we need to you know sue trump and anybody else when they do stuff that's that's terrible but i think we also need to recognize that  are as much as these are terrible developments for ourselves and for the the people of the communities we care about they are also opportunities that we can take advantage of you know and i did that sounds kind of gross but i think we have an obligation  done that all on take advantage of these i think that's particularly important here because i think that people have in society have not really understood transgender people are just kind of have this view that they got from television and movies and so on don't realize that we're in every part of society doing all kinds of things and you know part of the difficulty is that i don't think this is like our st issue in terms of what transgender people need we need employment we need housing we need health care access all that stuff but this is a way to get through to people just as it was with john and stone taps to to for an issue that's very very important for people in terms of military people have a lot of reverence for that the military i know that you know my father was in the military and you know whatever my thoughts may be about the military since then i you know recognize that he served his country and this is a way to get people to think about who transgender people are and maybe they think like oh the transition a person is a soldier who's defending our country they thought a tr know but look i think i am chaz has had a big impact on people i think this will have a much larger impact you are a few hours now i have a theory which andy thinks is completely wrong headed and will say you know neither of us knows but i would like to think that it would be in the order says you know d kicking people out no more allowed in no more medical care and last the secretary of defense talks me out of it and i would like to think that in fact that's his way of kicking the can down the road about six might turn out to be true but you know the order specifically says you know military service and no later than march rd two thousand and eighteen so you know the orders been given it's explicit you know there might be some hope but hold out for something but  you know you know and i agree with joe i think that look i think that there's an effort here to spin this as not as you know bad not as devastating as it really is  there's some things that ministration are spinning this like oh there's a study period we're trying to figure out what to do and maybe we'll change our mind later i think that's all just to make this an easier pill to swallow i think the reality is there's a stir period but all they're doing is studying how to implement not whether to implement i don't think the secretary defense has any real discretion of about what happens on march whatever it is two thousand and eighteen i think from that point forward generally speaking clearly certain trends folks are supposed to be out and be he may have some discretion around the edges for a few people but when we're talking i mean the estimates range from six hundred and twenty one five thousand in terms of the numbers of  currently serving transgender service members they're not going to have exemptions for fifteen thousand people so most everybody is going to be out and what struck me i mean they've done studies already right it's like we're saying well now we want to do more studies what in a couple of months you're going to do a full scale study that they're not doing any studies on you know whether this is something that we need for our military you know they're they're looking at how do we get this done but the minimum amount of people pushing back you know you're raising you know stand you know equal protection due process in the other cases raising the st amendment is that issue does this have the potential of becoming a landmark case for transgender rights that will affect all americans it could be it could be certainly if the court agrees with the claims in any of the three cases that government discrimination against transgender people is a form of sex discrimination gets and requires the government to have a good reason  that the court will agree that what you just want to say before i get to that you asked the question when get to get congressional action senator gela brand as promised a bill is there going to be congressional a that can happen and so the national defense authorization act which is one of the main funding bills for the defense department is coming up in the next week or so for hearings in congress and would go back yet to the obama policy which would be better i think there's another bill that would do that but this one is so this says just look let's just stop this for now and i think they are saying they've done that because the you know you know to get something passed in this congress they need a bunch of republican votes and there may well be republicans who would support that certainly there were as you mentioned earlier a number of republican senators who came out opposed to trump's tweets in the couple of days after he tweeted that that military policy stuff out back in july and so it seems it's not a conceivable to me that some number of perhaps a good number of those republican senators would get on board with this look let's put this on hold because we're worried about you know creating problems for currently serving service members that debate will happen over the next couple of weeks and look i think it's possible that it could it could pass it would then have to they've got to get sixty votes that's going to be a challenge  to get through the house but even if it doesn't and obviously i hope it does this is another part of the public discussion in the public pushback that i think is a part of how the country is learning about the service by these thousands of sam's club which is owned by wal mart in north carolina that was an employment discrimination case where do we stand on employment this well i mean i think that all of the the courts the federal courts have pretty much said at that  t discrimination based on sex discrimination is not permitted against transgender people under the federal civil rights act you know it hasn't been tested in supreme court yet but it will at some point and i think that  you know will get a favorable ruling on that keeping my fingers crossed but this ruling that we won were actually two rulings that we got both against wal mart for sam's club stores one in florida one in north carolina transgender employees who experienced the harassment of discrimination and we took the case to the u s equal employment opportunity commission which showed despite change in administration you know still has its principles even with some of the appointees are there are the vote you got the votes anyway well the way that works is that these cases don't actually go to the commission members for a vote sometimes that that happens but not with these cases the you know the front line equal employment opportunity commission investigators and regional directors reviewed the case and what they found was that there was plenty of evidence to show that discrimination had occurred and you know that happens in less than five percent of cases brought to the e e o c i mean they have a caseload of like one hundred thousand dollars cases a year so to win two victories against the same company in a relatively short time is actually pretty telling you know now you know there's another process called conciliation that will happen and then if that fails then we'll go to the fed courts but i think what this shows is that transgender people are making strides in all kinds of areas and it's particularly important in states like north carolina and florida to show that the federal law protects everybody and seven lost my job promptly and you know it was very happy to go from lawyer to legal secretary and my newfound friends were looking for where their next meal was going to come from and where they're going to lay their heads you know we talked before about people's view of transgender people as sex workers part of the reason for that is because transgender people have been marginalized and they can't get jobs that was out i'm too to participate in the american economy and so that's what's left open and nothing against sex workers i don't have a child you know there are good stories coming along and progress being made does it worry you that they department of justice has switched its position on all of these issues well i'm not entirely sure what the department of justice  done you know they are still involved in some cases that were holdovers in the previous administration on behalf of transgender people and we'll see where that goes you know so i think there's a lot of kind of ferment that's happening they change their position in one area that another area they haven't said anything yet and so on so we'll have to see so what's what's likely to end up in the supreme court there are some cases that they're looking at transgender cases well you've got the big master the school district there has just asked the u s supreme court to take their case it's not they don't have to but they might since they took evan's case they could easily take this and that presents a question of or transfix covered by the federal ban on sex discrimination by months on behalf of a lesbian who worked for a college in georgia who was the allegation she was fired because she's gay and the question is is that sex discrimination that violates the federal ban on sex discrimination in employment and i just want to underscore something that jill said just literally or i think our community needs to understand that at the the way things stand right now the e e o c its position is that trans people are still go to the e e o c which covers not all employers but most employers and that is i think there's been a lot of misinformation in our community about whether we're covered or not and yes the supreme court will ultimately decide that but until it does you  and you know thought that the court might start to get better for us it might be a prudent thing to wait on these presented news questions until more federal appeals courts or state courts have decided these issues and decided them the right way as i do think we're in the midst of building that law but in a world in which justice kennedy may be leaving at the end of next term i think the judgment of for many different organizations and i completely share this is put out there now roll the dice let's see because it's not  court is only going to get worse i want to talk about that masterpiece cake shop but we don't have a lot of time i may have to get you back to talk about this but i'm very concerned about these religious freedom arguments and th all sorts of other cases and wondering where you think that's going to go and it's not just it's not just religious freedom it's people who are asserting their st amendment rights not to express themselves by baking cakes for us yeah and so this case is you guy who doesn't want to take it for you he's going to spit in it or do something worse when you go someplace else and of course they don't want the cake from the guy who might spit in it but that's not the point the point of the civil rights laws is you're never supposed to be in that situation you know supposed to know that they hate your guts even if you kind of live in a world and you know that some these people hate your guts but i must tell you that not just a we worried that when you walk into this store that store you might be turned away because of who you are that's not those are not american values right in your hospital or hospitals exactly it's not and it's not it's it and it's not just you know gay people and weddings it's definitely trans people it's hobby lobby it's hobby lobby and so the consequence is here the reason i hope that people will focus on this case and  understand the potential consequences if the bakery wins here either because they get to discriminate based on their religious beliefs or they get to discriminate just because they want to just because they have a political point that they want to make which is the argument the baker making that doesn't just mean that any business in america can discriminate against people it means any business in america can discriminate against anybody they want to just because that's their point of view and that is an extent that would be a devastating blow to civil rights laws all across the country it is absolutely the core of the argument that the bakery is a meeting here and we haven't even gotten trump's religious freedom executive order got exactly well they're working on that all right well we could go on for days so we're not going to we'd love to have both of you come back and continue this conversation frequently and i thank you very much for you so much filling us all in life he announced that he will retain the envoy for l g b t i n rights and the ambassador for aids issues but they get rid of the irish envoy yaz the james kennedy in florida is suing the southern poverty law center for defamation because the seven southern poverty poverty law center labeled them a hate group and now amazon won't  a beneficiary of charitable donations through their site ok we don't think they're going to get anywhere and transactor of by the way we told you about the murder of t t dangerfield the week or two ago  transgender woman murdered in atlanta they have arrested a suspect in that case we also told you about the police killing a trans woman kiwi hereon in st louis dispute easy well he is not taking it easy he's yelling all the time about it is good news from ohio where the athens ohio city council has banned conversion therapy for they will not tolerate hate crimes against any individual based on sexual orientation said acting assistant attorney general john go or and this department  brooklyn new york a couple of gay bashing cases one guy was at a chicken joint ordering chicken he was attacked at is job broken there was a similar anti gay attack at the same point use a few months ago and nother gay man was threatened by a guy wielding a knife on the subway we don't have time for this video this week but we do want to tell you that southwest airlines has another problem with gay passengers gay couple with their two little daughters tried to board during family time and the agent went no not you later and they really held them up you know so they're drawing attention to this lambda legal defense is suing the and they put in a four year request of freedom of information act request for documents from these departments about the resending of the guideline they said no they said nothing they didn't reply they didn't produce the documents they have done nothing so now they've just ignored their request so now it's to get the documents and we've got a bakery in bakersfield california takes trees bakery which told the guy that he wouldn't they wouldn't do a gay wedding and two other couples came in the gay couples going in the same day and they were rejected but the interesting thing is this was willing to refer them to another bakery yes but that's not a interview with the woman who answered who said we love everyone we support everybody but we work for god and god doesn't like these weddings so we're not doing that you are worshipping a false god just want to put that in there there to sit with the people who oppressive detention when they try to come into this country for asylum or refuge so seventeen trans women and gay men from mexico and central america made a point of showing up  also worked as a d j controversy over prot excuse me pride in charlotte north carolina where they had an excellent turnout of about one hundred thousand people the pride organizers have rejected a request for  would you not that is not that it were say that was a pro gay republican crow the deplorable if they're supporting trump are not supporting us they had their own they had their own protest they did and it was peaceful and you live in malta you can go get married on friday if you're a same sex couple well but they're still arguing in australia now either they're updates on this the registration to vote on the non binding postcard well six hundred and seventy five thousand have updated their registration one hundred and sixty five thousand still to be process m t v australia for a whole day just had a thing information that no twelve hours just encouraging people to vote and register and get going to office the guy running the campaign for marriage equality in australia is the same guy who ran the campaign in iowa see which way you know we showed all that footage of people irish people coming back to ireland to fairies for the linen stuff while he's jenny not the same kind of participation in australia they're still awaiting a high court decision on the constitutionality of the postal vote but ballots are supposed to go out to voters on september th and be returned by sometime in november fifteen thousand dollars roundly then melbourne for same sex marriage and there's a poster australian capital territory in canberra they wrapped up buses in rainbow colors to show you where they stand and the transit authority there to support the same sex marriage effort yeah fantastic news from india where the supreme court has just issued a ruling on the right to privacy for everybody it's a very comprehensive ruling but they went out of their way to  criticize the ruling four years ago that reinstated the sodomy ban must be a new court they said discrimination against the individual on the basis of sexual orientation is deeply offensive to the dignity and self worth of the individual equality demands th a male they were sentenced to a year in placement for this for just walking around and ultimately because of all the international attention they drop the prison sentence and they find them two thousand two hundred seventy dollars each good news from canada where the government has decided that people can choose to use the letter x on their passports as a gender markets on a go over the united states when they show i was go band plane i will survive dancing queen and i'm so excited now if someone like mark i'd be in fear of excluding him at this point oh i see you do draw the line somewhere oh yes because he doesn't support our rights there is an organization headquartered in canada called the iranian railroad for queer refugees people who emigrated from iran and they've been running a support network  former refugees and people seeking asylum so they put out a notice this week saying that their leaders had been in the middle east assessing the situation they've gone to turkey where they found two thousand two hundred and eighty six died of a stroke at the age of fifty two but she was a big campaigner of a very fearless journalist on so many issues and she also quit the b b c when they at st refused to talk about  when we were hearing about all the horrible anti seen and and beatings of gay men and she really broke that story in the united kingdom behati to the united kingdom the high court has agreed to hear the president has in fact submitted a marriage equality or she is holding up the holding up the legislation trump style that's what it but in a good way now they don't think they're going to be able to get a bass by the time she leaves and tw overall and in the united states the insurance company is apologizing because they send notices to people with hiv be twelve thousand type of mistake is unacceptable speaking of aids drugs activists who we know what the new york state attorney general to investigate goliad for antitrust violations around truvada which is holding off the generic here and we'll tell you more about it robert ash he was sixty seven years old and planned parenthood is doing a pilot program with the black aids institute they're going to build and expand comprehensive a hiv prevention education programs at the those france service members show up at the m t v vietnam yes pink was getting a special award and she gave a very moving speech about her six year old daughter saying i'm ugly because i look like a boy and pink gave this whole this is how prince who was directed and produced some of the greatest musicals of all time have a project there on time so they do scenes from all of these things and that's the one from follies it's a wonderful coincidence that it's the greatest hits of how prince i had a good time  perestroika but it's you can it's been true there are encore presentations around the country if you want to see it you can see both parts and it's an excellent production and it may come to the united states well if you're only in new york you might want to go see a new play called charm there was a wonderful feature story in the times this week about sandra caldwell actress in her sixty's who has just come out as trans to play a trans part in this new play sondra called well charm is the name of the play now we of course remember the liberal party scandal gay scandal in britain in the sixty's when germany thorpe was their if your son is gay i didn't want to do this story because they were complaints and so they canceled it and apologized but we have time so i am because the funny thing about the story was that the funny it's outrageous they were they were telling parents you know do you want to have a future or do you want to have grandchildren you better find this out and we will give you the spyware but there's also some things that you might want to look at because you like musical comedy things like i mean seriously this is the kind of stuff it as the courts particularly the analysis that the reason the courts defer to the military is because of military judgment but in this case the military has said absolutely nothing against trans people serbians openly but i am still curious to see whether trump all back away from this madness is analysis of snakeskin use or whether as most people think he will go full steam ahead with this and have a wonderful trip look forward to seeing you all back next week with chris cooper thank you chris for sitting in for the next two weeks and i will be back after that i certainly hope so