but the republican senate to the u s senate is celebrating by moving the nomination of a very elegantly anti judge where you heard that before now the u s supreme court this past week punted on the oregon case but it inadvertently opened the door on the fight against the ban on transgender troops we will explain remember those days when we did nothing but explain and go through all the various federal circuits this will not be that complicated but we do need to sort it out a little and there is a flurry of activity good and bad as state legislative sessions come to a close two more murders of transgender women of color and outrage that even the american medical association is calling and a mormon epidemic and the forty nine victims of the pulse massacre are remembered in orlando three years later but not by the president of the united states who opened his campaign for reelection ten minutes from the site you've heard of story corps tell years doris they want your story about being l g b t before stonewall our guest will tell you how you can contribute to the history project right from your own home so that'll be at the end of the show but  sign post with the name of like everybody in our in our constellation well in rainbow colors down there and christopher and gay i can't fully see the monitor from here but i read it before so let's see if i can will get me oh and i should mention that in new york city six places have been named gay historic sites phil and i are landmark preservation commission designated six spots including former homes of james baldwin and audrey lord yes and well there was quite a lesbian community and staten island i'm not sure how many more recently than that and the gay activists concert in the nd floor performance area doing one of her big hits shake it off and jesse tyler ferguson was there but she has a new record out  no sylvia sylvia i think at the seventy three rally or say y'all better i'm down ok and i don't know none of the writings about it have referenced sylvia but i think that's what it is but it's a very  morning if you want to walk in the feed your ancestors walk in the streets as opposed to the heritage of pride parade which won't anymore let you walk in the streets unless you're pre registered marching with an organization you can't just go off the sidewalk and into the streets so the queer liberation march is happening sunday june th stepping off from sheridan's square by the stone hall and at nine thirty am if that's too early for you to join us along the way particularly at bryant park where we're telling people to gather by a leavening am there will be festivities in the park as people are gathering and then the march will come by pause and pick everyone up there and continue up six that avenue into the new i will be out there asking for your comments and the show so and then they'll be a big rally on the great lawn in central park from about one to four you can just come there if you want now there's a nice little video about a minute  previewing this where you have produced a number of little videos so if you go to our reclaim pride n y c dot org website you can find some videos and we're putting them out on social media and this is one that attempts to explain our goal gays and lesbians and trance people were all out in the street open and proud and defined marching uptown from the village concern for a park in broad daylight been exactly a year since the stonewall riots and for the st time we were taking the streets and saying that we were part of this city of this society and we were not going back in the clause that ever again and we kept up the spirit with the march for many years but then something changed and it had always been about the struggle and the celebration but at some point it became corporations get one hundred percent rating on the corporate equality good decks from the human rights campaign but they give most of their corporate donations to right wingers we're going to lower their taxes and keep us from getting equal right wing republican the pride parade they are doing it to advertise themselves to what they regard as an affluent set of consumers yes and i think that corporations should if they want to support us should hold a banner on the side of the march saying you know we one hundred thousand dollars or five thousand dollars a year march or whatever it is and then people can pass that but they're not they're not given big chunks of the we don't let people who sponsor the u s open golf tournament march down the fairway they so the good corporate tents isomers their clients and you know helping the community what are they are they hiring trans women of color are they working to provide jobs and housing and anti discrimination provisions and an end to violence against people are they helping l g b t homeless youth money in any significant way now they are simply featuring happy corporations which really are just cold blooded in there and that's not to say that they lot of them aren't sincere in supporting their l g b tea employees or think they're being sincere or whatever but if you dive a little deeper into their practices yes their money goes to right wing republican politicians who are destroying all our nondiscrimination provisions putting these evil judges on the federal courts it's endless so let's take a little closer look at what their practices actually are and demand better know it but i did i saw one pride event that i really like that i wanted to highlight pittsburgh held its pride parade last weekend and there was a guy who i noticed that one thing that sprung up here and there are these mom hugs that women go to busy events like this and they offer people busy walking down the street a hug because you know some of them been rejected by their families or whatever so this guy decides well it's father's day when the pittsburgh parade is taking place i'll go out and offer dad hugs and that will just be nice for people and he said he came away and he was just blown away because people really were enormously emotional and really went deep on these hugs and and it really taught him a lot about how much people were alienated from their fathers and really needed this kind  you know come on everybody has written about james buchanan that's been disputed how many how many abraham lincoln how many politicians have stood up and said oh by the way we've probably had a gay president so we didn't know about i thought i was fabulous ok musical it doesn't get outside our bubble everything's good hey have you been watching television this month everything is getting outside our bubble but who is watching it will have to see us or you'd be surprised to be surprised was watching us i'd be surprised about a lot of things right well and how is this affecting attitudes the new gallup poll says fifty three this is interesting to me fifty three percent say new civil rights laws are needed to protect l g b t people that's when you say when you put it to them do you want to do more about this only fifty three percent say that whereas ninety three percent support equal opportunity for us well so but they don't necessarily want a law about  it sixty three percent say same sex relations are acceptable eighty three percent says homosexuality should be legal well that's going to be up to the supreme court and i can't even listen to these polls a lot alone well i'm just thinking  interesting because we act like everybody supports us but when it comes right down to it do they want to pass these new laws no they elected donald trump get real well let's talk about him shall we well speaking of evil anti mal judges put on the federal courts the current nominee we're looking at is matthew has merrick nominated to a federal court in texas so anti l g b t that even maine republican susan collins finally came out against him yes but evidently that's not going to be enough to defeat him how bad is he calls trans people delusional says our movement is typified by lawlessness called for a long war against nondiscrimination protections for he the time you see this on friday i guess you're right and that will be their st presidential endorsement and i thought really how could they have not endorsed any presidential candidate but they do endorse l g b t q candidates so we haven't fudged it they said we're sending it back and we want you to rehear this in light of our masterpiece cake shop decision which had nothing to do with the fundamental issues because in the colorado case as we try to keep explaining to people but people outside the bubble don't get it the masterpiece decision was not about saying that a baker had the right to refuse wedding cake to a same sex couple it was about the court ducking that issue and instead said well you know it worked its way up it was in front of the colorado civil rights commission and one of those commissioners said nasty things about religion so that's inappropriate so busy we're not going to rule for the couple men still stolen this because what they did with the the oregon case is say go back to where you started in oregon and look at this in light of the masterpiece case but all that means is you have to go back and make sure there at the supreme court because they have not decided yet whether these bakers are in public accommodation that are required to adhere to state laws this is about state laws against discrimination and the interesting thing is that is that of course the court even people like clarence thomas believe in state sovereignty which is why and they tell their ox is gored as well which is why in the double jeopardy case where they said if you're convicted of a federal property tried on a federal offense it can be tried by a state court that was a seven to two decision by the court with an ominous note from clarence thomas which we should note because he said yeah i'm going along with this one because you know but it's not because i necessarily believe in starry decisis meaning keeping up precedent because i'm ready to overturn a lot of things and he cited the old burger fell decision and he said let's just read justice roberts dissent you know burka fell and we're ready to overturn that if it comes back if these issues come back to us well the current situation is busy that the nondiscrimination cases have been essentially postponed they have been put in the corner as as the court figures out what to do and that look they could have i've taken these cases and decided right away they have the potential for the five votes to say that these bakeries are not subject to nondiscrimination laws over religious freedom they could say religious freedom trumps the state nondiscrimination laws and they have not done that well and they have resisted doing all the religious right has something called project blitz which is to get its from christian nationalists to get all these religious freedom was in the state legislature as we've reported yet evidence of that but they had a hearing in the house about it these by the way project once is a project of the congressional prayer caucus foundation which spearheads all kinds of anti gay anti abortion things you could learn more let's watch dot org they have twenty model bills well look i am under no illusion that the court may not eventual a decide against us in these cases but i think at the moment they're having a very hard time saying that public accommodations are not covered under these nondiscrimination laws so i think that's good for us so better a delay then a loss at this point i'm going to joyrides for a few more you well and the other case is the military case where the th circuit on the west coast ordered ok you got it you got to you've got to hear this again and this is a great opening for us because now we can try it on the merits and they said you've got to apply heightened scrutiny yet to trans people as sex discrimination so this gives them a tremendous opportunity to create a court record that could help us i'm going to try explaining it too far and what i think is a little simpler way because there or supplement what you said we had four cases on trans people serving in the military that were going up through the system in different circuits around the country and as they headed for the supreme court the supreme court said we're not going to decide on whether the ban on trans service is legal right now but we're going to let it go into effect we're going to lift the injunctions against it while we still consider whether or not it's legal for a nice it's not nice at all so so the cases on the exclusion of trans people from the military are still in front of the supreme court like the cake case the supreme court has not reached a final decision on this yet but what they said was in the meantime we're lifting the injunctions the ban can go into effect which is really bad because usually when they do that that means that they're inclined to enforce the ban right but they haven't yet what they have done is said  we're still considering this and meanwhile you can be mean to trans people so in the midst of this the washington court says well we have to reconsider the ban but you have to do it with this heightened scrutiny which means you have to have a standard as you look at this that says you have to really really really prove that it is bad for the military to have trance paypal serving right so the  illegal groups national center for lesbian rights a c l u whatever are ecstatic they say it's a game changer because this gives them the chance to go back and and prove with a very high bar that in fact it's not a problem by the less optimistic that they'll do that for partisan gerrymandering which is the other cases that we have yet to hear the decision about what kind of spirit mannering was this this was racial this was this was virginia in a court court decision you know saying these are racially discriminatory law the republicans challenge that and the court said no racial discrimination i mean that you know and even what's his name oh because thomas was with us but but the part is a good reason for everybody to focus on the congress and on the senate in the next election we're going to have a lot of good bills that have come out of the house lined up for the senate if we ever get it back and good news from puerto rico where  the governor had proposed a religious freedom bill a religious liberty and ricky martin blasted him and said n g governor and he and the governor went this is from the republican party that defends the muslim ban yet now we have a number of very sad stories about all the war murders there are deaths of black trans women around the country and it's just they the death toll is climbing and it is shocking that this is not given more tense and prominence and it was good to see the american medical association declare this essentially to be an epidemic tha shot to death and shot to death just a couple of blocks away from where her friend ashanti carmen who was also killed just a few months ago i think  other black trans woman and so as these murders pile up here in dallas detroit i think one starts to wonder whether there is something more going on here than just a case at a time well we've been telling you we told you about the murder of malaysia booker and it was one of three recently and they arrested the guy named ken lyles and they are looking for a link to the murders of extravaganza black trans woman who died while in custody at rikers island jail here in new york city she was in jail for a number of sort of minor crimes missing former  appearances couldn't make the five hundred dollars bail to get out and she the story of the corrections department is she was found dead in her cell we are all waiting to find out what the actual cause of death was what the actual circumstances were because none of that has been talked about publicly i went to her or wake in the bronx this week and it's just heart wrenching there are dozens of family and friends there everybody just torn up about her death and there weren't any protests there weren't any you know people rejecting her it was a really loving well gathering of people it would be great st of all if we reform the bail system and reform rikers but but also to get resources to these folks in these situations that community groups yeah put the bio up you know with cetera well there are efforts to do a bail fund but they need more legal help more bell fund availability but really better living conditions jobs housing all of that that busy make it possible more possible for them to survive speaking of violence in albuquerque they arrested a biker for trashing the rainbow cross walk there with burnouts but there's another  have hanging and there's some question about whether it was suicide or whether it was a murder there on the right that's her with her mother clearly a stories on conversion therapy in new jersey a judge ordered conversion therapy provider shut down the jewish institute for global awareness and calif and you know the attorney general there is asking to shut down river view christian academy for of students including l g b t students denying the medical care putting restrictions on their communication with their parents i guess that should get us into the middle of sparks story now i've got another death of a trans woman the woman show out leon who died in ice and just having gotten out of ice custody in texas or arizona somewhere around there the family is now suing because of show on a treatment by ice she's the nd known trans woman to die in or near i guess ice custody and there's clearly a lot of  neglect at best going on for everyone in custody situations and so the family is suing in hopes of provoking more of an investigation and more accountability a lot of those hatred is stirred  by religious groups and in some cases in schools and that's why nicholas sparks the romance writer is in the news because he founded a christian academy a pitch for the school down in north carolina and the former head master and c e o is suing over a pattern of racism homophobia and harassment sparks did not want the school to be welcoming and inclusive now all this got out because his e mails were reprinted and i he's apologized but yes he has apologized but the evidence is all there in the mails he was against a gay straight alliance student group he was against any acknowledgement or help for the students he wanted it all kept quiet don't talk about it handle this quietly and it's not a pretty story right in the district of columbia three teens were arrested in the attack on a gay man there  the guy in brooklyn and the d a s office and they went back and looked at all his cases which were illegitimate and hackensack new jersey there's a board of ed trustee francisco pilia who got extremely vocal about the new law in new jersey that requires schools to teach l g b t q history and she that just set her off she said i want to hear about  and down there in orlando where the president spoke this weekend didn't open his campaign and didn't make any mention of it he was in orlando ten minutes from the balls but if the memorial service one thousand five hundred dollars turned out and they w so now it's been reissued the state of florida will not tolerate hatred towards the old g b t in a span of communities we will stand boldly with the orlando one such from florida community against terrorism and hate except we would support a fa state wide g b t rights law that wasn't written down there but that's the truth we will not let hate win and of course our transit an executive order that excluded us as well and our president this week was in orlando announcing his re election campaign what two minutes for a pulse and ten no mention at all no but a gag gaze against guns held a vigil here in new york with the human being display that they created after the original massacre three years ago where they have people dressed in white forty nine people in advance and silently parading with pictures and descriptions money and there was a dust up even at the mall moral service local wal makers are proposing ten million dollars from the hotel tax in orlando from the museum and the state legislature even put up half a one billion dollars  guidelines you meet the guidelines we're taking the right amount to do you in hollywood california movie producer director bryan singer has paid the alleged rape victim who accused him of rape one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and was seventeen when the alleged attack occurred but there are a lot of other allegations against singer that are not settle yet brandon straka is suing the center center here for twenty million dollars because they cancelled me is a scheduled appearance he's kind of a right wing guy he says they discriminate against and the denver's who is showing off its gay male flamingo kind of international news yet we've buried one of the headlines ecuador's constitutional court voted for marriage equality last week  and since we were in ecuador let's go busy to guatemala nearby  is the st out l g b t member of congress graduation yes and then we will hopscotch over to italy where a female navy couple had a civil union ceremony and they look so cute i just had to put them in there even though it's a mess and then maybe four years ago and the picture went viral because it's so charming and the rings were carried by their bulldog and they have a lot of  bulldogs it's a civil union but some people refer to it as a merry confused she says we've never had any problems with the navy i have problems with my father she said but he's coming around bermuda is going to have its st pride parade aug st you remember they have this huge debate about marriage legalization which is still going on to some extent and in the country of georgia the tbilisi pride parade is scheduled st one it's now receiving huge to rats the from the right wing there is the government has asked them to cancel it but they're going ahead and in the u k captain had a graph the highest ranking trans woman in the army was awarded of buckingham palace and she's in charge of like transgender issues for the army all right well broadway cares have their broadway bears benefit they raised a record two million bucks over two performances how to travel theme we can't show you the video going to put it in our e mail it's marked not safe for work because there's some there's some due to the there but you can we will link to it in our e mail yeah and democrats are a lot of demo democrats are calling for an end to a ban on gay many familiar faces in younger days this was made in eighty two and there's audrey or it hanging out at a cafe and talking to the filmmaker isn't just casually and now once we were young and alive stories but we'll do other stories of earlier life with our guest and joining us is radio veteran dave isay who was been doing that for thirty years and a project you probably heard of if you listen to n p r story corps which captures the stories over the years of african americans latinos teachers veterans people who wanted to remember nine hundred and eleven victims and now you were doing a project called one of our booths and you record an interview about your life with the help of a facilitator and people think of it as if i it's a forty minute session if i had forty minutes left to live what would i say to this person who means so much to me you guys you know are doing interviews that you know the mike from so it's the largest collection of human voices ever gathered on this is what we're doing is collecting the wisdom of humanity and it's very much about honoring the stories of everyday people the poetry and grace and beauty that's kind of hiding in plain sight all around us if we just take the time to listen as you guys well kno but you're not doing oral histories you're not doing a whole busy life here no it's forty minutes so i mean it meets a strict definition of oral history because it's someone who knows what the story of their person and we're recording it but it is totally citizen it's you talking to someone you care about and and it's more i think it's people talk about what's really important in their lives and they choose what they want to talk about when you do an interview the facilitator who's with you when you do what we call a signature interview one of our boos will always say you know ask that question you've always wanted to ask because you have the permission to talk about important things right we also a few years ago created an app that makes it possible to record story corps stories any time any place and with one tap upload it to the library of congress so we are doing a special project that we want to get you and your audience involved in and in honor of stonewall fifty where we are asking the country to pick up our app and honor an elegy t q elder with an interview so that we can capture the stories of what it was like to live before stonewall i heard you mention john skag the audio the last segment what was it like to live before stonewall so that we can capture those stories before they're lost you know there's not that much history our focus is on rural stories people of color trends and we want to get those voices and honor them and to us that's kind of a really meaningful way to celebrate the th anniversary of stonewall so let's roll back on your head about how this came know and he so after my dad we run the picture there of the two of them we should put it up after my dad after when my dad my it took me completely by surprise when my dad came out and i actually despite all the many never fixed up on it wow you know he was a gay activists it didn't occur to me that he was actually gray but you know these things happen and you know when when he came out i was i was really distressed and felt like you know that you know that our my life had been all lies and all the kind of things that kids can go through and he mentioned stonewall to me in passing in a conversation i had just started making radio documentaries and i decided that a way to try and figure out what was going on was to record the stories of the people who had been at stonewall so i did a documentary thirty years ago called remembering stonewall where i got to know everybody you know sylvia rivera became one of my very close friends and all the whole gang and i met some of the most incredible courageous people i'd ever met in my life and did this documentary which i dedicated to my dad and that was the beginning of kind of us reforming our relationship to last until he died on the anniversary of stonewall nine years ago eight years really think about it that much and then you know he died very suddenly he was diagnosed with cancer on a he was working diagnosed on a friday and he was dead by the next tuesday he had been working up until that friday and then that night i listen to the interview with my dad and i have i mean old that i have young kids and i realized this was the only way they were going get to know this person who is such a huge you know figure in my life and you know i thought story corps couldn't mean any more to me than it did but at that moment the rubber really hit the road so it's really important that we sit and we take the time now and we don't wait and we interview the people who are important with us because it's an incredible way of telling them that you love them so the key thing here and again to repeated for our viewers yes they can do this from their homes and if they go to the website yeah which is story corps dot org backslash outloud yeah they can get a hold on yes on how to do it and it's very easy and what we're going to ask you to do is to  pledge and pledge how many people are going to interview get organizations involved we want thousands of people to be interviewed by the end of the year and again it's just i think a really appropriate way to celebrate the th anniversary of stone history of what life was like and we also you know we have broadcast on n p r we at the stories you guys have run an animation or two and you're welcome to run any animation so we create this little poem these little poems out of interviews some interviews of kind of who we are as human beings that hopefully will last forever and just remind us you know of you know the power of stories all around and we will we will link in our e mail if you are on our e mail list to two of the animations s one of which we've run on the show before but get let's go find the population that you're seeking here again you say people who were around before snowball i mean i was around but i was like fifteen is ok but you're focusing on what you want to hear about our experiences in the harry but but yet you know the and it can be you interviewing someone who is important in your life a mentor i mean i was just there's a story which i also sent to you guys that we broadcast a week ago about it was an eighty year old guy who was remembering someone who was his mentor and he used to hang out in bryant park who would who was also eighty and told him about what it was like being gay in the eight hundred and eighty s in new york you know so you know find find someone who you want to say thank you to and just ask them what was you know what was it like being gay when you were growing up what was you know what were some of the hardest moments what were some of the most joyful moments how did you come out to what was the reaction of people you know this is all this is important stuff angry yeah now people are angry but they don't do abusive things and people talk about painful things that have happened to them you know but they're not they're not they're not being cruel to other people when they're participating in the center just can they be anonymous they can and you can also on the app you can make it public for the library of congress or you can have it just be private for people who are who site and then give their names to story corps or you can just keep it on your phone if you want to or you can put your name on it and you can be in the library of congress right and you know the interesting thing is when when what happens in the story corps booth is incredibly intimate and we are nonprofit in every possible way and we're a public service in every possible way and when you come to story cor record an interview at the end you can sign a release or not sign a release this is in the signature interviews and it's true of the app interviews as well and if you don't sign a release you've had this experience and you can put it in a in a safe place and we're thrilled and i thought we'd have a compliance rate of seventy percent because what happens in a site in the release because what happens is so incredibly intimate as you know from hearing some of these and the releases have been signed by ninety nine nine percent of participants everybody why do you why do you think that because people want to know that they matter and they won't be forgotten it's very important to people to have this record you know and to know that their time on earth won't you know mattered right and they haven't gotten around to writing their books that's right that's right that's right  stonewall on products still exist and wasn't sure so so i did so interesting enough i'm flying to l a tomorrow with my son we i'm not going to tell that story it's a little controversial at all it's but basically sorry i'll tell you off the air we created this documentary thirty years ago and you tube bought the rights to the documentary and created an absolutely is the old the documentary it's lance bass and all these amazing people actually they brought younger people in to lip sync the voices on this radio documentary and did it in i have very low expectations of ho everything up yeah and i had low expectations of this is well and then they sent it to me and it was gorgeous they did a fantastic job so it's a thirty minute spent you know it'll be available on youtube for free on june th and it is a video it'll be i think it'll be out there pretty pretty widely they really did an extraordinary job and i have to say the person who it's a lot of you tube stars and i confess i am not now not my area of action but the person who played sylvia rivera treasure trove and i only worry that we are producing so much content that no one will ever get through it you know but the thing about the thing about this is that this is in the world today we're there's so much content that's created that it's disposable and this stuff last forever so even if it's one hundred years from now or two hundred years from now or five hundred years from now when people go back to it it will be gone back to and because of the nature of the way we've set this up these conversations are always important right so they're they're very rich and deep and i