Hillary Clinton calls to ban LGBT discrimination in relaunch speech
During her relaunch speech this weekend for bid to become US President, Hillary Clinton called for an end to LGBT discrimination.
Speaking on Roosevelt Island, Clinton brought up LGBT rights alongside a range of of wide-reaching issues.
She said: “We should ban discrimination against LGBT Americans and their families so they can live, learn, marry, and work just like everybody else.”
On rights for women, she added: “[We] want higher pay for employees, equal pay for women.”
According to Politico, the comments on LGBT rights and other social issues were the ones which received the most enthusiastic response from the crowd.
The Democratic Presidential hopeful last week attended her first LGBT fundraiser of the Presidential campaign.
The former Secretary of State announced her support for equal marriage back in 2013 – and has consistently shown her support for LGBT issues.
She has already been endorsed last month by pro-LGBT group Equality California – more than a year before the polls open in November 2016.
Last year, she claimed in a memoir that she was “ridiculed” by Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni when she confronted him about Uganda’s anti-gay legislation.
She wrote: “When I raised these issues with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, he ridiculed my concerns. ‘Oh Hillary, here you go again’ he would say.”
In 2011, Clinton gave a groundbreaking speech to a United Nations summit in Geneva on LGBT rights.
In her Geneva speech, Clinton said: “Some seem to believe it is a western phenomenon and therefore people outside the west have grounds to reject it.
“Well, in reality gay people are born into and belong to every society in the world.
“They are all ages, all races, all faiths, they are doctors and teachers, farmers and bankers, soldiers and athletes.
“Whether we know it, whether we acknowledge it, they are our family, our friends and our neighbours. Being gay is not a western invention, it is a human reality.”
