LGBTQ Pride Month

Floor Speech

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Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I rise in recognition of LGBTQ Pride Month of 2021. For more than 50 years, Pride Month has offered us a chance to celebrate lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer--LGBTQ-- Americans and to reflect upon the progress that our Nation has made in how we treat this community in law, policy, custom, and everyday life. It also is an opportunity to redouble our efforts to end enduring discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

President Biden promptly issued a Presidential proclamation recognizing June of 2021 as Pride Month. With the authorization of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, U.S. diplomatic missions around the world are displaying the pride flag as a clear visual representation of American values. On the very first day of his administration, President Biden issued an executive order on preventing and combating discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. This decision has already driven new policies at the agency level making an important difference in real people's lives, from protecting transgender individuals seeking safe shelter to reversing the Trump-era ban that prohibited transgender people from serving in the military. It is clear that LGBTQ Americans can count on the Biden- Harris administration to do everything possible to champion fundamental human rights on their behalf.

The bad news is that while we see progress at a Federal level, the Human Rights Campaign assesses that 2021 is the worst year in terms of State-level anti-LGBTQ legislation in recent history. Governors have signed 17 anti-LGBTQ bills into law, already exceeding the 15 anti- LGBTQ laws passed in 2015, which held the previous record in recent history. There are even more bills waiting Governors' signatures or veto override votes. Most of these bills shamefully target transgender children. These bills and laws are untethered from trends in real public opinion. Recent polling from Gallup finds that support for same- sex marriage is at a new high of 70 percent of all Americans. A PBS/ NPR/Marist poll published in April revealed that two-thirds of all Americans oppose legislation to ban transgender student athletes from joining sports teams that match their gender identity, a number that barely changes across partisan lines.

The American people clearly agree with the principle expressed in President Biden's executive order: ``All persons should receive equal treatment under the law, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation.'' It is as simple as that.

When it comes to human rights, civil rights, and being treated with dignity and respect, everybody in this country, regardless of where they live, should receive equal treatment. The House of Representatives passed the Equality Act in February to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in education, employment, housing, credit, Federal jury service, public accommodations, and with regard to receiving Federal financial assistance. These protections build upon and align with the Supreme Court's landmark decision 1 year ago in Bostock vs. Clayton County, which affirmed that the sex discrimination prohibition in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 also applies to discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. That ruling states, ``it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.'' We still urgently need to pass the Equality Act, however, to apply this interpretation to all areas of civil rights law and to apply protections against discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity to a broader scope of entities. I am proud to be an original cosponsor of the legislation and will work to advance it this Congress.

As Harvey Milk said, ``It takes no compromise to give people their rights. It takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no political deal to give people freedom.'' This Pride Month, I urge my colleagues in the Senate to join me in supporting the Equality Act to ensure that we protect the human and civil rights all Americans. Our government should do all it can to promote equality, compassion, and empathy--not discrimination, bigotry, and hate.

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