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, “By 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,” 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.”

“Together, you embody the central truth: We’re a great nation because we’re a good people,” the president said. “Our democracy begins and ends with the duties of citizenship. That’s our work for the ages, and it’s what all of you embody.”

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.

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.  

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 “strongly opposes” the anti-trans provision.

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

“This 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,” added Biden. “No service member should have to decide between their family’s health care access and their call to serve our nation.”

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

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.

I am deeply honored and humbled to have been nominated by President Trump to serve as the United States Ambassador to the Holy See. Words cannot express my gratitude to all those that have helped me achieve this nomination, most especially my wife Sara…

— Brian Burch (@BrianBurchCV) December 20, 2024

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 Vatican’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 “unjust.” 

He met with two African LGBTQ activists — Clare Byarugaba of Chapter Four Uganda and Rightify Ghana Director Ebenezer Peegah — 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 that took place at the pontiff’s official residence on Oct. 12.

Francis during a 2023 interview with an Argentine newspaper described gender ideology as “one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations” in the world because “it blurs differences and the value of men and women.” A declaration the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith released in March with Francis’s approval condemned gender-affirming surgeries and “gender theory.”