It is with great optimism that we welcome the Biden-Harris Administration! The United States – and the entire globe – deserves to see leadership that chooses equality over divisiveness, kindness over insults, and action for the common good.
We fully expect this administration to take proactive steps to solidify our community’s rights. From implementing the Bostock decision across the federal government, to restoring trans military service and healthcare protections, among other crucial steps, this administration is poised to be the most pro-equality in history.
But this administration cannot accomplish all of the vital work we know is necessary.
They cannot pass the Equality Act. Only Congress can send that bill to the President’s desk.
They cannot stop state lawmakers from the onslaught of anti-LGBTQ bills we fully expect this spring legislative session. It will take the might of the business community and other constituent groups to squash these misguided efforts.
The administration cannot halt every police officer from profiling a Black motorist. They cannot comfort a trans middle schooler who is spending more time fretting about what harassment awaits them changing for gym than their friends or studies. They cannot take away the pain and loss that millions of families have experienced at our nation’s border. And the administration cannot put the genie of hate and xenophobia that has been so horrifyingly released, back in the bottle.
The work of demanding justice is on all of us.
The work of creating and sustaining communities and workplaces of belonging is on all of us.
In the next week, we will formally launch our 2021 programs and plans. I assumed the role of CEO of Out & Equal three years ago this week, on Martin Luther King Day, a poetic start to what is the greatest honor of my professional life. My charge, to listen as much as I lead, to look beyond the present to the possible, and to take this organization into its next chapter.
Out & Equal is now in its 25th year. To those of you who were with us at the beginning and to those of you were not even born by 1996, I say thank you.
And when you think you are alone in fighting for your visibility or for belonging, please take heart and know you are never alone. We are a global community thousands of people strong. We will invest as much – if not more energy – in speeding up the bend of the arc of the moral universe when the political winds are at our backs.
So, welcome to the entire Biden-Harris Administration. And welcome to the first day of our next chapter!
Erin Uritus
CEO
Out & Equal Workplace Advocates
