Joe Biden quotes Bible verse while urging people of faith to support trans equality
Democratic presidential candidate and former vice president Joe Biden speaks at a LGBTQ presidential forum at Coe College’s Sinclair Auditorium on September 20, 2019 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (Scott Olson/Getty)
Former US vice president and current presidential hopeful Joe Biden says that people of faith should support trans equality.
Biden made the comments in an interview with Mara Keisling of the National Center for Transgender Equality.
Regardless of which religion people follow, they should recognise trans people’s right to have their identity recognised and to be treated equally by the law.
“The Lord said, ‘What you’re doing to the least of my children, you’re doing to me,’” Biden said. “We’re all God’s children. Who is to judge you, whether or not you’re lesbian, gay, or trans? Who is to make that judgment, especially if it’s done from your heart?”
“The idea that someone can tell you that you can’t be who you are in your heart and your soul is just wrong. That’s the sin. The sin is not being LGBTQ. The sin is not allowing you to be who you are in your heart,” he added.
Joe Biden is currently one of the three frontrunners for the Democratic 2020 primary, alongside Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
He said that if elected president of the US, “I promise you I’ll protect every single right.”
Joe Biden also laid into Donald Trump, saying. “He’s eviscerated so many basic civil rights,” and that Trump’s anti-LGBT+ equality moves are “wrong for who we are as a people”.
It was when Sarah McBride, the trans woman who worked as national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign and who is now running for the Delaware state senate, worked for his son, Beau, that Biden learned more about trans issues, he said.
McBride advocated for Delaware’s Gender Identity Nondiscrimination Act alongside Beau Biden, who died in 2015 from a brain tumour. The act passed in 2013.
The National Center for Transgender Equality interview series has also featured Cory Booker, who talked about having a non-binary “nie-phew”, and Bernie Sanders.
