As we close in on the final days before the 2020 election the candidates are making a final push to voters. Even as more than 70 million voters have already cast a ballot.
One issue igniting voters is the differences between candidates on LGBTQ+ rights. President Donald Trump finds himself at a disadvantage to his democratic rival. According to polling by GLAAD, nearly three quarters of LGBTQ+ voters are supporting former vice president Joe Biden.
President Trump’s 2016 campaign left his supporters with a conflicted message towards gay rights, a voting block he needs in 2020. According to The New York Times Trump looked to Richard Grenell, the openly gay former ambassador to Germany who served for three months as the acting director of national intelligence, to sell the president, and to attack Biden. Grenell spoke at the 2020 Republican National Convention.
“We’re not taking the bait,” Alphonso David, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ+. civil rights group, said to the New York Times. David told the newspaper the President has tried to divide the coalition by targeting transgender people.
Biden has called out the administration’s actions towards the LGBTQ+ community. According to NBC news, Biden accused the President of trying to taking back protections provided by the Obama administration.
“You deserve a partner in the White House to fight with conviction and win the battles ahead,” he said. “Together we’ll pass the Equality Act, protect LGBTQ youth, expand access to health care, support LGBTQ workers, win full rights for transgender Americans, recommit to ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic by 2025, advance LGBT rights around the globe, not just at home.”
Biden also brings with him the LGBTQ+ legacy of former President Barack Obama. During the Obama administration the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling legalizing gay marriage. The administration also worked to put in place other workplace protections for LGBTQ+ employees.
The Trump administration rolled back the mandate of health care as a civil right for transgender patients under the affordable care act.
