Oval Office sit-down was the first for an LGBTQ newspaper
Christopher Kane at Washington Blade:
Writing about President Joe Biden’s legacy is difficult without the distance and time required to assess a leader of his stature, but what becomes clear from talking with him is the extent to which his views on LGBTQ rights come from the heart. Biden leads an administration that has been hailed as the most pro-LGBTQ in American history, achieving major milestones in the struggle to expand freedoms and protections for the community. Meanwhile, conservative elected officials at the local, state, and national levels have led an all-out assault against LGBTQ Americans — especially those who are transgender, and especially transgender youth, who face an uncertain future with Donald Trump promising to strip them of their rights and reverse the gains of the past four years if he is elected in November. Biden shared his thoughts and reflections on these subjects and more in a wide-ranging sit-down interview with the Washington Blade on Sept. 12 in the Oval Office, which marked the first time in which an LGBTQ newspaper has conducted an exclusive interview with a sitting U.S. president.
Looking back on the movement, the president repeatedly expressed his admiration for the “men and women who broke the back of the prejudice, or began to break the back” starting with those involved in the nascent movement for gay rights that was kicked off in earnest with the 1969 Stonewall Riots. They “took their lives in their own hands,” Biden said. “Not a joke. It took enormous courage, enormous courage, and that’s why I’ve spent some time also trying to memorialize that,” first as vice president in 2016 when President Barack Obama designated a new national monument at the site of the historic uprising, and again this summer when speaking at the opening ceremony of the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center. “I think it set an example,” Biden said, not just in the U.S. but around the world. Stonewall “became the site of a call for freedom and for dignity and for equality,” he said, and at a time when, “imagine — if you spoke up, you’d be fired, or you get the hell beat out of you.”
The president continued, “I was really impressed when I went to Stonewall. And I was really impressed talking to the guys who stood up at the time. I think the thing that gets underestimated is the physical and moral courage of the community, the people who broke through, who said ‘enough, enough,’ and they risked their lives. Some lost their lives along the way.” Through to today, Biden said, “most of the openly gay people that have worked with me, that I’ve worked with, the one advantage they have is they tend to have more courage than most people have.” “No, I’m serious,” he added, “I think you guys underestimate that.” The president has spoken publicly about his deep respect and admiration for LGBTQ people, including the trans community, and trans youth, whom he has repeatedly said are some of the bravest people he knows.
A record-breaking number of LGBTQ officials are serving in appointed positions throughout the Biden-Harris administration. Among them are Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay Senate-confirmed Cabinet member; Rachel Levine, the highest-ranking transgender appointee in history, who serves as assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; the first out White House communications director and press secretary, Ben LaBolt and Karine Jean-Pierre; and 11 federal judges (the same number of LGBTQ judicial nominees who were confirmed during the Obama-Biden administration’s two terms).
Even though “everyone was nervous,” Biden said, “I wanted an administration that looked like America,” adding, “all the LGBTQ+ people that have worked for me or with me have reinforced my view that it’s not what your sexual preference is, it’s what your intellectual capacity is and what your courage is.” “I never sat down and said, ‘it’s going to be hard, man, she’s gay, or he’s gay,’ or ‘she’s a lesbian’” he said, and likewise, “it wasn’t like the people I work with, I went, ‘God, I’m surprised they’re competent as anybody else.'” And then there is Sarah McBride, the Delaware state senator who is favored to win her congressional race in November, which would make her the first transgender U.S. member of Congress, a sign that “we’re on the right track,” Biden said.
A close friend of the Biden family, McBride worked for the president’s eldest son, Beau, who died from cancer in 2015. (As the Blade reported on Friday, Biden called to congratulate her on winning the Democratic primary race last week.) While the president’s close personal and professional relationships with LGBTQ friends and aides has often been highlighted in the context of Biden’s leadership on efforts to expand freedoms and protections for the community, he credits first and foremost the values he learned from his father. “I think my attitude about this, from the very beginning, was shaped by my dad,” Biden said. “You think I’m exaggerating, but my dad was a well-read guy who got admitted to college just before the war started” and in addition to being well educated was “a decent, decent, decent, honorable man.”
“My dad used to say that everyone’s entitled to be treated with dignity,” the president said, recalling a story he has shared before about a time when, as a teenager, he was surprised by the sight of two men kissing in downtown Wilmington, Del., and his father responded, “Joey, it’s simple. They love each other.” “As a consequence of that, most of the things that I’ve done have related to just [what] I think is basic fairness and basic decency,” Biden said. In his 2017 memoir, “Promise Me, Dad,” Biden writes that the country was too slow to understand “the simple and obvious truth” that LGBTQ people are “overwhelmingly good, decent, honorable people who want and deserve the same rights as anyone else.” Plus, “It’s not like someone wakes up one morning says, ‘you know, I want to be transgender,’ that’s what I want to do,” he said. “What do they think people wake up, decide one morning, ‘that’s what I wanted’ — it’s a lot easier being gay, right?”
As vice president, Biden had pushed for the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and for the designation of a national monument to honor Stonewall, but he took a lot of heat — along with a lot of praise from the LGBTQ community — for voicing his support for same-sex marriage before Obama had fully come around to embracing that position. His remarks came in the heat of the 2012 reelection campaign during an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Biden told the Blade he had just “visited two guys who had children” and “if you saw these two kids with their fathers, you’d walk away saying, ‘wait a minute, they’re good parents.’”
[...]
Other major pro-LGBTQ moves by the Biden-Harris administration include:
• Issuance of a new Title IX policy prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools, educational activities, and programs;
• A proposed rule from HHS that would protect LGBTQ youth in foster care;
• Expansion of mental health services, including the establishment of a 988 suicide and crisis lifeline, which provides the option for callers to be connected with LGBTQ-trained counselors;.
• Legal challenges of anti-trans state laws, such as those restricting access to health treatments;
• Repeated pushback against these bills by the president and other officials like Jean-Pierre;
• The president’s remarks reaffirming his support for the LGBTQ community, including in all of his State of the Union addresses;
• The administration’s work tackling the mpox outbreak;
• Expanded non-discrimination protections in the healthcare space;
• Issuance of new guidelines allowing for changes to gender markers on official government-issued IDs;
• Efforts to bring justice to veterans who were discharged other than honorably under discriminatory military policies, and;
• ‘The biggest Pride month celebrations ever held at the White House.
“But the one thing I didn’t get done was the Equality Act,” Biden said, “which is important. important.” The president and his administration pushed hard for Congress to pass the legislation, which would codify LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination protections in areas from housing and employment to lending and jury service.
[...]
On LGBTQ issues more broadly, Biden said, “I think there are a lot of really good Republicans that I’ve served with, especially in the Senate, who don’t have a prejudiced bone in their body about this but are intimidated.”
“Because if you take a position, especially in the MAGA Republican Party now, you’re going to be — they’re going to go after you,” he added. “Trump is a different breed of cat. I mean, I don’t want to make this political, but everything he’s done has been anti, anti-LGBTQ, I mean, across the board.” Project 2025, the president said, “is just full of nothing but disdain for the LGBTQ community. And you have Clarence Thomas talking about, when the decision was made [to overturn] Roe v Wade, that maybe we should consider changing the right of gays to marry — I mean, things that are just off the wall — just pure, simple, prejudice.” “What I do worry about is I do worry about violence,” Biden said. “I do worry about intimidation. I do worry about what the MAGA right will continue to try to do, but I’m going to stay involved.” “I’m going to remain involved in all the civil liberties issues that I have worked for my whole life.”
President Joe Biden (D) became the first sitting President to be interviewed by an LGBTQ+ newspaper outlet, as he was interviewed by the Washington Blade.
See Also:
The Guardian: Biden says ‘good Republicans’ are scared out of pro-LGBTQ+ stances by far right
