WASHINGTON – In case you missed it, earlier this month, U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) gave the keynote speech at a reception celebrating the opening of the Washington, D.C. office of Lambda Legal, the national organization fighting for full recognition of the civil rights of LGBT individuals and those with HIV. In his remarks, Senator Coons also honors U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.), the recipient of Lambda Legal’s first “Courage in Action” Award. 

The complete text of Sen. Coons’ remarks is below. Click here to watch the video. 

SENATOR CHRIS COONS
REMARKS AS DELIVERED AT LAMBDA LEGAL’S WASHINGTON, D.C. RECEPTION

JUNE 15, 2017

I wish you could see from here what I see -- a motivated, an engaged, an empowered army of resistance. A group of men and women, lawyers from across our country and our community, who know what this [Pennsylvania] Avenue does. It connects the Capitol to the White House, it goes by the Department of Justice, and it continues onto the Supreme Court.

This is a route which we must tread together. This is a path that deserves your leadership and your work. In Sharon McGowan, you've picked a great champion. From her time at the ACLU to her leadership at the Department of Justice to her service with you, we are going to make a difference together. Thank you, Sharon. Thank you, Rachel [Tiven, CEO of Lambda Legal]. Thank you to Karen [Dixon, a member of the Lambda Legal executive committee], thank you to the board, thank you for everything that Lambda Legal is doing. 

And I also have to thank, at the outset, the folks who make it possible for me to do the sorts of things you describe [in the introduction], whether at a Neil Gorsuch hearing or in events that I engage in overseas, and that's Erica and Andy. These are my lawyers, who are your lawyers.

Now, folks, I know I'm the appetizer, and we've got an entree about to come up here. You may have seen Cory scoot in late, right before the event started. I turned to Sharon and I said, "You know the thing about Cory, he's always late for the big event, but when it comes to delivering justice, he is right on time." So you're going to have to suffer through me for about 10 minutes, and I'm going to scamper off to Delaware, and you're going to get to hear from the main man, the person who tonight is being honored with an award he well deserves.

I don't know how your January went, but I'll tell you I took a fabulous train ride home to Wilmington, Delaware, with Joe Biden. It was great to be with him as we took that Amtrak home. We celebrated and welcomed him in fine Delaware fashion, and then Tom Carper, my senior Senator, tapped me on the shoulder and said, "You know, we do have to go back." And go back we do.

How do we channel our frustration? How do we channel our despondency? How do we channel even our anger into action?

How do we take the feelings of the last six months and move it into defending equality, defending our democracy, defending our rights -- the nation that together we have built? Which is, literally, the greatest nation on earth, not just for human rights broadly, but specifically for the LGBT community. How do we defend this, together, and how do we resist?

I cannot think of a better investment of time, of resources, of energy, for anyone to make than to support a civil rights organization like Lambda Legal, which isn't just helping inspire a resistance, but is charting and chaptering and leading a resistance, and that deserves a round of applause.

This fight is more urgent than ever. You know what's happened in the last six months. We've seen behavior normalized that we thought was long past. We've seen hateful rhetoric. We've seen differences and fears manipulated to set people against each other. We've seen the rolling back of positions, policies, and rights we thought were firmly settled. 

Lambda Legal isn't just watching this happen. Lambda Legal isn't just cheering from the sidelines. It is helping drive the bus. And you can count on allies like Cory Booker and me in the United States Senate, and like the great members of the House of Representatives who are here.

There is no doubt the road ahead is daunting. There's no doubt the months and years ahead include major fights. We have more critical nomination fights. You heard the description about how I pressed Justice Gorsuch on his restrictive, his cramped, view of personal liberty, and what that means in our courts, what that means if that's allowed to become the majority opinion of our Supreme Court.

But our fight for equality doesn't end with Justice Gorsuch, or even with the Supreme Court. There are nominees for dozens of circuit court vacancies and district court vacancies that will play a critical role in either protecting or undermining the constitutional rights that are the bedrock of equality.

That means protecting marriage equality. That means protecting intimacy, rooted in a due process clause understanding that gives full force to the meaning of equal protection, and opposing the transmogrification of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into a weapon that would allow federal law to be used to condone discrimination. 

Our courts have to continue to be a place where the legal rights of the LGBT community under due process, equal protection, Title VII, and Title IX, can be vindicated. These are the principles that will direct how I examine and how I vote on the judges and justices who come before the Judiciary Committee.

I will also fight for legislation that delivers on, that makes real, the promise of equality. It's about making steady, determined, relentless progress towards things that today seem out of reach, but so too was marriage equality just a few short years ago. The Equality Act must become a part of the laws of our nation -- an act that bans discrimination on the basis of orientation and identity.

I'm also a cosponsor of the Repeal HIV Discrimination Act, which also needs to be advanced in order to end the stigma, the stereotypes, and the discrimination that we all believed would soon become part of the past of our brothers and sisters living with HIV. We need legal protections.

And we need to be relentless in challenging the executive orders that come out of this White House and that lay the groundwork for discrimination under the guise of "religious liberty."

We also have to demand that federal agencies actually protect the civil rights of all Americans. During Attorney General Sessions confirmation hearings, I expressed my view that throughout his entire career, on too many occasions -- a young man who grew up outside of Selma, Alabama; who was alive when a march that began the successful march to pass the 1965 [Voting] Rights Act -- when he had had an opportunity to join that march of justice, to move forward our commitment to justice in this nation -- instead, had stood on the sidelines, had watched history pass him by, or had actually sought to block it.

In just the first few months of this new administration, we've already seen the Department of Justice and the Department of Education rescind guidance that was a protection for transgender students. You know, I'd advocated for this very guidance and I was moved by former Attorney General Loretta Lynch's commitment to see, to stand with, and to protect the transgender community in this country. We have to be vigilant for that vision to once again be restored to our Department of Justice, for that vision and set of priorities to once again lead our nation.

As you heard in the introduction, I also serve on the Foreign Relations Committee. I hope you have a sense of what a beacon of hope our nation is around the world. We have to speak out against the hateful regime of Vladimir Putin, and what's happening in Chechnya, where there are people being kidnapped and tortured because of their orientation.

Sometimes, when I ask myself, "Can any of us in Congress make a difference in the face of things happening around the world?" I'm reminded of a woman with whom I met in my office tearful and joyful that I'd been able to play some small part in helping her secure refuge and asylum here in the United States. She and her young child seemed peaceful, joyful, optimistic -- it seemed hard to believe the deposition that had some to my office, the pleas that had come to my office, letting me know that this beautiful, capable woman, a Zimbabwean, had been imprisoned, had been tortured, and was seeking asylum in the United States. We must never forget that LGBT rights are human rights, and that human rights should be inextricable from American foreign policy.

If we are not the place, if we are not the nation, where our politics, our values, and our laws commit our society toward openness and love, we've lost what it means to be Americans.

We have shared values that commit us not just toward personal liberties, not just to tolerance, not just to inclusion, but to celebration -- to celebration of the differences in how we love, who we love, and how we celebrate and affirm that love. I can't think of anyone who fights harder on social media -- or in the halls of the Senate -- day-in and day-out, week-in and week-out, than my friend, my brother, Cory Booker.

When Cory was trying to decide whether to take on a run for the United States Senate, he called me. And for the first year he came here, he cursed me for having helped talk him into joining one of the most dysfunctional legislative bodies in human history because the transition from a mayor -- who spent years successfully fighting for better housing, for better education, for equality, for criminal justice reform; a creative and successful and compelling mayor -- had to trade in that role as mayor, and had to take on a role as a senator. 

That was not initially the most satisfying transition he's ever undergone. But I'll tell you that as we sat on the floor of the [House of Representatives] next to each other, and listened to Barack Obama give his last address, his last State of the Union, he [Sen. Booker] turned to me and he said, "You know, you actually undersold how great this job really is."

It's not every day you hear a member of Congress talk about how their job is, but Cory believes it, and we're better for it. He's the one senator who could testify against a colleague's nomination -- not out of animosity towards that individual, but out of respect, even love, for his country. And Cory did that when he took the stand and testified against our colleague, now Attorney General, Jeff Sessions.

He [Sen. Booker] is a friend; he is a partner in the fight for civil rights; he is a zealous defender of this country's promise and a campaigner for love. Cory, tonight's Courage in Action Award is truly well deserved.

I can't think of a month that more symbolizes the challenges and the pain, the progress and the hope, than Pride Month. June symbolizes remarkable celebrations and moments of pain and difficulty. It was just this week that we are mourning the anniversary of the senseless deaths of those killed at the Pulse Nightclub. But June is also the month the Supreme Court made marriage equality the law of our land.

And I think that juxtaposition of tragedy and celebration reflects what we experience in our nation now, as we face an administration that thrives on division and fear. The remarkable progress we've made so far must give us hope, must give us heart, to face the obstacles ahead. 

We've been inspired, we've been challenged, and we've ultimately succeeded. If you think about the trajectory from Stonewall to Obergefell; if you think about how lives have changed and how hope has blossomed in this country, we cannot be daunted by what seems, at the moment, the unconquerable challenge of the current administration.

This weekend, I will be at home in Delaware, and I will have a chance to speak to the Stonewall Democrats in Rehoboth. I'm hopeful I will once again visit with a couple I've come to be good friends with in my years in the Senate. They confided in me during the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" that they had together spent 50 years in service to our nation in our military and intelligence communities -- the entire time living lives that were privately joyful but publicly lies, denying who they were in order that they could be faithful to our country while still being faithful to the love they had for each other.

Today, we live in a nation where their sacrifice, their service for freedom, can be recognized through their marriage and their enjoyment of full civil rights. 

So, folks, the arc of history is long, and it does indeed bend toward justice, but only if we work to bend it. This progress did not happen overnight. It happened through enormous work and sacrifice, as you know well, as you know better than anyone. 

There is a country on the coast of west Africa called Gambia where just in the last few months -- a country that had sweltered under the harsh hand of an authoritarian, hateful, anti-LGBT ruler for 20 years -- turned him out through a peaceful, democratic election.

If we think about what we have to do to advocate for rights both at home and abroad, to continue to be that beacon around the world and to continue to have optimism for our prospects here at home, I encourage you to remember what Justice Kennedy once wrote: "the nature of injustice is that we may not always see it end in our own time." But we have to remember that our Founders understood this, and entrusted, as Justice Kennedy said, "to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to understand liberty and to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning."

Folks, Lambda Legal is on the front lines of not just observing history, not just learning what liberty means, but of shaping history and defining what liberty means in the interests of all Americans.

Thank you for who you are, thank you for what you do, thank you for the love that you share with our nation and the world, and thank you for the honor of having the opportunity to resist alongside you.

###