As Delivered:
Thank you, Chris, for that great introduction. I am pleased if I was able to be a small bright spot on November 2nd, and I am glad to be able to join you this evening.
I also want to thank Jonathan and Samantha for the remarkable work that they’ve done pulling together this very successful dinner and for everybody here at HRC and throughout the country who is actively engaged in the fight for equality.
Carson, you’re doing a great job of hosting tonight and I must say thank you, Carson, for being here. I wanted to wear a pink tuxedo—I know that’s his favorite color–but I am frankly deeply fashioned challenged and the invitation did say black tie after all. So, I was just saying to him backstage if there should be a future opportunity, a queer eye for the Senate guy, perhaps. I am going to be first in line to volunteer for a makeover.
For those of who don’t know me, which I suspect is many of you, it was just six months ago that I was the little guy with little hair from a little state running against a simply magical opponent named Christine O’Donnell. And after all the stuff that was flying around in that election campaign, it has been wonderful to be able to settle into the disciplined and serious work of the United States Senate. I must say what a long strange trip it’s been.
I also wanted to just take a moment at the outset and convey Senator Bob Casey’s best wishes. We were talking Thursday on the floor of the Senate about this dinner and how much he wanted to be with you this evening. He has a family commitment, but he and I share a deep commitment to equality. He is someone who I really enjoyed getting to know in the Senate and who I know we can count on as we make tough votes and make real progress in the months and years ahead.
And I also had a great chance to visit earlier this evening with Jenny Murphy. Jenny and her husband, Congressman Patrick Murphy, are folks who I genuinely admire and who I think have been real leaders for our community and our country. She has a shocking grasp of detail and repeated back to me literally every single thing that my wife and I said to her and Congressmen Murphy at the White House Christmas Party. I thought wow, I really got to take notes the next time I go to a party but it was great visiting with you earlier Jenny. Thank you for you service to our community and to our country.
As you heard, earlier this past week, bills to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act were introduced in the House and in the Senate. I have a little secret to share with you, I was proud to be an original cosponsor of the Respect for Marriage Act – the Act that will repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and end it being the official policy of this country to discriminate against couples. The President’s announcement that he was going to order the Justice Department to stop defending DOMA caught a number of us by surprise. It was just a few hours later that my colleague from California, Senator Feinstein, announced her intention to introduce a bill to repeal DOMA. What people don’t know is that if she hadn’t done that, I was planning on announcing my sponsorship of that bill at this dinner tonight. Here is the good news, having too many Senators who are too eager to introduce a bill repealing DOMA is a great problem to have.
Now, let’s be clear on what the Respect for Marriage Act is and isn’t: marriage has always been a state issue in this country and this act won’t be able to change that, instead it will end federal discrimination by treating all married people equally. In my view, we are not building a wall, we are tearing one down. What we’re saying is that those who are married in states that allow it should be honored as married by the federal government. Sexual orientation simply should not be a factor in someone’s access to equality in this country and discrimination should not be the policy of this nation or our government.
Now, as you heard Chris say in his introduction one of the special things about my special election was that I was seated as a Senator just two weeks after my election. And so I got to participate in the lame duck that was anything but lame, in which one of the many good things we got done was the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. I think the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell shows that the American people have had enough of government sanctioned discrimination against the LGBT community.
The introduction of the Respect for Marriage Act, the repeal of DOMA, this is not the first time a repeal of DOMA has been introduced, but I certainly hope it will be the last. If we don’t get it done in this Congress, then we will try again in the next Congress. And for however long the people of Delaware continue to send me to Washington, I intend to continue to be one of those fighting for equality: equality in federal benefits; equality in health care; equality in housing; equality in access; equality…equality…equality.
I am grateful for the enthusiastic support of HRC and many folks up and down the State of Delaware who are committed to a principled view about equality in our country. But I have to say, I have to share with you when I first became a candidate for the Senate, a little over a year ago: one of the very first meetings I had was a meeting with the people of American Way in Washington. It was, literally, my first or second day going and meeting with a dozen different organizations and groups and Michael Keegan sat down with me, and many of you know Michael, and he looked me right in the eyes, and he just asked me one question: “are you for marriage equality.” And I am embarrassed to say, I hesitated. I talked around a lot. I talked about my horror at seeing colleagues and classmates, friends and families suffer the abuse and the discrimination that has too long characterized this country, America’s history. And I talked about things I have done as county executive and things I am committed to. And he blinked, and waited for a moment, and said “are you for marriage equality?” And I gave sort of a half-positive, I sure hope…think so, yes, answer. And I’ve never forgotten that because he looked at me calmly and said, “Are you a candidate of convenience or a candidate of principle?” And that question haunted me—that night and for the next day.
I’ve never forgot when I first started running, Joe Biden, our Vice President, pulled me aside at a function, and he said, “Young man you need to know what you are willing to loose over.” Because it was the civil rights challenges of the nineteen sixties that first moved Joe Biden to run for office at the local level and for the United States Senate. And it is exactly, the struggles of the civil rights movement, not just of the last century, but of this century that inspires and challenges and moves me to serve.
I called Michael back the next day and said, “I am embarrassed that I did not immediately and strongly say yes, I am for marriage equality.” And it was only because of my newness as a candidate, my uncertainty about my state. But it’s not my state I need to worry about, it’s me. What are my principles? What am I willing to fight for? And so frankly, Michael was right, if those of us who are elected aren’t willing to stand up and speak on principle then what are we doing in office in the first place? There is in this world right and wrong, and Washington is a place that too rarely sees and speaks about things in those terms.
Discriminating against people because of who they love is just simply wrong. Just as in the last century, we gradually found our way back to a more perfect union as a nation. We recognized how profoundly wrong it was to discriminate against people based on their skin color, or based on their gender, or based their wealth, or based on their education. Discrimination, pure and simple, based on one’s sexual orientation is the defining civil rights moment of this century and this generation.
As I thought back on it, there are today still far too many people growing up in Delaware, growing up in the United States, who think the world is against them just because they’re gay. Folks growing up seeing a military that has said for too long they were unfit to serve, something we’ve now changed. Growing up, living in a nation that still in too many places says they are unfit for marriage. Growing up victims of bullying, of harassment, of abuse in schools or in neighborhoods that we must end. Growing up in a world that says that who they are or what they are, is not acceptable or somehow less than every other American who deems them somehow not normal and not a full part of our American family. And sadly too many of these young people grow up with no sense of hope, of belonging, of promise, of optimism and, in some tragic cases, because of that take their own lives.
I suspect many of you are familiar with the incredible project out there: the It Gets Better Project. It features all sorts of Americans: famous people, average day-to-day people, gay people, straight people, all telling our young people that it’s ok, it’s ok to be gay, to be lesbian, to be bi-sexual, to be transgender, because it gets better. It is an amazing project, at a critical time, and it’s saving lives. But it is not enough to simply tell young people that it gets better. I think it is up to all of us and particularly those of us you’ve chosen to serve in elected office to make sure that we are making it better.
It’s up to me. It’s up to you. It’s up Democrats. It’s up to Republicans. It’s up to every American who in their gut believes that equality for all means equality indifferent to sexual orientation. It’s up to all of us to make it better.
Repealing DOMA is just one real way we can make it better and tell a whole new generation of young Americans not to give up. That they are not broken, that the love they have for their partner is no less real than the love I have for mine and no less worthy of honor and respect of celebration and of strength.
That we are equal. That you are equal to every other American. That is the principle for which I am honored to fight and serve.