Joe Biden set himself even further apart from Donald Trump in an interview this week, pledging that in his first 100 days he will sign legislation to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The Trump administration, in contrast, has opposed such legislation for years, and has advanced policies to block LGBTQ+ people from receiving equal treatment in employment, housing, education, and more.
In correspondence with highly-regarded Philadelphia journalist and community organizer Mark Segal for a piece published in Philadelphia Gay News, Biden said that signing the Equality Act is one of his top priorities. The bill would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the Civil Rights Act, extending protections already provided on the basis of race, age, military status, and more.
Currently, LGBTQ+ Americans experience a patchwork of protections that vary widely from state to state and town to town. In many places, it’s legal to evict someone, expel them from school, deny them a loan, or fire them simply for suspecting that they might be queer.
The Trump administration has said that they oppose discrimination, but like many of their claims, that’s not borne out by the facts. Last year, Trump indicated that he is opposed to the Equality Act, with a spokesperson saying it would violate “parental and conscient rights.” Prior to that, Trump had said that he supported the bill, but he reversed course once in office.
Democrats have been pressing for the bill for years, but Republicans have managed to prevent its progress. In the meantime, about a dozen states have passed some limited anti-discrimination protections, but the inconsistency in policies from one state to another has produced confusion. A recent survey from the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute shows that a solid majority of Americans, in every single state, favor such protections. Support is highest among Democrats, at 79%.
The Trump administration has systematically dismantled protections for queer people over the last few years. GLAAD’s Trump Accountability Project has tracked over a hundred actions that his administration has taken to block LGBTQ+ Americans from accessing the same rights and protections as their peers. That includes eliminating access to homeless shelters, blocking open military service, arguing against job protections before the Supreme Court, ending foster care protections, stopping investigations into discrimination in schools, and much more.
Biden, who has an extensive plan for advancing equality, also wrote to the Philadelphia Gay News about his plans to provide affordable housing for LGBTQ+ people, to end violence against Black trans women, and to push for the decriminalization of homosexuality overseas. While the Trump administration claims to have taken steps towards international decriminalization, there’s no evidence that they’ve actually done anything; and in fact the administration blocked the flying of Pride flags overseas. Vice President Mike Pence has a history of defending countries that execute people for being gay.
Even if Biden were to sign the Equality Act into law, it’s not guaranteed that those protections would go into effect — at least not right away. Reforms would likely be challenged by conservative groups that wish to maintain discriminatory practices.
It’s impossible to predict exactly which courts or judges would hear such a challenge, but the Trump administration has packed dozens of homophobic judges into the federal court system over the last few years. Trump’s Supreme Court justices have indicated hostility to LGBTQ+ equality, so the bill could still be invalidated unless Biden is able to add more unbiased judges to the bench.
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