In the video on Wednesday, Grenell criticized Biden's changing stances on marriage, saying that "now that we've made progress, Joe Biden has changed his mind." Meanwhile, he called Trump "the strongest ally that gay Americans have ever had in the White House."
On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump said that people should be free to use whatever public bathroom they wish to, regardless of their biological sex. Shortly after his election as president, he said he was "fine" with same-sex marriage as the law of the land.
In his 2019 speech to the UNGA, the president said that the U.S. stands in "solidarity with LGBTQ people who live in countries that make homosexual activity a crime.
Grennell said that Trump "publicly challenged the 69 countries who make being gay a crime" in his 2019 speech to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). He also cited the U.S. fight against the Lebanese Shi'ite Islamic party Hezbollah, recognized by the U.S. as a terror organization and which Grenell called "homophobic and barbaric." He also noted the administration's hardline stance against the Iranian regime, known for its public executions of people with same-sex attraction.
Contrasting the assessment of the Log Cabin Republicans, the head of the pro-LGBT Human Rights Campaign has called Trump the "worst president ever" on LGBT issues.
Trump's health department has rolled back the Obama-era mandate that doctors provide gender-transition surgery upon request; a federal judge put a temporary halt on implementation of the rule on Monday. That decision was praised by the U.S. bishops' conference.
In June, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch-nominated by Trump-sided with the Court's majority and ruled that federal protections against sex discrimination also apply in cases of someone's sexual orientation and gender identity. After the Court handed his administration another defeat, this time on the DACA immigration program, Trump blasted the "horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court."
Pope Francis has spoken out repeatedly against gender theory and ideology. Speaking at the United Nations in 2015, the pope urged world leaders to embrace a consistent stance on respect for life and the created world and "recognize a moral law written into human nature itself, one which includes the natural difference between man and woman, and absolute respect for life in all its stages and dimensions."
The pope has also called gender theory "evil" and "dangerous," saying blurring and erasing the natural distinctions between men and women would "destroy at its roots" God's creation of humanity in "diversity, distinction."
"It would make everything homogenous, neutral," Francis was quoted saying in a book published earlier this year. "It is an attack on difference, on the creativity of God and on men and women."
On June 10, the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education released a document which included a sweeping denunciation of so-called gender theory and the "radical separation between gender and sex, with the former having priority over the later."
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"In all such [gender] theories, from the most moderate to the most radical, there is agreement that one's gender ends up being viewed as more important than being of male or female sex," the Congregation for Catholic Education wrote in the document entitled "Male and Female He Created Them."
"The effect of this move is chiefly to create a cultural and ideological revolution driven by relativism, and secondarily a juridical revolution, since such beliefs claim specific rights for the individual and across society."
Trump's administration has also not filled a special envoy position at the State Department tasked with advising the secretary on promoting LGBT ideology abroad; the Obama administration was the first to create such a position at State, and Biden has said he will "immediately appoint" a special envoy.
In 2017, Trump issued an executive order on promoting religious freedom as a policy of his administration. Later that fall, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued guidance for other federal agencies, identifying various statutory religious freedom protections. The U.S. bishops' conference "commended" the administration for its conscience protections in that case.
In one prominent case of a religious freedom claim versus an anti-discrimination measure-Fulton v. City of Philadelphia-the Justice Department sided with the Catholic Social Services of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, saying the U.S. "has a substantial interest in the preservation of the free exercise of religion."
In that case, the city terminated its contract with Catholic Social Services unless it agreed to match foster children with same-sex couples. The administration, in its friend-of-the-court brief in June, said the city's rules "reflect unconstitutional hostility toward Catholic Social Services' religious beliefs."