The Biden administration is off to a hopeful start, as Secretary of State nominee, Antony Blinken, has confirmed a recommitment to LGBTQ rights. In a confirmation hearing last Tuesday, Blinken confirmed that among other proposals, the Biden administration will reverse the Trump-era bans on U.S. embassies flying rainbow flags in honor of Pride month. The Obama administration had issued a blanket of approval for the flags display, but the Trump administration forced embassies to seek permission to fly it on official flagpoles, denying most requests. In a memo from July 2020, former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper released a list of flags permitted to be displayed at U.S. military bases. Missing from the list was the LGBTQ pride flag, which Esper compared to the confederate flag. Prior to the ban, embassies raised the flag during pride month on the official embassy flagpole.
During the hearing, Blinken also confirmed that he plans to appoint an envoy for the Human Rights of LGBTQ persons, a position created by Barack Obama in 2015 that wasn’t filled during the Trump presidency. Blinken believes that filling the position is a matter of “some real urgency” following a surge in violence against LGBTQ people around the world during Trump’s four years in office. According to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), 44 transgender and gender-nonconforming people were killed in the U.S. in 2020 alone, marking it the highest number since the HRC began tracking anti-trans violence. In a report from Transrespect Versus Transphobia Worldwide (TvT), 350 transgender people were murdered globally between October 2019 and September 2020, a 6 percent increase from the previous year. “We’ve seen violence directed against LGBTQI people around the world increase,” Blinken says. “And so, I think the United States playing the role that it should be playing in standing up for and defending the rights of LGBTQI people is something that the department is going to take on and take on immediately. Raising the pride flag is one way to outright show LGBTQ solidarity.
Related article: President Biden’s New Executive Order Enforces Workplace Equality During the hearing, Blinken also said he would reject the findings of the “Commission on Unalienable Rights” an advisory committee launched by former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. The committee was tasked with viewing human rights through the lens of “natural law”, which has often been used as code for the exclusion of LGBTQ rights. The committee’s findings claimed that queer and trans equality was an issue invented by “politicians and bureaucrats” and referred to marriage equality and reproductive rights as “divisive social and political controversies.”
The Biden administration’s commitment to LGBTQ rights comes as highly anticipated gain for the LGBTQ community. Biden is the first U.S. president to openly embrace a full range of queer rights, including transgender equality.
By Kelly Mutz
