President Joe Biden held a ceremony at the White House on LGBTQ Human Rights Month on the 10th and criticized the reality that legislation targeting LGBTQ+, centered on conservatives, is flooding.
According to the Associated Press and Reuters, President Biden said at the event that day, “Families trying to protect their children from dangerous anti-LGBT laws across the country faced the painful decision of moving to another state. We must act.” said.
“We need to stand up to the hundreds of callous and negative bills that target trans children and criminalize doctors and nurses,” he said. “These bills and laws attack our most basic values and freedoms as Americans.” Emphasized.
President Biden urged the US Congress to amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination based on race, color, and national origin, to amend the ‘Equality Act’ to regulate discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity as well.
Many of the attendees at the commemorative ceremony held on the South Lawn, the southern lawn of the White House, responded to President Biden’s speech by shouting “four more years” and declaring his re-election challenge.
Hundreds of LGBTQ and human rights activists, including victims of hate crimes such as the Orlando nightclub shooting in 2016, attended the ceremony, which is the largest LGBTQ Rights Month event held at the White House.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, the first LGBTQ minister to come out publicly, also attended the ceremony.
Recently, in the United States, there are increasing cases of pushing legislation hostile to LGBTQ people, especially in areas where Republicans control state governments and state legislatures.
Florida, where Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis is governor, is at the forefront of this movement, restricting sex reassignment treatment for minors and banning sexual identity and gender education in public schools, Reuters reported.
On the other hand, since taking office in 2021, President Biden has taken the opposite stance, such as scrapping the policy of the former Donald Trump administration, which banned transgender people from serving in the military, and signing the Marriage Respect Act, which virtually recognizes same-sex marriage.
Gallup, a US polling agency, recently announced that in a survey of 10,000 American adults last year, 7.2% of them identified themselves as LGBTQ, more than double the rate of 10 years ago (3.5%).