Biden calls Florida laws targeting transgender people ‘sinful’

Joe Biden seems to be preparing for a head-to-head presidential election with Gov. Ron DeSantis with new attacks on Florida laws that the president claims are ‘sinful’ against the LGBTQ community.

A clip released from Monday’s episode of The Daily Show offers a sneak peek at Biden being interviewed by guest host Kal Penn at the White House. 

The actor and comic, known for his starring role in Harold & Kumar, took a break from acting in 2009 to work at the White House for over two years as Associate Director for the Office of Public Engagement under President Barack Obama. He returned to acting in 2011 with the television series How I Met Your Mother.

Penn also came out as gay in November 2021 and revealed his engagement to his long-time partner, Josh.

President Joe Biden told Daily Show guest host Kal Penn in a clip released Monday from an interview at the White House that Florida laws related to LGBTQ rights are ‘sinful’ and ‘cruel’

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who could announce a bid for president any day now, is spearheading a slew of laws that would prevent minors from receiving transgender health care and surgeries 

During the sit-down, Biden claims that recent laws in Florida, many of which are spearheaded by DeSantis, are ‘cruel’ and the clip features the president revealing his ‘epiphany’ moment in high school when he decided being gay was OK in his book.

‘It’s just terrible what they’re doing,’ Biden said in a preview clip.

Lawmakers in Florida, where a Republican supermajority runs the legislature, introduced several bills this session that activists claim will strip members of the LGBTQ community of their rights.

Opponents of the proposed legislation say that the governor is using the guise of education and parental rights to implement laws they say are anti-gay and anti-transgender.

One bill, for example, would outlaw transgender surgeries and healthcare, like puberty blockers and hormone therapy, for children who say they are the opposite gender in which they were born.

DeSantis released his memoir The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival last month and is currently on a book tour that many see as a pre-presidential bid announcement trip around the states.

The book and the priorities of Florida’s current legislative sessions are primarily viewed as a platform on which DeSantis would run his campaign once he launched a 2024 bid for the GOP nomination.

The Parental Rights in Education law, which the governor signed last year, was dubbed by critics the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill – because it prevented educators from including in their classroom curriculum discussions on gender identity or sexual orientation. The law currently includes children in kindergarten through third grade, but the Florida legislature is now considering expanding that to include minors up to the eighth grade.

‘It’s not like, you know, a kid wakes up one morning and says, ‘You know, I decided I want to become a man, or I want to become a woman, or I want to change.’ I mean, what are they thinking about? They’re human beings. They love. They have feelings,’ Biden said in his sit-down with Penn.

‘It’s cruel,’ the president added of Florida’s laws aimed at minors.

When Penn asked about the ‘evolution’ of his perspective on marriage equality, the president said it stemmed back to his time in high school.

See also  German girl, 15, reveals Texas gunman told her he was going to shoot up elementary school

Biden spoke with Kal Penn in a wide-ranging interview for The Daily Show. Part of the clip released Monday shows the two discussing when Biden had the ‘epiphany’ in high school that gay marriage was OK

Kal Penn with long-time partner, Josh. The comic and actor came out as gay and engaged in November 2021.

‘I can remember exactly when my epiphany was,’ Biden said before telling a story about his senior in high school when he saw ‘two well-dressed men in suits’ kissing.

‘I’ll never forget. I turned and looked at my dad. He said, ‘Joey, it’s simple. They love each other,’ he recollected.

‘It’s just that simple,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter whether it’s same-sex or a heterosexual couple, you should be able to be married. What is the problem?’

‘Transgender kids is a really harder thing,’ Biden told Penn. ‘What’s going on in Florida is, as my mother would say, close to sinful.’

While Biden says he came around to accepting gay marriage as a teenager, a 2006 video distributed during the 2020 presidential election shows then-Senator Biden speaking out against same-sex marriage.

‘Marriage is between a man and a woman, and states must respect that,’ Biden said in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press as he defended the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act, at the time.

Biden, a longtime senator from Delaware before becoming vice president and then president, voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2004 and in 2006, claiming that the measure wasn’t worth Congress’ time.