Miles J. Herszenhorn
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden lambasted “dangerous anti-LGBTQ” laws passed in state legislatures around the country during a speech at a White House Pride celebration on Saturday.
Biden singled out a Florida law that bans the teaching of gender identity and sexual orientation in public schools. Without mentioning the 2024 Republican presidential contender Gov. Ron DeSantis by name, Biden praised those protesting “hateful bills like Don’t Say Gay,” using the term coined by DeSantis’ critics.
The White House previously denounced the Florida bill when it was first signed into law by DeSantis last year, a key victory in the Florida governor’s agenda to reshape education in the state. Florida’s Board of Education later expanded the law in April to ban the teaching of gender and sexuality through the 12th grade.
In his speech, Biden acknowledged that “too many people in the LGBT community are worried and afraid about their future and their safety.”
“So today I want to send a message to the entire community, especially to transgender children,” he said. “You are loved, you are heard, you are understood, and you belong.”
Biden specifically criticized legislation targeting transgender youths and called for a nationwide response to anti-trans bills.
“When families across the country face excruciating decisions to relocate to a different state to protect their child from dangerous anti-LGBTQ laws, we have to act,” he said.
“We need to push back against the hundreds of callous and cynical bills and laws introduced in states targeting transgender children, terrifying families, and criminalizing doctors and nurses,” Biden added. “These bills and laws attack the most basic values and freedoms we have as Americans.”
The recent spike in anti-LGBTQ legislation enacted in states across the country has pushed the issue to the forefront of the culture wars as the 2024 presidential campaign gets underway.
Former Vice President Mike Pence told the Des Moines Register on Wednesday that he would support federal legislation banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors.
“If there was a move in the Congress to protect children from this radical gender ideology and to ban chemical or surgical transition treatment for kids under the age of 18, you bet I would support it,” Pence said.
Biden, in his speech on Saturday, also addressed the “growing threat” of book bans.
Biden touted his administration’s move to appoint a federal coordinator to address the banning of books in schools, which “may violate the federal civil rights laws when they target LGBTQ students or students of color and create hostile classroom environments.”
In the speech, Biden reiterated his call for the passage of the Equality Act, an LGBTQ civil rights bill that stalled in Congress amid widespread Republican opposition.
“When a person can be married in the morning and thrown out of the restaurant for being gay in the afternoon, something is still very wrong in America,” Biden said.
