President Biden Signs Executive Order Aimed to Target Anti-LGBTQ Laws
Last week, Biden celebrated Pride Month in the White House, making it a historic event by passing an executive order to fight for LGBTQ rights. To start off the event, Biden addressed LGBTQ youth by saying, “My message to all the young people: Just be you. You are loved. You are understood. You do belong. I want you to know that as your president, all of us on this stage, have your back.”
During his speech, Biden celebrated the diversity of the administration by highlighting its LGBTQ members, like Pete Buttigieg, secretary of transportation, and Karine Jean-Pierre, press secretary. Biden also acknowledged the dangers of the 300-plus anti-LGBTQ laws that the community is facing.
“No one knows better than people in this room, we have a lot more work to do… I don’t have to tell you about the ultra-MAGA agenda, attacking families and our freedoms, 300 discriminatory bills introduced in states across this country. In Texas, knocking on front doors to harass and investigate parents who are raising transgender children… These attacks are real and consequential for real families,” Biden says.
Biden’s executive order addresses these attacks, conversion therapy, suicide prevention in LQBTQ youth, discrimination against LGBTQ youth, parents, caretakers, and families in foster care, LGBTQ homelessness, and other barriers impacting the youth and older adults in the community. The administration aims to tackle these issues by working with the Department of Health and Human Services, to expand access to gender-affirming care, and the Department of Education, to support LGBTQ youth at schools.
The executive order will also prevent the dangerous practice of conversion therapy both in the U.S. and internationally. The Department of Health and Human Services will help reduce LGBTQ youth’s exposure to conversion therapy. The executive order aims to add protections for LGBTQ youth, older adults, parents, and families.
To wrap up the event, Biden adds, “We will also do so much to protect and support our fellow Americans, but Congress has to pass an act as well, and that’s the Equality Act, which will enshrine the long overdue civil rights that protects all Americans.”
The executive order is a productive step forward to support, protect, and fight with the LGBTQ community. However, some LGBTQ advocates, like the National LGBTQ Task Force ,feel like some of the details of the executive order are underwhelming given the prevalence anti-LGBTQ legislation.
“The White House provides no deadline for when our community’s children, young people and families can expect new Title IX regulations,” says Liz Seaton, policy director of the LGBTQ Task Force. Not only do people feel like there is a lack of a timeline for when things are going to be implemented, but the executive order fails to mention how it will be enforced. While the order aims to protect a large amount of LGBTQ people, it doesn’t address Black and Brown, queer immigrants in detention centers.
“LGBTQ immigrants cannot wait any longer, and we must speak truth to power. President Biden made campaign promises to our communities and we delivered for him in 2020,” says Mayra Hidalgo Salazar, deputy executive director of the Task Force. We’ll see how Biden’s executive order develops and protects the community over time.
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