The damage and the abuse that we are living through isn't just exclusive to Trump. You have to go back to the John Robert Supreme Court and the unleashing of Citizens United that paved the way for this fascist, authoritarian, regressive form of government. And Donald Trump knows that he has this court in the palm of his hands. Some breaking news came out yesterday. Pop this up. Fox News reports President Trump tells Fox News Peter Ducey he's going to Supreme Court Wednesday for expected birthright citizenship arguments. Ron Philip Kowski of the Midas Touch says no sitting president has ever appeared before the Supreme Court during oral arguments in the history of the United States. And this court truly is a piece of work because yesterday the Associated Press reports the following. Pop this up. Supreme Court rules against Colorado ban on conversion therapy for LGBTQ plus kids. And we have all seen that this group of people have been so abused and so marginalized. And now that abuse is institutionalized. And here to discuss this with me is Kelly Robinson. We are so honored to welcome Kelly. She is the president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBTQ plus civil rights organization working to achieve equality for LGBTQ plus people. She is a trailblazing advocate and leader in the fight for human rights and the first black queer woman to lead the HRC. Let's welcome to IHIP News. Kelly, how are you? You know, that's a complicated question. I woke up another day ready to fight. I like that. I like that. Kelly, big picture. What are the immediate implications of this ruling? Are all conversion therapy bans in the United States now gone? No, that's really important to know that this is not a blanket legalization of conversion therapy. What it does do is open up a path, a very dangerous path for conversion therapy bans to be challenged at the state level. But I think a couple of things are true. Again, underscoring. This is not a blanket legalization of conversion therapy. This does not take away people's rights to sue when they are, when these conversion therapy institutions are engaging in fraud and misleading them and imposing harm. And it also means that we've got to continue to fight back. Look, every major medical organization acknowledges that this is junk science, that these are harmful practices. Let's follow the science and continue advocating until that's the truth. I mean, it's actually kind of like if you were to send somebody to a camp that's heterosexual to make them a different sexuality. That's the insanity of this practice. Is it not? It's totally insane. I mean, look, there's a reason that medical care is regulated in the United States of America. We want to make sure that folks are getting best practice care for whatever condition it is that they have. And this is no exception to that. This is like if you needed your tonsils removed and you said, you know what, doctor, just go ahead and freestyle it. Whatever you think you want to do is just fine. That's not how medical care is supposed to operate. We have to have standards of practice. And I think the damaging thing, I don't want to lose this, is the stories that we hear every day. I was with a woman named Linda Robertson during oral arguments for this exact case. And she lost her son to suicide in 2009. He turned to drugs after years of painful and harmful conversion therapy. We are losing members of our community to this harmful practice and the Supreme Court has opened up a door for more harm to more of our kids and more of our families. That's what happened yesterday. So let's discuss the cruelty of this. And I'm going to go ahead and just call it institutionalized cruelty. And I grew up in a Bible Belt state with a very progressive mother, thank God. In the 1980s, we had a really bad perms, really spiked up hair with white rain hairspray. We had a fabulous trans hairdresser. And I was in junior high and I said to my mother, like, why is she changing genders? And my mother said, well, darling, all you need to know is nobody in their right mind would choose to do this in the middle of the Bible Belt. This is just who she is and we support her. And so this issue is as old as our species, the trans issue. And now we have, this is my perception of it. You can tell me what you think. You see the civil rights movement of gay marriage really rapidly in my lifetime advance, like super quickly. And I feel like what they're trying to do to undo that is go, OK, who is the easiest person to pick on? Let's get them checkmated. And then we're going to start rolling back and getting everybody else checkmated. What is your take on that? Look, I couldn't agree more. I am a black queer woman in America and as challenging as this moment is that we find ourselves in right now. If you've got a time machine, I am not getting in it because if you go back to any other chapter in American history, my life doesn't exist. You know, I'm married with my wife, we have a kid. All of those things weren't possible just a generation before. You know, oftentimes I talk about this hope, the hope of this nation as being how beautiful and bold and robust and diverse that we are growing into, you know, 30% of Generation Z identify as a member of our community. People of color are not only growing into our power in numbers, but we're driving culture in powerful ways. And all of those things that excite me, I think terrify our opposition. So you see them launching a concerted effort to roll back our civil rights, not only the rights gained over the last 10 years, but really the rights of the last 400 years, because they are afraid of what it means to watch this country change. And I think that this is an important moment for anyone that's watching, whether you are a member of our community or not, whether you are black or white, whether you're a woman or a man, like this is an important moment because our country is deciding whether or not we want to move forward and embrace the diversity and the boldness of this nation or if we want to go back. So that's the choice that's in front of us right now. And that's what our opposition is constantly reminding us of. Okay. So let's talk about, let's dive into the ruling a little bit. This was an 8-1 ruling. Give us your background on this. Where were the other two left-leaning justices on this? What was their thinking? I'm talking about Elena Kagan and Justice Sotomayor. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that Katanji Brown Jackson's dissent really, to me, underscores the moment that we're in. If and when this decision moves forward, it may open the door for an era of unsafe and unregulated medical care across multiple disciplines. That's what she talks about. She even says that the Supreme Court right now is playing with fire and the American people is who will be burned by this. That to me, that statement encapsulates a moment. Now when I think about this being an 8-1 ruling and, you know, Sotomayor and Kagan, who we know are advocates and champions for the LGBTQ plus community, I think that they had the best intent in mind in a world and political context that may not be applied. What they were really hanging their hat on is this idea of free speech, that if we protect free speech for all, it can benefit all communities and reduce harm. But right now what this bill actually says is that the free speech of extreme Christian counselors at conversion therapy camps matters more than the harm it could do to queer and trans kids. That to me is a challenge. As we see our opposition moving forward, these bills through the Supreme Court, whether it's Scrimmetti that says you have to regulate care that could hurt LGBTQ plus people in theory or this bill that says you have to regulate care that could help us, you are still putting us in the same position where some folks have access to free speech, but not everybody. Some speech matters, but only the kind of conservative speech that they want to protect. So I think the challenge for me is that this decision in this political climate opens up the door for more harm and more hate. And what's your message to the millions of LGBTQ plus youth around the country who are seeing that their government will not protect them? Just an anecdotal story in my home state, home city of Oklahoma City, one of my very best couple friends, they have a trans daughter. And the laws there are so draconian, so cruel, so targeted towards their child. They are moving to a sanctuary state so that they can raise their child. And the mother of this beautiful trans girl tells me, I'm lucky that we can afford to do this. There are so many lost voices in these red states that don't have the means to flee, to go find refuge in a place where they can be themselves. So what is your message to all of those young queer trans voices that are trapped in rural America or trapped in poverty? We see you, we value you, and we love you. I think where you started this conversation is an important note. Queer and trans people have been here since the beginning of time, and we are not going anywhere. And in this period that is dark, in this crisis that we're in, I believe that there will be a reckoning that gives us the opportunity to transform this country and this world so that the beauty that every queer and trans person in our family has can be seen by everyone. But this is our moment to fight. And being at the Human Rights Campaign, we are 3.6 million members strong of people that are committed to fighting this fight every single day so that no one finds themselves alone. All right. And then right now, currently, what is the Human Rights Campaign doing today in response to this ruling? And what can my listeners of the, I've had it. We have the patriots, the gay triads, the vatriots, the black triads, the brown triads. We have built a community of people who will leave no one, not one group behind. And you see people even in the Democratic Party that are very quick to throw a particular group of people under the bus, the same group that now the Supreme Court is targeting. What can we do as a community to help you and what are you all doing to help this community? Yes. And I want to remind folks of this. This is not a red state or a blue state problem. This is an everybody challenge. If they are able to take these actions to roll back the civil rights and put in place harmful practices against trans people, they can do it to all of us. Look at Kansas, right? Where they took away the driver's licenses of trans people. Please believe if they can do that to my community, they can do it to anyone. So we all have to be in this. So here's what I would say. Number one, the most important thing that we can all do is to not be silent in the face of misinformation, disinformation and lies. A lot of us, I think are like, Oh, I'm not a member of the trans community. I'm an ally, but I don't know everything. So I don't feel like I can speak up. The bar is higher right now. If you hear someone saying something that you know is not right, it is your responsibility to say something and you don't have to know it all. But you do have to speak from your values and your experiences to tell your story and our story. That is critical right now when our opposition is putting hundreds of millions of dollars into feeding the American people lies. And number two, we have to get out and vote. At the end of the day, we have a political problem in front of us that demands a political solution. The Supreme Court is out of hand. The only way to get it back in check is to get new justices on the Supreme Court to have leadership that's willing to entertain ideas to make sure that that pillar of our democracy is actually serving the people. We need pro equality majorities in the United States House and we sure as heck need to win back the White House. If we don't do that, we will continue to find ourselves in this moment in this crisis in this peril. We have to change the political outcomes and that means voting, not just in November, but talking about the election every day, making sure you've got your voter registration in order, supporting candidates that you love. I completely agree. And I just think that this quote has been credited to various people. None of us are free until all of us are free. And so to my listeners in our community, we have to vote for and surround the most marginalized and the most picked on group among us. That is the most noble, brave, decent, moral thing we can do. And the work that you all do at the Human Rights Campaign is fantastic. It is so important. I know from personal experience how problematic living in MAGA supermajority states how the pain just piles on. So thank you so much. Listener, please go follow the Human Rights Campaign online. And Kelly, thank you so much for all the work you do. Thank you. We can do this. We can. Call my wife. Calling UK wildlife. 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