Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Friday offered a defense of his support for transgender rights, addressing an issue that has prompted debate and soul-searching among Democrats, some of whom attribute losses in 2024 to a focus on identity politics.
Republicans, Mr. Biden said in a brief speech, had “weaponized people’s basic identity and turned it into a political football.”
“They’re trying to turn it into something scary, something sinister,” Mr. Biden said. “But folks, it’s not really about anything that’s all that complicated. At its core, it’s about giving every American an opportunity to be treated with the basic decency, dignity and respect they all deserve.”
The former president’s comments came as he accepted an award from the Victory Institute, an organization that supports L.G.B.T.Q. people in public office, and as President Trump has made it harder for transgender people to participate in public life. Mr. Biden spoke at the group’s annual conference, a gathering of several hundred L.G.B.T.Q. elected officials and community leaders in Washington.
The organization described Mr. Biden as assembling “the most L.G.B.T.Q.+ inclusive administration in U.S. history.” About 15 percent of Mr. Biden’s appointees identified as L.G.B.T.Q., according to the Victory Institute.
Mr. Biden, 83, has kept a relatively low profile since leaving the White House. His office announced in May that he had an aggressive form of prostate cancer and in October that he had completed a round of radiation therapy.
On Friday, he appeared to relish the laughter as he recounted how, in 2012, when he was vice president, he had expressed his support for same-sex marriage on “Meet the Press” before Barack Obama, who was president then, had done so.
“I got myself in a bit of trouble — good trouble,” he said.
Mr. Biden’s support for same-sex marriage came as a reversal from earlier in his career when he voted for measures that blocked federal recognition of same-sex marriages and cut off federal funds to schools that taught the acceptance of homosexuality in the 1990s. Mr. Biden’s more recent position helped push his party to take a stand on the issue.
His embrace of trans issues followed. In 2018, Mr. Biden wrote the foreword for a memoir by Sarah McBride, who in 2024 became the first openly transgender member of Congress, representing Delaware.
As president, he shored up protections for sexual orientation and gender identity under statutes that govern federally funded health care and education. “We see you,” Mr. Biden told trans students at the time.
In 2022, he signed the bipartisan Respect for Marriage Act, requiring states to recognize valid marriages from other states. The move came after the Supreme Court overturned a constitutional right to abortion, raising concerns that it would use the same logic to reconsider its decision protecting same-sex marriage.
Evan Low, president and chief executive of the Victory Institute, said that Mr. Biden had been “intentional about understanding that a historically marginalized community can participate fully and openly in our democracy.”
Mr. Biden’s support for transgender rights stands in contrast to the Trump administration’s efforts to impose strict limits on transgender people, including requiring that U.S. passports reflect the sex on people’s original birth certificates, a reversal of a decades-old policy. Mr. Trump has called transgender teenagers “mutilated” and barred transgender people from serving in the military, asserting that having a transgender identity is “not consistent with the humility and selflessness required” of people who serve in the U.S. military forces.
Mr. Trump has appointed a number of openly gay men to work in or alongside his administration. But he has sought to rescind federally funded programs aimed at ensuring that L.G.B.T.Q. groups receive equal access to education, health care and public accommodations, and to cut H.I.V. vaccine research and funding for L.G.B.T.Q. suicide prevention services.
Those policies have won support from Mr. Trump’s base, as well as from others across the political spectrum. Polls show substantial public support for putting in place restrictions on the transgender rights that the Biden administration had supported. Some Democratic officials and strategists have argued that the party should align itself with public opinion on issues like transgender athletes in sports and medical transition for minors.
But others have suggested that Republican efforts to invoke transgender issues to portray Democrats as out of touch with the mainstream — most famously with Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign ad tagline “Kamala Harris is for they/them, President Trump is for you” — appeared less effective more recently. For instance, in last month’s race for governor of Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, won despite a focus by her Republican opponent on anti-transgender messaging.
Mr. Biden on Friday said that “because of our national debate” on L.G.B.T.Q. issues, “there are young people sitting alone as I speak, scrolling through social media, wondering whether they will ever truly be accepted for who they are.”
“You are heard, and you belong,” Mr. Biden added, to a standing ovation.
Amy Harmon covers how shifting conceptions of gender affect everyday life in the United States.
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