At his eighth and final White House
LGBT Pride reception, President Barack Obama called discrimination
“so last century.”
The president said that the nation had
come a long way in securing rights for the LGBT community, but more
work remained.
“We cannot be complacent. Securing
the gains this country has made requires perseverance and vigilance.
And it requires voting. Because we've got more work to do,” he
said.
“We still have more work to do when
gay and bisexual men make up two-thirds of new HIV cases in our
country. We have to work hard to make sure that jobs are not being
denied, people aren’t being fired because of their sexual
orientation. We still have work to do when transgender persons are
attacked, even killed for just being who they are. We’ve got work
to do when LGBT people around the world still face incredible
isolation and poverty and persecution and violence, and even death.
We have work to make sure that every single child, no matter who they
are or where they come from or what they look like or how they live,
feels welcomed and valued and loved.”
Obama added that the “upcoming
generation” knows that “people are people and families are
families, and discrimination is so last century. It's so passe. It
doesn't make sense to them. So we live in an America where the laws
are finally catching up to the hearts of kids and what they
instinctively understand.”