obama" which covers president obama's life up to his winning the presidency. >> i think the point to emphasize here is that over the course of barack's presidency, there were scores and scores of people in illinois who had known him in years earlier who would were deeply disappointed with the trajectory of the obama presidency, and in two ways. number one, disappointed that barack forgot the people, many of the people, most of the people who were essential to his political rise. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span's q&a. now, members of the lgbt community share personal experiences in the fight for marriage equality and transge transgender rights. hosted by george washington university, this is two hours. welcome to our fifth annual

lgbt health forum. this is actually a very, very special one for us. and we're doing a number of wonderful things, celebrating our fifth year of our program, and i'll tell you about the program in a moment. but not the least of which is this incredibly powerhouse panel we put together, and on a topic that's fairly urgent right now. if you're not familiar with our forum, this is our public outreach mechanism. we do this every year with the start of our annual summer residency, which begins our program. during the residency, all of our students who are in the new cohort are in town from all over the country and many times all over the world. and this is our way of sort of reaching out to the public, letting you know who we are and what we do. our program is a graduate certificate program, and our mission is to train medical and

mental health professionals, health professionals in the broader sense, to improve the quality of care for lgbt people. that's our mission. we started this around 2011, we thought hey, there might be something to do here. the number of key things happened and we started the wheels moving. hey. it's okay. and here we are five years later. if you know anything about academia and what it takes to get a program launched and to keep it going, five years is pretty special. we're really proud of it. i'm also really proud of our new class, and our alumni. i'm just going to embarrass you for one moment. can our new class members of the class of 2018 stand up? there we go. yes. check you out. [ applause ] i'm not going to exaggerate by saying this is one of the best group of students we've had yet.

and that's not just blowing hot air. we also have some alumni in the house today, too, who are graduates of the program who are wonderful. can i ask you guys to stand up for a second, too? colin, adam, yeah. there you go. they're here. so, for those of you who have come to the forum before, you know that we usually do this down the street at the auditorium. and because this is a special year, we have added on another event this year. we moved the forum here, and instead of this being sort of our big fund-raising event, we have a very special performance by margaret cho. if you didn't notice. she's kind of in the lobby out there. she's graciously agreed to do a benefit concert. i would say a comedian concert, i don't know, performance for our program, and that's thursday night at the auditorium just two blocks away. you can certainly get your tickets here.

there are a handful of vip tickets left, and those include a meet and greet after the show with madam cho herself and other guests. one of our good friends, good friends with many people on our panel and our group, barney frank, will be there and he's going to greet the crowd. >> as your lawyer, i think you should remind people that margaret cho's work is not safe for work, but it's great. >> all right. as my lawyer, walter, tell me what you think about this. here's what she said to say, we asked her for a comment about her coming performance in washington, d.c. and she said, my performance in d.c. will be my sickest show to date. taking -- i love this. taking on addiction, abuse, activism, and awareness. it's all about the politics discussed and what's disgusting about politics, so there you have it. should be good. this thursday the 13th, our wonderful folks outside the door

can help you get tickets here or you can just go to gwtickets.com to pick them up. and the vip tickets are there. so, the topic for tonight's forum is really a direct response to the events of last fall. november of 2016. or at least that's what made me think this was really salient. we find ourselves now in a social and political environment that's not only what we didn't expect to see, but in very real ways, potentially threatening to the progress we've made and to the very health of our population. tonight, we're going to revisit many of the successes of the lgbt community and specifically in the domain of marriage where we clearly had the most success in terms of advancing rights. we need to acknowledge that the successes are not enough, though. we have a lot more work to do, and we can learn from things such as lawrence v. texas or the civil marriage protection act in maryland or hollingsworth v.

perry, and these are all cases that resulted in wins for what we would call wins for our side. and perhaps are informative to what we have to face moving forward. what we face moving forward are things like state bathroom laws, hb2 in north carolina. and there are other threats to transgender people all over the country. we also have the masterpiece cake shop versus colorado civil rights commission which will be held by the supreme court in the next session. so it's something to pay attention to. we need to think not only about advancing the rights into a public accommodation and employment and housing, but making sure to protect what we have already done. anyway, it's my pleasure to introduce very, very briefly each of the panelists you see on the stage today. i'm going to name them real quickly and they're going to spend about three minutes each talking about what their relevance is to this

conversation, their particular experiences, the cases they were involved in or the legislation they were involved in. and then we'll direct a few questions and we will leave plenty of time for q&a. we really want to do that, and there will be a microphone right there, we'll ask at the given time you line up right in front of the microphone and we can do questions. so first of all, to my left is waller dellinger. he's a former acting solicitor general under the clinton administration and an assistant attorney general and author of many amicus briefs he'll tell you about in the process. luke clippinger, who is with the maryland house of delegates and was a co-sponsor of the marriage civil protection act that brought marriage by referendum, not by case, to the state of maryland. sandy and chris, sandy is here and chris perry were co-litigants in haollingsworth

vft perry. they have a book called love on trial. i'm sure they would be glad to tell you all about it. and right next to them, excuse me, there's candis. candis is from north carolina, a transgender educator and activist in north carolina and had the pleasure of meeting the former north carolina governor and having a conversation about hb2, which i'm sure you'll tell us all about. and of course, jim obergefell. he was in obergefell v. hodges which is the culminating case which made marriage the law of the land in the united states. he, too, has a book called "love wins kwaetsz and i believe there's a film that they're working on about your experience. last but certainly not least is marty rouse at the end. in addition to his current role as a national field director at human rights campaign, he was involved in the efforts that got the very first state that had

marriage up in massachusetts. so this is our panel today. i want to welcome them first. so let's start, we'll go back to the end and have each of you just spend two, three minutes tops telling us more about your case and we'll launch into more of a discussion. >> great, thank you. it's really wonderful to be here. it's really hard to imagine that while we have marriage equality in this entire country, it was only 13 years ago when we didn't have marriage anywhere. so when we think about the success of the lgbt civil rights movement, when we think about the struggles that we're facing now at the federal level and the states, we have to remember how far we really have come in a relatively short amount of time for civil rights movements in our country. i had the fortune of working in massachusetts after the state supreme court, sjc, in

massachusetts ruled in favor of marriage equality. and gave the ledge slajer six months to do what it needed to do in order to enact marriage equality or possibly not in massachusetts in 2004. the court ruling came down in 2003. and they gave the legislature six months. i was brought on board as the first person hired in massachusetts to help prepare that state to defend that decision. because the legislature was going to do everything it could to have a conversation and perhaps amend their state constitution to stop marriages from going forward. so we had six months in massachusetts to defend that decision and ultimately another two years because in order to amend the constitution in massachusetts, you have to do it twice. once in the intervening general election and again before you can ultimately amend the constitution. we had 2 1/2 years to defend marriage equality in the first state. to think about what it was like, it was really a really tremendous battle for our

movement. and most americans weren't paying attention. most lgbt people weren't paying attention, but that was where ground zero was in mas, and that was a battle. what we learned there, the lessons learned and our successes and some of our failures there led down the path for how we're going to proceed, focusing on winning in the courts, focusing on passing legislation in the state legislatures or fighting against something in the state legislatures and getting involved in legislative elections to make sure we elect our friends and oppose our enemies. building the political muscle of the lgbt community, and then also winning in the court of public opinion. bringing public stories and personal stories front and center to change the hearts and minds of americans. it really was in massachusetts where we led the fight to begin with. we're the first success, but where we really didn't know if we were going to hold massachusetts or not, and then miraculously, look how quickly it spread through state legislative elections, through

state legislative victories, through some court victories and also some ballot questions where we ultimately won on the ballot, especially in 2012, where four states won marriage at the ballot. maryland, minnesota, maine, and washington state, all in one year. miraculously, who would have thought it would happen in one election year? we have come so far. we learned a lot of lessons and i was fortunate to be on the ground in massachusetts, in vermont, in new york, in many of the states where you had these battles and i look forward to having conversations about how we move the ball forward and some of our lessons learned. >> thank you. so i was never an activist. neither was my late husband john, and for almost the entire 21 years we were together, we never thought we would marry. it just didn't seem like a possibility because we lived in ohio. and ohio was one of those states that passed its own mini doma, preventing same-sex marriage. things started to change for us really for not a very good

reason, and that was when john was diagnosed with a.l.s. in june of 2011. when the person you love is diagnosed with a terminal disease, there's only one way this is going. it makes you start thinking about things a little bit more seriously than maybe you did previously. we talked about marriage over the years, but for us, getting married and having it only being symbolic wasn't something we were willing to do. we wanted it to mean something, for it to be legal and have our government say, yeah, you exist. he was diagnosed with a.l.s. in 2011, by april of 2013, he was completely bedridden and i was his full-time care giver. we had at-home hospice care for about five hours a week, but i took care of hem. that's what you do when you love someone, no matter what. june 26th, 2013, not only did jim and sandy's case come out, but that was also the winter case, which struck down part of

the defense of marriage act. an impromptu, unplanned moment, i hugged john and said let's get married. we had to figure out how to get this dying man to another state. we eventually settled on maryland because they did not require both people to appear in person to apply for a marriage license. so by virtue of chartering a medical jet and flying to maryland with john's aunt, we got married inside that small jet on the tarmac of bwi airport. that's all we wanted to do, simply get married. five days after we got married, we were introduced to a civil rights attorney who said do you guys understand when john dies, his last official record as a person will be wrong? ohio will say he's unmarried, and jim, your name won't be listed as surviving spouse. we hadn't thought about that. we knew ohio wouldn't recognize our marriage in maryland, but that was an abstract concept. that started our case. our case was based on the

argument that in ohio, ohio would not issue marriage licenses to first cousins or underaged couples. but if first cousins got legally married in another state or got married legally in another state and they moved to ohio, ohio would immediately recognize that marriage. so that was the heart of our argument. and we won in federal court. 11 days after we got married. then we ended up in the sixth circuit court of appeals with five other cases from kentucky, tennessee, and michigan. and you know how the rest turned out. so that's my story. [ applause ] >> okay, wow. oh, no. jk. does it -- oh. there we go. okay. wow. tough to follow. so first, i just want to say, like, hi, marty. we go way back like high tops.

and also, similar to you, i never have thought of myself as an activist. or an advocate. or an educator or any of the other things that are stated in my bio, included on my website. i did not write that. i just thought i was someone who was trying to be like the best them that they could be. that i was going to make a difference in this world for women, for women of color, and for transgender women. by assimilating, by blending in, by being successful in my corporate endeavors and getting an education and doing all of the things that people think we just can't do. and that, to me, was how i was making an impact. and then all of that kind of got

thrown in my face and a tornado came through. its name was house bill 2 in north carolina. and hrc, marty rouse, who went from someone i didn't know to being someone who i thought of as one of my like guru, like i texted him more than i texted my husband. and equality north carolina, which i now have the pleasure of sitting on the board of, they all contacted me, and said candis, your story is really amazing. we also think you would be a great person to come down here and tell your story, and i said, oh, sure. of course, i don't mind doing that. and i did. and then chad griffin, i don't know if -- he said let's go for a walk. i'm not making this stuff up. i said, okay. where are we walking to? the governor's office.

oh, okay. why? um, and i blinked my eyes, and next thing i know, i'm walking into his office with about 5,000 news cameras at our backs as we step over the threshold. and we spend about 30 minutes talking to him. and telling him that i am a north carolina citizen, that i'm transgender, how this bill affects me and how it affects my life. and i walk out of there, and everyone is asking questions. and i'm like, why is this such a big deal? then i saw on like cnn, like my picture. and i'm like, hey. and they're like, the only transgender person to have met with the governor. and i was like, oh, wait, i'm the only one? and then with hrc's help and them coming into our state and taking over our state, i think, you know, marty probably feels like he's a north carolina resident. they were there so much.

really helping us and coordinating and working with, you know, constituents all over the stase. and helping to educate people. and show people ways in which they could help. and you know, to toot our own horn, with hrc and a lot of other people's help and to pat myself on the back, we were able to unre-elect the first incumbent north carolina governor in history. [ applause ] and depending on if you live in virginia or north carolina, that's a big deal since we're the first state, with virginia colony, all that stuff. so from that moment on, my life -- i got a lot of attention. and a lot of people started noticing me. and i said, let's take advantage of this. and be visible. i think that america needs to actually just have someone in

front of them in uncomfortable moments and say, hi, i'm transgender. what do you want to know? i took advantage of every opportunity. i have been given so many blessings and exciting things. getting to, you know, go and be with joan jett and heart on their tour, i was like, what am i doing? you know, getting to work with cate blanchett, i am name dropping right now intentionally because my life is that surreal to me, like i pinch myself every single morning. and i just go, like, this is my life now? and i get to travel all over the world. and i get to talk to people about my life, which i thought was basic because i was blending in. and through doing that, i realized that people within the lgbtq community and outside of the lgbtq community have a lot of misconceptions, a lot of

false notions of what transgender looks like, what it means to be, what we go through. one thing it's done for me, which is what made me feel passionate, and then i'll shut up, i'm long winded, about coming to do this, is i have same-sex parents. i know, people are like, oh. and i'm like, not exciting. but i remember going to connecticut with them so that they could get legally married. after having been my parents for 25 years. and being amazing, amazing moms. and now that marriage is recognized. but i remember how much that hurt, that i was able to marry my sishusband five years before my parents' marriage and mine was recognized at a courthouse in north carolina, and that hurt

because these people, they paid for my transition, they supported me, raised me, loved me. what do i deserve to have the government recognize within me that my parents don't? and then, something i have now learned is that we can't be too congratulatory with ourselves when we're talking about marriage equality. legally, we have it. socially, we still don't have marriage equality. because when people talk about marriage equality, they talk about gender. and when people talk about gender, they still try to think of gender in this very narrow, you know, male and female, male, male, female, female, and they prove how little we actually understand about humanity and about gender and about sexuality, so when we're talking about marriage equality, they sometimes lump transgender in, and then sometimes they remove us from it. and we have to really make sure that people understand that we've got the legal stuff, but we still have the social work to

do. and that's educating our population on who we are and what we look like and what our needs are. i'll shut up now. [ applause ] >> hi. i grew up in california. and when i came out, when i was a freshman in college, i was 18 years old. i was really happy to know that about myself, but i also knew i lived in a state where i would never be married and i would never have children. that's what it seemed like to me at that time. i'm a lot older now, and i was really fortunate many years later to fall in love with sandy almost 18 years ago, as a matter of fact, alt work, where we spend a lot of time. and when we fell in love, we also recognized that there was the same limitation in california that there had been when i was a freshman in college. but we wanted to pursue marriage anyway. we were really in love. we each had two sons. we were blending our family. we were building a home and a

life. and we wanted what everybody in our neighborhood and in our family had, the right to choose, make the most important choice you make as an adult, the person you'll spend your life with. so even though we didn't think it would be legally recognized, we were going to go down that path. i proposed to sandy, and she said, great. how do we do that? and we started figuring that out, but it was the very same year that gavin newsom who was mayor of san francisco, threw the doors open of san francisco city hall and told couples they could come to city hall and be married. so even though we thought we would get married in august and have our friends and family there, we couldn't miss this great chance to be married legally, at least it seemed there was a possibility of it being legal. we ran to the school, we got our kids. one of them sitting in the audience tonight, and we ran to san francisco city hall. we got in line, we got inside and were married on the stepoffs city hall in san francisco. a few months later, in fact, just a few days after we were married with our friends and family, we received a letter

saying that's been rescinded. those aren't legal. you're not married. here's your $30 check back for the marriage license. it's over. it's done. but it wasn't over. because states were fighting really hard for marriage equality prior to that and since then. you heard about maryland and ohio and all the other states, but california hadn't really taken on the fight yet. and what happened instead of a grassroots effort was more of a sort of legal effort. lawyers got together, the city and county of san francisco and other lawyers started to fight with the state of california about its constitution. and eventually, those lawyers prevailed. they got to the california supreme court. there was a ruling that basically made marriage equality legal in california right before the 2008 election. but there were a number of people in california who were very unhappy about that. so a group of political people, right-leaning political people, decided to run a campaign called prop 8. they wanted it to be yes on 8.

yes, in other words, take away the right to marry, which seemed like an odd thing, but it was confusing on purpose. and they won by a couple percentage points. the very same day the 44th president of the united states was elected. that was a really tough day. what follows is the next legal fight. our fight. the one we didn't know we would ever be in because all we really tried to do is raise our boys, be a family, and be married. but voters of california took that away from us, and it was the fact that they took a right away that had just been given to us that attracted ted olsen and david bois to our state and to our case and led us through a pretty historic trial. so sandy, you want to talk about the second half of that? >> yeah. thank you. hi, everybody. i'm getting to see some folks i got to see earlier today when i was participating in the panel talking about the federal government's role in advancing lgbt issues, and i work for the federal government right now, so

it was interesting and a pleasure to do. so once kris and i got involved in the case with the proposition 8 case in california, we went on an amazing adventure truly, some people here actually participated in that with us. we sued the state of california in federal court. we sued the governor of california, the governor of california incidentally was kris' boss because she was the director of a state agency in california that worked on early education and health issues for young children. so when perry sued schwarzenegger, she sued her boss, but that wasn't the weird thing. the crazy thing is we went to the court and we expected to have a series of court dates where we would have a ruling based upon briefs being submitted. we expected to have a fairly passive role in the process. in fact, what the judge so brilliantly did, especially looking back, the judge walker in the ninth district decided to ask for a trial. and he said to the court, i want

a full presentation of the facts. and that was a really -- that was a major turning point that had not been done before. there hadn't been a trial in federal court on the issue of marriage equality, and we indeed became involved in this trial. now, the trial, of course, involves a lot of participation of different people, including us. so we went through depositions and became very much embroiled in presenting our case as the individuals that we were, working closely with ted olsen and david bois and a slew of lawyers. it was completely amazing strategy that they employed because they had the four plaintiffs, kris and i and two gentlemen from southern california. they took every issue we brought to the table, every instance of discrimination and how discrimination impacts us, whether it's our children, our family, our health, our financial wellbeing, our emotional wellbeing, how we feel or don't feel politically empowered.

and they brought other expert witnesses in to that courtroom to provide the data and the research that backed up every single thing that we said. so if kris talked about what it was like to grow up in bakersfield and know that she was gay and be worried about being treated against by a teacher in high school, they brought in an expert witness that would talk about that very thing from a research perspective. it was a great opportunity for many individuals in the research and academic community to bring forth their work that typically just doesn't get this kind of an audience. and be impactful in a court s setti setting. in fact, we had an overwhelming number of experts witnesses and the other side really had a hard time finding expert witnesses who were willing to come into court and present their evidence because, as we all found out along the way, there really isn't a lot of evidence that supports discrimination. there just isn't. and as david said, the court is a lonely place to lie. when you walk into this court and sit in front of me, you better be prepared to tell the truth. he, in fact, was able to eke the

truth out of the other side. we call them the other side. it's like star wars. by his amazing cross-examination of those witnesses, and in fact, on a couple occasions, bringing those witnesses to our side with his incredibly expert questioning. so somebody who had walked into that courtroom and intended to talk about why they felt like discrimination was best for children, that it was best for children to have same-sex parents, that was one of their fundamental constructs, he was able to with a series of questions eventually bring the witness to say, actually, the most important thing for children is to have parents who love them and parents who are parenting -- people who are parenting children are able to do so more effectively with the support of government for their relationship. you put those things together, and the next thing you know, you have a witness saying actually, we will truly be more american

the day we have marriage equality. that actually happened in a courtroom that we got to witness. absolutely amazing. so kris and i participated in a three week trial in san francisco in 2010. in january, some months later in august, we got a ruling in favor of us, so in other words, we won, which is amazing. findings of fact were a brilliant strategy, and in fact, those findings of fact in that ruling became incredibly instrumental moving forward with many other states. we had a number of appeals going through in california and federal court and a couple odd detours of the california supreme court, ended up at the united states supreme court in 2013, the same day as doma. and have our hearing there in front of the judges. and in fact, we did win the same day that doma won, but we won on standing. so it's a great thing to win the case. winning on standing wasn't -- didn't give us the big national win we had hoped for, but it gave us a very important win in

california, and of course, set the stage to move forward. so thank you. [ applause ] >> my >> my name is lee clippinger and i'm proud to represent the people of south and southeast baltimore city in the maryland house of delegates in the 46th legislative district, the fighting 46. it goes from butchersill to brooklyn, from canton to curtis bay. if you haven't visited, you really should. that psa was for live baltimore and visit baltimore, so that's fine, they'll be happy with me now. this is my second term as a member of the house of delegates. in my day job, i'm a state's attorney in arundel county, which is annapolis, city of annapolis and the area north and south of there, where i prosecute domestic violence cases and serious felony property crime. again, i got elected in 2010

which was a pretty incredible time in maryland on this issue. we had actually at that point suffered some setbacks. but we could start to see the way forward. in 2006, two incredible people who i consider great friends and have been incredible advocates on this issue in the state of maryland, geeta and lisa. geeta dean and lisa poliack. were courageous, some of the courageous people who stepped forward in maryland to try and have our ban on same-sex marriage overturned. through the courts. they were not successful. court of appeals in maryland turned them down 4-3. in 2009, the attorney general doug gansler issued an opinion that started to move the ball

forward to us and moved it forward just a pinch by saying that it was a nonbinding opinion, but that in his opinion the state of maryland could recognize out-of-state marriages. so we started to move forward a little bit. then in 2010, the lgbt caucus doubled in size in maryland from three to six. we elected more lgbt members of the house of delegates. we had a new member of the house of delegates who actually came out on the floor in 2011. who took that very courageous step and very important step. with seven of us, we began to share our stories. we began to share who we were. and because of that, again, we kept moving forward. in 2011, we had the bill that

would allow for same-sex marriage in maryland and we fell a little bit short. and it was painful. we had a debate on the floor of the house after the bill had passed the senate. nobody thought it would pass the senate in 2011. then all of a sudden here we were. and we were short. we were short about five or six votes. and we got together. and we said, all right. we're not going to take this vote today. we're going to ask the speaker to hold it back. and we're going to redouble our efforts for next year. and because of the support of organizations like hrc -- and i want to recognize marty rouse for everything he's done, he did in the state of maryland to help us all the way through this process. we were able then to come back in 2012. and it wasn't easy in 2012 either. we made this pretty exciting vote. weren't quite sure what was

going to happen on the day of the vote. we knew we had a solid 70 and we needed 71. and the story, and if mr. speaker or the speaker's staff, if you're upset for me telling this story, i'm sorry. but we managed to get a 71st vote. and that was great. and we were moving it forward. what we didn't know is that we actually already had a 71st vote. so we actually ended up with 72. because the speaker was not as familiar with the text messaging function on his phone as he might have been. but we were able to get the 72 votes because a group of legislators from across the state who were in districts that were marginal stood up and said, we're going to vote for this. and they were given a pretty common out. look, we're not quite sure that we're going to have the votes,

it's okay if you've got to vote red or vote no for your district. it's okay. they went into the speaker's office. and they had the courage to say, no, we're going to do the right thing and we're going to vote so that everyone has the opportunity to get married in maryland. so we passed it. and we passed it in 2012. the governor signed it. again, i shouldn't understate the support of the governor's office that year. i got to be the house leader in 2012. working on the bill morning, noon and night. being in the meeting right before that meeting with those legislators from marginal seats where the question was asked, do we really want to put this vote up on the board again? do we want to sink people's feet in concrete where if they vote no now it's going to be harder to flip them? and we decided that we wanted to see this forward and we wanted to get a vote. and i think it was in no small

part because of the relationships that we had and that we built in the legislature that we brought the vote over the line. our opponents weren't done. they took the legislation to referendum. and so we had to fight a referendum campaign in 2012. and i got to be on the steering committee for that. and i knocked on more doors than i thought was ever possible. and we won. we won when even some people who were advocates on this issue said we shouldn't put it on the ballot. we shouldn't do it. we shouldn't go out there. they were concerned that we weren't going to do well with people who were catholic, with people who were african-american. they were concerned -- they had a different concern depending on the day of the week. but with the support of the governor, with the support of legislators all the way across the state -- and i should say, i should have mentioned delegate ben barnes who was there from

the very beginning. senator matt olino who's now running for governor. he just -- tireless advocates on this issue all the way across the chamber. we were able to get 52.5% of the vote in 2012. and with that, we were able to kind of break through on that issue and make a huge difference for so many people. and in some ways that was an important step as we then took another step in 2014 when we passed legislation that added gender identity and expression to our anti-discrimination law in 2014. that was legislation that, again that senator matt olino worked very hard on, i was the house leader on, but there were leaders all over the chamber on that legislation, including the floor -- one of the floor leaders on the bell, delegate pena melnick from over in

college park. so we've been able to accomplish a lot in maryland. and we've been able to secure those rights. but we do look around the country. and we look at what's going on in the federal government. and it gives me pause. and it makes me wonder. and so we have to continue the work. and we have to continue electing people who are lgbt. we have to continue to push these issues forward. and we have to do it every single day. so i forgot to mention that i am the sole member of the bear caucus. and it's that way -- well, and thank you very much for that. i think we're the only bear

caucus. when i say we're, it's really just me. i became chair of the caucus. [ laughter ] it was a tough election. but we pulled it out. but it's building relationships. it's getting to know people. it's letting people know what's important to you. what's important to your families. and what's important to our communities. and by doing that we continue. and we continue to make this a more just country. and that has to be our goal. thank you. >> what does it take to bring about profound social change? that is a question that was debated throughout the decades of battle over gay marriage. are you going too fast?

are you going too slow? should you proceed about litigation? should you seek legislation? should you wait and run candidates for public office? should you attempt referenda? stepping back from it i think the answer is, all of the above. i think that's what we really learned. when marty rouse and his colleagues began the litigation over marriage equality in the state of massachusetts, i think there was an enormous chorus of, it's too early. if you brought that as the first case today, in 2017, there would be the same chorus, that it's too early. someone always has to be too early. someone always has to be too early. and i think what we saw unfold in the litigation in california is that the litigation itself had its own effect on the courts and the judges.

it created a national dialogue. and whether votes would have been there the day before the suit was filed -- by the time it unfolded, it had generated its own momentum. you know, i think a major turning point was two decades ago when the supreme court struck down criminal laws that made it a felony to engage in homosexual acts. and what the court did in that is that it rejected the state of texas' justification that we the state of texas believes this is immoral. and the court said, that's not a public interest of a kind the government can assert. and they took that off the table. so that by the time that chris

and sandy and their great lawyers brought their suit, that's off the table. that's what it's really all about. so the defenders of the restrictive marriage laws were in the position of those french academics who try to write novels without using the letter "e." they couldn't say, simply because we say so, that's why it's bad. they had to show concrete evidence that it was harmful rather than helpful to children to have their parents married. and that is why i think the fact that there was a criminal trial, it was an enormously successful venture. judge vaughn walker, the trial judge in california, wrote this magnificent opinion, sweeping

across the board. and the state of california with jerry brown as attorney general and arnold schwarzenegger as governor decided not to appeal judge walker's decision. and 30 days after the decision came down, i wrote a piece for "slate" saying that the great california gay marriage case is over, and gay marriage won. because no one else has standing -- no one has standing to interfere with anybody else's happiness. but it was the fact that they won that victory and the fact that the court accepted the standing argument in the supreme court that you secured marriage equality in one of the largest countries in the world, california. and that led to, along with the doma decision, as a result of that pair of victories, lower courts across the country started striking down marriage laws and marriage started happening. and one of the most powerful forces known to man took effect. the normative power of the

actual. the normative power of the actual, when people saw it actually being done. then it began to have this enormous effect on the judges. and by the time tim bergenfeld in his case with the supreme court, the court was fully ready then. but every step in the process was essential. and i think we have too seldom, because they're all so cheerful and positive, jim and chris and sandy, it's really hard to be a plaintiff in a case of worldwide publicity. hard on them and hard on their families. and i want to thank you all for the courage for what you did. >> wow. we have some amazing experiences. and these stories are just amazing. the normative power of the actual. that's -- you've told me that before and that got in my head and i was thinking about it a lot. i remember right after -- right after jim's case was handed down and we won, and as i recall it was announced a little bit

earlier than we thought it would be. it was announced on a friday, which was the anniversary i think of windsor. rather than on the following monday which when we thought it was going to be. so people kind of got nuts and i got a media call and i ran down to the television station and they asked the question, why? why did this happen? how did it happen so quickly? someone has to do it too early. and what's -- what's sort of resonating for me here is that with marriage, there was this very, very dramatic turn. ten years previously, something in the area of 65% or 75% of the american population thought that it was -- was against same-sex marriage. we did a flip in a very short period of time. and my feeling was that everybody knew somebody who was gay, who wanted to be married or should have been married. the personal stories just like the ones you hear here came out. and that gives us, you know, the

normative power of the actual. so thinking moving forward, and marty, i'm going to go back to you and have you start on this. what similarities do you see -- you know, starting in massachusetts, and you've been working on this moving forward -- what similarities do you see in all of these cases regarding marriage? and you know, will this give us some sort of purchase in making progress moving forward? marriage is something that, you know, everyone can sort of agree, it's for lack of a better term a sexier topic than, for instance, employment or health or housing or things like that. do you see something we can really pull from these cases moving forward on the remaining agenda, like public accommodation and housing and job discrimination and gender? >> it's a great question. i would say that what was so evident from the beginning, and

it's actually -- we talk about massachusetts but we have to go then, vermont, even hawaii. it was really the power of personal stories. and bringing not just talking about the rights and benefits and protections needed in the discrimination, which is very, very important as you heard in legal cases. but just the personal stories of individuals and the power of love. it really is that simple. and everyone understood that. and so going forward in state after state, making sure that we were to bring forward couples. when you talked about the power of the actual, i couldn't help but think about may 17th, 2004. the first day of marriage equality in our country in massachusetts. how every moment of that first wedding of hillary and jewelry goodrich was choreographed. from what they wore, what the hair looked like what their sons were wearing, where they walked what car they were driving in, what food was served what type

of materials were going to be thrown in the church, who was going to speak. everything was choreographed. because we knew television stations and newspapers all over the country and all over the world were going to see for the first time the power of the actual. we knew that governor romney did not want that day to happen because he knew that once people saw what it was, that it wasn't scary. and it was something that everybody understood and everyone had an immediate connection to. and that was an amazingly historic day, and it was well planned and choreographed for a reason. as we move forward the lessons are there. every single thing we do as a movement, and other movements do, you have to make sure that it's about the personal stories. if we cannot connect ourselves, if there is no kansas cox talking to governor mcquery and new hampshire stories coming forward, north carolinans would not be accepting of transgender

people today. that's our future. our future is making sure we are visible, making sure we tell our stories and how we tell our stories because we just want to live our lives freely and openly. it's in some ways so simple and sometimes we think about this too hard but it is the power of telling your own story to your family, which for lgbt people is difficult, and telling it to your legislature, telling a story in court and just telling your story to everybody and once we can do that, that's how we will win. so that step forward is going forward in congress now trying to pass federal protections and trying to pass the equality act in congress. we need to show the real harms that exist in states across the country because there are no protections and we need to show the future and that if we do have these protections people in america will be safer and more secure.

we're finding the stories from wyoming, florida, alaska, maine. that's the power that we have and the power that makes sure that we bring it altogether. if we can do that successfully, eventually the politicians, they know that we're right. their politics plays in all of this. the marriage equality fights were about elections. we need to make sure we flex our political muscle and do that as well. it's the personal and making sure we flex our political muscle. >> speaking of choreography, when the district judge in north carolina following the victories in hollingsworth and refused to state the order, the front page of the raleigh news and observe had two north carolina deputy sheriffs were the first to be married. and that made an enormous

impact. >> candace, i'm interested to hear your firsthand experience because you are on that edge right now of, you know, turning opinions and making people understand your personal story. how are you being received by, you know, not only people you know who are friendly but, you know, when you go into not so friendly environments, do you feel like you're getting anywhere with having them understand your story and your -- you know, what you're up against? do they feel any sort of empathy? >> i always like to tell everybody, i wish i could give you dramatic and say that where i go is awful and people shout things. they don't. what i find myself having a lot of struggles with is that my -- my story, my work, unlike some of the other cases here, hinges a lot on the aesthetics. i -- the way i physically look,

that is -- when we're talking about my issues, it's not people's concepts, it's not god's law, it's literally what we look like. i have a lot of acceptance, and that's really not fair because people look at me and say i represent transgender much in the way they look at candace keane, janet mox and say, we represent transgender. we are representatives of but we are not a model. we're not what transgender should be or what it should look like. that's something i struggle with.

people accept me but when i tell them, oh, but wait, there's more, they kind of shut down. they're like, i thought i was so good. i accepted you when you walked in the room but now you want to tell me that there's variance in this gender spectrum? and i'm like, yes, yes. and that surgery is not a prerequisite and that identity is something that's personal and it can manifest itself in many different ways and when i start having conversations, that's when the roadblock starts to happen and you see that wall go up. and you see them say, i can accept you and i can accept a transgender person if they look like you, act like you, talk

like you, dress like you and fit into my image of what if a man were going to emulate a heteronormative middle class white woman because that's what i've been described as by people. that is offensive. that is for me what is offensive. it's not the tranny, the freak, it's the "you're doing so good, candace, because you fit the mold of what we think is good and acceptable in america." and i'm like, great, so you don't accept me for me. you accept me forfeiting for fitting something that makes you feel comfortable and something that is familiar to you and you think that i am actually trying to be that instead of you recognizing that i am trying to be me, not your image of what's right. is that all? i'm sorry. i apologize. >> candace, one thing i want to say to everybody is that it's important to realize how candace is perceived and received in

north carolina today, but what was just as important and sometimes more important was the poise and the grace that candace has, and when she's on tv, that she has been able to bring more transgender people forward in north carolina, all across the state, and so it's important to have someone come forward who is -- you people can be proud of and relate to, and that has made a tremendous difference because now legislators all across north carolina can't say there's no transgender people in my state district, in my house district. people have come out all across north carolina and to a large extent because of candace and how she is all over the television in north carolina representing so well reporters all across north carolina know you and nationally now, and that has really helped make a difference. and so as transgender issues come all across the state, we now have many more people coming

forward and being open about who they are and opening doors for others and that is one of the key reasons why we're being so successful, not just in north carolina but the u.s. >> thank you. and i do just want to touch on -- i'm sorry. thank you. i'm crying. that the fact that we are still having conversations about me helping to make it easier for transgender people all over the country to feel comfortable coming forward, going to their legislators and outing themselves in areas that we never once perceived being possible. the fact that we still have panels in which we're talking about equality within lgbtq community, that is what drives me. it is not my personal experiences. it's something that i put down because i believe that my voice

does not speak for me, it speaks for the collective we that is lgbtqia, everybody, and i believe that my fight, every -- every success, every step forward that i make is one that is made for all of us, for all americans. not just trans, not for just lgbtq, that's what drives me. it's a -- you know, it's wonderful that we get to have these conversations, but it's just a reminder to me of how far we have to come that we still have to have panels in which we talk about our very unique stories and talk about the very real pain that we've all experienced, and that's something that's very real and tangible and in our lifetime. so the amount of work we have

ahead of us far surpasses the gains that we've made. okay. that's it. [ applause ] >> let me play devil's advocate in a bad way here and talk to cooper here. does not a large section of our populus already think we have all the rights we need? do they not think they have everything or worse yet feel like they should take it back and -- you know, they've got a little momentum. we've got sort of a scary situation where they are trying to pull us back. maybe i can direct another thing to our two lawyers in the house. you know, how real is the danger of, you know, us losing what we've made from a legal standpoint? where are the dangers? what's real? >> i think it's very substantial.

i think we have a court that is poised to be more and more expansive view of what constitutes a religious objection, ever more differential as to what counts as complicity in other people's supposed sense, a court that is willing to allow those who have economic power in the name of religious liberty to impose their religious views on other people through their economic power, whether you're the owners of hobby lobby and object to contraception and therefore don't want your employees to have the standard coverage for it or whether you're people in the commercial world that want to resist serving customers. i think the fact that the supreme court granted for next term this master piece case that steve mentioned, a case they

didn't need to take because it doesn't even raise the hard question about forcing someone to express themselves artistically in a way that they don't want to. that's a hard question. let's assume that you can say i'm not using my art to express an idea i don't want to express. that's not this case because the baker in this case wouldn't sell any cake to a couple who was going to have a marriage between same-sex partners. and so the smartest people that i listen to say, this is a really surprising case because this is like the auto repair man saying i'm not going to change your tire if you're heading off to get married. the state enacts nondiscrimination laws. the idea that there's this widespread exemption is part of

a process. we have to be quite concerned that there will be an ever expanding category of exemptions. and we have draft executive orders from the current administration that would have a very expansive view of what corporations can do to claim their religious exemption from any discrimination principle. so i think luke mentioned it in his opening remarks. it's, i think -- i think we have to be on guard and not throwing rice at the nuptials and forgetting about what may be happening in the workplace and otherwise. luke, you want to -- >> i don't see this in this agenda that we're going to have an interaction with the panel and the persons in this -- in the audience. i just want to know for clarification, is that going to be a possible chance that that's going to happen? because in my mind, in my mind as a transgender woman of color living in washington, d.c., it's

wonderful to have a panel to have a discussion about the things that we really, really need to be talking about, but it is also just as important to me that we have an interaction with people who live in the community, who are living their lives as whatever they are and who see marriage equality in a manner maybe not like the panelists. because to me women of color in this city are struggling to survive in how they're going to survive with their partner, how they're going to pay their rent, how they're going to get jobs and how their job training that people need to elevate themselves is not on the top of the priority list. i'm very passionate. i'm 62 years old and i've been an advocate for the majority of my life for a number of issues, and what really bothers me is we get these good-feeling panels where we sit down and talk and

we never engage and most of the time what really, really disturbs me, we look to the audience and the audience is a trickling of the people who need this conversation. so i'm here as a person representing african-american transgender women of color who have become silent or silenced because -- not because marriage equality isn't important but because that has been moved at the bottom of the list. health care is no longer a primary issue. quality health care for transgender women of color is not a primary issue. skill building is not a primary issue and housing is no longer a primary issue, and until we start engaging that conversation with the conversation that we are having about marriage equality and until we start becoming mobilized around those issues along with marriage equality, we are just talking. >> one of the things i've

learned from steve's program, and i will put this to candace, is the enormous economic burden that the transgender community has faced, enormous. it's not just about acceptance of sexuality. enormous economic consequences. i think, steve, we did this when you did the program on transgendered people. >> yes. absolutely. >> yeah, i know. and first i just want to say thank you so much for coming and applaud you for being able to say how you felt compassionately because i'm like that's -- that's not easy so thank you for that so much. [ applause ] >> and it had me thinking because it kind of tied in with -- on the question that was asked of -- you know, in the possibilities of overturning things in that it raises a very

real fear and -- or especially trans women of color, you know, such as us. that fear is made even more so real when we think of all the things that we could lose because if you can easily strip you of your marriage license, then what's to stop you from taking my right to vote as an african-american back? i haven't had it for that long. and then as a woman, taking that away from me. i mean, for that matter, let's just go ahead and put slavery back in action. we had it longer than we haven't had it. if we can talk about taking things away, then we need to talk about the fear.

but when we're talking about the fear, it's imperative that the people who are experiencing that fear, the people who are actually in the line of fire are the ones that are actually being uplifted and being held up. and i know that that's something that we as a nation have struggled with, not just for trans women of color. i mean, the black pride matters movement is taking place because people are saying, we are not being uplifted and held up. our voices are not being heard. you do not seem to understand what we're facing. it's wonderful to talk about me meeting with the governor, but what's not talked about is the financial struggle that my husband and i experience, my car being repossessed that i worked so hard for because i lost my job with fighting hb2. that is something that is important for people to know

because i didn't have that network to rely upon. i don't focus on it because to me i'm like what i've been given back is fine, you know? i have a lovely car now, but those stories are the ones that we don't want to focus on. we don't want to know what's wrong, and i think the reason we don't want to know what's wrong is because we're still struggling to say, how can we make it right? we like to fix the problems that we already have the solutions for. gay marriage is easy to solve because we already have marriage. we don't have to define marriage, even though that's what they said they were trying to do or redefine. no, we're not. we know what marriage is. we are simply ensuring that everyone experiences it. now we are stepping into this new frontier of gender identity, gender expression and equality when it comes to that.

and so i appreciate what you said because that is important. i think it's just really hard for us to tackle, and it's hard for me as a trans woman of color to say how do we express those stories, those experiences? because in doing so we want to say, how are we going to fix them? and unlike california where you had a proposition to fight, you know, unlike coming out on the legislative floor or fighting with the governor, we are fighting for equal recognition and equal rights as african-americans. we are talking about equal rights as women, and we are talking about the ability for one to define themselves as being them. i don't need you to define me. and those are harder things for us to be able to offer

solutions. it's simple and yet it's hard because we do not know how to address the individual mind-set of people. i don't know how to make you think of me as being an equal when you don't think of black people as being equal. and that is something that affects all of us, and i think that that is the underlying fear that we're talking about, that if you can get rid of one thing, you can get rid of me completely because everything about me is a civil rights, equality movement, walking and breathing. i'm very fragile glass. >> to candace's point and to the speaker's point -- by the way, we will do that very shortly. many of you may be familiar with the national center for transgender equality. they've just published their second large study, the big one, 23, 24,000 participants. very well-documented. there are many stories in there. but these are not isolated

cases. this is very, very real. across the board in terms of health, violence against the community, lack of access to care, unemployment, addiction. it's overwhelming, and they did a very good job in this last study with demonstrating how intersectionality, the intersection of race, sexual orientation and gender are far worse in the colored cumulative -- communities of color than for others. and it's severe. and even in the district of columbia where we have a very, very progressive city, it's hard to find a municipality that's more progressive on issues, we have very disturbing cases of violence against transgender, women in particular and women of color very much in particular.

and that's something we really have to struggle with and work on. and i'm going to ask actually jim and sandy about since your cases have resolved as they were, have you felt or has there been any alliance or have you -- has there been connection between, you know, the marriage movement and your roles in that as leaders and icons in making connections with the trans community and sort of getting gender identity issues more to front? >> i know for me, whenever i speak, whenever i'm at an event it's very important for me to talk about our transgender community. for me it comes down to this simple concept. every kid deserves the right to be who they are without apology and without fear.

and until every kid in our country experiences that, we have work to do. for me, i did my own personal journey of growth with the transgender community. up until two years ago, if i knew a transgender person, i didn't know it. and i've had the great fortune to become friends with quite a few transgender people and that experience has changed me. it just goes back to what we've talked about so many times, the way we change hearts and minds is by telling our stories and by helping people who are afraid of a group or afraid of a type of person, the way we change that attitude is by showing them we are no different. we want the same things you do. we want to wake up. we want to live our life the way we want to. we want to be the people we want to be and are meant to be. and we want to do that and we are no different.

that's how we change the attitudes is really just by the people. that's not coming to an end. i think we need to remind people of that, the people who were against marriage equality and may still be against marriage equality. help them understand nothing has changed other than other people have the ability to partake in that right, in that beautiful thing of marriage. and that's what we have to help people understand is that we're not asking for anything different. we are asking for exactly what you experience, what you benefit from. we want the same things. so for me, i always talk about transgender community and i always focus on our kids because if a kid can't grow up happy and safe and healthy, then our kids can't do that. for me, it's all about the

intersectionality. i talk about the transgender community. >> well, i'm an early childhood education advocate and my dying wish is that we've reached a much better place in the country around respecting and supporting and lifting up people and letting them be whoever they are going be to and not put policies between them and their happiness which we do in all kinds of ways all the time. the panel's done a great job of talking about it. some of the things i've been doing since being a plaintiff that aren't directly related to marriage equality at all that are much more tied to this idea that having access to a high quality, free education and high quality care if you end up in foster care are really, really critical things that we have not done a very good job of in this country. so in my capacity as a professional in this area, i've joined the national court

appointed special advocates board, and i'm going to work really hard on how to do something for kids that end up in the foster care system because their family hasn't embraced them the way they are and the numbers are, frankly, appallingly high for that group of kids. and i'm also thinking a lot about the case we had and how the only people that would fight for kate were the mormon and catholic church. that's who fought against us every step of the way. and there's a way in which teaching that being different is a sin has caused so much difference. it's made us all feel divided. so i'm a little bit at this sort of -- you might say an upstream and downstream solution in my post marriage role where i'm worried about the kids who are coming into a system and already

been affected and i'm also thinking a lot about how when there might be a way to help parents do a slightly better job than maybe what they're teaching them about children that are different. those have been a couple of new endeavors since being involved in the case. >> and i'll add just very briefly, yeah, i work for the federal government now in kind of a technology role, and you can't -- you can't improve services if you can't count the people. i've worked in systems where you have to make sure you are counting the people. so when you're surveying or collecting administrative data for the various programs we have in state and local government, you have to be able to identify and capture the kind of information on people whether they're trans, lgbt or whatever you are trying to follow so that you can, in fact, have that powerful data that presents a compelling story for providing services. so that we know that these people exist and that data's

very powerful. then another thing i think chris and i really learned about our involvement in our case is the power of a bipartisan approach and to not look at everything as, you know, thinking about the people who believe in everything the way you do is that those people being your only advocates and allies on the solution. we were -- we think that we were successful largely, or at least in part because we had this amazing bipartisan legal team who were the lawyers that faced together in bush versus gore. because we had that team our case, our lawyer team became more credible to the public and it, in fact, helped create that public story and they helped create a public narrative that was very appealing to the broader swath of americans. there was probably no article that was more powerful than when

"newsweek" had on the cover the conservative case for gay marriage. that was an amazing article, and that's where we feel like we really introduced to, you know, mainstream america that this -- there's a conservative case for gay marriage. it's a conservative value. now it's not the only conservative value. health -- access to health is a conservative value, education, housing, economic stability. these are all things that we share. we just have to find the common ground to move forward on those issues and not always look to the friends that we traditionally think are going to work on something with us to find solutions. >> yeah. luke, i do want you to talk -- and i do want you to talk about the fairness for all marylanders act. we moved onto the gender identity and got that done. talk a little bit about that if you can. >> i want to mention one thing just to jump on to the end be of the last question very briefly and mention another critical piece and i will be escoriated

when i go back to maryland. we had an enormous group of people of liberals, conservatives, people across the spectrum and that's why we were effective in winning the referendum in 2012. we would not have been able to do it if we didn't have equality maryland, hrc leading the way to bring these groups together. and part of our challenge now in maintaining some of those coalitions, maintaining those connections, in keeping people together as we go into these difficult times and maybe re-establishing some of those connections because we have a lot of difficult issues that we're going to have to deal with in the next several years. i do want to mention the -- yeah, the fairness for all marylanders act in 2014. this was legislation that was a long time coming, and we passed it. we passed it -- i think before

it -- that marriage and the referendum on marriage, i do believe myself i think that it may have made it easier to move forward on the equality of marylanders. they were building a coalition that was very strong that was putting the pieces together, building relationships across both the house and the senate to bring people in, bring people to the table, get them on as co-sponsors to the bill and we were able to pass it in 2014. some of those coalitions were the same, some of them were even bigger in 2014, but we were able to do it because, you know, of that ongoing work where we were able to build one thing on top of another. >> i want to start moving to q&a.

for questions from the audience. i want to make sure we have plenty of time. we're going to have a good solid 35, 40 minutes to do that. so if you have a question or something you want to say, please move to the microphone right there. while people are doing that, i do also want to acknowledge the sponsors of both this forum and the market show coming up shortly. they've been actually very, very supportive and they've all provided something of great value. i'm going to mention them by name -- look at the program and see that they're there. gel creative, metro weekly, the washington blade, glamor. pag magazine, village heart, co-housing. compass rereality. one washington circle hotel. claudes. and a member for many years, daka beer garden, pound, nellys and drinker, bitle and rece. they've been quite supportive of us so i want to thank them.

now for questions. we've got a lot of time to talk and a lot of things came up. and i know we're going to have a great conversation. go ahead. >> hi. good evening. hello. okay. first of all, i want to talk about some things that really concern me. this country is leaning more closely to the period of not breaking down racial ties. it's become a country of the have and the have notes, the privileged and the under privileged. what is disappointing to me is we forget not too very long ago the people that were the have nots were african-american people, blacks in this country because of the disparities and civil rights laws in this nation. and those persons that we were talking about and we were empowering in those days who were struggling through the civil rights area were embarrassing to most of us because they were uneducated and they did not know how to articulate their needs and

because of that, not being able to articulate, we had to go and spend some time trying to shore people up. and this is what i'm trying to say to everybody. in mobilizing and getting together we have to take the time that we need to make people what we consider camera ready. we have become a society that is focused on what looks beautiful to us, what is pleasing to us, what we are comfortable with. the people that are being left out in our society are those who are not comfortable to us, who don't look like us, who are not pleasing to the eye and those are the people that represent real americans. and the reason why donald trump is the president today is not because there was a large number of people who did not like the direction the country was going, it's because a large number of people who are disenfranchised and marginalized were not being represented by all of us. so we share some of that blame. we share the blame that we did not reach out to those persons

that are not camera ready and get them ready to go to the polls. my concern about marriage equality in the transgender community today, when we have forums like this, we look around and there's misrepresentation. when we have panels today we always have -- and i don't mean in any way that you're a token because i think you're well representing the needs of what my community stands for. but i'm appalled that it's only one of you up there. there should be more than one sitting on that panel. whenever you have 10 people, 11 people, you have more than one white american, you have more than one female and you have more than one gay male but you always have just one transgender and that needs to stop. my question to each and every one of you on this panel is if we're talking about mobilizing -- because one of the

panelists said that he was -- had at period of pause, i'm actually at a period of panic. my anxiety level has gone up because i know this is the most difficult time in our lives. as a child of the '60s, remembering the civil rights era, knowing what my mother and father went through through jim crow, i see all of that coming back again. and if we don't shake the consciousness by being more exclusive, history is going to repeat itself. you were absolutely right, how could they not roll back certain things that they could so easily roll back marriage equality. i want to ask each and every one of you panel members, how do we mobilize? how do we not only use this instrument that we used to make marriage equality a reality, how do we mobilize and be inclusive of those individuals who marriage is not at the top of their priority list?

at the top of their priority list is to get off the streets as commercial sex workers, the top of their priority list is for their significant others not to be out selling drugs because you can now get a job. how do we mobilize those people like myself who are sick and tired of seeing the same thing as usual. thank you. >> thank you very much. [ applause ] >> we're going to talk about another panel, okay, talk about doing one. marty, why don't you start. >> yeah. i would say hard to answer that question in three minutes or so, but i would say that starting with marriage equality, when we started out in marriage equality, it was hard to get people who wanted to get married in massachusetts and ended up getting in massachusetts to actually come forward and talk about getting married in massachusetts. so when we were fighting to protect that decision, i remember that we had to look hard to find couples that got

married and to come forward and talk about defending their marriage because all they wanted to do was get married and take care of their kids. they didn't even know who their state legislator was. this is an ongoing issue in our movement and in america. americans are not politically motivated at all, so that was a lesson learned early on, to make sure that the people that were affected were brought forward and how to bring them forward. and it was not easy in massachusetts to do that. it's hard to realize that was only 2004, but finding a married couple to come forward, bring them together to talk to their legislator about why they got married that was not easy back then at the very beginning to go on camera to talk about it. they just wanted to watch their son play hockey. there's so many stories. so that is what i remember in the early days of the marriage movement. going forward now, we're fighting for the american -- to make sure that obamacare doesn't get repealed because that is very important for many people. we're fighting for the equality act which would then add housing to our civil rights laws.

we're making sure that the groups that fought so hard for the civil rights acts of our country are okay and supportive of including sexual orientation and gender which is the equality act. this has not been easy work to get these organizations all working together to make sure that we can bring everybody together at the same time. i think you raised a really good point about representation, and that's not easy. i remember in maryland, for example, luke mentioned the lack of catholics, the lack of african-american support for marriage equality as the biggest fear. how do you find catholics to come forward and talk about marriage equality? that was not easy. but we found laypeople who came forward and we formed catholics for marriage equality. they called their catholic friends and said, i'm a catholic. we worked with the naacp very closely. we worked out of the naacp office in prince george's county. >> thank you. >> prince george's county about making sure that the naacp was

there front and center bringing people forward, making sure there was not just one african-american person on the panel talking about marriage equality but many people. reverend dylan coates, a big supporter, he was on our tv ads. this was not easy and it continues to be very difficult. these are ongoing issues. we need to make sure they're addressed, but we can look right now at what legislation is being proposed in the good sense and the bad sense and we know that there is a path forward that we all have to make sure that there's diversity in many ways. we at the human rights groups are working in texas right now where the legislators are about to convene a special session to pass anti-trans legislation in a special 30-day session where they passed sb4 which is discrimination against immigrant communities. we are working together with the hispanic community in texas to make sure we're altogether. intersectionality is there.

we have to work on it together. they're not easy. again, representing and fighting for people that are not visible, that are not, as you said, the tv friendly people, we represen. that are into the the tv friendly people. we need to make sure we fight for them and making sure that we continue to bring people forward and we have to continue to do so about. >> you ask really vital questions. and i don't know what the answer is. because i look at the lgbtq community itself. we ask for people outside of our community to be allies. we're not good at being allies within our community. it angers me when i hear people say we should drop the t.

we want equality, and yet there are organizations that fight each other. i don't know how we bring in the voiceless, the people without a voice out in the community when we are -- we can't even get our act together and work together. for those things that really matter instead of letting our egos get in the way i wish i had an answer for that. i think that's one of the biggest stumbling blocks we have. we don't work well as a community. for me it's up to all of us, those of us who are currently speaking up. we can't stop. we have to raise our voice and say but what about those homeless kids. what about those transgender

women who are selling themselves on the street to survive. for me, i think that's where it starts. we have to be louder. we have to go out into the community. we have to go somewhere that makes us feel uncomfortable, we understand and look those people in the eye and say, you matter. i've gotten to know you, i'm going to fight for you. all activism starts on that personal one on one basis, if we don't do it, nothing will change. that's how i look at it, that's how i approach my thoughts. my activism now that i'm in this world. if we don't get outside of our

comfort zones and recognize and value people who are different than us, what's going to change. >> go ahead. >> you are putting me through it today. it's okay. first i'll just say it. because i think that -- we start with hearing the ugly, the ugly is i am incredibly uncomfortable sitting up here right now. and this is what i do i'm uncomfortable because i feel so

inadequate. attorneys and elected executives. what's your qualifications, i got someone re-elected. and then i get frustrated because i'm like, what's my other qualification. i went back to college and paid for it out of my own pocket that's not mentoring. i've never been arrested, i've never done drugs. i am a catholic ironically. >> it's okay, candace. and i'm the only transgender person, and i'm the only person up here with a tan.

that's actually something that's uncomfortable, because you now feel as though everyone is expecting you to speak for everyone who looks like this, and you're now thinking that no one up here is going to look at you equally. they're not going to respect you. they're not going to give the accolades they give one another. do i sound as smart as he does? i got accepted to law school, i didn't go i liked shopping. is he going to think i'm intel again the. i'm as important because i fight the political system that they work for. that is something that's real for me. and if i am camera ready and it's difficult, then of course, we're not going to have other representation up here.

if you're not camera ready as a trans person. if you haven't gone far enough in your journey you can articulate what it is. you're not going to be up here. let's not talk about people who are african-american latino, native american muslim american, anybody who does not look white can all tell you what it's like to walk into a room and look for the people who look like you. because that's what we do. we look for affirmation from one another when we say things. i will look at them and say, are you approving of this? or am i saying the message we want to convey? instead what we have to do is we have to stop thinking of us as them, us.

and that was my message. is that this really isn't about marriage equality and how does transit into it, this isn't about what took place in california or massachusetts or maryland or north carolina. we're the united states of america. not the collective states of america. we are not 50 individual states doing things. we are 50 we are a community and a family, and we should be cohesive we need to stop thinking of battles as being fought and won in our very small gay marriage victory in california. every victory is a victory for all when we think of it like that, it makes it easy for us to

not look at people differently who are receiving those victories. is this a victory if these people who are part of our community are still not. if gay marriage doesn't matter to you, how great of a job have we done in getting gay marriage. we got it so you could be homeless? we got it so you would engage in sex work? so that hiv and aids could be something that we are talking about a new diagnosis? we talk about marriage equality so poverty could be real so lack of access to education could be real for people. so i agree but i think the first step we do is stop thinking in this divisive way, that we start thinking in an inclusive way our

community has struggled. why don't we have equality. we don't have equality because it says no fats, no fems. i'm sorry, don't discriminate against me but you're going to discriminate against people. we have to stop thinking of successes in these pockets of america. >> we have to stop thinking of someone as being the first bear caucus in maryland. it's a bear caucus in maryland. that's what he is. he is an american. he's not a marylander. so that's what he represents. and we have to think of that as being something that speaks for all of us. that is a success for all of us, i'm in ed north carolina, i don

live in maryland. maryland delegates don't affect me but they do affect me when someone says i'm a maryland delegate. that is one of our delegates. i don't know if that helps at all, but it was a hard question to answer. >> sometimes progress can be stopped if it can be delayed a little bit we're not going to be counted in the 2020 census. i'm concerned about that i'm concerned about its effect on us as a community. and i'm concerned about us as a community as our children grow up.

if they can't be counted. we're less significant. i look at that dynamic and pose the question of what strategies do we have to lay out as a community to make sure that we are accounted every day. >> one thing i will say is, there was a time in our history not too long ago where we did not want to be counted. where -- when aids and hiv first became a problem in our country we did not want to be counted. we did not want to be visible. we did not want the government coming after us. there's a receipt sense in marginalized communities. there's a give and take to that. the question of being counted.

although i understand and know exactly why it's important to be counted on, health surveys from the cdc and other places. i would say as far as a strategy goes, we have to focus at the federal level and look at our natural leader right now. and make sure we focus on our national leader. we have to focus on the federal level in a broader sense. just because you are not a parent doesn't mean you shouldn't pay attention to what happens at the school board level. it's engaging in many ways, it's a shame when the administration says we're not going to add sexual orientation to the survey. there are many ways in which we can be successful, and that's at

the state level. we have strong states like california and other states that had taken the lead years ago in washington state in surveys and then we had friendly federal governments who had surveys that weren't available back then. there's enough date to to show there is enough outcomes i would say that it's just important to make sure we are visible. we are strategic and make sure wherever we are, we have to make sure we hold our elected officials accountable. any election is an issue for our community. we have to make sure we pay attenti attention. >> i'm going to add a tiny bit

to that. i thought it was a great macro analysis. i'm going to be literal in my response. i believe there are so many things the federal government has a census and that's an important count. most are delivered through state organizations and local organizations. we kind of have the broad responsibility. but it's what it really comes down to is states and local government where the rubber hits the road. that's where i think you want to put your effort when you want to see progress. from working in the mental health services, we had a campaign that i participated in, it was called nothing about us without us. it was a powerful constituency group where individuals came together who are receiving mental health services and said, we will not have you plan

services and programs for us without our involvement. it's not fair, it's not okay, it's not ethical. it's right, it wasn't. it became the fundamental driving force for how every dollar was spent. there's a group of individuals, their voices were heard they had voting privileges on decisions that were made. nothing about them would be decided without them. that's grassroots work at play. you see it also in the schools with the right school board representation. ensuring that your school has an alliance. i think that's where -- if you want to make change, that's where you're going to be the most impactful. >> spencer? >> thank you so much for being here. thank you for supporting a

program that's deep in this fight. we're preaching to the choir here you said it's a tough place to lie on the witness stand. in my line of work, the hardest thing we have is getting people on the witness stand how do we make sure the people that oppose us -- we are getting this to the top of the agenda, how do we set the agenda how do we make sure lgbtqia issues are a talking point and not an after thought on the news cycle. that's the hardest thing we're going to have making sure this is a priority for fwoeks. >> do you want to go first?

>> how do we set the agenda, we participate all the time. we participate in coalitions that bring together lots of groups of people. i'm going to be shameless and plug a bill i'm working on because, hey, c-span. for five years in the state of maryland, we've been working to get people the opportunity to earn sick leave. and in the last legislative session, it's been my bill for the last three years, we finally passed, earned sick leave legislation, with the coalition of over 166 different groups, gay, straight, all the way across the spectrum. and we did it. we passed the bill, the governor vetoed it, we have to continue that coalition, we have to continue to expand the coalition. we have to listen to the voices that aren't heard.

or that can't be heard or that haven't been heard. and we have to keep building this out, and the only way that you can do that, and the only way you can get and stay on the agenda is if you are participating in the process, and i think it becomes very easy. my partner patrick will be calling me a hypocrite in 30 minutes. because we sit on the phone and we look at facebook, and we -- don't pretend that you don't. he is a nice person i like him, five years. we find it easy to do those few quick things on the phone. we find it difficult to cross the street and find out who your neighbor is. and it's that that we have to start doing. we have to get out of our

bubbles. we have to get into communities where we feel uncomfortable. when we do that, it's news. shouldn't be, but it is. it's part of setting of agenda. >> i would add to this that for me, at least i would turn it around a little bit. i don't think we should be setting the agenda. i think the agenda in some ways is set what i mean by that, we have our own concerns. what is facing our country and our world today the fact that we might zero out funding for planned parenthood, that's an lgbt issue. what's happening with immigration reform, that's an lgbt issue. we can go on and on the list. it's important for us as a community to make sure we engage in the issues of the day, and

make sure we speak for them from our personal experience. which would include the fact that we are lgbt people. we should bring our whole bodies and our wholeselves to the discussion, and by doing that, it's how we have the allies by making sure that we understand immigration reform affects all of us. realize that lgbt issues affect all of us as well. >> inspired, you all are amazing. >> i want to give a heartfelt thanks to our warriors. wen cat do it without you. the number one reason why donald trump won is because people didn't like people who didn't look like them. the number one reason.

it wasn't money, it wasn't health care. people that don't look like us, that's been talked about all around the circle here. some of it seems like common sense, what are we fighting about. what makes people so afraid. what are people afraid of, if we have gay marriage, do they feel their marriage is going to fail? i moved to south carolina i went into full blown culture shock. i found someone with a patriots hat on on the plane. massachusetts had gay marriage, it didn't affect anyone else's marriage. it's an interesting thing, because people are afraid of the

unknown? what are we afraid of? what's on the other side. i let people troll my facebook page that has blown up with i hate donald trump stuff. my friends say, you should unfriend these people. no, i want to hear what they have to say. so from your vantage point what are we fighting, what's on the other side, why would anybody fight equality for all. why would anybody want somebody to live on the street. what are we fighting, can you tell me what we're fighting? thank you. >> i think there are parents telling young kids some really not entirely factual information and' grow up in an environment where perhaps someone that runs on a really religious or conservative agenda would match

with what they were told is good and right in the world. these early childhood, formative years are, they last a lifetime, and i think when we all become adults, we believe what our parents believe. there's something important about how we embrace young people and create the opportunity for them to make these decisions for themselves later on. instead of predisposing them to thinking there are good people and bad people. we want to gift them the ability to be analytical and the ability to make hard decisions based on who they are when they make those decisions. i really can't -- brain structure is hard to undo. and the messages that are coming from churches in particular and in some cases, fringes or

factions of political parties are very negative. and i think they're penetrating into homes and affecting young people and parents and i think we all have a hard time undoing that. >> i go to all these meetings. i find, where is the message, what is the message. water finds its own level. they're pliable. and maybe they do have something at home, but they will gravitate toward what feels good. i look at a community that says we're fighting. everybody's fighting. what are we fighting about. what if we changed our course, and said, why don't we have messaging that gets transgendered people together doing something nice for a community. what if we show them that this is what people are about. this is what heart centered people are about. we don't judge by the color of your skin or gender or

sexuality. we judge by our character. and our character says be kind. if the messages were be kind, be kind, be kind. let me show you how to be kind. i think we would change the dialogue, do you agree? >> i do. >> we have time for one more question. >> i'll try to keep this quick. i'm a junior at gw, i'm just freaking out being in front of all of you. thank you for everything you've done for the community. every young lgbt person has a dinner experience. my experience is different from the experience of a gay white male or transgender black woman has growing up. there are higher rates of mental health problems among the lgbt community. higher rates of drug use, suicide, how can do we address

those issues while keeping in mind the issues that communities of color and other communities face. thank you. >> i'll speak to that briefly. >> i think the way you try to do that is to make sure going back to nothing without us kind of a model that you have those voices at the table. and what you want to do is advocate and if you think about the mental health services examples you brought up, is to advocate and insist you have services that are matched to people appropriately. if you are a queer woman of color and you're 16 years old, you may want a queer woman of color providing your mental health services. who's going to relate to you better. those sources are out there, and those individuals are out there, it's just a matter of insisting

that you have appropriate services. services that represent the students. we need to have the teachers go through the training process. where the service delivery happens is the most important to make that match specific to your example. so thanks. >> we are now out of time, i want to thank all of our panelists, because this has been an amazing experience. [ applause ]

>> and you know you're not leaving without getting one more pitch. thursday night margaret cho come and see us, and thank you for coming. [ applause ] the senate foreign relations committee examines the reorganization plans for 2018 they'll hear from deputy intersect of state john sullivan. live coverage begins at 5:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span3. tonight on the

communicators. >> private sectors yeo's roe recognize that your id group is not just a cost center, it's an entity that can help drive innovation. it's an entity that can help improve your bottom line. we need the federal government to start thinking that way. >> the chairman of the house information technology subcommittee texas congressman will hurd talks about his bill to upgrade technology at federal agencies. his opinion of u.s. cyber defenses and his proposal for a cyber national guard. he's interviewed by tim starks. >> the idea of a cyber national guard is this. if you're in high school and you want to go to college and study something around cyber security, we're going to find you scholarships to go to college. and when you graduate you have to come work in the federal government. at the department of interior, at the census bureau or at

social security much you're going to do that for the same amount of time you got the scholarship for, when you finish your time in the federal service and go work in the private sector. the private sector is going to loan you back to the government for the proverbial one weekend a month or ten days a quarter, where this is going to improve the cross pollenization of ideas. >> watch the communicators tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span 2. sunday on q & a. >> when we look at president obama's domestic legacy, there are two things that are very important. that will have long lasting good commences for the united states. sonia sotomayor and elena kagan.

>> the second of our two-part interview with david guerro. he talks about his book, rising star, the making of barack obama. which covers president obama's life up to winning the presidency. >> the point to emphasize here, there were scores and scores of people in illinois who had known him in years earlier who were deeply disappointed with the electra swrektry of the obama presidency and disappointed in two ways, number one, disappointed that barack forgot the people -- many of the people, most of the people who were essential to his political rise. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern. on c-span's q & a. >> secretary of state rex tillerson testified before a senate appropriations subcommittee last month on his