Joe Biden helped a movement when he changed his mind on LGBTQ issues. Who advises him now?
WASHINGTON – Joe Biden wasn’t prepared to answer a question about gay rights when he walked into a meeting of the North Star Civic Association that Monday evening in Delaware.
The state’s junior U.S. senator, Biden was just a few months into the job. He’d been invited to speak to a small group of constituents and listen to whatever was on their mind. But Biden was startled when Robert Vane, a gay rights activist, demanded to know where he stood on employment and military regulations that were discriminatory against gay Americans.
“My gut reaction is that they (homosexuals) are security risks,” Biden responded, according to an account published in The Morning News, a Delaware newspaper.
Five decades pass. On the White House South Lawn, hundreds of gay men and women gather with their family and friends on a sweltering June afternoon. Some proudly wave rainbow flags. Others hoist small children on their shoulders to get a better view. All are there for a celebration, reportedly the largest gay Pride event ever held at the White House.
Their host: Joe Biden, president of the United States.
“You’re some of the bravest and most inspiring people I’ve ever known,” Biden says, his speech interrupted repeatedly by raucous cheers and thundering applause. “You set an example for the nation and, quite frankly, for the world.”
Taken together, those two events – in 1973 and 2023, two generations apart – can be seen as bookends to Biden’s remarkable evolution on LGBTQ rights. Over the course of his career, Biden’s views on gays and lesbians have advanced along with the forward march of the gay rights movement.
In politics, leaders who are decisive and unwavering are frequently lauded as strong and effective while those who change their minds are branded as “flip floppers,” a reproach that can derail and possibly even end a career. That can be especially true amid the partisanship of the current political climate, the most polarizing period of American history since the Civil War.
But with the passage of time often comes a deeper understanding of those issues and of the leaders whose positions on them shifted.
So it is that Biden, who once suggested gay men and women might jeopardize national security and who as a senator took positions that often mystified and infuriated LGBTQ advocates, is now regarded as the most LGBTQ-friendly president in U.S. history
How he got there during his 50-year career can be traced in part to overall shifts in public opinion that have led to greater acceptance of gays and lesbians. But that’s not the complete story.
If Biden’s interest in LGBTQ issues seems deeply personal, it’s because his views have been molded in part by his personal interactions with LGBTQ Americans. They have counseled him on policy, connected him to personal stories and now become a part of his public image. In part because of their influence, Biden has not only changed with the times, but also shown a willingness to get ahead of others in his party on issues like same-sex marriage.
“I’ve literally seen the tears in his eyes as we talk about violence against transgender people,” said Sarah McBride, a longtime friend of Biden and his family and someone whose advice Biden has sought on LGBTQ issues, particularly transgender rights.
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'You know, senator. I'm gay.'
McBride, a transgender state senator from Delaware, was just 10 or 11 when she first met Biden in a pizza parlor in Delaware, where she grew up.
Her parents were sitting at a table next to him and the future first lady, Jill Biden. They interrupted the Bidens’ dinner and told them how much their child looked up to him. Biden ripped a page out of his briefing book and signed it. McBride would cherish that inscription for years.
Her relationship with the Biden family deepened when she worked for their oldest son, Beau Biden, on his attorney general campaigns and after she came out as transgender while the student body president at the University of Delaware. Beau Biden’s death in 2015 brought her even closer to the Biden family.
In his memoir “Promise Me, Dad,” published just two years after his son's death, Joe Biden wrote that it took a long time for many Americans to understand what he called “the simple and obvious truth” about gay men and women: That they are “overwhelmingly good, decent, honorable people who want and deserve the same rights as anyone else.”
Biden concedes he didn’t fully grasp the difficulty they face until one night in the 1990s. He was a senator at the time and was on a train back to Wilmington, Delaware, after a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gays in the military. One of the men servicing the snack bar on the Amtrak train, whom he had known for years, had been watching the proceedings and was demoralized by the talk he’d heard from the anti-gay crowd.
“You know, senator,” he said. “I’m gay.”
“No, I didn’t know that,” Biden responded.
The man, who Biden did not identify by name, said that not only was he gay, but that one of his two sons was also. “You know what gets me about these guys?” the man said of the anti-gay rhetoric. “They think this is a behavior. They think we woke up one morning and said, ‘…Wouldn’t it be great to be gay? … This will make life easier. … I think I’ll be gay.”’
A decade later, when he was vice president, Biden made a stunning declaration in a television interview when he announced his support for same-sex marriage. Biden’s revelation created a stir in political circles because he had gotten ahead of his boss, President Barack Obama, who followed days later with his own public endorsement of same-sex nuptials.
But Biden had foreshadowed the announcement just a few weeks earlier during a reception at the home of Michael Lombardo, an HBO executive, and Sonny Ward, an architect, in Los Angeles. Pressed on why the Obama administration had not come out in favor of same-sex marriage, Biden pointed to the couple’s two children and said no one could question whether they were cared for, loved and nurtured.
“Things are changing so rapidly, it’s going to become a political liability in the near term for someone to say, ‘I oppose gay marriage,’” he predicted. “Mark my words. And my job – our job – is to keep this momentum rolling to the inevitable.”
Biden’s endorsement of same-sex unions is now regarded as a watershed moment in the push for marriage equality. Last December, before a celebratory crowd of thousands bundled up for a chilly ceremony on the White House South Lawn, Biden went even further and signed legislation that codified protections for same-sex and interracial marriage into federal law.
It was another sign of the extraordinary progress made in the long fight for equality – and of how far Biden himself had come on the issue. As a senator, he had supported the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
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Who advises Biden on LGBTQ issues?
McBride was speaking last fall at an event on the health worker shortage in Delaware when she suddenly noticed she’d missed two calls from a familiar number. A few minutes later, she got a text message from the White House.
“The president is trying to reach you,” it said.
McBride quickly returned the call. The president wanted to pick her brain about the fight over transgender rights, Beau Biden’s work on the issue and the steps his own administration was taking to provide protections for a vulnerable community under attack.
McBride reminded Biden that members of the trans community take great comfort in seeing the leader of the free world fight to protect their rights. It's important, she said, "for people who are feeling isolated and scared right now to see and know their president loves them and has their back."
Since he walked into the Oval Office as president on Jan. 20, 2021, Biden’s administration has taken a number of actions that support the gay community, including signing executive orders to advance LGBTQ equality and protect transgender Americans from the recent onslaught of legislative attacks in Republican-led states.
“This is a core conviction for Joe Biden – a core conviction of his spanning decades – that the promise of America is to respect the human dignity of every single American, and that includes every single LGBTQ+ American,” said Neera Tanden, the White House’s chief domestic policy adviser.
At the White House, a team of advisers, gay and straight, works behind the scenes to take Biden’s vision of equality and mold it into policies that will directly impact the lives of millions of LGBTQ Americans.
As president, Biden has surrounded himself with LGBTQ people. Some 14% of the roughly 1,500 people he has appointed to various positions in his administration identify as LGBTQ individuals. But a smaller group of aides has a direct role in crafting policies and the legislation on LGBTQ issues.
Issues of equity – whether they involve LGBTQ rights or other matters like racial justice and disability policy – flow through the Domestic Policy Council, which is staffed by individuals with expertise in a broad range of areas. Across the federal government are individuals whose portfolio also includes LGBTQ issues.
Those who play a significant role in crafting policies on LGBTQ issues include key advisers like Tanden, who leads the Domestic Policy Council, and Steve Ricchetti, who has been a top Biden aide for more than a decade and currently serves as counselor to the president. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay cabinet secretary confirmed by the Senate, is seen as an important voice on LGBTQ issues.
Others who may not be as well known to the public but who are regarded as trusted advisers on LGBTQ matters include Gautam Raghavan, director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel; White House counsel Stuart Delery; and Emmy Ruiz, director of the White House Office of Political Strategy and Outreach.
White House communications director Ben LaBolt helps find compelling narratives to inform the public what the administration is doing to advance the LGBTQ cause. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre often speaks out from the briefing room podium about the administration’s efforts to promote equality and protect LGBTQ Americans under attack.
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Biden and his administration also seek advice from Americans who have no formal role in the administration but whose counsel is considered invaluable, such as Tim Gill, a prominent entrepreneur and philanthropist who was among the first openly gay people to be included on the Forbes 400 list of America's richest people. The Gill Foundation, Gill’s Denver-based non-profit, partnered with the White House to put on the Pride event in June. His husband, Scott Miller, is the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland and Lichtenstein.
And then there’s McBride, who has no direct role in shaping administration policy but who Biden often turns to for advice.
Biden has described transgender discrimination as “the civil rights issue of our time.”
To that end, McBride, now a candidate for Delaware’s lone seat in the U.S. House, said he is well versed on trans rights and, during her conversations with him, often asks detailed questions.
At times, she said, their conversations will involve in-depth discussions that cover the ins and outs of non-discrimination protections. Other times, Biden will just share his passion for the issue, she said.
Biden will sometimes stun McBride by reciting from memory the most up-to-date statistics on trans violence – “information that I’m not even as versed on,” she said. There have been times when he didn’t know that they were going to interact, she said, “yet he had that information top of mind.”
White House aides recount similar stories in which Biden has demonstrated how deeply he is invested in LGBTQ issues. He listens closely, they say, and almost always asks follow-up questions. Sometimes, his queries are so detailed that his staff is caught off guard and not immediately prepared to answer.
Raghavan, who served as White House liaison to the LGBTQ community under Obama and later worked as a consultant to the Biden Foundation, recalled Biden meeting last year in the White House Roosevelt Room with the Congressional Equality Caucus, a group of lawmakers who pledge to advance LGBTQ rights. During the meeting, Biden highlighted the 14% of his administration that identifies as LGBTQ.
“But the thing he focused on was not the number,” Raghavan said. Biden emphasized instead that these are people who feel comfortable in coming out and that the White House is an environment in which they knew they would be protected.
“It never occurred to me before that that would be something to celebrate, too,” Raghavan said. “But I think it’s a really important point.”
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'Freeing the soul of America'
When McBride was completing her first book chronicling her journey as a transgender woman, her editors had an idea. “What do you think about asking Vice President Biden to write the forward?” they asked.
McBride approached Biden with the idea, and he agreed. Her story was powerful, he wrote in the book’s forward, because “it’s not just a singular issue of identity, it’s about freeing the soul of America from the constraints of bigotry, hate, and fear, and opening people’s hearts and minds to what binds us all together.”
Biden’s words meant a lot, McBride said, not only to her, but to other transgender individuals because it signaled growing support within the Democratic Party for trans people and their rights.
It was also a reminder of how Biden’s evolution on issues of equality had been heavily influenced by many of the people in his orbit.
“The president’s legacy on these issues is the byproduct of a lot of amazing work by a lot of people,” McBride said. “And I'm honored to be part of that journey.”
Michael Collins covers the White House. Follow him on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, @mcollinsNEWS.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Biden's evolution on LGBTQ issues. The good, bad and sometimes ugly
