Original subtitles

♪ [MUSIC]

REPORTER: What do you want the police to do?

MAN: We want them off of our backs.

We want them to stop harassing us, stop pushing us around.

NARRATOR: Every single one of us has an unexpected guest

in the bedroom.

LOVING: I woke up and there was the policeman standing beside

the bed.

DR. WESTHEIMER: The law has to stay out of people's bedrooms.

CHARLES: People are interested in regulating what other people

do because we wanna have a cause or something to feel like

we're in control of things.

MORRIS: Well, I'm a hundred percent against birth control

because it's immoral.

It's the same as prostitution.

SAVAGE: Everyone should back the [bleep] out of the room

and leave it alone.

MCCARTHY: The fight to expose those who will destroy

this nation will go on and on.

NARRATOR: But sometimes, the government can be a useful

bedfellow.

CHO: It was a great victory and it's something

that I still celebrate.

NARRATOR: No matter which side of the debate you're on.

MAN: Abortion is murder.

NARRATOR: When the government's in the bedroom,

nobody is getting any sleep.

POLICEMAN: Your demonstration is over.

BAIRD: And I will fight them to my last breath.

COHEN: You have to speak up and you have to fight

for what you believe.

NARRATOR: In a push to strengthen civilized behavior,

in 2016, the Chinese Government bans internet videos

of women eating bananas erotically.

♪ [MUSIC]

Putting the brakes on sexualized bananas is a mild restriction

compared to China's most notorious anti-sex regulation.

♪ [MUSIC]

DR. FENG: Women were forced to undergo abortion, sterilization,

and when the families try to resist the policy,

their houses were torn down.

NARRATOR: In the second half of the 20th century,

China's communist leaders became deeply concerned

about their nation's exploding population.

DR. FENG: Everything that goes wrong in China was because China

had too many people.

Population must be controlled with the most extreme measure.

NARRATOR: In September 1980, the Chinese Government announces

that from then on, and with few exceptions,

couples are allowed to have only one child.

DR. FENG: Women were required to undergo monthly examinations.

In some villages, women's menstrual cycles were posted

in public.

NARRATOR: Because of the traditional Chinese preference

for a son, girl babies were often aborted.

INTERPRETER: Within a few years,

the words for brother and sister will disappear.

In my view, the single child policy will lead to a very

selfish society.

DR. FENG: If you do not observe the one child rule,

you could lose your job.

NARRATOR: For 35 years, China strictly enforces the one child

policy.

Then in January 2016, China finally repeals

the severe program.

By then, the damage had been done.

Sex selective abortion resulted in a Chinese population

with as many as 30 million more men than women.

DR. FENG: I think one of the main lessons learned

is the danger for the government to go so far

into people's bedrooms.

NARRATOR: But it's a lesson governments throughout history

and around the world never seem to learn.

BERKOWITZ: The essence of power is whether or not a government

can control someone's actions.

So for a government to actually exert power,

the power has to extend beyond the streets

and into the bedroom.

EISENBACH: Each civilization tries to provide a code,

sometimes backed by the force of God to keep people in line

sexually.

MAN: Venus.

[LIGHTNING]

GOODWIN: Laws about sex are very rarely about sex itself.

HARTLEY: Most of them are very punitive.

They're very anti-woman.

They're certainly anti-pleasure.

They're anti-science.

They're anti-logic. They're anti-compassion.

They are just crazy.

NARRATOR: Crazy or not, sex laws in the United States didn't get

on the books until relatively recently.

EISENBACH: See, there's this common myth that,

we're this Puritanical people right from the very beginning.

That's not true.

You just had those Puritans up there in New England.

The rest of the colonies had a very liberal attitude

when it came to sexuality.

WEISS: We had a lot of sexual activity in the streets.

Anything you did in the streets was okay

in the 19th Century as long as it didn't disturb the horses.

NARRATOR: In 1863, a very religious 18-year-old farm boy

from Connecticut named Anthony Comstock marched off to battle

in the civil war.

The experience would change him and America forever.

EISENBACH: He's seeing all his fellow soldiers,

carousing with prostitutes, and this is very traumatic for him.

BERKOWITZ: It appears, according to his writings,

that he was rather consumed with sexual materials himself

and masturbated to a furious degree.

NARRATOR: Repulse by the sinful behavior of his fellow soldiers,

Comstock returns from war with the mission of his own.

EISENBACH: After the war, he then starts a one-man crusade

to crack down on vice, and obscenity, and pornography.

BERKOWITZ: Anthony Comstock went down to Washington and set up

what he called a Chamber of Horrors.

WOMAN: Ahh!

EISENBACH: He presents the U.S. Congress

with literally this collection of sex toys,

ranging in size, from this spiky little thimble to this 28-inch

mahogany dildo.

NARRATOR: Fueled by Comstock's laser focused fervor,

congress passes what becomes known as the Comstock Law,

America's first federal restraint on sex.

Comstock himself is commissioned as a US Postal Inspector,

with the power to open anyone's mail and seizes

whatever he considers obscene.

BERKOWITZ: He sort of was postmaster censor-in-chief

and that allowed the government to monitor and track,

virtually, everything.

It was astonishing.

NARRATOR: Comstock confiscates tons of nude photos,

erotic writing, sex toys, and everything to do

with contraception.

COMELLA: His concern with contraception, I think,

had everything to do with a certain idea of keeping women

in their place.

He also went after birth control advocates.

SANGER: Many people are horrified at the idea

of birth control.

Well, to me, it is simply the keynote of a new moral program.

♪ [MUSIC]

EISENBACH: Margaret Sanger had been a nurse working

in the poor sections of New York.

She had seen how life in the slums was made infinitely

more difficult by unwanted pregnancies.

BERKOWITZ: The way she saw it, only by controlling pregnancies

can a poor woman exert some kind of control over her life

and her economic well-being.

NARRATOR: Sanger rebels against the status quo.

She goes toe to toe with Comstock in a relentless battle

to give women access to birth control.

BERKOWITZ: Everything Margaret Sanger said and believed was,

to Comstock, the voice of Satan.

It's one of the great blood feuds of American Law.

KLEIN: Margaret Sanger essentially says,

it's okay to have sex or pleasure or passion,

and this was such an offensive idea.

NARRATOR: In 1915, Comstock dies.

♪ [MUSIC]

A year after the death of her arch nemesis,

Sanger opens a birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York,

the first in the United States.

Unlike its namesake, Comstock's Law is alive and well,

and Sanger is arrested.

She refuses to back down from her mission and is sentenced

to a month in prison.

♪ [MUSIC]

Sanger is not alone in her crusade.

Across the pond, a controversial English activist,

Marie Stopes writes Wise Parenthood,

a sex manual detailing methods of birth control.

Following Sanger's lead, Stopes also opens a clinic.

ANNOUNCER: Marie Stopes pioneered birth control,

believing that one of the greatest freedoms women

could have will be freedom from constant childbearing.

In 1921, opened her first Mother's Clinic in London,

the centers helped to educate mothers in how to bring up

healthy babies, and were part of the gradual process

that liberated women from the Victorian to boost

the surrounded subjects like health, sex, and morality.

NARRATOR: That same year, 1921, Sanger founds

the American Birth Control League in New York,

a precursor to today's Planned Parenthood Federation.

BERKOWITZ: In the 1930s, one of Sanger's clinics ordered a box

of conical diaphragms that were called Pessaries.

Those diaphragms arrived in the mail and they were confiscated.

NARRATOR: Sanger sues to get them back.

Judges side with Sanger and declared that the government

has no right to interfere in the health of women.

♪ [MUSIC]

This means that contraceptives are no longer, by definition,

obscene and can now move freely through the U.S. mail.

BERKOWITZ: That was an enormous victory for Margaret Sanger.

Really, from the 30s, contraception has been much

more widely available.

WOMAN: Did you say bed? WOMAN: Yeah.

WOMAN: That's not to relax him, that's for action.

COMELLA: That case ends up being a really important turning point

in giving women an ability to exercise more control

and autonomy in the bedroom.

NARRATOR: Sanger victoriously announces

the birth control movement is free.

SANGER: I believe that there should be no more babies

in starving countries for the next 10 years.

NARRATOR: But it looks like she spoke too soon.

Some states had written their own versions of Comstock Laws

against birth control.

And three decades later, one of these little Comstock Laws

triggers another battle in the fight for control

over the bedroom.

MORRIS: Well, I'm a hundred percent against birth control

because it's immoral.

It's the same as prostitution or abortion,

or in any others in those immoral things.

NARRATOR: In 1961, James G. Morris files a complaint against

the newly opened New Haven Planned Parenthood Clinic

for violating the Connecticut Comstock Law

and butts heads with its director, Estelle Griswold.

GRISWOLD: Well, I think it's very evident that the law

is unenforceable.

I think if you had a policeman under every bed in the state

of Connecticut, they still could not prove anything.

NARRATOR: Griswold is fined and her clinic is shut down,

but she appeals, and the Supreme Court agrees to hear her case.

On June 7th, 1965, the high court proclaims that the right

to birth control does extend to married couples.

BERKOWITZ: The Supreme Court held that even though the word

privacy isn't written anywhere in the constitution,

we have a right to have sex as we want.

That notion that a person's body and a person's sexual activity

should be free from interference from the government

cannot be overstated.

NARRATOR: But the ruling in the Griswold case would have to be

stated over and over again.

ALLRED: I had to risk my life with someone who was not

licensed, which I did, and I almost died.

♪ [MUSIC]

NARRATOR: In Colombia, South America,

prostitution is legal throughout the country,

in so called tolerance zones,

but a new bride in Cali, Columbia can only make love

to her husband if her mother is in the room.

It doesn't matter what country you live in.

When the government gets involved in people's sex lives,

it can lead to confusion, contradiction,

and a slew of unforeseen consequences.

[CROWD SHOUTING]

STRUB: Griswold has decided in 1965,

this is the beginning of the arc of what we often called

the sexual revolution.

♪ [MUSIC]

Society is beginning to change its views on the regulation

of sexuality.

KLEIN: Americans have the right to birth control,

oh, wait, wait, wait, if they're married.

But what about all these baby boomers who are now in College,

are they gonna be allowed to have birth control?

NARRATOR: Legalizing birth control for unmarried couples

becomes the mission of a 31-year-old medical researcher

named, Bill Baird.

In 1963, while coordinating research at the Harlem

New York Hospital, Baird is shaken by a shocking scene.

BAIRD: I heard screams that I'll never forget and I saw

this young black mother covered with blood from the waist down

with an eight-inch piece of white cord hanger

sticking out of her body.

She died in front of me.

I found out she had no knowledge of birth control

because New York State Law said, birth control was a crime

and I thought that was dead wrong.

BERKOWITZ: He became a self-appointed contraception

advocate.

BAIRD: I gathered mobile clinic, 25-foot van.

I drove it to poor areas like Harlem and I would give them

free birth control, and that work spread rapidly.

BERKOWITZ: He would go and do speaking engagements,

and rallies, and he was arrested many times.

NARRATOR: On April 6, 1967, Boston University students

conspire with Baird to provoke a challenge to a Massachusetts Law

that severely restricts access to contraception

for unmarried women.

BAIRD: I arranged before I got up on the stage with

a 19-year-old student for me to give her a contraceptive foam.

The moment I gave it to her, the police came up to handcuff me.

BERKOWITZ: Fornication at that point in Massachusetts was

a misdemeanor in all that no one was ever prosecuted for it

but the providing of birth control was, in fact, felony.

MAN: Mr. Baird, your trial is next week and it still

is very likely that you will serve time in jail.

Do you have any thoughts?

BAIRD: Well, if this is the price I must pay to help society

to move forward, then this I must.

NARRATOR: Baird is convicted.

The judge declares him a menace to society and sentences him

to three months in the infamous Charles Street Jail.

BAIRD: It was a very powerful time of my life,

but an inner voice told me, if I can just hold on,

the U.S. Supreme Court might hear me.

NARRATOR: On March 22nd, 1972, the high court hears Baird

loud and clear and topples the last barrier to contraception.

EISENBACH: Thanks to the equal protection law,

it was manifestly unfair to prohibit one class of women,

unmarried women, from getting access to contraception

that you are allowing married women to get access to.

BAIRD: This is what the Supreme Court said,

if the right to privacy means anything,

it is the right of the individual to be free,

to decide whether to bare or beget a child.

KLEIN: It erased the line between the sexuality

that married people are allowed to have

and the sexuality that unmarried people are allowed to have.

JILLETTE: Bill Baird accomplished something

that should have never had to be accomplished.

He made contraception legal.

BERKOWITZ: Did it take someone as single-minded and as selfless

as Baird to allow the rest of us to have contraception?

Yes.

NARRATOR: Bill Baird's efforts pay off with the legal president

that rewrites the government's role in the bedroom

and in even more intimate spaces.

ALLRED: Before 1973, when I became pregnant,

in order to terminate my pregnancy,

which I desired to do, I had to risk my life with someone

who was not licensed, which I did and I almost died.

CRONKITE: Good Evening.

In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court today legalized

abortions.

STRUB: Roe v. Wade is the next level of expanding that zone

of governmental noninterference in the bedroom or the body.

WOMAN: Can you afford this child?

Can you afford to give it what you wanna give it?

It takes more than love and affection to raise a child

in this day and age.

INTERVIEWER: Personally, would you have an abortion?

WOMAN: Yes, I would.

I'm on my way to have one right now.

♪ [MUSIC]

NARRATOR: The decision on Roe V. Wade becomes a battle cry

for the conservative movement in the war over the government's

role in the bedroom.

COULTER: If you're going to do something that's not

in the constitution and pretend that it's in the constitution,

I think that would have been much better result

state by state.

WOMAN: What's your plan today?

MAN: Well, we don't have a plan.

We simply come here to save baby because abortion is murder.

ALLRED: It is going to be a battle that will continue

because essentially it's a battle to control women.

NARRATOR: In 2012, the United Nations makes a controversial

declaration, that access to birth control is a universal

human right, recognizing that women should be empowered

to control their own sexuality.

♪ [MUSIC]

When it comes to addressing global concerns over sex workers

or prostitutes, the pathway is not as clear.

In 2016, Amnesty International calls for nations

to decriminalize prostitution.

TAORMINO: Decriminalization is essentially the commitment

for the government to say, we're no longer interested

in this as a crime.

NARRATOR: That model is often denounced by groups

that see any plan that perpetuates prostitution

is harmful to women.

WOMAN: It is so simple to create safe,

fair working conditions for sex workers,

what they need is nothing special,

just exactly the same rights as other people.

NARRATOR: Another option on the table is legalization,

a system embraced by countries of Turkey, The Netherlands,

and Ecuador.

TAORMINO: If we legalize it, then it is subject to rules,

regulations, and potentially government intervention in it.

It is yet another extension of the government attempting

to control and regulate women's bodies for them.

BIEN-AIMEÉ: And then there's the third model that is known

as the Nordic model that we hope will be the global model

which was initiated in Sweden in 1999.

GUPTA: The Nordic model addresses the demand

by penalizing the Johns and decriminalizing the women.

It shifted the blame away from the victim to the perpetuator.

TAORMINO: The problem with it is that,

it's still ultimately operating from a place of shame

and stigma.

So they're saying, we're gonna lift the stigma

and the criminalization off of one end of this transaction

but we're still gonna shame and criminalize the other end

of the transaction.

NARRATOR: As nations debate the different solutions,

the goal remains the same.

GUPTA: Women need to have equal opportunities as men

and they need to have choices other than prostitution.

BIEN-AIMEÉ: In a world were women were considered

full human beings, there would be no prostitution.

NARRATOR: Full recognition and equal treatment is the goal

for another sexually oppressed group.

MCCARTHY: The fight to expose those who will destroy

this nation will go on and on.

BERKOWITZ: They were seen as sexual perverts.

♪ [MUSIC]

NARRATOR: The Soviet Union tightened the leash on its own

citizens, when it criminalized homosexuality in 1934.

Joseph Stalin sets the price tag for being gay at up to

five years hard labor.

In 1950s America, communists are subject to a witch hunt,

right alongside another group branded Un-American.

MCCARTHY: I might kill the solemn promise the fight

to expose those who will destroy this nation will go on and on.

BERKOWITZ: Right alongside the Red Scare,

there was something that we now we called the Lavender Scare

which was the fear that homosexuals wherein

the government corrupting American government from within.

NARRATOR: The US Government believed the gays

who hide their homosexuality could easily be blackmailed

by Russian agents.

Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy leads the government

charge right into the boudoirs of private citizens.

EISENBACH: McCarthy is creating this whole public paranoia

but they can't really tell a communist from a non-communist

by how they look and that feeds into the anxiety

about homosexuals.

REPORTER: In towns and cities all across the country,

men like these marry, have children,

and keep their homosexual contacts on the side.

This much is certain, male homosexuals in America

number in the millions and their number is growing.

BERKOWITZ: They were seen as people who did not hold

to American values and they were seen as sexual perverts.

♪ [MUSIC]

STRUB: In 1953, Dwight Eisenhower took office as

president and almost immediately issued Executive Order 10450

which barred homosexuals from federal employment.

BERKOWITZ: Government employees were encouraged to snitch

on one another.

There were many examples of notes going to investigators

saying, this particular woman has a man-ish walk,

this man seems to be interested in opera.

RUSK: Policy of the department is that we do not employ

homosexuals knowingly, and that if we discover homosexuals

in our department, we discharge them.

SPRINGER: Can you imagine having to live life

where you could never have sex, or if you did have sex,

it would have to be so quiet that no one could know

and people could blackmail you because they knew you had sex?

Well, you know, we'd go, what?

Gay people had to accept that every day.

WALLACE: Most Americans are repelled by the mere notion

of homosexuality.

The homosexual bitterly aware of his rejection responds

by going underground.

NARRATOR: As the government purges gays throughout the 1950s

and '60s, it actually plants the seeds of a Rainbow Revolution.

CHARLES: The civil rights movement, women's movement,

sexual revolution, the temperature was perfect

to challenge the status quo.

NARRATOR: On June 28, 1969, a police raid at a New York

Gay Bar, the Stonewall Inn, erupts into rioting.

[SIREN] [CHAOS]

MONTALVO: Stonewall was a nightly hangout for me.

I was partying with my friends when the cops came in,

they were, like, angry, harassing me for I.D.

and all of a sudden, we're all being put into the paddy wagon.

BERKOWITZ: It blew up.

MONTALVO: I remember a cop hitting one of the drag queens

and the drag queen punching the police officer.

Now, there's a crowd forming outside, screaming, Let them go.

Let them go.

Yeah, the protest has started.

♪ [MUSIC]

NARRATOR: The uprising at Stonewall sparks gays to start

standing up for their rights.

EISENBACH: For the first time, you have gays now being reported

in the press not as deviants but as people battling

for their rights on the streets of New York

and that was a revelation.

REPORTER: What do you want the police to do?

MAN: We want them off our backs.

We want them to stop harassing us, stop pushing us around.

REV. PALACIOS: When I started to pay attention to the news

and the Stonewall riots occurred, I was deeply affected

by thinking to myself, I'm one of those folks.

I'm one of those guys.

I'm gay.

MONTALVO: Everybody really realized it's not about

drag queens or extremely conservative gay men,

we're in this together.

And if we don't do it together, we're gonna fail.

REV. PALACIOS: Stonewall opened up a whole new thing that,

why should my private life not be public and should we not

then unite in an integral way private and public lives?

I should not have a heart divided.

STRUB: What Stonewall reflects is what becomes known

as gay liberation, an in-your-face brash

in the streets defiant movement.

♪ [MUSIC]

WEISS: Not only we're gonna be out but we're gonna show you

everything, we're gonna dance it on the stage

and we're gonna put it in sparkles,

in sequence, and put it up on a parade

because you can't stop us now.

STRUB: Dozens of cities pass non-discrimination ordinances

that give gay people new rights under,

you know, existing civil right statutes.

NARRATOR: AND IN 2016 PRESIDENT OBAMA DECLARED A PARK ACROSS

FROM THE STONEWALL INN TO BE A NATIONAL HISTORIC MONUMENT

IN RECOGNITION OF LGBT CIVIL LIBERTIES.

BRYANT: ♪ Jesus loves me.

STRUB: With increased visibility for gay communities also comes

backlash.

D'EMILIO: Anita Bryant, former beauty queen, popular singer,

went public in opposition to Dade County, Florida

non-discrimination ordinance.

BRYANT: In our campaign, we talk about the danger

of the homosexual becoming a role model to our children.

STRUB: That framing of gay rights as an infringement

on the rights of straight people to protect their children

really carried a lot of weight.

NARRATOR: Bryant's campaign, Save Our Children,

draws from conservative Christian values,

and presses for more government scrutiny of the sex lives

of its citizens.

STRUB: The crusade goes into dozens of cities around

the country and begins revoking the exact progress

that had just been made in the last five years.

NARRATOR: Bryant's vocal opposition to gay rights

meets up with the unique form of armed resistance.

BRYANT: Were met with protest and all kinds of problems.

And the, every.

[Ohh... Ohhh...]

MAN: Security agents, security agents.

MAN: No, no, let him stay, let him stay.

BRYANT: Well, at least it's a fruit pie, huh.

MAN: Let's pray, let's pray for him right now.

Anita, let's pray.

Anita, why don't you pray?

That's all right.

BRYANT: God, I wanna ask that you forgive him.

MAN: That we love him. BRYANT: And that we love him

and that we're praying for him to be delivered from his deviant

lifestyle, Father. And I just.

[CRYING]

NARRATOR: The gay community isn't alone

in its struggle against government interference

during the most intimate of moments.

EISENBACH: The Sheriff barges into the bedroom of Richard

and Mildred Loving.

LOVING: When I woke up and there was the police man,

standing beside the bed.

♪ [MUSIC]

NARRATOR: What do France, China, and Sudan all have in common?

There are ways to marry a dead person in these countries.

But throughout history, if you wanted to marry someone

who is alive but from another race the law was dead set

against it.

LOVING: I didn't realize how bad it was until we got married.

♪ [MUSIC]

NARRATOR: An interracial couple in the US,

confronts the most literal example of government

in the bedroom.

[SIREN]

LOVING: And I saw those lights, you know,

and I woke up and then there's a policeman

standing beside the bed.

♪ [MUSIC]

STRUB: In a nation that is fundamentally founded

on racial division, white supremacy,

MAN: I, for one, and the God will die before I yield one inch

STRUB: Anxieties around interracial sexuality date back

to the founding of the republic.

GOODWIN: Legislators shall believe that African-Americans

were so tainted that interracial couples would breathe and spawn

people who would be physically inferior, mentally inferior.

D'EMILIO: And so American law, especially in the south,

prohibited interracial marriages,

they were called anti-miscegenation laws.

NARRATOR: Mildred was the daughter of a share cropper

who married the boy next door,

a construction worker named Richard Loving.

BERKOWITZ: Mildred Loving and her husband got married in

Washington DC because their marriage was not permitted

in Virginia and then they returned to Virginia to live.

[SIREN]

EISENBACH: On the night of July 11th, 1958, a sheriff,

Garret Brooks, barges into the bedroom

of Richard and Mildred Loving.

The sheriff then asked them, you know, who is this woman?

And Richard Loving is like, my wife.

Boom, they both get arrested.

LOVING: They locked us up in January to head to trial.

And they told us to leave the state for 25 years.

EISENBACH: Mildred says, you know what,

we shouldn't have to put up with this.

And she writes a letter to Robert Kennedy,

then the Attorney General, and he puts her in touched

with the ACLU.

COHEN: It was that simple letter that got us into this

not so simple case.

HIRSCHKOP: These statutes are slavery statutes.

NARRATOR: After nine years of clearing legal hurdles,

they reached the Supreme Court to ask the justices to remove

the government from this unwanted threesome.

♪ [MUSIC]

On June 12th of 1967, the Supreme Court decided

that Richard and Mildred Loving had the legal right

to be husband and wife.

♪ [MUSIC]

The decision struck down anti-miscegenation laws

in Virginia and 15 other states.

STRUB: Loving v. Virginia is a very important precedent

in that, the Supreme Court explicitly declares marriage

a fundamental right.

STRUB: How can they ban same sex marriage if the Supreme Court

has explicitly said marriage is a fundamental

constitutional right.

WILLIAMS: Two Cincinnati men who were legally married in Maryland

are taking the state of Ohio to federal court

for not recognizing their marriage.

♪ [MUSIC]

NARRATOR: In modern-day Monaco, if you want to get married,

you need to post a written announcement on the town hall

for 10 days.

Across the globe, governments love to legislate who can and

can't get married for reasons of control, paranoia, or fear.

BROKAW: Scientist of the National Centers for Disease

Control in Atlanta today released the results of a study

which shows that the lifestyle of some male homosexuals

has triggered an epidemic of a rare form of cancer.

♪ [MUSIC]

NARRATOR: In the 1980s, the world is faced

with a new crisis, HIV/AIDS.

CHO: I lost a lot of people that I love.

They would be very healthy, very strong,

and then they would seem a little weaker,

and then you wouldn't see them again.

Within about five years, a community that had been totally

bustling, totally busy, totally vibrant completely disappeared.

NARRATOR: The epidemic forges a bound within the gay community,

a strength in numbers that will become critically useful.

D'EMILIO: AIDS brought more gay people out of the closet

than gay liberation was ever able to do.

It made them join organizations.

It made them engage in demonstrations.

EISENBACH: Gay marriage really becomes a very important issue

for the gay community when the AIDS crisis hits.

SAVAGE: We couldn't determine our own immediate next of kin.

Families blew into hospital rooms with sick and dying men

and had their partners of 30 years thrown out

of their hospitals, families disappeared with the bodies of

deceased men and refused to tell their partners, their husbands,

in all but name, where they buried their relative.

What we needed were the protections of marriage

that kick in at the worst moments of your life.

We saw, firsthand, the consequences of not having

those protections.

NARRATOR: In the decades following the AIDS crisis,

LGBT communities around the world make steady legal gains.

Many nations legalize same sex marriage,

the Netherlands in 2001, South Africa 2006, Argentina 2010.

REV. PALACIOS: Spain, Argentina, Mexico,

a number of the Catholic countries, you know,

have been very much there with the supportive marriage equality

and gay rights because I think people have understood

that this is a matter of seeing each person as a child of God.

NARRATOR: But in the United States,

the legality of same sex marriages resides

with individual states.

And through the early 2000s, not all states allow it.

NARRATOR: Two Ohio men became the standard bearers

in the fight for marriage equality across the country.

STRUB: James Obergefell and his husband John Arthur

could not be married in their home state of Ohio.

They went to Maryland, a state that did recognize

marriage equality to be married.

OBERGEFELL: I can't believe it's happening.

NARRATOR: Because John Arthur is paralyzed from a neurological

disease called ALS, widely known as Lou Gehrig's disease,

they marry as soon as the jet lands in Maryland.

Ten minutes later, they're heading back to Ohio.

OBERGEFELL: Just happy, that's all I can say.

JOHN ARTHUR: I'm overjoyed.

NARRATOR: When they land, Ohio refuses to recognize

their marriage.

WILLIAMS: Two Cincinnati men who were legally married in Maryland

are taking the state of Ohio to federal court

for not recognizing their marriage.

NARRATOR: One hundred one days after their wedding,

Arthur dies.

Undaunted, Obergefell continues the appeal.

And on June 26th, 2015, the US Supreme Court presents

its ruling, a dramatic shake up of the government's role

in the bedroom.

HOLT: Now that that historic Supreme Court decision

legalizing same-sex marriage across the land

and it's profound the five to four vote in many ways

reflecting the huge societal shift of the last twenty years.

OBERGEFELL: Today's ruling from the Supreme Court affirms

what millions across this country already know to be true

in our hearts, our love is equal.

BERKOWITZ: Obergefell carried the notion that under

the due process clause of the 14th amendment,

one has a right to individual autonomy because gay people

choose marriage, there is an absolutely no reason for society

to withhold that validation from them.

Their individual autonomy trumps the law.

SAVAGE: There's a line that's at the end of every Supreme Court

decision, it is so ordered that just devastated me

to have had the word disorder thrown at us throughout history,

and all my life, that a homosexual person is disordered.

And then to get to the end of this decision and see the word

ordered without dis in front of it in reference to our rights,

to our humanity really, it makes me cry to talk about it.

LEMON: I grew up never thinking about the possibility of being

able to be married or to be public with the person

that I loved.

And now, that has completely changed so it has rocked

my world.

CHO: It was a great relief, it was a great victory,

and it's something that I still celebrate.

I think it's very, very, very exciting.

♪ [MUSIC]

BERKOWITZ: The fight that she's fighting.

DAVIS: I just want to serve my neighbors quietly

without violating my conscience.

BERKOWITZ: Is a fight to the death.

♪ [MUSIC]

♪ [MUSIC]

NARRATOR: No checkmate for you,

it's illegal to play chess while having sex in Tallinn, Estonia.

In Santa Cruz, Bolivia, you can have sex with the mother

and daughter at the same time.

And thanks to one long time state employee making her

own law, it was impossible for anyone to get married

in one particular county in Kentucky.

[SHOUTING]

HOLT: That historic Supreme Court decision,

legalizing same-sex marriage.

WILLIAMS: It's the most important gay rights ruling ever

PRES. BARACK OBAMA: This decision affirms what millions

of Americans already believe in their heart.

When all Americans are treated as equal, we are all more free.

MOORE: In Kentucky, I thought it would take a hundred years

before that would be legal.

It's never gonna happen for me.

REPORTER: Couples who fought the bans in Kentucky were ecstatic.

MOORE: I was like, well, it's legal now.

I'm gonna have to get married now.

But the very next day, our accounting clerk made

the statement that she would not be issuing any marriage license.

We're getting ready to go into the Rowan County Courthouse

and apply for a marriage license.

ERMOLD: We've been together for 17 years,

we live in Rowan County for 10 years,

and we feel that it's our right as citizens.

MOORE: We went in, we waited for probably, like, 10 minutes,

her deputy clerks were talking to everyone.

They said they weren't issuing marriage licenses at all.

And we were like, well, who can we talk to?

Can we talk to the country clerk?

DAVIS: Well, I advise you to put your phone low.

MOORE: Well, I asked her what, you know,

what is the horrible thing that's gonna happen

if you give us a license and she said, Well,

I'm worried about my salvation.

I'm worried about going to hell.

ERMOLD: And then he said, well, it's likely you probably gave

a marriage license to murderers and child molesters.

And she said, well, yeah, but they would've been a man

and a wife.

It was that moment, when she said that, I was,

I was finished and I was like, that's, we're fighting this one.

NARRATOR: The American Civil Liberties Union files a contempt

of court notion against Davis but she fights back

citing religious freedom.

MAN: Every public official in our democracy is subject

to the rule of law.

CROWD: [Inaudible].

MOORE: People were getting bussed in.

Anti-gay church groups were coming out.

So it was very tense.

♪ [MUSIC]

MOORE: I'm good. How are you doing?

MOORE: The Supreme Court decided.

ERMOLD: There is no more appeal, there is no more appeal,

it's been ruled by the Supreme Court of the United States

that we people are citizens in this country and we deserve

our right.

We deserve our rights.

What she has done is unconscionable,

it's unforgivable, it's absolutely,

absolutely ludicrous.

Don't smile at me.

ERMOLD: You absolutely have disrespected us.

MOORE: Would you do this to an interracial couple?

DAVIS: I would ask you all to go ahead and we.

MOORE: Why are you not issuing marriage licenses?

MOORE: Why?

ERMOLD: Under whose authority are you not issuing licenses?

MOORE: I didn't expect Dave to ask her that question.

I was glad that he did say that because it forced her to really

kind of reveal to everyone that she was putting her personal

religious beliefs above our constitution.

BERKOWITZ: You can put Kim Davis in the context of Comstock.

The fight that she's fighting is a fight to the death.

CROWD: [Inaudible].

BERKOWITZ: While her beliefs are deserving of respect,

she had no choice but to follow the law.

NARRATOR: DAVIS TRIED TO TAKE HER CASE TO THE US SUPREME COURT

BY REFUSING TO HEAR THE CASE,

THE COURT MADE IT CLEAR THAT PERSONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

IS NOT A LAWFUL ARGUMENT TO DISCRIMINATE.

MOORE: She was thrown in jail for contempt of court.

SUPPORTER: We want Kim to be our Rosa Parks who says, No,

I will lay my comfort down and my life down,

as she already has by going to jail for six days

in order to stand on God's word.

HUCKABEE: I feel like she's shown more courage

than most any politician I know.

MOORE: We finally got our license a few days after

our last encounter with Kim Davis from her deputy clerks.

COHEN: Those guys are brave, you know,

anyone who gets up in the face of hate and speaks their truth

and tries to impact change is brave.

That's how we make progress.

NARRATOR: Throughout history, governments push their way into

and back out of our bedrooms.

And knowing when we want their company and when we want

our privacy is a question we need to keep asking.

BERKOWITZ: I think what the law needs to focus on in the coming

decades is protection of one person from imposing

his or her will on another.

EISENBACH: And now that we have begun to really escape

the judgments of the past, I think we can actually have

an adult conversation in a way that we were incapable

of having when morality was just thrown in our face.

JILLETTE: Once you have consensual sex between adults,

there is no place for the government ever, ever, ever.

SAVAGE: The government has no role in the private consensual

sexual conduct of adults,

♪ [MUSIC]

period, the end.

♪ [MUSIC]