 And this time we really are back again. So we're going to talk a little bit about better Sanchez-Perez and migrant justice and things to which we may not have been attentive, but should be in the future. There was a judiciary committee hearing on fair and impartial policing. We're going to talk a bit about that, and it will reflect back with the migrant justice. Legislature's back. H3 about ethnic and social studies standards, Bill, should have gone through House Education Committee today with some final revisions on language. We'll talk some about that. And the budget appropriation should have been approved. Should go to the floor tomorrow. We're also going to talk a little bit about minimum wage. And as you're watching Orca, look for the House Human Services Committee discussion on preserving the right to abortion. Could be enlightening. And then a little talk about a CDC report that came out about transgender high school students, high school students. Federal administration, they're proposing a real change to Medicare D that will change the requirement for inclusion in drug classifications and what this means for people with HIV and AIDS is they may no longer have access to retroviral treatment. Events coming up. What Ann has brought us is every February for the past two years, JAG Productions has invited African-American theater artists to spend a week in White River Junction. And they will be doing performances starting on Friday, February 8, when they will be doing the play The Last Day of Black History Month, a conversation with a naked black southern lesbian. I'll be waiting for photographs. And they're going to produce these staged readings. It's $20 per ticket. But if you go to all four readings, it's $50. And just if I may also, the wrinkle is. She's on a roll. It says there's no way on the website, if you wanted to get the $50 deal, which Lynn and I did, you have to say you're going to go for each show for $20 and then magically the price changes to $12.50. So it's a little wrinkle if you have trouble calling them. But don't be discouraged. Should be great. I'm very excited about it. As if by lesbian magic. Yes. So other events. Monday, February 11, 6 PM at the Montpellier Senior Center, you might have heard about Stonewall having a 50th anniversary, and perhaps people are trying to organize an event here in Vermont. Pride Center, actually by the time this airs, this event will have occurred. It's on Friday from 3 to 5.30. Needs and assessments of older LGBTQ Vermonters. Ann and Linda are going, I'm mentioning it because we're going to want to hear from them on the next show what was discussed. A mention for the Pride Center that every Wednesday from 4.30 to 5.30, they have their peer support group for LGBTQ people living with disabilities. And it's one of the things that we just don't promote enough. Morrisville at their community center, Monday, February 11, is their transgender support group. And then it meets every two weeks. Fundraisers, Saturday, February 9, Green Mountain Cabaret Burlesque Variety Show, 8 PM Flynn Space, benefit the Flynn's Art Scholarship. Saturday, February 19, is the 24th. And you will winter is a drag sponsored by the House of LeMay to benefit the People with AIDS Coalition. And there's an event at positive pie on February 22 at 9.30. And it's part of the proceeds will go to benefit Stonewall 50 celebration. And I have no trivia question for this week, but Sunday the 27th was Holocaust Remembrance Day. So yeah, I'm going to be talking about it. I have some headlines. You've got a lot of headlines. I certainly do. I have news from the gay penguin community. I've missed them. Well, they're back. All right. Angola decriminalizes same sex conduct. I'm starting out with good news. Three billboards campaign targets gay conversion therapy in China. Now some what's good news. Brazilian lawmaker steps down. Trans people must still be sterilized before changing gender in Japan. Egypt sentences a TV host to jail over a gay interview. Then these are stories I may not get to, but then again I may. Bali's LGBT pageant avoids the limelight amid public prejudice. But they are so these activists were crowned in secret. And I have a picture of them. And I'll return to that story perhaps. Cures extend man has gay carved into his stomach in a homophobic attack. And I have a very creepy picture of that. Suspect arrested, finally, over the murders of the Bangladesh LGBT activists. They were hacked to death in 2016 in there. The offices of their gay newspaper. I have a picture before you. Now of the murder victim, Hulhas Manan. People have been arrested. No one has been charged. And finally, kind of an upbeat note, stiletto races and hula hoops at the Pride Festival in Myanmar. So those are my headlines. OK, that's the one for which I would want pictures. I know it. I couldn't get a picture. It was maddening. So that's your news. And the penguins are going to be first. Penguins are going to lead up the lineup. Well, there was sad news and late breaking news about Jussie Smollett, one of the stars of the TV series, Empire. Supreme Court ruling on transgender people in the military. Arizona gives transgender employees less health care than their working partners. So Russell Tomey, a professor of the University of Arizona, has filed a class action suit. South Dakota kills a bill that would have attacked transgender students. The HB 49 would have bought trans athletes for competing in school athletics. Florida LGBT community is going to civil war over non-discriminatory protections. Dallas venue refuses a gay couple. It gets banned from major winning planner website. Utah bill blocks gender changes on any birth certificates. South Bend mayor Pete Buttengieg is running for the nomination of president, and he's gay. So that would be a first. Missouri, a few weeks ago reported about the two women, married women, lesbians, who were trying to get into a senior living arrangement. And they went to court, and their suit was denied. I haven't heard whether they'll appeal this or not. The retirement community was a community of faith, as I recall. Yeah, it was a community of faith. That religious freedom stuff. I don't know if it was like, well, anyway. I think it was, but not like in that extreme kind of Catholic, something or other, but anyway. San Francisco is starting an art center for LGBTQ people. This will be the first, and will be the permanent home of the gay men's chorus. The choir acquired the building, and they're establishing a center there in stages. So they're doing a few things now, and I think they're planning on buying a few other buildings. And they want to just do a big LGBTQ art center. So that's kind of exciting. One million moms go ballistic over our parent's magazine cover, which shows two gay dads. And the right wing is losing it over this. The million moms organization says that these magazines are in doctors' offices, and all over the place where children might see them. The Southern Poverty Law Center characterizes the million moms organization as a hate group. Karen Pence, the wife of Mike Pence has taken a job at the Emanuel Christian School in Springfield, Virginia. It is very clear that being LGBTQ is an abomination. In their contract, it says they must be born again Christians and must confirm that they believe that marriage is just between a man and a woman. Just one man, one woman? Yes. Okay. Builds to protect LGBTQ individuals for fair housing and employment fails in North Dakota, Senate vote by 20 to 27. And I have a few obituaries to read. Diane Olson, Mary Oliver, A.K. Ballard. So we'll get to those later. And I'd like to add Dolores Knoll, if I may, to your obituaries. Okay, she's just at it tonight. Isn't she? It's pertinent, I think. She's a groundbreaking academic. She taught at Kent State. She was the first person in 1972 to teach a course in LGBT studies. And what's interesting is that she died in a nursing home and her partner was also in the nursing home. So it can happen. Yeah. And we'll ask about her influence when we interview the professor Charles. Yeah. On our third anniversary. Well, I'm looking forward to that. If you've got questions and things you've always wanted to know. About and. So, Beto Sanchez-Parros. Now, people in the migrant workers community here in Vermont, this name is very familiar to them. This has been one of our leading LGBTQ activists within the migrant workers community. He's openly gay man. Has been working with the Pride Center to ensure that LGBTQ immigrants, migrant workers, were adequately represented and get access to services. However, in December, he was stopped and ticketed for DUI. When he went to court, ICE was waiting for him as he exited the building and he was taken into custody. He had a hearing last week. It was extended until this Thursday, January 31st. At which point, they will make a decision as to, if he is going to be released, return to the community here or remain detained in New Hampshire and deported. And one of the things that migrant justice is saying is, this is not a felon. This is not a repeat offender. Why should Beto or any other of the migrant workers that have a catchphrase of milk with dignity, which I love as part of their movement. And they have it in Spanish on their t-shirt. Why should they be treated any differently? Anyone who's picked up for DUIA first defense, this is a protocol of what happens. And it's not detention and it's not deportation. And that moves into the House Judiciary Committee had a public hearing about fair and impartial policing. There is no bill, but there will be follow-up committee hearings. And sitting in the room and listening to the testimony what I heard repeatedly from law enforcement is they have model policies, they have gone out, 70 of the 75 law enforcement agencies in the state of Vermont have adopted them. But here's where they ran into a sort of bump in the road. The $40,000 that was supposed to have been appropriated for training was removed from last year's budget and people kind of missed that it wasn't there. So even though they had policies, they didn't have a means by which to train their officers on what those policies really meant. And what we heard from the NAACP migrant workers, ACLU, is that Vermont law enforcement are sharing more information with immigration in ICE than I think people realize, more than with which we are truly comfortable. The ACLU in particular raised the question of, okay, this is how far Vermont has gone in saying we're gonna set up policies where we don't ask you about immigration status. We are not voluntarily working with the feds or with ICE. Is there more we could do? Are there other states that draw the line much further than we do? So that's one of the things that the Judiciary Committee is gonna be looking at. But it was enlightening to hear, particularly there were people who identified as migrant workers who were testifying, who talked about they're afraid to even call an ambulance when their daughter is having an asthma attack because they're afraid that the police will show up as well. And unfortunately, these farming communities are in rural areas in Vermont, where it's the county sheriff, and not necessarily the state police who have had more training who are responding. And the worst incident that was relayed where it was a county sheriff who radio's saying, I need someone to help interpret from Spanish. And it was Border Patrol and ICE that heard the call and said, oh, we can come help. And then they stepped in and did what ICE does. So now you're gonna enter, and I'll come back with some legislative stuff, more legislative stuff, but you're gonna talk to me about penguins, that makes me smile. Well, I'm gonna show you penguins. Well, let me show you a clip now of baby Svengic, and I'll remind you about them. Actually, it's a sheet, having a swimming lesson. So this is a minute clip. You see one of the workers at Sydney Sea Life Aquarium in Australia conducting a swimming lesson. So. So. Diving lesson, but I'll show you now. But let us recall baby Svengic. In Australia, that this chick was born in October to gay parents. These are gentoo penguins. Who became inseparable last year right before breeding season. Visitors often spotted the pair waddling around and going for swims together, which is why they were deemed to be suitable prospective parents. Now you may recall, I mentioned in October one another penguin couple laid two eggs, Svengic, and their names are, these two male penguins are named Sven and Magic. So the couple has been called Svengic. So Svengic was entrusted to hatch a backup egg because it's common in gentoo penguin culture to lay two eggs each breeding season. And for the sub-antarctic penguins whom we are considering tonight, they usually only have enough resources to incubate and raise a single egg. So the backup chick may not survive, not in this case, however. On October 19th, 2018, an adorable 91 gram penguin chick was born to the doting penguin parents. Didn't we have a picture at the time? Yes, we did. But now we have more pictures. Now I have showing before you a picture of baby Svengic being taught to dive by her parents. And at the end of the last, the clip I showed you, the zookeeper teased us with the gender of baby Svengic and that has been revealed. But let me continue with the story. It's important for the keepers at the aquarium to know the gender of each penguin for population management. This is the zookeeper Hannan who also appears in the clip. It takes experts a couple of months and a blood test to determine the gender of a penguin as the sexes closely resemble one another. But in the penguin world, gender roles aren't defined and parents share equal responsibilities when it comes to maintaining nests and raising the young. Now baby Svengic is three months old and I have a picture now before you of the family. Magic, Sven and baby Svengic. So we've seen the clip of the swimming lessons and we've seen the picture of the diving lesson by the parent. So turns out that baby Svengic also has a healthy appetite. She was born at just 91 grams which I said, which is less than an apple. And now she weighs over five kilograms which is the size of a watermelon. So she clearly loves food, this zookeeper says. Baby Svengic will be an ambassador for this species who are facing global threats such as global warming and plastic pollution. And we look forward to sharing more updates with you in the coming months, says Hannon, you can see life. I thought you were gonna say says Anne of all things, LGBTQ. Well, you can count on that also. We'll trace the growth and development of baby Svengic and they keep saying they're gonna change baby Svengic's name, but they haven't. Okay, more good news. Angola decriminalizes same sex conduct. It's finally shed the divisive vices against nature provision in its law, widely interpreted to be a ban on homosexual conduct. Taking things one step further, the government has also prohibited discrimination against people on the basis of sexual orientation. And so anyone refusing to employ or provide services to individuals based on their sexual orientation may face up to two years in prison. This is a great stride. The changes came on January 23rd as Angola's parliament adopted its first new penal code since it gained independence from Portugal in 1975 and removed the provision inherited from its Portuguese colonizers. There are a lot of these colonial draconian laws. That stay on the books. While there have been no known prosecutions under the law, Iris Angola, the country's only gay rights lobby group has often complained that its members face discrimination when accessing healthcare and education. Now this is another good thing that happened. Last year Angola gave legal status to Iris Angola which was established in 2013. A move that can now be seen as the forerunner for this last step toward equality. The group called the decision an historic moment allowing the organization to defend the rights of sexual minorities in Angola. In contrast, Mozambique, another former Portuguese colony decriminalized homosexuality in 2015 when it too adopted new penal code but declined to register the country's largest LGBT group Lambda leaving it to operate freely but not legally. In casting aside this archaic and insidious relic of the colonial past, Angola has astute discrimination and embraced equality. The 69 other countries around the world that still criminalize consensual same sex conduct should follow its lead. Now I have more or I can move to Linda. Let me do one more story. All right, go ahead. If I may. We recall that movie three billboards outside Eming, Missouri. And that has influenced some Chinese allies to launch a campaign against gay conversion therapy. Chinese artist and a gay police officer have launched an unusually public bold protest campaign in which bright red trucks bearing slogans denouncing homosexual conversion therapy are being paraded through several major cities. Now I have a picture of the trucks, the three trucks in particular. Artist Wu Gong said three billboards, the movie was about raising and questioning unresolved issues. We wanna use this format to raise doubts about conversion therapy. He said, he's 28. Wu, who was based in the southern city of Shenzhen, says he is not gay and his police officer associate identified only by his surname, Lin, planned to stage the campaign in eight cities. It began last weekend in Shanghai. China removed homosexuality and bisexuality from an official list of mental illnesses in 2001, but official terminology still includes vague references to sexual orientation disorders. Some parents, as we know, as we may surmise, are known to pressure gay children to correct their orientation, including through conversion therapy. I thought that was a Christian thing, I guess it isn't. No. The truckspear slogan saying that therapy was being abused for a non-existent disease. Others say Chinese clarification of mental disorders still include sexual orientation disorder. It's been 19 years. Why? Such campaigns are rare in China where authorities quickly shut down most public protests to prevent them from snowballing. But Wu said the project has encountered no obstructions yet. Its Chinese social media account remains unblocked by censors and had six million followers as of Wednesday. Wu said the project has raised 3,000 US dollars in donations. He hopes to raise triple that to pay for drivers and fuel. Our ultimate goal is for more people to talk about this, said Wu. We stopped near a shopping mall in Nanjing and a security guard came out to ask what sexual orientation disorder meant. After we explained it to him, he supported us. Good to find out. That's an interesting kind of- Yeah, maybe we should try some of that. Yeah, we could get a truck and drive around. Yeah. We could go to St. Louis and Atlanta, and Atlanta, Dallas, Birmingham. Mm-hmm. Sad bit of news today, Empire Star Jussie Smollett was hospitalized in a possible hate crime. Police say that the 36-year-old was in Chicago walking around when someone shouted racial and homophobic slurs at him. I read he was leaving a restaurant. Really? At 5 a.m.? No, it didn't say 5 a.m. It said he was- Okay. I read the Hollywood Reporter. Well, there you go. Well, I heard he was just walking around. All right. Well, it just happened this morning in the early hours, I guess. Two men attacked him. They poured some chemical liquid on his body and they wrapped a rope around his neck. He is openly gay and first came out in 2015 on The Ellen Show, The Police At The Time. At this time, I've not taken any- They have no suspects and they're still looking at cameras and things around the area that might give some indication. But weren't they yelling racial and homophobic slurs? That's what I said. Oh, did you say- I'm so sorry. I'll pay more attention. You better pay attention. Sorry, I have a cold, unfortunately. The Supreme Court allows Trump administration's trans-military police policy to go into effect. The Supreme Court Tuesday allowed the Trump administration to begin enforcing its policy, limiting trans people from being in the military and their ability to serve, while brought illegal battles play out in the lower courts. The five to four decision allows the Pentagon to buy new recruits. From going through transition. The Pentagon officials insist that their policy is not a ban. Excuse me, but the rules need, are needed to prevent disruption, disruption in training and unit cohesion. The Trump administration will make the same arguments as the cases are fought one by one up to the Supreme Court. This is a blow to the trans community who now may be forced to leave and my face astigmatization. The justices divided along ideological lines and neither side explained its decision. But the arguments have been playing out in the courtroom across America. LGBT advocates expect that many of the other cases waiting to reach the Supreme Court will also fail. Recruits will be allowed to join if they are deemed clinically stable in their preferred sex for 18 months and did not suffer from marked stress. It seems like if you're in a really stressful situation like this, you would have stress. And also having to do with the Trump administration, they've been helping faith-based agencies block LGBTQ adoption. The administration gave those anti-LGBT efforts a boost by granting requests from the governor of South Carolina to allow federally funded child welfare agencies to turn LGBTQ people away based on their religious beliefs. Governor Henry McMaster asked the Department of Health and Human Resources to exempt the state's faith-based child welfare agencies from Obama-era non-discriminatory regulations protecting LGBTQ couples. This is of course granting exemption to fund these agencies with our taxpayers' dollars to discriminate. Did it not also extend to single mothers and the Jewish community? I'm not sure. What was one of the commentaries that I had read is that that would be the practical implication for what they had allowed. Yeah, so. Okay. It's so you don't keep coughing. Oh, I may join you in coughing. She has a cold and she's desperately trying not to share it. Really? It's late for me, I'm afraid. Go ahead. We digress. As I move further to the right, the Centers for Disease Control just released a report that has the first most comprehensive reporting on transgender high school students. And what they found is that 2% of the students polled identify as transgender, which is much higher than what people had guessed. However, 35% of them had made a suicide attempt. 27% felt unsafe going to and from school and 35% reported having been bullied at school. So, and I think that some of that reflects the data that we got from the Department of Health Youth for a survey here in Vermont, but. May I add, and I'm sure you read this also, that the suicide attempts have diminished in schools that have GSAs. GSAs, GSAs. Well, and that gets into part of our legislative report with the Ethnic and Social Studies Standards curriculum, where those schools were included into the curriculum, not as a standalone, but truly embedded into the curriculum. All of that sort of bullying starts leveling out. I know, because they said even with straight people, straight people had less suicide with an ASA in that school. Is that a GSA or a GSA? Yeah. Well, there was also a study that said people are happier if they have a gay friend. Seriously, did you see it? No, but I believe it. There was a study that said that. Okay, so looking very quickly at the legislation going through, one of the things we're gonna be following is the minimum wage bill. And what is being proposed in the Senate Economic Development Committee is $15 per hour by 2024. And that would actually give people a boost and looking at the graph, it would really be advantageous. Paid family leave, bill just got introduced. It would do a, and as Becca Ballant said on the last show, the burden to an employee would be one and a half cents per pay period, seems nominal, but what you would get is 12 weeks of paid family leave per year. What Phil Scott and Governor Sununu were proposing with their voluntary process would only be six weeks. So there's a radical difference. One of my concerns, and I will be submitting this as a piece of written testimony, is that this is based on a relationship status and a documented relationship status. So if you are a domestic partner, you still may not be entitled to benefits. And I'm going to leave that for now so I can come back and spend more time with the Holocaust overview. Well, I have several items to discuss involving the sorry situation in Brazil. Let's go back to the penguins. I know, I know. Jair Bolsonaro, as you know, was elected the gentleman. Supposedly. Exactly, who said that he'd rather his son be dead than be gay. We also recall the horrible tragic assassination of Mariela Franco in Brazil. Did they arrest some police officers or something, I thought? Well, what happened in this, the story that I'm getting to is that Bolsonaro's son has brought into the staff somebody, the police officer who was accused of killing her. Right. And so, that has prompted the current, the second openly gay congressman, Gene Welees, to resign. Not only resign, but leave the country. I have a picture of him before you. He said on Thursday he won't serve the new term for which he was re-elected due to death threats and that he now plans to live abroad. He belongs to the Socialism and Liberty Party. His seat in Brasilia will go to a substitute lawmaker who was also gay, Rio Councilman David Miranda, who is the husband of Pulitzer Prize-winning US journalist Glenn Greenwald. In a letter to the party explaining his decision to leave Brazil, he said that death threats had made his life unbearable, that he hardly left his real home. His siblings and his mother had also been threatened. He said in a newspaper interview that the climate of violence in Brazil, which had one of the world's highest murder rates last year had worsened since the October election of the far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who has disparaged gays and other minorities. He said he was tired of living with bodyguards since the execution-style murder last year of popular Rio de Janeiro Councilwoman Mariela Franco. It was not Bolsonaro's election itself. It was the level of violence that has increased since he was elected. He told, Willis told the Fulha de São Paulo newspaper, I don't want to sacrifice myself, he told the paper. I want to take care of myself and stay alive. Willis 44, and again I have a picture to show you of him, was a staunch advocate for gay rights and fought religious discrimination and violence against women during his two terms in Congress. Brazil's first openly gay congressman was fashion designer and television presenter Clotaville Hernandes, who represented São Paulo for two years in Brasilia and died of a stroke in 2009. Unlike Willis, however, he did not publicly defend the LGBT cause. So it's terrible in Brazil. Okay, let's move to more bad news from Japan. You're just an upper tonight, you know? This is by the down portion of my reporting. It has upheld a law effectively requiring trans people to legally change their gender to be sterilized. Takatuo Yasui, a transgender man who wants to change the gender instead on his, listed on his official documents, had appealed to the court seeking to overlaw, overturned law 111, which requires applicants to permanently lack functioning reproductive parts to qualify for gender affirmation. That's a little different than being sterile. That's going more into the you must be castrated before. Really? You know how long I'm a sterilized castrated? No, they're different things. Over dinner, we will have a discussion. We'll sort it out. The Supreme Court unanimously rejected his case Thursday, ruling that the 2003 law was constitutional, though judges added it was invasive and encouraged the legislature to review it. The court initially said the law was intended, this is their bogus reasoning. The court initially said that the law was intended to prevent problems in parent-child relations, which could lead to societal confusion and avoid abrupt changes to society. Suki Chang, Asia Pacific Campaign Manager at Amnesty International said the ruling was a blow for the recognition of transgender people in Japan. It is a missed opportunity to address the discrimination transgender people face. Conservative, we recall this, I reported on it at the time. Conservative Japanese lawmaker, Mio Sugita, belongs to the ruling Democratic Party. And we recall she attracted widespread criticism last year when she published an article saying support for LGBTs has gone too far. Will people agree to have their taxes used on LGBT couples? They cannot have children, so they are unproductive, she said, according to the Japan Times. However, despite all this evidence, polls suggest that Japan is becoming less conservative on LGBT issues. A poll this month by an advertising firm found more respondents than ever openly identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. Over 70% of respondents to this poll said they supported stronger legal protections for LGBT people. How many? 70%, according to this poll. But it seems like the ruling party is against it. Now, I was gonna say, we know what that's like. No, no kidding, no kidding. So let's go to bad news from Egypt if we can. Egypt sentences a TV host to jail over a gay interview. You know, and we have friends who just invited us to travel to Egypt with them. We declined the offer. Don't do it. An Egyptian court on Sunday sentenced a television host to one year in prison for interviewing a gay man last year, a judicial source said, Muhammad al-Ghati, who has expressed his stance against homosexuality on several occasions, was accused of promoting homosexuality in contempt of religion. The misdemeanor court in Giza also fined him 300, sorry, 3,000 Egyptian pounds, which is $147, in order to be put under surveillance for one year after serving his sentence, says the lawyer who brought the case against him. In August, 2018, Gedi hosted a gay man on his talk show on the private LTC TV station and discussed homosexuality on the air. During the interview, the gay man, whose face was blurred to hide his identity, said he was a sex worker, and he openly talked about his relationship with another man. After the interview, was aired the Supreme Council for Media Regulation. Egypt's top media body suspended the channel for two weeks for professional violations. In a statement at the time, it said LTC TV had violated its decision that bans the appearance of homosexuals or the promotion of their slogans. The council banned the appearance of homosexuals on any outlet, and I remember this incident. After a rainbow flag, which we know is symbolic, what it's symbolic of, was waved during a Cairo concert in 2017. Oh, yeah. At the time, the authorities launched a large-scale crackdown on suspected homosexuals, triggering condemnation from right groups. Homosexuality is not expressly outlawed in Egypt, but gays have previously been charged with debauchery in the deeply conservative Muslim society. So I would caution my friends who are gay men to maybe avoid Egypt, but it's up to them. I know. I have more things to talk about, but we can move on, if you'd like. I think we need to move on. All right. That's fine, although I could talk about Bali. Maybe you'll have time later. Okay. We'll see. All right. Diane Olson dies at 65. Diane was a marriage equality activist. Died of a brain tumor in a home in LA. She was married to Robin Tyler, who was a comedian and a writer and et cetera. The couple had been together for 25 years. This is the interesting thing. I didn't know this, but beginning in 2001, Diane and Robin would go to court on Valentine's Day and apply for a marriage license. And of course they were denied, but they went every year on Valentine's Day and asked for a marriage license. Mary Oliver dies at 83. Her partner was Molly Cook and was referred to as M in many of Oliver's poetry. She received a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for her collection, American Permanent. And Kate Ballad, which I guess she was kind of closeted. Really? Yes. Did you ever see her? Yes. Okay. But according to sources, she was rather closeted and didn't really want to talk about lesbians or anything like that. But she was a comic actress and singer, and she began her career in Vaughnville. So. May I add the dish we got from Andy Hum on Gay USA? Apparently there was a gathering in a lesbian bar and Liz Smith, the columnist, took Gay Ballad's girlfriend. I know, I know. Andy is getting really trashy. Well, he gets around. Andy is getting really trashy. I know that's a good little tip but I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah. So, that's it for me. So, Sunday was Holocaust Remembrance Day. And the reason, the reason I'm really obsessing on it is if you look at Berlin in the 1920s and you look at what we enjoy now, you know, the freedom of our relationships, holding hands in public, that sense of acceptance and really not needing to hide, that's what Berlin was like in the 1920s. And then by 1933, the National Socialist German Workers Party, that's a mouthful, came into power. And they came into a power on this nationalism agenda. Sound familiar? And a piece of that nationalist agenda was dealing with all those perverts. And how they had taken over the German culture, the German society. Basically, erasing them. Sound familiar? And the German penal code was paragraph 175, which we've referenced at varying points in time. The estimate is that prior to the rise of the National Socialist German Workers Party, also known as, oh my, the Nazis, there was an estimate that there were probably a million gay men in Germany. Between 1933 and 1945, they arrested over 100,000. 50,000 were put into concentration camps. And the estimate was that 60% of those people who were incarcerated never survived. And it was because they were on the bottom of the hierarchy. There was this concept of working to death. You move the pile of rocks from here to there and then back again. And were deliberately fed less than what they knew you would need to survive. They were also subjected to experimentation. And I'm not gonna go into a whole lot of details, but you can imagine it's where castration comes from. And when you talked about sterilization, you know, there's a difference between the vasectomy and castration. And we can thank these people for that. They also employed their own degree of conversion therapy. One of the pieces about the Holocaust that doesn't get a lot of recognition is that lesbians were interned in the concentration camps. But it had much smaller percentage because the German culture was very misogynist, male-based, women really didn't have rights or recognition within the culture. And the lesbians who were interned, it was because they were anti-social. They would not submit to a man's dominance. You were going against the social order. As people may know that what the Nazis used to identify a gay man in the concentration camp was a pink triangle. They used a black- On your collar? Which I wear repeatedly now since the election in 2016 every day. And lesbians, those anti-social women, I have greater respect for you now, were given black triangles. And one of the things they did to try and experiment with conversion therapy is, once a week, the lesbians who were put into the brothel had to have sex with a gay man. And when people look at the history about the Holocaust and how we were impacted by it, there's not really a whole lot of information because at the end of World War II, we were still considered to be criminals. And there is a story that was shared at one of our anti-discrimination hearings that when the Allied forces were liberating the concentration camps, and as they were helping people out, they were asking what all of the different symbols on their uniforms meant. And when they were told the pink triangle meant that the person was a homosexual, the Allied forces took him back inside the concentration camp and left him there. There wasn't even an acknowledgement until the 1980s that we may have been interned, and that they may have documentations from those hearings where people were charged with the crime of homosexuality. It wasn't until 2002 that the German government finally apologized for the persecution of homosexuality during the Holocaust. And it wasn't until 2005 that the European Parliament included a recognition of the persecution of homosexuals as part of the resolution relating to the Holocaust. So the impact that it has on us doesn't get discussed. I'm concerned because there are members of our youth who can recognize a rainbow flag but don't recognize the significance of the pink triangle. You were about to try and say something. Yes, I'm not surprised by that because when Linda and I in the 90s We were in Germany. Traveled to Germany and went to Dachau. They had like a ribbon in the 90s. There was a ribbon of all the symbols that Starve David and so he wouldn't include the pink triangle. The person who showed us through acknowledged it but he said, you know, this is under dispute. They won't include this symbol. It wasn't until the 80s that it began to acknowledge official German government response wasn't until 2002. Right, exactly. The other story relative to World War II and I was sharing it with people in my office today. Netherlands. Do you know that there was a tradition and people who see me wandering the streets of Bombay may be able to pick me out. And one of the stories is on Fridays and the other story was, you know, it was all the time they wore a red beret as a symbol of the resistance. There was this oppressive regime that was in charge. They were, it was futile to try and resist them but this was their symbol much as of saying we are not one with, we are not a part of. And if I may add one more thing I'd recommend to our audience Martin Sherman's play The Bent, which has been made into a movie which evoked that whole year on. That was the 90s too, wasn't it? We're written in the 90s? Yeah, I believe so. I think it was. I think we saw the play in the 90s, didn't we? I don't know, I'll double check that. In your youth. Yeah. But, and again, as part of my concern is that we have parts of our history that we've been trying to bring out with the trivia questions and acknowledgement of different events. But, and it's really looking at the Ethnics and Social Curriculum Standard is embedding all of the underrepresented communities into that curriculum so that when you are teaching about the Holocaust all of the people who were persecuted and incarcerated in turn become part of that conversation. It is no longer an other it's part of an inclusive this happened to us. That was 1979. Wow. So we saw it in Boston. Yeah, we did, but we saw it most of the early 80s. It's been made a movie too. Yeah, it has. Well, being at Dacau was one of the saddest experience of my entire, I mean, really, it was. It's really life changing. Just to stand there was unbelievable. So, on that cherry note. Yes. Yes. We thank you for spending this time with us. And remember, in these times we must always, in all times, resist.