I wanna make sure that my husband Phil can visit me in the hospital.
Should I have to go back again?
Like when I had a triple bypass a few years ago.
I wanna make sure my husband has my earned benefits for retirement and
Social Security.
I wanna make sure that my husband is taken care of just like your spouses are taken
care of.
If I was the entity on the other side of the aisle.
I'd be more concerned when my own members accused of having cocaine fueled orgies
than worrying about the morality of my marriage I yield back.
>> People understandably get fired up over the issue of marriage equality and
Mark Pocan is no exception.
Yeah, if on your side of the aisle,
members of your own caucus are talking about your drug fueled orgies.
Maybe get a lockdown on that situation before you try to stop the LGBTQ+
community from having access to the same rights that other people have.
Thankfully Mark Pocan inside one and last night the house passed legislation that
would repeal the defense of marriage act and
enshrined marriage equality into federal law.
Notably the house did that were not yet
at the point where the senate has taken it up yet alone voted on it.
We will return to that in a bit.
I do wanna talk though about the nature of the vote.
It was 2 67-1 57, okay?
Which means that most republicans voted against it.
Also the only people who voted against it were Republicans.
But I believe 47 house Republicans joined the Democrats,
which as I mentioned, enshrines marriage equality also, by the way,
codifies the right to interracial marriage.
So, to some of you republicans don't get any wise ideas.
We got out in front of you on this one.
But anyway, 47 Republicans joined the Democrats and yeah,
it's a minority of their party Jessica.
But you certainly wouldn't have expected that even just a few years ago,
what do you think?
>> I honestly would not have expected this a few years ago.
The far right in the United States has been emboldened and it's about a lot
more than just marriage equality because these people have been elected by
communities that are okay with them being completely against gay marriage.
They want to oppress people who are members of the LGBTQ+ community.
And so, sure, they're going to cast this vote against gay marriage.
But of course, it's going to pass anyway regardless of how they voted.
But it just signals as to what life is like for members of the LGBTQ communities
in those districts that those representatives are coming from.
It's a very hostile environment for them in the United States today.
And it's terrifying, that in 2022 we are fighting for
the same rights that we have been fighting for decades.
It's insane.
>> They're fighting again.
Like, we're used to continuing to struggle to achieve the same
thing we've been struggling for.
Like, because we never had a single payer healthcare or whatever.
It's when you have to do it again that it almost hurts worse.
Like, knowing that you can legalize same sex marriage.
And then, they might be coming for that actually in the same way with Roe v Wade
or you could outlaw assault weapons and then, God, they bring it back and
it's that double dipping.
Like, some things shouldn't be rebooted and the destruction of people's rights.
I think I would include in that.
But yeah, 47, I wouldn't have expected two years ago.
I'm gonna be completely honest.
I wouldn't have expected it right now.
I am actually shocked, that so many Republicans would do this not only
because the whole Republican thing and they're awful.
But also like, what is the right been campaigning on for
the past year and a half?
Like, sure it's not all homophobia and transphobia.
They've also had their whole CRT thing.
There's a lot of racism in there and there's quite a bit of misogyny,
let's be clear.
But there's so much of a focus on the daily demonization of not just
segments of the LGBTQ+ community.
But individuals from it like,
lives of TikTok is the most popular thing on the right because they want an endless
stream of third grade lesbian teachers that they can personally attack.
And so, with that as the backdrop, having several dozen republicans being
willing to vote for this is actually pretty surprising.
But that said, we've been talking about the history of this.
I wanna give people a bit of history, because if you've started paying attention
to politics in the last few years, you may not know how fast this has moved.
Even on the democratic side.
Just a decade ago, Joe Biden got castigated for
announcing his support for gay marriage before Obama,
who at that point was the sitting president had done his own.
Because we need to be clear,
Obama didn't come out in support of gay marriage until 2012, ten years ago.
That was just a couple of years before Donald Trump slid down that escalator.
It took a long time.
And a decade before that Biden himself helped pass the defense of
Marriage Act in the senate 116 Democrats supported it in the house.
Nearly as many Republicans as opposed the codification of marriage equality did now.
That is about as big of a shift on an issue of national import that I think that
we've seen, I don't know what else,
I don't know Jessica if you can come up with anything else.
But that's about the biggest.
>> Yeah, yeah, it's a big shift and it's the product of a lot of protesting and
a lot of riding like, people forget that Stonewall was a riot.
This is something that people were fighting for in the streets for
a very long time.
And I think in the United States we tend to,
I don't know turn our presidents into deities like Obama gave us gay
marriage became legal under the Obama administration.
And so we make him the hero.
But Joe Biden came out for gay marriage before him.
And also, all of those people that were in the streets,
all of those people that were injured and lost their lives fighting for
gay rights are the people who got us to this point.
And so, we can't really make a deity of Barack Obama and
be like he got us these rights.
Because it's really not with the history shows.
And so again, to protect these rights,
it's probably going to have to be the same thing.
It's going to have to be people in the streets to protect those districts
where we still have elected officials governing on behalf of the far right who
doesn't want us to enjoy our rights.
And that is very scary.
It's almost like, they say change should be a slow crawl.
But instead, it's a few steps forward and many steps back and
these days it kind of feels like Sisyphus rolling the big rock up the hill.
And then it rolls all the way back down and we have to start over again.
>> Yeah, you can tell the different I guess education backgrounds of us.
She made the Sisyphus reference and I was gonna reference Paula Abdul.
But anyway, yes, it is in one form or another two steps forward one step back.
In any event that was the house we still need the senate to actually pass it.
Is that gonna happen?
I don't know.
More than 20 GOP senators declined to stake out positions on the issue.
When an Axios reporter asked him about it,
Marco Rubio said he's a no he called it a stupid waste of time.
Which is fun for his many, many LGBTQ+ constituents that
it's a stupid your rights are a stupid waste of time.
Not a stupid waste of time.
So I guess we'll just do it and
get it over with a stupid waste of time that I will block at all costs.
I will filibuster for weeks.
That's how much of a stupid waste of time it is, to him.
By the way, marriage equality polls at 68% in Florida,
you know what that is for Marco Rubio a liability.
And so, if you're chuck Schumer again, as we were talking about earlier in the show,
why not make them filibuster this marriage equality nationally?
Is it 71%.
It is bad for a politician to stand against something so
overwhelmingly positive and it's not just him by the way.
David Dan tweeted out in Wisconsin.
It's 73-26.
Ron Johnson would vote no make him filibuster it.
He's up for re election.
Do you want to defeat him or don't you?
So, whether you force the filibuster to show how much you prioritize these rights
and how you will defend these communities do it for that reason.
But if you can't do it for that reason,
do it to take out Ron Johnson do it to take out Marco Rubio.
These are competitive racest.
And so, whichever it is Dr. Oz make him take a, take a stand on this,
get out there and actually show people that these are issues you care about.
>> Yeah, the fact that they care so
much about gay marriage is honestly just creepy to me.
As a member of the queer community, it's like why would the party of freedom,
the party that wants everyone to exercise their rights.
And especially the libertarians, it's usually people on the far right who have
extreme views, who are against gay marriage, the same people who talk about
how important it is to have freedoms in our country.
It is insane to me.
This is the most intimate aspects of someone's life.
And really, at the end of the day,
all it's about is these people don't look like me.
They don't abide by the same traditions as me.
And therefore I reject their way of life.
And I don't want them to be able to practice it in the same country as me,
because I value my privilege so much that I don't even wanna look at it.
>> Yeah, 100%.