Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday was
quoted as describing the fight for equality for transgender people as
the “civil rights issue of our time.”
According to a White House pool report,
Biden made the comment leaving an Obama campaign office in Sarasota,
Florida.
The pool reporter noted that Biden
approached a woman.
“She said something … at first
inaudible to pool, to which VP responded was the 'civil rights issue
of our time.'”
“Pool later asked the woman, Linda
Carragher Bourne of Sarasota, about the exchange. She said her
daughter was Miss Trans New England and asked if he would help them.”
“'A lot of my friends are being
killed, and they don't have the civil rights yet. These guys are
gonna make it happen,' she told the pool.”
Conservative site Newsbusters.org
suggested the vice president had made a mistake.
“To paraphrase the immortal words of
Britney Spears, oops – he did it again,” the site's Noel Sheppard
wrote, a possible reference to Biden's endorsement of marriage
equality, which many believe nudged President Obama into announcing
his support on the issue.
(Source: POLITICO.com.)