President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign plans to appear at more than 200 LGBTQ Pride events and launch a media blitz at LGBTQ voters during the month of June, campaign spokespersons told NBC News recently. This announcement comes months after the Biden campaign declared in January it would make the abortion issue “front and center.”
The campaign plans Pride appearances in 23 states, including all battleground states, featuring not only campaign surrogates but top figures as well. Vice President Kamala Harris greeted 150 LGBT activists in Los Angeles last weekend. First Lady Jill Biden made an unannounced stop at a Pride festival in Pittsburgh.
The Biden campaign will “culminate the so-called celebration of Pride with a huge fundraiser in New York City” on June 28, where President Biden “plans to be the keynote speaker,” narrated David Closson, director of Family Research Council’s Center for Biblical Worldview, on “Washington Watch” Friday. “You’d better believe it will be the president himself waving that rainbow flag.”
Closson said he was “not at all surprised” at the Biden campaign’s decision, even though it was a “pretty significant” investment. “President Biden has really presided over the most aggressive pro-LGBTQ administration that we’ve ever seen,” he explained, championing the Equality Act, pushing the “so-called Respect for Marriage Act that codified gay marriage” over the finish line and rewriting Title IX, “the legislation that’s supposed to protect women and girls.”
Under the Biden administration’s leadership, the culture wars are “no longer just about the LGBT movement seeking affirmation,” Family Research Council Action President Jody Hice agreed. “Those in the movement are trying to force their supporters and even their opponents … to bow their knee, and they want to demonize anyone who refuses.”
The Biden campaign’s “plan to aggressively campaign at Pride events” comes as “Big Business has scaled back on its public support of all things LGBT,” observed Hice. “Many companies and businesses are not nearly as all-in [on Pride Month] as they have been in years past. No doubt this is due in large part to the backlash over Bud Light and Target.” But, as corporate America withdraws from this unpopular position, the Biden campaign “is really making an aggressive push” on LGBTQ Pride, Closson noted.
Hice also noticed “quite a difference, a contrast in how the Biden and the Trump campaigns are messaging on LGBT issues,” both in the priority they give to the issue and on the position they take. Whereas the Biden campaign is emphasizing Pride events, the Trump campaign is focusing on crime, the economy, and immigration, said Closson. “This is not an issue they’re really running heavily on.”
However, Closson continued, “when they’ve had opportunity,” the Trump campaign has “highlighted the importance of religious freedom, whereas the Biden campaign really is kind of all-in on this whole gamut of LGBT issues.” He added that “we don’t have to guess what the second Trump administration would look like because we have a four-year record [reflecting what the] Trump administration did on issues related to religious liberty.”
Closson highlighted the Trump State Department’s leadership on the international religious freedom ministerial, an executive order protecting religious freedom, the Department of Health and Human Services designating clergy as essential workers and protecting the conscience rights of doctors, and the Justice Department intervening to support religious liberty for everyone from private citizens like Jack Phillips to churches seeking the freedom to assemble together. “When it comes to religious liberty,” Closson concluded, “the contrast between the Biden administration and the first Trump administration is actually quite stark.”
This policy difference between the presumed nominees for America’s two major political parties is “why Christians really need to be paying attention” to the Biden campaign’s emphasis on Pride events, urged Hice. “This is not simply an issue of sexual preference or whatever. This goes far beyond that to impact your church, my church, our religious liberties, the doctors, where they work … [even] teachers at school.” Closson agreed. “Elections really do have consequences.”
Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.
