If you got now, ukraine, russia, hungary, dozens and dozens of nations are looking at the United States as an evil mention because tunnel men like this person gentleman like this person, have lots of money and have more money than average americans, are going into these nations and promoting the homosexual lifestyle. In russia, they had a riot and had to shut down our professed homosexual demonstration in shut down a prohomosexual demonstration because, was funded b was funded by american groups. And the law forbidding the adoption of russian children, a huge part of it was the homosexual lobby. Russia was a communist nation, atheist, and these people take god serious now in these countries. Host richard, thanks for the call and thanks for adding your voice and perspective to the conversation. Kevin cathcart. Guest i hardly know where to start, but first of all, there are gay people in every country in the world, and the movement for lgbt civil rights around the world are home run in these countries. They are not steered by america and american money into it is true that there are many countries where the clashes between pro and antigay politics are stronger than it is in the United States today. There are also countries in the world that are ahead of the United States, places where there is merit recognition and National Civil rights laws, things we are still working towards and trimming of in this country. I dont think you can say that the United States is better than everywhere else. You certainly cannot say that the United States is worse than everywhere else. There are many places for us to catch up with and if we can help other countries along the way to make life safer and better for gay people who grew up there and live there, there would be a great thing. Host this is from one of our viewers. How do you respond to that sentiment . Guest i would go back to the prior comment and said that we do have opposing points of view on this show, because i keep hearing them steadily. People are entitled to their personal opinions, but there is nothing in psychology that would back that up. If you look at the American Psychological association, American Psychiatric association, National Association of social workers, you find no agreement with that statement whatsoever. I will not argue with somebody over something they just happen to believe. I would just say that science is not on their side. Host this from jody to that point of view, your response. Guest finally, a comment that i like. I dont think anything the president was doing was promoting gay lifestyles. The whole concept of the promotion of thomas equality is curious, because i dont actually believe that anyone who is heterosexual is going to become homosexual because marriage laws have changed or all of a sudden there are job discrimination protections. That is not how human beings work. Human beings are who they are pit in certain circumstances they need to hide hoot they are to be safe. The law does not recognize the relationship in their families. But theres nothing that will change there is nothing in Marriage Equality that will change the marriage of heterosexual people. If anyone is threatened by my relationship, their marriages and a pretty bad shape to start with. Host the defense of marriage act oral arguments are set for march. Set up what arguments the court will hear and what they will decide. Guest there are two marriage cases the court will hear prior to that over the spring. One is over the california marriage case. The California Supreme Court ruled that proving marriage violated the california constitution. There was a referendum, and the constitution was changed. There are 17,000 couples in california who got married during this brief period of time. Now they are on an island where no one else can join them. Host proposition 8, correct . Guest yes. There is also the challenge to d l oma, socalled the defense of marriage act, passed during the Clinton Administration to prohibit recognition of samesex marriage. That may not seem important until you drill down and say, what does that mean . Even if you are legally married in new york, iowa, washington state, maryland, or the district of columbia, the federal government does not recognize your marriage and your partner cannot get Social Security benefits. If you are a federal employee, your spouse will not get your pension benefits, date and will not get health insurance, your children may not get health insurance. There are real life harms every day from the defense of marriage act. We maintain that the defense of marriage act is unconstitutional. I certainly hope that the Supreme Court will find it so. Line. Miami, democrats caller good morning. My question to you is had you seen a lot of transgendered married with heterosexuals . What is the point of it, then . Guest well, i think transgendered people have always gotten married. Some transgendered people are straight, some transgendered people are gay. The ones who are straight are allowed to marry in some places, the ones who are gay are only allowed to marry in states i mentioned already. Again, i am not sure by how anyone elses marriage or life is impacted in any bad way if people are allowed to make commitments to the person they glove and strengthen their family they love and strengthen their family illegally. Host legally. Host laura has this guest well, i think that that is true. However, i have to say, as a longtime civilrights activist who has watched other Civil Rights Movements, even the generational shift take place, the changes that we want to see dont just happen. I dont know that generational shifts just happened. I think they happen because people are out there fighting for equality and talking about it, because it becomes part of the national conversation. As younger people grow up, they grow up into a different conversation and different world. I dont think we can just wait and in 20 years it will be taking care of. When the president alluded to equal pay for women the Womens Movement is in many ways much older than the gay movement. Has it reached all of its goals . No. I think we need to keep pushing. However, the polls that show support among younger people are great, wonderful, and give me a lot of hope for the future. I dont know how to put a timeline on exactly when this is done. I dont know if the civilrights movements are ever done. But with the numbers we are seeing, the support we are seeing among young people, the changes going to speed up 10 or 20 years from now. Host if you are just joining us, the issue isnt a rights in the u. S. And civil unions and marriages. Is gay rights and the u. S. And its of billions and marriages. Our guest is kevin cathcart. Give us the background of your organization. Lambda legal is the countries oldest and largest gayrights organization. Offices in chicago, dallas, and atlanta, and we litigate around the country and to Public Education on lgbt and hivr elated rights issues. Host republican line. Gloria, good morning. Caller good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my call to my family is six generations and the great state of california, and we have seen many changes take place, especially with regard to the issues that are on your program today. I am sure you probably know that in the 1950s, the greektown of san diego not san diego, san francisco, passed the ordinance to protect homosexuals from being attacked. You would go to jail if you beat someone out or when after someone and cause them harm because of their sexual preference. But weve also seen in the great state of california this issue turned into a mainly a white, very well established, male dominated issue. The men who are gay in this state are not pork, they are not an agitated, and they not poor, not uneducated, and they are long on opportunity. I think the issue of not allowing people to have a say on what their preference is is a difficult and unpleasant hill to swallow. Weve spent a lot of money on this issue, in particular aids. We have poured millions and millions and millions of dollars into this issue. We are aware that many men in this state would like to have proposition 8 overturned simply because of the financial benefits that would come to them and their partners. Host gloria, thanks for the call. Kevin cathcart. Guest there is an awful lot in there and let me try to make three points. First of all, i dont think that most people who want to get married want to do so because of financial benefits. Studies have shown that when people want to get married, they want to do so because of love and family and legal protections. There is definitely amiss in our society that a myth in our society that gay people look like me. I am a white man and i am representing gay people on this show. There are lgbt people in every racial and ethnic and Economic Group in this country, and it is unfortunate that those faces and voices are not more visible, because that would help to convince people that this is a much broader issue. This is not a white mans issue. This is an issue that affects African Americans, lesbian and gay latinos. One of the people at the inauguration was a gay latino poet. It is a myth we have to work much harder to put to sleep. Aids, we could do an entire other show and talk till sunset. It is a disease that hit the Gay Male Community are, but also hit people of color very hard, particularly Young African american gay men very much at risk of hiv infection in this country today. It is tied in with the pathology that all gay people are rich, white men. Studies show that they are in every demographic possible, every state in the country. Staggering numbers of couples and sorry, the census only found couples because he did not ask individuals about their Sexual Orientation couples raising children in the deep south, where many people believe we even live or go. People are living there and raising families there. They the protections, too. Host this comment from a bill on our twitter page. Guest you know, people like to talk about traditional marriage as if marriage has not changed dramatically over the centuries. People like to quote from the bible as if there were not people in the bible had multiple spouses. Eric has changed and evolved as the site marriage has changed as a society has changed over the years. Theres nothing about traditional marriage that is going to be undone by allowing lesbian and gay couples to get married. We have 10 years of experience with this in massachusetts and we are building more experience building more experience in this country and countries around the world, including canada, our neighbor to the north, south africa, other places where National Equality is Marriage Equality is national law. Host carlos is on the phone, independent line. Caller what you said is that marriage has evolved over the centuries, conference of marriage concept of marriage, and will continue to eve of, i hope. What you said earlier in the program is the reason i call it you said it dismissive when he said that no one in the religious or the Church Community was concerned about marriage being separated from civil rights until civil rights of lgbt people started to get some traction. That is really not true. There are a great many of us. I am a lutheran pastor, and a great many of us are concerned about this issue long before glbt people got traction. Host thanks for the call. Guest ok, well, i stand corrected there. I guess what i am reacting to is the fact that i hear it more and more all the time now, and perhaps i dont know enough about the history of before, but every time there is a debate in another state about in marriage law and a lawsuit in another state, we hear this issue about religion. I may be overreacting a little bit, and if so, thank you for calling in. Host ron has this tweet. Let me follow up on the point that many religions still dont identify samesex marriage as a marriage. Guest many dont, and yet, many do. If you read the papers and follow the news, many people in states that do not legally recognized marriage, many churches perform ceremonies and go through ceremonies in their faith communities. A broad range of faith. It is wrong to think that religion is in one place on this. Religion is all over the map on this. Even within religions, there are enormous debates within a variety of sects of how to deal with samesex couples, gay or lesbian clergy. This is a debate that is going to be going on for quite awhile but i think that the movement of history is on the side i am one. Host let me go back to one of the earlier caller is discussing adoption and the restrictions put in place. Of course we know what has happened in russia, where they say no to various adoptions,. Ga saying gay couples should not be able to adopt pit where are we on that issue . Guest it varies from state to state, because marriage laws and family law issues are determined on a statebystate business. There are places where it is very difficult for gay couples to adopt, although almost everywhere, single gay people can adopt. Often they are in relationships to it this creates problems, too, because only one parent is the legal guardian of the child. There were several other responses in to the caller who talked about russia, but i have to say, i dont believe the reaction in russia to foreign adoptions is primarily or even barely at all about gay people adopting in the United States. There are highly publicized issues about failed adoptions, children who were adopted, who died, about a cop who was sent back to russia. Theres a lot of i dont know what i want to call it jingoism here, the issue in russian and children who need homes. But i disagree that this is about gay people and adoption and that this is motivating the debate that is going on in russia today. Host another point of view from our twitter page. Guest well, i disagree with several things there. First of all, gay citizens do not have all the right spirit that is wh all the rights. That is why organizations like lambda legal existed and i dont think it is a disgrace. I dont want to get into one of those useless discussions about whos so rights battle is the most important whose civil rights battle is the most important civilrights battle. All of these are important civilrights issues. They were at the time, they are today. One of the things that gets lost in the discussion is the notion that these are all separate there is a womans movement, a movement for racial justice, there is movement for gay people. Many people fall into multiples of these movements. There are many africanamerican eneca and for whom synagogue stonewall are all important. I think the Civil Rights Movements, as we move forward with the work we do today i see this in the work that lambda legal does. Many of the organizations focused on civil rights issues or race and ethnicity issues support our work and we support their work. Many people understand that civil rights, there is room for everyone, and we are better off as the expense of all rights for each group, that were not taking away. It is not a zero sum game here. Host our last call is from new york city. Surely is on the phone for kevin cathcart. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I just want to say that i am for marriage between a man and a woman. If gay people want to have a marriage i listened to my president speak of mothers and teachers i mean, mothers and daughters, wives and whatnot. Two men cannot make a child, two women cannot make a child. Put in what you want of peoples beliefs, but in your heart you know that this is wrong. Host thank you for the call. Guest i do not know that this is wrong because i do not think this is wrong. Obviously, we have different beliefs, shirley, but i dont think the ability to have a child has ever been a test of who can get married in this country, straight or gary. Allow people to get straight or gay. We allow people to get married when they are 85 years old, or when they are in for infertile. Many tase and lesbians gays and lesbians raise children, have families. We have the same interest in making sure that your children are secure under the law, and that is part of the reason why marriage to such an important issue in the lgbt movement today. Host finally, we talked about the Supreme Court oral arguments in march. What are the issues that justices will be considering . Guest there are so many issues at stake in each of these cases. One of the questions, the big question, is doma constitutional . There are so many ways it could be done away with. We believe is unconstitutional. It also would be possible for. Ongress to repeal the law this was a statute passed by congress. Unfortunately, i dont see that happening in the near term, not in this house of representatives. We are hoping that the Supreme Court will understand the issues and will rule on the right side of history. The other issue is the california case. There are so many ways that case could go. The court could determine that proponents of repeal do not have a standing, which would leave the Lower Court Decision in place, which would mean that marriages would come back on board in california, adding another state to our list. They could decide it is unconstitutional throughout the United States to prohibit Marriage Equality. That is a bigger stretch, and much less likely end point. On both ofot riding these cases and so, come late june of this year, there is going to be a lot to talk about and and not going on we will now lot more about a lot going on and we will know a lot more about where we stand under the analysis constitution in this country. That will help us figure out our road map for the years ahead. Host kevin cathcart, thank you for being with us on a washington journal. Guest thank you. Host scheduling information today. The Associated Press confirming that the president has to take his new chief