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Megan Rapinoe among 17 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients

White House ceremony to take place July 7

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Megan Rapinoe (Screen capture via U.S. Soccer YouTube)

The White House on Friday released President Joe Biden’s selection of recipients for bestowing the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The awards will be presented at the White House on July 7.

Included among the seventeen honorees are Megan Rapinoe, the out Olympic gold medalist and two-time Womenā€™s World Cup champion. She also captains OL Reign in the National Womenā€™s Soccer League. She is a prominent advocate for gender pay equality, racial justice and LGBTQ rights.

Also selected by the president for a posthumous recognition was Richard Trumka, the powerful labor leader and longtime Democratic ally of the LGBTQ community who passed away last August. Trumka had led the AFL-CIO since 2009 and who throughout his career, was an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ Americans, social and economic justice.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the Nationā€™s highest civilian honor, presented to individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the U.S., world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors.

Presidential Medal of Freedom (The White House)

The following individuals will be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom:

Simone Biles
Simone Biles is the most decorated American gymnast in history, with a combined total of 32 Olympic and World Championship medals. Biles is also a prominent advocate for athletesā€™ mental health and safety, children in the foster care system and victims of sexual assault.

Sister Simone Campbell
Sister Simone Campbell is a member of the Sisters of Social Service and former Executive Director of NETWORK, a Catholic social justice organization. She is also a prominent advocate for economic justice, immigration reform and healthcare policy.

Julieta GarcĆ­a
Dr. Julieta GarcĆ­a is the former president of The University of Texas at Brownsville, where she was named one ofĀ TimeĀ magazineā€™s best college presidents. Dr. GarcĆ­a was the first Hispanic woman to serve as a college president and dedicated her career to serving students from the Southwest Border region.

Gabrielle Giffords
Former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was the youngest woman ever elected to the Arizona state Senate, serving first in the Arizona legislature and later in Congress. A survivor of gun violence, she co-founded Giffords, a nonprofit organization dedicated to gun violence prevention.

Fred Gray
Fred Gray was one of the first black members of the Alabama State legislature since Reconstruction. As an attorney, he represented Rosa Parks, the NAACP and Martin Luther King, who called him ā€œthe chief counsel for the protest movement.ā€

Steve JobsĀ (posthumous)
Steve Jobs (d. 2011) was the co-founder, chief executive and chair of Apple, Inc., CEO of Pixar and held a leading role at the Walt Disney Company. His vision, imagination and creativity led to inventions that have, and continue to, change the way the world communicates, as well as transforming the computer, music, film and wireless industries.

Father Alexander Karloutsos
Father Alexander Karloutsos is the former Vicar General of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. After over 50 years as a priest, providing counsel to several U.S. presidents, he was named by His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew as a protopresbyter of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

Khizr Khan
Khizr Khan is a Gold Star father and founder of the Constitution Literacy and National Unity Center. He is a prominent advocate for the rule of law and religious freedom and served on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom under President Biden.

Sandra Lindsay
Sandra Lindsay is a New York critical care nurse who served on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic response. She was the first American to receive a COVID-19 vaccine outside of clinical trials and is a prominent advocate for vaccines and mental health for health care workers.

John McCainĀ (posthumous)
John McCain (d. 2018) was a public servant who was awarded a Purple Heart with one gold star for his service in the U.S. Navy in Vietnam. He also served the people of Arizona for decades in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate and was the Republican nominee for president in 2008.

Diane Nash
Diane Nash is a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who organized some of the most important civil rights campaigns of the 20thĀ century. Nash worked closely with Martin Luther King, who described her as the ā€œdriving spirit in the nonviolent assault on segregation at lunch counters.ā€

Megan Rapinoe
Megan Rapinoe is an Olympic gold medalist and two-time Womenā€™s World Cup champion. She also captains OL Reign in the National Womenā€™s Soccer League. She is a prominent advocate for gender pay equality, racial justice and LGBTQI+ rights.

Alan Simpson
Alan Simpson served as a U.S. senator from Wyoming for 18 years. During his public service, he has been a prominent advocate on issues including campaign finance reform, responsible governance and marriage equality.

Richard Trumka (posthumous)
Richard Trumka (d. 2021) was president of the 12.5-million-member AFL-CIO for more than a decade, president of the United Mine Workers, and secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO. Throughout his career, he was an outspoken advocate for social and economic justice.

Wilma Vaught
Brigadier General Wilma Vaught is one of the most decorated women in the history of the U.S. military, repeatedly breaking gender barriers as she rose through the ranks. When she retired in 1985, she was one of only seven women generals in the Armed Forces.

Denzel Washington
Denzel Washington is an actor, director, and producer who has won two Academy Awards, a Tony Award, two Golden Globes, and the 2016 Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award. He has also served as National Spokesman for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America for over 25 years.

RaĆŗl Yzaguirre
RaĆŗl Yzaguirre is a civil rights advocate who served as CEO and president of National Council of La Raza for thirty years. He also served as U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic under President Barack Obama.

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The White House

Biden honors two LGBTQ advocates with Presidential Citizens MedalĀ 

Evan Wolfson, Mary Bonauto among 20 awardees

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President Joe Biden (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

President Joe Biden awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal on Thursday to LGBTQ advocates Evan Wolfson, founder of Freedom to Marry, and Mary Bonauto, senior director of civil rights and legal strategies at GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders (GLAD Law).

They, along with 18 other awardees, were honored in the East Room of the White House with a ceremony celebrating their exemplary deeds of service to their country or fellow citizens.

In a statement, the White House said that, ā€œBy leading the marriage equality movement, Evan Wolfson helped millions of people in all 50 states win the fundamental right to love, marry, and be themselves,ā€ while Bonauto, an attorney who argued the Obergefell case that made same-sex marriage the law of the land in 2015, “made millions of families whole and forged a more perfect union.ā€

ā€œTogether, you embody the central truth: Weā€™re a great nation because weā€™re a good people,” the president said. “Our democracy begins and ends with the duties of citizenship. Thatā€™s our work for the ages, and itā€™s what all of you embody.ā€

Former Republican U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Democratic U.S. Rep. Benny Thompson (Miss.) were honored on Thursday for their work leading the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, siege of the U.S. Capitol.

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The White House

Biden signs NDAA with anti-transgender health care provision

Spending bill bans gender-affirming treatment for servicemembersā€™ children

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President Joe Biden speaks at a World AIDS Day commemoration at the White House on Dec. 1, 2024. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

President Joe Biden on Dec. 23 signed the National Defense Authorization Act with a provision that bans gender-affirming health care for children of U.S. servicemembers. Ā 

The U.S. Senate last week approved the NDAA by an 85-14 vote margin.

Biden in a statement the White House released after he signed the NDAA said his administration ā€œstrongly opposesā€ the anti-trans provision.

ā€œBy prohibiting the use of appropriated funds, the Department of Defense will be compelled to contravene clinical practice guidelines and clinical recommendations,ā€ said the statement. ā€œThe provision targets a group based on that group’s gender identity and interferes with parents’ roles to determine the best care for their children.ā€  

ā€œThis section undermines our all-volunteer military’s ability to recruit and retain the finest fighting force the world has ever known by denying health care coverage to thousands of our service members’ children,ā€ added Biden. ā€œNo service member should have to decide between their family’s health care access and their call to serve our nation.ā€

The Human Rights Campaign in a statement noted the NDAA is the first anti-LGBTQ federal law signed since the Defense of Marriage Act.

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The White House

President of anti-LGBTQ Catholic group nominated to become next Vatican ambassador

Brian Burch criticized Francis’s decision to allow priests to bless same-sex couples

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Brian Burch (Screen capture via The Catholic Professional/YouTube)

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated the president of an anti-LGBTQ Catholic group to become the next U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.

The incoming president on Dec. 20 announced he had nominated Brian Burch, president and co-founder of CatholicVote, for the ambassadorship.

“Brian loves the church and the United States,” said Trump on Truth Social. “He will make us all proud.”

Burch on X said he is “deeply honored and humbled to have been nominated by President Trump to serve as the United States Ambassador to the Holy See.”

“The role of ambassador is to represent the government of the United States in its relations with the Holy See,” said Burch. “The Catholic Church is the largest and most important religious institution in the world, and its relationship to the United States is of vital importance.”

“I am committed to working with leaders inside the Vatican and the new administration to promote the dignity of all people and the common good,” he added. “I look forward to the confirmation process and the opportunity to continue to serve my country and the church. To God be the glory.”

Burch in his post also thanked his wife, Sara, and their nine children for their support.

The National Catholic Reporter reported Burch last year sharply criticized Pope Francis’s decision to allow priests to bless same-sex couples.  

CatholicVote’s website repeatedly refers to transgender people in quotes.

A Dec. 5 post on the U.S. v. Skrmetti case notes the justices heard oral arguments on “whether Tennessee can protect children from puberty blockers, which chemically sterilize, and sexual surgeries that mutilate and castrate.” A second CatholicVotes post notes the justices grilled the Justice Department “on challenge to Tennessee protections for children against ‘transgender’ mutilations and sterilizations.”

The Vaticanā€™s tone towards LGBTQ and intersex issues has softened since Pope Francis assumed the papacy in 2013.

Francis, among other things, has described laws that criminalize homosexuality as ā€œunjust.ā€ 

HeĀ met with two African LGBTQ activistsĀ ā€” Clare Byarugaba of Chapter Four Uganda and Rightify Ghana Director Ebenezer Peegah ā€” at the Vatican on Aug. 14. Sister Jeannine Gramick, one of the co-founders of New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based LGBTQ Catholic organization, organized a meeting between Francis and a group of trans and intersex Catholics and LGBTQ allies thatĀ took placeĀ at the pontiffā€™s official residence on Oct. 12.

Francis during a 2023 interview with an Argentine newspaper described gender ideology as ā€œone of the most dangerous ideological colonizationsā€ in the world because ā€œit blurs differences and the value of men and women.ā€ A declaration the Vaticanā€™s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith released in March with Francisā€™s approval condemned gender-affirming surgeries and ā€œgender theory.ā€

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