President Joe Biden shakes hands with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg during an event to commemorate Pride Month. (Evan Vucci/Associated Press )

On Jan. 20, Joe Biden, who spent eight years as President Barack Obama’s vice president, was inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States. Moments later, Kamala Harris, U.S. senator from California since 2017, made history as the first woman to become vice president of the U.S. And with their inaugurations, the LGBTQ community breathed a collective sigh of relief.

There are, of course, LGBTQ people who have supported Donald Trump and who believe he was the most LGBTQ-supportive president in the country’s history. In September, gay social app Hornet reported survey results showing 45 percent of its American respondents would be voting for Trump. But a Morning Consult poll in June indicated only 19 percent of LGBTQ respondents were supporting Trump, while a report issued in September by GLAAD showed only 17 percent of LGBTQ voters backed Trump.

While Trump did, indeed, appoint the first openly-gay person to a Cabinet-level position — Richard Grenell as acting director of national intelligence — his administration’s anti-LGBTQ record was overwhelming, with transgender people the most frequent target of his administration.

So the LGBTQ community overall was waiting with bated breath and high hopes that Biden’s administration would reverse course and once again get the country moving toward equality. And the new president didn’t disappoint: Within hours of his inauguration, Biden had signed an executive order protecting LGBTQs against discrimination.

Also on day one, Biden signed another executive order advancing racial equity and support for under-served communities, including the LGBTQ community. He addressed the LGBTQ community specifically in an executive order on combatting COVID-19 within his first week, and on Jan 25, he issued an executive order rescinding Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the U.S. military. Other executive orders established a White House Gender Policy Council and banned anti-LGBTQ discrimination in schools.

Under the Biden-Harris’ administration, HUD has issued a memorandum interpreting the Supreme Court’s Bostock ruling on unemployment discrimination to apply to the Fair Housing Act, while the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has declared that Bostock applies to the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, while the Department of Justice said Bostock applies to Title IX.

That was all within his first 100 days.

Within those same 100 days, the Biden- Harris Administration appointed more than 200 openly LGBTQ people to positions within his administration, the most of any administration in history, and he nominated “Mayor Pete” Buttigieg, who had been one of his opponents for the Democratic nomination, as Secretary of Transportation, making Buttigieg the first openly LGBTQ confirmed by the Senate to a Cabinet seat. Arlando Teller, an openly gay Navajo man who was serving in the Arizona Legislature, was named deputy assistant secretary for Tribal Affairs under Buttigieg. Another high-profile appointee is Dr. Rachel Levine, assistant secretary for Health, the first transgender person nominated to a position at that level.

Those 200-plus LGBTQ appointees all came within the first 100 days of Biden’s administration. In early June, in a proclamation recognizing LGBTQ Pride Month, Biden himself said nearly 14 percent of his then- 1,500 federal agency appointees identify as LGBTQ. He added, “For all of our progress, there are many states in which LGBTQ+ individuals still lack protections for fundamental rights and dignity in hospitals, schools, public accommodations, and other spaces. We will not rest until full equality for LGBTQ+ Americans is finally achieved and codified into law.”

Trump did not, in his four years in the White House, ever recognize Pride Month.

And so far, Biden is keeping that promise. His appointments have continued, and in early November, the U.S. Senate on Monday, Nov. 1, confirmed the appointment of Judge Beth Robinson of Vermont to the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, making her the first openly LGBTQ woman confirmed to a seat on a federal appeals circuit bench. In mid-November, Biden nominated openly lesbian U.S. District Court Judge Alison Nathan of New York to the Second Circuit Court. Judge Nathan is currently presiding over the criminal trial of accused child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, and her nomination to the appellate court is pending confirmation.

— Tammye Nash