Biden, Harris Take Offi ce with List of LGBTQ Priorities
New administration vows to take bold action and bring unity to ailing nation
BY MATT TRACY
The Trump years are
over.
With a promise of unity,
Joe Biden ushered in
a new era in history after he was
sworn in as the 46th president of
the United States on January 20
alongside Kamala Harris, who
became the fi rst woman and fi rst
Black and Asian American person
to become vice president.
“Today, on this January day,
my whole soul is in this: bringing
America together, uniting our
people, uniting our nation,” Biden
said during his inaugural address.
“And I ask every American to join
me in this cause.”
Biden is launching his presidency
with the tall task of confronting
the raging coronavirus crisis
following a year during which
his predecessor ignored the pandemic
and fanned the fl ames of
misinformation and hate, leading
to 400,000 deaths. Many states
— including New York — are immediately
turning to the new administration
to address their dire
need for vaccines and economic
support.
The new administration will, of
course, also be tasked with eradicating
the bigotry that seeped out
of an administration that spent
four years injecting racism, homophobia,
transphobia, religious
bigotry, xenophobia, and sexism
into the American bloodstream.
Biden quickly got to work on more
than a dozen executive orders, including
a directive reversing the
ban on trans troops and another
requiring federal agencies to follow
the Bostock v. Clayton County
Supreme Court ruling from June
to bring workplace protections to
employees on the basis of gender
identity and sexual orientation.
Among other orders, the new
administration is moving to bring
the nation back into the Paris Climate
agreement, extend student
loan relief, end the Muslim travel
ban, halt construction of the border
wall, and call on Congress to
swiftly act on immigration reform.
Joe Biden is sworn in as the 46th president of the United States by Chief Justice John Roberts as Jill
Biden holds the Bible.
Kamala Harris is sworn in as Vice President while her spouse, Doug Emhoff, holds a bible.
Biden is also advancing executive
orders intended to wipe out the
Trump administration’s 1776 commission
and re-evaluate racial equity
in federal agencies to ensure
even distribution of federal funds.
Biden is widely considered to be
the most pro-LGBTQ president to
enter the White House, but it remains
to be seen how quickly he
can deliver on change for queer
Americans.
A divided Senate will pose major
challenges to the Biden agenda,
even with a slight Democratic edge
— and Harris’ role as a tiebreaker
in the upper chamber will place
her in a signifi cant position of infl
uence. The incoming administration
has vowed to advance the
stalled Equality Act, which would
build on the June Supreme Court
ruling and expand LGBTQ protections
beyond employment — but
REUTERS/ ANDREW HARNIK
REUTERS/SAUL LOEB
that won’t be easy.
Before Biden begins courting
bipartisan support for that measure,
he will have to woo conservative
Democrats like Senator Joe
Manchin of West Virginia, who has
opposed the Equality Act. The legislation
passed in the House with
bipartisan support during the
Trump era, but never made it to
the Senate.
There is also a need to restore
consistent HIV/AIDS funding,
which was slashed during the
Trump era, and advocates have
demanded the repeal of FOSTASESTA,
a bipartisan law passed
in 2018 that was branded as an
anti-traffi cking bill but wound up
having a negative impact on sex
workers just as the sex work decriminalization
movement heated
up.
The new administration will be
INAUGURATION
pressed to refocus efforts on a number
of healthcare-related fronts in
the face of a deadly pandemic that
arrived in the middle of the Democratic
Party’s debate over Medicare
for All. Biden took heat for taking
a more moderate stance on that
issue — and he will undoubtedly
continue to face pressure as the
coronavirus crisis takes its toll on
the health of Americans.
The new administration will also
be required to revamp numerous
federal agencies after the Trump
administration used them as
tools to squash the rights of queer
Americans — especially transgender
folks — and other marginalized
groups.
Trump’s Department of Health
and Human Services led an effort
to strip transgender patients
of non-discrimination protections
and allow same-sex parents to be
rejected from adoption agencies,
the Department of Housing and
Urban Development sought to restrict
the rights of transgender
folks seeking emergency shelter,
and the Department of Education
took aim at protections for transgender
students in schools and on
playing fi elds.
The Trump State Department,
meanwhile, shattered the Obama
administration’s efforts to focus
on supporting LGBTQ rights and
blew off marriage and immigration
laws by rejecting citizenship for
children of bi-national same-sex
parents.
Biden and Harris have evolved
on queer issues over the years.
Biden, for example, supported
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and voted
in favor of the Defense of Marriage
Act, which defi ned marriage
as a union between a man and a
woman at the federal level, and
Harris has a history of opposing
trans-affi rming care for prison inmates.
She has since changed her
tune on that front. Harris has also
long supported marriage equality
and Biden was a pivotal player in
the Obama administration’s shift
➤ BIDEN/HARRIS, continued on p. 35
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