OutCasting; Stonewall at 50 — the uprising in context (Part 3 of 3)

i'm a little nervous right now because i think our legal rights are going to be trimmed by this they are being trained by the trump administration they will be trampled by the supreme court for sure we may lose some legal rights but whenever going back of the closet or so were always orozco if it were to fight harder until we will make this and free society for everybody this is now casting public radio's lgbt chief program we don't have to be cleared to be here i'll cast is produced in europe by media for the public good online an outcast media dashboard light and casper and out as the participant june twenty nineteen mark the fiftieth anniversary of the stonewall uprisings in nineteen sixty nine the stonewall inn was a gay bar in your city's greenwich village in those days police raids of gay bars were commonplace newspapers often printed names and sometimes photos people arrested during these raids being publicly outed in this way as what we now think of as lgbt q could lead to the loss of homes jobs and families during one such raid on a hot night in late june nineteen sixty nine pages at the stonewall inn benchley joined by many other

people rose up and fought against the police this led to a series of riots over the next several nights in the wake of the stonewall uprising you activist groups were formed and the cold and the stonewall uprising came to mark a major turning point in lgbt q activism pride celebrations around the world commemorate the events that started at the stonewall inn in late june nineteen sixty nine and this series outcast enter talks with andy how a veteran gay journalist and activist based in new york city and is the co host of the weekly tv news program gay usa early in the series and you're in any talk about what life was like for lgbt people before the early activism of the mansion society and the daughters of politeness they talked about her activism became more militant in the years leading up to the stonewall uprisings the uprising itself the wrath of the liberation activist groups almost immediately afterward and the aids crisis on this program we kicked the story in the nineteen nineties as new drugs are being released that transformed a jedi aids from an almost universally fatal disease to a chronic manageable condition we continue through the fight for marriage equality talk about stone walls role in the context of the lgbt q

rights movement and considered just how much work still lies ahead for the movement officer alex also comments on why it's important that everyone not just lgbt q people have an awareness of stonewall in the movie and this is the last part of a three part series the entire series is available on our website i asked media dot org thanks for joining us again you're welcome so you mentioned earlier about in the mid nineties a show the aides have made the transition from a death sentence to a more a chronic manageable disease it was a gradual it was abrupt they discovered protease inhibitors and it went from night to day if you were the sec before those drugs were put on the market you were due are basically dead unless you have a very slow moving version of the virus which some people did but once those protease inhibitors had in ninety five ninety six they call it the lazarus syndrome you were about to die and you start taking these drugs and then you made a comeback and people have been taking them ever sends to the

point where buckets no fun having a jedi of tickles the rest your life but it is now a manageable disease so around that time same sex marriage say to sort of prickly in a small number of states and not resulted in the defense of marriage act so can you tell us about that sure marge was not on the agenda for them up most of the groups we didn't think there was even the possibility of marriage so we were fighting for things like domestic partnership that if it's that companies and cities it took us until nineteen eighty three to get domestic partner benefits in new york city through a lawsuit for the city employees and many companies did it and some of them and doing it for a long time and the major groups hr see a guilty of all these groups they did not want a fight for march some of it was wow we want to be part of something that's a heterosexual institution that's what they said and some of it was nobody supports this it's going to be too difficult to get

people to fight a so badly or are the big losers but you had gay couples who said no we wanna be married there was a famous couple in nineteen seventy one the what got married in minnesota and eventually their marriage wasn't recognized at the supreme court in nineteen seventy one actually was just recognized by the social security administration saying you've been married since nineteen seventy one and there was another couple but did that and colorado where they were legally married because there was no barrier to people of the same sex getting married was nothing in the law that said people of the same sex couldn't get married so they were married again it wasn't recognized forever there but they did do that but the case that really brought things out in the open was in hawaii some couples wanted to get married and why this was started by a local lawyer who is suing for this eventually evan wolfson he was then working at lambda legal offense got involved with the case and they won that case at the lower court level they want to add that triggered the

defense of marriage act which was passed by congress in nineteen ninety six by a five to one margin that's how much they hated us i mean i could name people today like chuck schumer who's now the democratic minority leader in the senate right at it you know all these people joe biden always people voted for the defense of marriage act no no hillary clinton and bill clinton they supported and bill clinton sided know same sex marriage no no no no no no no it was a tremendous setback and no legal gay marriages it been started know why because the case had been appealed to the whole why supreme court so once the senate passed the defense of marriage act they were allowed to be in it and they did bennett and then the right wing jumped on this and started passing constitutional amendments in as many states as they could referenda banning same sex marriage this was horrendous for people like mississippi in all these states were there was hardly any visible really a moment in many of the states this is being put on the ballot

their dignity and their lives are being put on the ballot and we're losing these things bedtime we and when any of them for the longest time madame a couple towards the end where we prevailed but it was awful it was just awful so tell us what exactly the fed said two things one may be why a one state didn't say why but it's a maybe a state once direct see marriage in the united states up until that time was totally controlled by the states they said who was married states have different was about who can get married among heterosexuals in some states you can marry her cousin and some states you can't write and suffered as different age limits for marriage around the country so the state say you can get married so what the federal government said was you can go get married know why maybe that it a good use of rights but the federal government will not recognize it for federal purposes so you find your tax return you're not married even if you're married in a state the other thing

that they said it was very insidious they said so white and i had to do this if they want to but the other states are not required to recognize those mary just if they don't want to see most and most areas of law of the state recognizes he was married when you move to another state is still not great right but in this case they said of you and you know i recognize it you don't have to recognize it and those were the two parts of the defense of marriage act and they were eventually struck down by two different court decisions one the windsor decision which said that the federal government didn't recognize that i knew it was a very well and nobody wanted to take her case her why she had got married in canada they lived in new york and her wife had died and she was going to have to pay a huge tax bill was a pretty good amount of money of about three and sixty thousand extra dollars on taxes because the federal government wasn't recognizing her as the with no obvious partner and she eventually won

that race and then jamal bar fell brought this case up to say that my state has to recognize it to every state has to recognize that and he eventually won that case so that done all states had to recognize same sex marriage and again those decisions were five before they could be taken away by this court this court could say that was wrongly decided the chief justice the united states john roberts would like you will the marriage decisions you know barbara felon windsor he said there might be a very nice thing to do but it's not a lot of the constitution so watch out because those things can be changed but even when there was an effect state state legalizing same sex marriage is we did make some progress as time went on i mean well first of all some other countries to the netherlands was the first to legalize same sex marriage and then our neighbor to the north in canada they started to do it is first in the provinces and then for the whole country and a lot of people in america would go up to candidate

to get legally married and here's the thing i live in new york new york did not recognize same sex marriage but new york did give allow you if you got married up in canada or eventually in connecticut or any of these other states the start of legalize it when you came back to new york you were recognized as married as what happened to ed wood search or what candidate back to new york she was married even though you couldn't get married and an ar there was a judge and a european korean tv i guess it was oh five i guess who ordered mayor bloomberg to recognize same sex marriage is a start doing it and he appealed to the court of appeals in new york and we lost the court of appeals said york city does not have to recognize that if the mayor had appealed that decision that would've been thousands of legally married gay people your people can come and all over the world i hate him for it but yes states gradually started to oh codify it and recognize it and it had a sort of a snowball effect and then once you had the windsor decision right

which said that the federal government had to recognize it even justice scalia wrote in his dissent you've given them a roadmap for legalizing it across the whole country and us federal judges across the whole country said yes you do have to recognize that here there and everywhere and that happened all very very quickly and i actually just read the other day that the evangelicals or truck space they were so shocked by the marriage decision because they've been so successful in banning same sex marriage that was the air play and they did it and many many many many states right when the supreme court says larry you know you can't do that day that really upset that really mobilize them to want a monster donald trump who was an awful person and they knew it who would slay us the women's rights activists the gay rights activists and and he's doing it is taking away gay and transgender rights as he says they keep saying things like well yes

the same sex marriage is settled law of course it's a lot it settled until it's unsettled and the supreme court didn't change their mind on that and he's put enough federal judges in who may start overturning so that's the backlash they want people who were gonna turn the clock back on gay rights and women's rights and rights for african americans so to sum it might have seen that after marriage equality was achieved the main goal of the gay rights movement was famous for example the empire state pride agenda declared a mission accomplished and clothes that do you think he was right to do so absolutely not they're always going to be issues you know they have a great organization in california that works on these things they pass scores of bills affecting lgbt people every year in california i'm so jealous of them proud of them we have a lot of work to do and the organ many many things to do and many many states of course is you know some states especially in the south are passing laws that say it's totally legitimate to discriminate against gay people especially if you have a religious reason this is the big fight that we're

in today a federal equality act doesn't allow for that you can ever religious exemption to applying the law the sense that the catholic church doesn't afterward an openly gay people for instance right but it doesn't affect that in terms of religion but every religious person is allowed to choose what civil rights law to get it abide by are not abide by were in a lot of trouble as society and that's where the trump administration and the religious right wants to take it i don't need to be so so depressing so it is i mean having to do the gay usa show every week for the last thirty four years every week and talk about these things can be very painful and people say they get depressed by what we talked about but there are there are tremendous triumphs also more more people are opened young people can come out of high school and have to go to their primes and you know their proliferation of images of us on television from across the gender spectrum and the sexual orientation spectrum so we have made a lot progress culturally but

politically this is a very tough country because it's not much of a democracy or controlled by a few small states that get two senators and the electoral college and the like you know monsters like trump so for england as angry as they were not about what faith remains the lgbt community well here's the deal until we get to a point where we can walk down the street had been hand with our partners any place in the country any place in the world where not for it right until we can do everything that they're allowed to do normally were not free and you know that that seems to be a long way off at this point despite all the progress that we've made this is now testing public radio's lgbt to youth program produced any work by media for the public good online about casting media dot org june twenty nineteen mark the fiftieth anniversary of the stonewall uprisings a series of riots that marked a major turning point in lgbt q activism our guest on this podcast series is the veteran gay journalist and activist and the harm he's

talking with abkhazia anger about how lgbt q life and activism have evolved over the decades so some states and municipalities have laws protecting lgbt he writes including newark which sets recently passed and then what's the status of that area didn't just oh you mean the state just recently passed gender we passed a while ago when i was back in two thousand and three most people in the united states live somewhere where they're protected but half the states don't protect us mean even though many cities within those states protect us and there's some states like arkansas with it where some cities have gay rights laws and transgender rights laws they passed a wide laws that say you can't protect gay rights unless the state does and tennessee has done the same thing that's pretty good heinous talk about local control always right wingers say local control local control except when it comes to us so that's why we need the equality act that was just re introduced into the congress which donald trump has never been assigned but it's it's gonna pass the us house of

representatives and they're not faltered in the senate but i doubt that mitch mcconnell's can allow a vote on it but maybe they'll find a way and then that what will trump to trouble probably the top will have to wait for a new president say and significantly singing she says and transgender visibility but over options acceptance and writes are sort of lagging behind gay exception sentence so tell us about where the chance to munich in the stands in terms of what's been accomplished and what sitcom oh it's that's a funny thing cause i've i've known transgender people in what we used to do some people use to call themselves transsexuals back in the seventies and in some ways you know they function does society they were so visible but gus don't forget when you transition most people will transition want to be known as the new gender that they are they don't wanna be known as a transgender person that one of the known as just a woman or a man which made the communist and so there was a lot of problem with visibility in there and open

it that's part of the reason that the trans movement led by mine but now transgender people becoming more assertive more more visible as transgender and they are fighting and people are more aware of it and of course you know i mean i don't want to be too controversial but i have said this before we're all on the gender spectrum were all transgender in that sense you know the man to woman spectrum right the very few people lowered the total end of the spectrum family butcher totally feminine what should i call it or aren't between somewhere right ann gay people have to realize that the reason that people discriminate against us is because we're crossing gender boundaries a man going out with a man that's not right for a man a woman going out with a woman that's that's crossing a boundary and that's why they go after us that's why we've had a lot of success in recent years with sewing for our rights in the absence of laws protecting

sexual orientation and gender identity by citing sex discrimination under title seven titled mind these federal laws that forbid sex discrimination there been cases going back eighteen years where we've won these cases and by the way they're building to a head and they're sitting in front of the supreme court right now and they don't know what to do with them to decide what to do with them an optimistic what the supreme court will do but that's how those laws have been used because it is all about sex discrimination and that's why you know where we're child of the feminist movement of the women's movement that people can accept equality women very tough for them to accept equality of lgbt people so let's put stonewalling to prospective fifty years later would he think of violence overall effect on the lgbt q rights movements well hi ho it's it's because we have an annual march or parade in honor of it and then all over the world and i hope people are still remembering what stonewall was about i'd gone to forty literally straight forty five

pride marches a new yorker like to call them martyrs not parades i'm a little sick of it because it's become too corporate and it's too regimented almost other stuff that one a limited number of people on the street not so actually this year i'm part of a committee call from something called reclaim pride and we're trying to have a separate march from the corporate parade or were just that a march from the stonewall up six revenue to central park like people did in nineteen seventy and other day and then maybe a rally that's what we want to do because that's with them because we want people to remember that there's still a lot to fight for we have a lot to celebrate we are going up but i mean just having a go go boys on a you know on a truck gyrating around or that something to celebrate yes but we can't forget how far we have to go especially around the world so that's where we're having a civil rights march this year well for stonewall fifty in addition to the brake so what you see

as a feature of the lgbt q rights movements i'm a little nervous right now because i think our legal rights are going to be trimmed by this they are being trained by the drug administration they will be trimmed by the supreme court for shore the way it's set up which is why i like what this openly gay candidate for president the people to judge the south bend mayor he says we need to we need to rebalance the court it's it's we need to band members to it and that can be done by the congress and the president and the sponge rob ford they used to change the number of supreme court justice in the nineteenth century all the time washington had sex they were all confirmed on the same day another bounced around for a while until about the eighteen sixties and i kind of settled on nine but this group of nine is not very representative of this country at this point and we are we need a larger quorum and i've had a more balanced court i think i've got about five maybe find a better way to select

justices so that they are judicious and they're not just playing politics i know the other side things are side is playing politics with the courts but we just ate something that everybody can respect so in terms of where we're going we may lose some legal rights but we never going back of the closet or so were always grows that a fight where the fight harder until we will make this and free society for everybody and you know i hope it might my gay male brothers you know or assist gender a will stand up for our transgender brothers and sisters because we need to be out there for them and their fight i work on the board of a group called no alternatives for homeless lgbt youth and the majority of our young people or transgender and that makes them that no leads to almost as for them isn't so hard for them to get employment and things like that and their families throw them out that you have to leave their towns and things so it's a hard time and we have to eat with all stick together around this stuff if we're going to make progress so you say we're not going back into the cotton it

and that's true for those less wordy outburst can muster legal protections make it harder for lgbt q to come out in the first place yup it short and the courts about mr sides on many issues not just marriage but i mean you know if you were to start a gay club in your school the federal courts will order them to do it if your local school district is saying no if you want to go to the prom with his same sex dating the federal federal courts will say yes that you have to do that you can't discriminate on the basis of gender on that so i don't know how much that's gonna change but it would think with the media the way it is with the internet the way it is you can't put the genie back in the bottle in a sort of a good solid i think we're going to end up or in camps although if you live in chechnya you are offended been killing gay people over there in camps so you know if it is happening in various parts

of the world and their place is in the words of wisdom that virtually impossible to be about personal and we need to change that thanks for having me andrea and he joined us from his home in new york city he's a journalist and activist and co host of a weekly tv news programme de usa next a pastor alex reflects on the fiftieth anniversary of the stonewall uprising the fiftieth anniversary of the stonewall riots is an invitation to reflect upon half a century of the modern lgbt q rights movement fifty years in some respects it's an eternity especially for a young person like me but the history of the lgbt q rights movement from both before and after stonewall is rarely talk and not well understood by many people today so it's important that everyone not just lgbt q people caught up about fifty years in context i'm eighteen my left and there's a stretch far back enough to truly recognize many of the advancements in lgbt q rights that were sparked by still i never faced the

experience of having this sexual identity classified as a mental illness i don't fear being harassed and brutalized by the police just for gathering with other lgbt q people it lived through the worst part of the aids epidemic i grew up seeing same sex couples living safely and happily in the communities here but i recognize that i live in a part of the country were being lgbt q is generally pretty well accepted there are many areas in the united states where it's much more difficult for lgbt q people continue to face these difficulties and of course ode to be tissue people face even bigger challenges in other parts of the world the town says stories of fear violence discrimination and suffering that are an inevitable part of remembering the stonewall riots are reminders that we can never be complacent none of the modern rides we lgbt do people have one came without sacrifice and hard work by activists who fought to improve public understanding of these issues and seek to get lawmakers and judges to help reduce discrimination these accounts and stories also remind us of how fragile the bits of a quality we want

actually are in the blink of an eye these advancements could be wiped out the current administration has certainly taken steps to do that and at the supreme court justice clarence thomas recently cited deliberate the case one of the two supreme court cases that established marriage equality as an example of something he thinks the court should undergo fifty years is both an incredibly long time and a surprise me shorter fifty years of countless hours of activism raising money lobbying politicians bring lawsuits and working to change people's attitudes the lgbt q rights movement is an ongoing process of educating and training new generations to continue to advance the movement for equality fifty years is also a continuing history of thousands and thousands of lgbt q people were kicked out of their homes or lose their jobs for being gay bi trans and yet for a social movement to substantially flip the nation's mindset in just fifty years is astonishing i can speak to a lot of the change that happened during the time that i'd been aware of these issues

and there's been a lot of change beyond the legalization of same sex marriage nationwide it feels so different to be queer now compared to ten years ago more people are open to being educated lessening the stigma of being lgbt kids considering the last fifty years of the lgbt rights movement brings two conflicting realities together the progress made since stonewall has changed the lgbt q community for the better in countless ways yet discrimination haven't stopped and challenges against the growing inequality continue as i mentioned people like justice thomas and many others in our country are actively trying to undermine and rivers are progress the status of lgbt q rights evolving and progressing and simultaneously going backwards in little increments year by year month by month we must continue our activism to make more progress even as he fights the people who want to turn back the clock and there's lots of work to be done lgbt people are still discriminated against in all fifty states and even small ways is the final

part of the three part series you can listen to the entire series on our website out testing media dot org that's it for this edition of outcast and public radio's lgbt q youth program or you don't have to be queer to be here on this program has been produced by the casting team including new participants and your cowlicks i'm only dante lucas truth any faster our executive producer is mark sofas out casting is a production of media for the public good more information about how testing is available at outcast immediate dot org to find information about the show was a link for all out testing episodes and podcast link outlasting is also on social media and connect with us on facebook twitter instagram and youtube outcast in media if you're having trouble whether its at home or school or just with yourself call the trevor potter tie it six six forty feet seven three feet six or visit them online at the trevor project dot org trevor project is an organization dedicated to lgbt q youth suicide prevention being different isn't a reason to hate or hurt yourself

eat six six forty eight segment three feet six or online at the trevor project dot org you can also find a link at our site out casting media dashboard and her out casting o g b teaching resources and casper thanks for listening