 I'm Keith Ghostland. I'm Linda Quinlan. And this is All Things LGBTQ. We are taping this week on Wednesday, December 2nd. Anna's off for this episode, so you will have to put up with Linda and I, which means there will be no stories about Poland. We want to start by acknowledging that All Things is produced by Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which is unseeded indigenous land. All righty. So should we have headlines? Absolutely. Okay, well then I'll start. Laverine Cox and her friend were attacked while walking in the park. Colorado Gay Governor Jared Polis and Polis and his partner test positive for COVID. The election in Florida for two senators, no, in Georgia for two senatorial seats will affect LGBT people in the United States. The runoff will be determining who controls the Senate and what gets prioritized in the next few years. Deb Prine, a pioneer columnist on LGBTQ issues dies at 62. Trans women in prison. Elliot Page, the star of Juno, comes out as transgender. We'll have more about that. And the LGBTQ marching band performed during the Thanksgiving Parade in New York City for the first time ever in history. Two lesbians of color named to the White House staff if they're confirmed. Funeral home that fired Amy Stevens who died last year is to pay $250,000 to her estate. As we recall, she was fired from a funeral home as a funeral home director when she told her boss that she was transitioning. Skyler Heath, 20, a transgender woman of color was murdered in Miami and her death is being investigated as a homicide. And another transgender woman of color, Che Meshia, has been killed in Virginia. Her car crashed and she was found dead inside. She'd been shot. I don't know what to say about all of this. It's just unbelievable. John Morris is remembered as a gifted writer and trans activist. She was 94. Her son said of his mother who was a famous travel writer that she is now on her greatest journey. Trump appointed judges and conversion therapy in Florida. We'll have more about that. And Rachel Maddow and I don't know if everybody heard this, but if you haven't, you can go on MSNBC and hear how she talks about her partner having COVID. And it was very moving spot on. And if you haven't seen it, I really suggest it's worth a listen. You might want to do that. And Billy Porter is to direct a trans teen rom-com called What If. And I think that's been, Keith will have to check with Keith too, but I think that was already a movie at one time or a play. But anyway, this will be his first directorial debut. So, Chris, so, Keith, what do you have? Okay, I think What If was... It was a play, I thought. It was a theater piece and Billy Porter is adapting it so that it will go now into a digital version. So, I want to start with a trivia question, which I didn't run past Linda before we started taping. So, let's see if she knows the answer. Gaetan Dugas. That name sounds familiar. If so, why? I also want to acknowledge that today would have been Matthew Shepard's 44th birthday. And as Linda will be sharing with you, the incident recently with Laverne Cox, even though there's a lot of work that's been done about bias and hate-motivated crimes in this current era of accelerated hate speech, we still have so much more work to do. I also want to talk some about local events. I want to put a notice out again about the time health forums that will be coming up. They will be virtual events rather than being centered on geographic regions. They will be focused on issues. So, as those notices come out, look to see if there's an issue that's of interest to you, and then we'll make sure you can get connected to the virtual meetings that happens. I'm going to talk a little bit about Barry and how in their effort to recognize racial injustice, they may have just done the opposite. We're going to talk a little bit about the Vermont Legislature and all women positions of leadership in the Senate and a new woman speaker of the House. I'm going to talk a little bit about some national events. I'm going to put out that Monday, December 14th, is when the Electoral College makes their official votes for who will be the next president. I'm going to do a follow-up on that California Supreme Court. Exactly what happened, who he is, and the significance of it. I also want to talk a little bit about the U.S. Supreme Court and a recent decision that they have made and what that might portend for the LGBTQ plus community and why we should be very concerned. And then I have just enclosing a brief recognition of an international event that will be of interest to our regular viewers. So, Linda. All righty. Well, I have, oh, I wanted to tell you that Becca Ballant made the national news as head of, I saw it in the advocate, so that's pretty good. And so I have now a clip that is called Born to Be, which follows the work of Dr. Jess at Mount Sinai Medical Center for Trans-surgery. So here's the trailer. Human beings are complex. Everything, including gender, is represented by diversity. You're fighting every day. You're fighting to be who you are. You're fighting to feel comfortable in your own skin. And that's just like that home. And then you have to go outside and you have to like fight a whole another battle. When you see yourself, what do you see that? Maybe you be interested in changing. Not every patient wants to have a surgical transition. You might just change your hair color, your makeup, the way you dress. You don't have to have surgery. I see a subset of the transgender population, only those patients who desire transitional surgery. Goodbye to the space. She has this internal image of herself that is very mismatched to her external appearance. We're just going to make her external face in her internal identity match. It's going to bring more to the table. It's going to bring a lot to the table, baby. Oh, yes. I mean, if they call today, they won't get an appointment for a year. Don't get on the waiting list. How could there be 400 patients? Oh my god, we need so much help. Insurance is giving me a hard time about some of the notes, not medically necessary, cosmetic, deferred, and I delay. I had to cancel two vaginal classic cases because I was definitely ill. And if we cancel them, how are we going to find time to do that surgery? We're booked six months in advance. Remember, this is a work in progress. Oh my gosh. And I love it. And I love it. And I love it. And I love it. There isn't a way for surgeons to learn now. There's no formalized training program. There are no standards. This is a new operation. We're inventing this. You're pioneering. It's amazing, Dr. Jane. I'm ready. Nervous? Yeah. Are you? I deserve any healthy and happy life, just as anyone else does. I cannot, like, I can't, I can't express how happy I am. You're going to be very grateful to have you here today. And then we have the Salvation Army. Has it really changed? They say they have that they are no longer discriminating against LGBTQ people. I don't know if we should take them at their word or not. I see Keith shaking his head. Maybe he'll have a commentary on that. But they have never said whether or not they were against or for conversion therapy. And I'd like them to answer that question. The Supreme Court and Indiana, I'm going to talk a little bit more about that. And David Dinkins, a former mayor of New York City from 1990 to 1993, was an LGBTQ advocate and he has died over the last few days. Lynn Conway, a tech pioneer who worked for IBM 40 years ago was fired when she transitioned. IBM has apologized better late than never, I guess. And so we'll talk a little bit about Laverne Cox. Well, she and a friend, and she didn't say who the friend was, were, and she started in, or she started and starred in Orange is the New Black, among other things. And she was walking with a friend in an LA park when they were assaulted. A man approached them and aggressively asked them for the time. Then asked, are you a guy or a girl? Laverne's friend who was unnamed told him to fuck off. The men, the man then started to attack the woman. They were just socially distancing walking. Laverne called 911 and the man ran away. And so as far as I know, they still don't have him or know who he is. And Debra Prince, a pioneering columnist on LGBTQ issues dies at 62. Debra Prince or Debra Price? Debra, is it Price? Yes, Debra Price, I'm sorry. And she died at 62. She had the first column on LGBTQ issues to be nationally syndicated to mainstream outlets. Her wife, Joyce Murdoch, said she died of intersyndio pneumonia, which is an autoimmune illness. And if I might add, in 2000, Debra and Joyce came to Vermont to be one of the first couples to enter into a civil union. And the then justice of the peace from Plainfield, Vermont may have been the person who officiated for them. Well, there's some local trivia that of historic value. And I assume she was a very nice person. Yes, very nice. And then there's this, the trans woman says she has been sexually assaulted 14 times in a Georgia prison. Ashley Diamond won a historic settlement in 2016. But when she had a parole violation and was sent back to prison, things were exactly the same, she said. So she's being, she's still being assaulted and refused medication she needs. Georgia is again being sued. Hello. Elliot Page, the star of Juno, comes out as transgender. Porter, Elliot's wife is a dancer and said that trans people are a gift to the world and pledges to support them through this transition. Page, star of movies like Juno and Inception, revealed their news yesterday saying I am transgender. My pronouns are he and they and my name is Elliot. Page and Porter were married in 2018. A very brave move for him. Two lesbians of color named to the White House communications staff by President-elect Biden are Karine Jean-Pierre, who is a Black, and will be Principal Deputy Press Secretary and Peely Tobah, a Latinx, will be Deputy White House Communications Director. So I'm really excited about the diverse cabinet that Biden has put together so far. It's very impressive. There are a few that I could talk about at some other point who are to Wall Street or corporation associated, but that's another story and we'll get to that at another time. And Trump appointed judges, fine conversion therapy ban unconstitutional. A federal appeals court blocked enforcement of two Florida laws banning the use of conversion therapy in minors saying that it violated free speech. So well now go to Keith who will have some local news. That's really distressing about the conversion therapy and that they were trying to base their decision on free speech versus the religious exemption which most other states have been putting in place. But let's go to Barry, our own backyard, where following the death by police of George Floyd, Councilwoman Erica Reel made a proposal that the city fly the Black Lives Matter flag in city park. There was resistance and they have been debating this issue since then. They have just decided that in a compromise move that what they would do is fly a different flag each month for the next 24 months. They then retracted that proposal and said no what they were going to be doing is flying the or displaying the Black Lives Matter flag for the month of December and then in January they are going to display the thin blue line flag. If the intent was to highlight the racial injustice inequity that was clearly demonstrated by the murder of George Floyd, this succession of flags would seem to undo that. So and I did not see where the council was taking this issue back up or if it was under reconsideration. As Linda has pointed out, the new configuration in our Vermont legislature has gotten some national recognition particularly with the nomination and what will look like the certain election of Becca Ballant as the president pro tem of the Vermont Senate. What we should keep in mind about our upcoming legislative session, they will be meeting the first Tuesday in January but they're looking at it being a virtual event that the cases of COVID are skyrocketing here. They cannot bring that many people into one place at one time to conduct all of the ceremonial processing as has been done usually. So for some of the functions, the House will be meeting at the Berry Auditorium. The Senate will continue to meet at the State House because there are only 30 members they can spread them out. But what they're predominantly looking at doing is the same protocol that they had used last year which is all of the committee work and the floor debate will be virtual events so that we can go in via the legislative website and watch all hearings as they're happening. One of the advantages to this is that all of these will be taped. So if there were two hearings that you wanted to watch they're occurring at the same time, you can watch one live, one of the taped one or you can always go back in and look at the archive tapes. What we are going to be missing though is the direct constituent interaction with legislators. You know you're not going to be able to sit in the cafeteria and have casual conversations or have an informal discussion about you know such as the older Vermonters bill that went through during the last session. You know here are the limitations on the language you're using and how the LGBTQ plus and underrepresented communities might be excluded and be able to work out some compromising outside of the formal process. However if you have testimony you want to provide they will make arrangements for you to testify virtually in the committee hearing. Also looking at the house it looks as though Jill Krowinski will be the next speaker of the house. She will again be a woman speaker this will be the I believe the fourth woman speaker in Vermont legislative history and the majority leader is they believe will be Emily Long who is from New Thing. So in the Senate both Beck is the president pro tem, Allison Clarkson is the majority leader, Cheryl Hooker as the party whip, all women in positions of leadership the same is looking to be coming true in the house as well. So Vermont is doing some very interesting things. So I'm going to let it go back to Linda and then I'll come back and talk a little bit about some national stuff and then my final international reference. All right I just have one story left that I was going to talk about which is about the Supreme Court review of an Indiana case on parenthood of homosexual couples is a case we have to watch in case it makes its way to the Supreme Court. Eight lesbian couples who use sperm donors to have children are fighting the state of Indiana to have their parenthood recognized on the birth certificate of their children. In the petition box, in the petition box versus Henderson asked whether a state consistent with the 14th amendment due process may adopt a biology based on a birth certificate system when heterosexual couples use a sperm donor the husband is always considered the father. So this will be very interesting and this is one of these cases and you know as Keith talked about too these are the cases that are going to try to start to whittle away at our rights and they're going to come up more and more and more in different states and so this is one to watch you know like if you adopt it if if you're a heterosexual couple and you adopt a child the person the adopted parents become the parents if there's a sperm donor in a heterosexual relationship even though the father didn't give the sperm he's still on the birth certificate considered the father so it would seem to me that this wouldn't that this would apply to also to gay couples but we'll see um and so we'll watch it. Keith? Actually I had that case listed to bring up talking about the U.S. Supreme Court because they are taking it up. Oh they are okay and and one of the commentaries was you know this was the case that was originally filed in Indiana in 2017 and in the past the U.S. Supreme Court has deferred taking up cases similar to this deferring to the state courts because what happens on birth certificate is a state decision however now that they have that new justice on the court. What's her name? Amy Conan Barrett. They clearly see this as an opportunity to start chipping away at those LGBTQ rights that have been granted looking at as Alito and Clarence Thomas have referenced trying to undo marriage equality. The premise in this case is called presumption of parenthood and in Vermont it should not be as much of an issue because when we redid the parenting statutes these were some of the issues that we were dealing with. However where my concern is coming from is a decision that recently came out of the U.S. Supreme Court and it was a case that was came out of New York and it was filed by the Catholic diocese and the Orthodox Jewish community particularly in Brooklyn and it was in response to Governor Cuomo's COVID restrictions that houses of worship could only have 25 people and look how that went and the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the religious freedom saying that it was unconstitutional but they also gave an indication about how future arguments may need to be crafted. They were saying that one of the reasons they were deeming it to be unconstitutional is because the governor had specifically identified homes, communities of worship rather than a public gathering restriction. Because he made it specific to houses of worship that's what they said was unconstitutional. The other case that's coming up that we really need to watch is Fulton versus the city of Philadelphia and this is the Catholic social services agency that contracts with the city of Philadelphia to look for foster parents and to place children in their homes and they have categorically refused to consider LGBTQ plus foster parents. So what the city of Philadelphia did is withdrew their federal funding because they were not in compliance with Philadelphia's non-discrimination statutes. The case before the Supreme Court is going to be if they do or not have the right to discriminate and still qualify for federal funding and we know how the current administration is supporting this piece of legislation at this court case. The other case that was argued on Monday is about the census and people know that Governor Scott appointed me to Vermont Census Commission so I've been very attentive to census related issues. This is from the current administration asking that undocumented immigrants be removed from the census count. Now the U.S. Constitution says it's a complete count of everybody. They did not qualify citizenship status or any other criteria. Everyone gets counted and that is what the reapportionment is based upon. That means if the current administration can get these undocumented immigrants removed states such as New York and California which are traditionally Democratic states would lose seats in the U.S. House of Representatives so they have a large investment in seeing that the undocumented get removed from those census numbers. Now I'm a little confused about how exactly what they're going to use for an algorithm to decide who is undocumented because we did not include citizenship questions on the current census. Maybe if you have a name they'll decide you know. Well the census is aggregate numbers. Your name is not included. Your name only shows up and I want to say it's 50 years after the fact. Until that point in time it's sealed. Nobody can get at it. So we were kind of part of the conversation was are these people who were being held for deportation or there was something already happening that identified an undocumented status so they were going to reduce an aggregate count from an aggregate count. There wouldn't be a matching of individuals. It would just be numbers minus numbers. The other concern as we get closer to inauguration is what seems to be a slash and burn strategy. And this is an old military strategy that as you are retreating you burn everything in your wake so that whoever is coming after you has no resources. And some of the things that has been occurring is within the Department of Justice and within the intelligence community. They're taking the classified career members and making them exempt employees which means that the current administration could merely say your services are no longer required. You can leave now so that the incoming administration would lose all of that historical knowledge about how things work and what they're also going to also would lose is a clear documentation of and this are the things that were done during the current administration. So you wouldn't know what it is you needed to fix because there would be nobody there to tell you. One of the other things and this is the one that just makes you shake your head spy planes. Yeah the current admit yeah Linda loved this one we talked about this before we started taping. The current administration withdrew from the international agreement that allows all of the developed nations with nuclear weaponry to fly reconnaissance missions to track what each other is up to. So not only did the current US administration withdraw from that agreement they're in the process of dismantling the only two spy planes that can do this. I know it boggles the mind doesn't it? Well and it's at this point that the theater of the absurd comes in but the last piece that I found truly distressing is that the current administration is accelerating their youth of the death penalty. Oh yeah and they have five people slated for execution before the inauguration. One will be the first woman who has been executed in over 70 years and everyone else are men of color but what is truly insidious is they expedited a policy revision that said barring anything in state statute that would prohibit it that you are not merely restricted to using a lethal overdose you could also opt to use electrocution hanging or a firing squad. I have no further comment but to leave you on a much more happy note Sven and Nathan remember them? If I mentioned that they were a gay couple who lived at the Australia Sea Life Sydney Aquarium and two years ago they made a nest and the handlers at the aquarium gave them an egg that they hatched. Laura is now two years old happy birthday Laura but what the handlers have said is that you know Sven and Nathan were such good parents that it is practiced within the aquarium that penguins who have multiple eggs and they will only nurture one or if there's an egg that's neglected they will give it to nests that have no eggs so Sven and Nathan have just become parents again and Laura who is now two years old has her own nest and egg and is about to become a mother which will make Sven and Nathan grandparents. That's amazing. Isn't that great? I love that. And I think it was fun that we've been around long enough to follow Sven and Nathan and we may have to start a fan club. I know and Anne will be disappointed she didn't get to tell that story but you know no when she comes back you know Laura may have hatched the egg so she can then report on that so going back to our trivia question. Before you get to that I just wanted to make a comment about like you know these law you know these people going to the supreme court and you know we have to keep in mind the same thing we did you know like if you look at abortion now it's virtually impossible to get one in many states in quite a few states and it's the same whittling way of rights that you know we've seen this now we know how this works we really really really need to stay on top of this and and somehow um and I don't know how but be really aware make sure you know what's going on and fight back in any ways that we can because this is really important and it's going to be and these things are going to be going to the supreme court now for the next two knows how long so I think what they've shown us is that when it becomes an issue of public welfare or civil rights versus religious freedoms right that as a court they're going to be ruling on the side of religious freedoms which means that we have much more work that we need to be doing in our own backyard to ensure that protections are in place and that those protections when we draft them and when they're passed as legislation we've acknowledged the potential for a challenge based upon religious freedoms and we have taken steps to respond to that absolutely so our trivia question about gaitan dugas did you remember the name no would it help if I also made reference to monday december first was world aids day gaitan dugas was referenced in randy schultz's book and the band played on as patient zero now here is the back story that most people don't take the time to find out randy schultz was an investigative journalist in san francisco and when hiv and aids really became prevalent he started doing some research you know how long had this been around what was the cdc response you know what were they missing why didn't we count and he started looking at records from you know the departments of health and gaitan dugas was in the california numbers but he wasn't referenced as patient zero oh he was actually patient oh and oh referencing he was out of state he was not a california resident and what randy was trying to point out and it wasn't that he was trying to say that gaitan was the first person and this is who brought hiv and aids to our community what he was trying to show was how the cdc didn't do their work that he was able by virtue of what we now call contact tracing was able to identify gaitan in multiple samples from multiple departments of health from across the country he was what would be called a vector transmission and if randy was able to do it why couldn't the cdc and for us looking at covet contact tracing is one and our vermont department of health does it exceptionally well and it is going to be one of the primary means by which to be able to identify spread and to effectively respond to it however looking at hiv and aids the epidemic isn't over there are estimated 1.2 million people living in the us who are hiv positive current estimate is one in seven may not even know that they're hiv positive there are over 40 000 new cases diagnosed each year highest rates of infection are in the south and that might explain why this is really a crisis not only for men who have sex with men people of color latinx the indigenous communities those people who do not have access to adequate health care and resources there is a new campaign called you you and it's not the unitarians this is the undetectable untransmittable campaign what they have found is that if you are taking the hiv suppressing retrovirals once you reached an undetectable level with your blood sample you can no longer transmit this sexually which really increases the need for outreach acknowledgement of who this is impacting in ensuring that services are extended to them the new the current administration did issue a statement on world AIDS day you won't be surprised to learn that we were not included or identified in that statement and although they say oh look at how wonderful we are they've taken hiv allocated moneys and redirected it to their immigration policies separating children from their parents they have closed down federally funding hiv resources and let's not forget this is the administration that fired all of the people on the federal hiv aids commission so with that linda i'm just like overwhelmed so we'll see you in two weeks do we have any we're going to have an interview show right we have an interview show coming up on December 12th we may have our first international interview with a brazilian author we are also looking at an interview with someone connected with the opera and we may be meeting one of those new out lgbtq plus vermont representatives all right so we'll see you in two weeks personally hopefully and we'll be back and in the meantime resist