Barack Obama Gave A Speech About LGBTQ Rights To Celebrate Pride 2020
The Stonewall Uprising that took place in June, 1969 in Manhattan, New York is the reason LGBTQ pride month is celebrated every June. It's almost been 51 years since the 1969 demonstrations at New York's Stonewall Inn, when LGBTQ patrons decided to fight back against the police who had been raiding gay bars. That protest is widely considered the inception of the modern LGBTQ rights movement, and former president Barack Obama gave an inspirational statement as Logo commemorated the day. Barack Obama's speech for Pride Live's Stonewall Day celebrated LGBTQ rights, as he highlighted recent victories and called for more progress.
Logo's Pride Live held its third annual Stonewall Day on Friday, June 26 on its YouTube channel. While the event is typically held in New York City’s West Village, the event live-streamed on YouTube and Facebook this year due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. The former president of the United States gave an inspirational speech, celebrating the recent landmark Supreme Court ruling protecting LGBTQ workers from getting fired for their sexual orientation or gender identity. Logo shared a clip on Thursday, June 25, ahead of the event. "We're almost 51 years since the night when the patrons at the Stonewall Inn stood up for their rights and set off one of America's defining victories for civil rights," said Obama.
"Because of the movement they sparked and the decades of work that followed, marriage equality became the law of the land five years ago, and just this month the Supreme Court ruled that employers can no longer discriminate against LGBTQ workers," he continued.
Obama referenced the dismissal of the Trump administration's petition to the Supreme Court, which asked that employment and civil rights protections not extend to LGBTQ people, and also revoked the transgender healthcare protections Obama had put in place during his presidency. The Supreme Court made history on Monday, June 15, when it ruled that the LGBTQ community is protected under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
"The struggle and triumph for LGBTQ rights shows how protests and politics go hand in hand, how we've got to both shine a light on injustice and translate those aspirations into specific laws and institutional practices," said Obama. The president finished his statement, saying, "We've got to both shine a light on injustice and translate those aspirations into specific laws."
Other celebrities to speak during Logo's Stonewall Day live-stream included Taylor Swift, Ellen DeGeneres, Demi Lovato, and Katy Perry.
Swift's Stonewall Day statement called for further change to create a more inclusive society for trans and non-binary people. "We still have so far to go in terms of equality and protections for LGBTQ people and people in the trans community,” she said. “I got my census the other day, and there were two choices for male and female, and that erasure of transgender and non-binary people was so upsetting to me," said the Lover singer.
"When you don’t collect information on a group of people, that means that you have every excuse in the world not to support them," she said. "When you don't collect data on the community, that's a really, really brutal way of dismissing them." Swift finished her speech by asking viewers to vote. "We need to make sure we elect people who care about all communities," said Swift.
The event raised funds for four LGBTQ+ organizations: Trans LifeLife, Brave Space Alliance, TransLatin@ Coalition, and The Ally Coalition.
Watch the full Stonewall Day event from Pride Live on Youtube.
