Democratic presidential candidates on Thursday promised an aggressive agenda to end workplace discrimination, improve health care and ensure protections for people who face threats, or worse, because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
At a televised forum in downtown Los Angeles, rivals for the party’s nomination to challenge President Donald Trump took turns criticizing the Republican administration. The event was at times interrupted by demonstrators in the crowd seeking to highlight an important issue within the LGBTQ community: a rash of slayings of black transgender women. Pete Buttigieg said it was important to lift up the visibility of the issue. He explained that being gay didn’t mean he understood the experiences of everyone in the LGBTQ community, but he said the group could turn its diversity into a strength.
“Our country is so torn apart or so fragmented. And here we have an LGBTQ+ world that is everywhere,” said Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and the first openly gay candidate to launch a serious presidential bid. “We are in every state and every community. Whether folks realize it or not, we’re in every family. And that means we can also have the powers to build bridges.”
Elizabeth Warren, another top contender, earned a roar of laughter from the audience in a Los Angeles theater with her response to a question about how she would respond if someone told her marriage was between one man and one woman.
“I’m going to assume a guy said that,” she said, “And I’m going to say: Just marry one woman. I’m cool with that. Assuming you can find one.”
The 2020 campaign is unfolding at a time when polling shows significant backing for LGBT rights. A recent poll found that 71% support allowing transgender people to serve in the military, a stance at odds with Trump’s efforts to sharply restrict their military presence.
But there is also widespread distress within the community that gains in equality during Obama’s presidency are being eroded. The Trump administration has moved to restrict military service by transgender men and women, proposed allowing certain homeless shelters to take gender identity into account in offering someone a bed for the night and concluded in a 2017 Justice Department memo that federal civil rights law does not protect transgender people from discrimination at work.
The Supreme Court is weighing whether a landmark civil rights law protects LGBTQ people from discrimination in employment, and the Trump administration has reversed course from the Obama administration and has sided with employers who argue that the civil rights law does not protect LGBT people.