A year ago next Monday, Former Vice President and presumptive Democratic Presidential Nominee Joe Biden declared the LGBT agenda to be his number one campaign priority. Although he is currently centering his campaign around this issue, the former vice president’s shift to embrace this radical agenda has been gradual. His critics on the left have described him as slow to outline policy proposals advancing the LGBT movement and Senator Bernie Sanders has criticized Biden’s record as not being pro-LGBT enough. One liberal commentator pointed out that this shift is typical of Biden’s stance—he begins moderate and then moves to a more extreme position. While Biden may have a history of being less extreme than other left-wing politicians, the policies outlined by his current campaign are anything but moderate. In fact, he has centered his campaign around some truly radical viewpoints, which has earned him an endorsement from the largest LGBT organization in the U.S.
In the time since he publicly declared the LGBT agenda to be his top campaign priority, Biden has, among other things, publicly committed to making Equality Act legislation a priority within the first 100 days of taking office if he is elected. The so-called Equality Act would make gender identity and sexual orientation a protected status under the Civil Rights Act. This would mean that if a biological male claiming to be female demanded entry to female locker rooms or restrooms, it would be a civil rights violation to deny him entry. His “gender identity” would override the privacy rights of women and girls. Similarly, schools would be required to allow male athletes who identify as female to compete on girls’ sports teams. Biden’s proposed policies would also allow male inmates to be housed in women’s prisons on the basis of gender identity, with Biden explaining, "In prison, the determination should be that your sexual identity is defined by what you say it is [and] not what the prison says it is."
The Biden Campaign website specifically calls for religious freedom exemptions to be removed in order to advance the LGBT agenda. The Equality Act would already threaten faith-based adoption and foster care providers, as well as women’s homeless shelters, and would also mean that Christian bakers, florists, and photographers would be legally required to participate in homosexual weddings, even when doing so goes against their religious beliefs, but in case if there was any question, the Biden campaign website makes it clear that any and all religious exemptions must go. The “equality” Biden intends to pursue leaves little room for religious freedom and freedom of conscience. He has also called for nationwide counseling bans, limiting what licensed therapists and counselors can say while working with clients who are struggling with questions of identity and sexuality. This is a serious government intrusion on counselor-client relationships and would prevent people who are struggling with their sexual identity from receiving counseling that would help them live consistently with their biological sex.
The Biden campaign’s radical commitment to the LGBT agenda is anything but moderate and prioritizes policies that would have serious ramifications for religious freedom, as well as for the safety and privacy of women and girls.
(Image: Flickr, Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0)
