Joe Biden becomes first sitting US president to be interviewed by LGBTQ+ news publication

Joe Biden has made history by becoming the first incumbent US president to give an interview to an LGBTQ+ newspaper.

Biden, the 46th president, spoke to The Washington Blade last week. During the interview, published on Monday (16 September), he reaffirmed his desire to support LGBTQ+ Americans, especially at a time when right-wing politicians are trying to repeal queer rights.

“All the LGBTQ+ people [who] have worked for me or with me have reinforced my view that it’s not what your sexual preference is, it’s what your intellectual capacity is and what your courage is,” the president said.

The 2,100-word story encompassed 81-year-old Biden’s views on LGBTQ+ rights from his childhood experiences, through the senate and as vice-president, and up until his time in the Oval Office.

He recalled the first time he encountered an LGBTQ+ couple. Walking with his family as a teenager in downtown Wilmington, Delaware, he noticed two men kissing and turned in shock to his father, who said: “Joey, it’s simple, they love each other”.

Biden went on to say: “I think my attitude about this, from the very beginning, was shaped by my dad. You think I’m exaggerating but my dad was a well-read guy who got admitted to college just before the [second world] war started.

“My dad used to say that everyone’s entitled to be treated with dignity.”

Joe Biden praises the ‘enormous courage’ of his administration

The president repeatedly expressed his admiration for the “men and women who broke the back of the prejudice”, including those involved in the Stonewall Riots in 1969.

They “took their lives in their own hands,” Biden said. “Not a joke. It took enormous courage, enormous courage, and that’s why I’ve spent some time also trying to memorialise that… Stonewall “became the site of a call for freedom and for dignity and for equality,” at a time when, “if you spoke up, you’d be fired, or get the hell [beaten] out of you,” he added.

He also expressed pride in the milestones his administration and the LGBTQ+ community had achieved during his time in the White House, including the response to the global Mpox outbreak in 2022 and the “Respect for Marriage” Act, signed the same year.

He also praised the “enormous courage” of the LGBTQ+ members of his administration, particularly the trans and non-binary people, whom have “more courage than most people.”

The commander-in-chief went on to say: “I wanted an administration that looked like America. I never sat down and said, ‘It’s going to be hard, man, she’s gay, or he’s gay, or she’s a lesbian’.

“It wasn’t like the people I work with went: ‘God, I’m surprised they’re as competent as anybody else’.”

Looking forward, he addressed Project 2025, a proposed playbook which aims to plot out Donald Trump’s first 180 days in office if he wins the upcoming presidential election.

The plan has “nothing but disdain for the LGBTQ+ community”, Biden said, adding that he believed the “MAGA Republican Party” would be “going after” queer people. “Trump is a different breed of cat. I mean, I don’t want to make this political, but everything he’s done has been anti-LGBTQ, across the board.”

“And you have [supreme court justice] Clarence Thomas talking about, when the decision was made [to overturn abortion law] Roe v Wade, that maybe we should consider changing the right of gays to marry. I mean, things that are just off the wall: pure [and] simple prejudice.”

Some Republicans who “don’t have a prejudiced bone in their body” are being “intimidated” into supporting anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, he continued.

“What I do worry about is violence,” he added. “I worry about intimidation. I worry about what the MAGA right will continue to try to do, but I’m going to stay involved. I’m going to remain involved in all the civil liberties issues that I have worked for my whole life.”

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