MSNBC's Katie Phang and Delaware State Senator Sarah McBride discuss Supreme Court allowing some businesses to turn away LGBTQ customers
McBride: 303 Creative ruling “creates a gaping hole in our nation's civil rights laws that put not only LGBTQ people at risk but put so many other marginalized communities throughout this country at risk.”
Published
Citation From the July 2, 2023, edition of MSNBC's The Katie Phang Show
KATIE PHANG (HOST): Joining me now is Delaware State Senator Sarah McBride, who is running for the state’s only Congressional seat. If elected you would be the first transgender person to serve in Congress. Sarah, it is an honor to have you on the show this morning. I do want to start with your reaction to the latest supreme court ruling limiting LGBTQ rights. What did you think when you heard that decision come down?
SARAH MCBRIDE (STATE SENATOR, DELAWARE): Well, first off, good morning Katie, thank you for having me on. Throughout the last several years, the Supreme Court has consistently sided with the powerful over the vulnerable.
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It creates a gaping hole in our nation's civil rights laws that put not only LGBTQ people at risk but put so many other marginalized communities throughout this country at risk. We have to make clear this July 4th, religious freedom is a fundamental American value. But what it has always been, and what it should always remain, is a shield to protect vulnerable religious minorities from prosecution, and not a sword to inflict harm on already vulnerable people. This decision certainly reinforces the need for us to continue to fight, to continue to fight for equality for all, to continue to fight for opportunities for people regardless of their backgrounds. Well I'm not running to be the transgender member of Congress, I'm ready to serve Delaware and to make progress in all of the issues that matter, the Supreme Court's decision certainly reinforces the need for us to have a seat at the table and policymaking, for us to recognize that we are talking about LGBTQ rights we are talking about people, and at the critical moment with so many attacks in our community, to show LGBTQ young people that the heart of this country is big enough to love them too.
PHANG: There is something that you said that really struck me and I want to emphasize it for my viewers right now. You talked about the dual story of progress and pain. And you said that we can turn this pain into progress, as long as we summon the hope necessary to see this fight through. How?
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MCBRIDE: Well first off, Katie, I have seen too much change, I have seen too much progress to lose hope now. When I came out, the idea that somebody like me could serve authentically in a state legislature seemed so impossible it was the most incomprehensible. When I ran for the State Senate, there were people who questioned whether the voters of the district were ready for someone like me. When I knew I was going to be introducing the first private sector paid family medical leave law here in Delaware, political observers said that we would never get it done. We got it done in two years. I've seen too much progress or believe that we don’t have the capacity to turn what might seem improbable, not just into possibility, but into reality. And the reality is that as we finish up Pride Month and as we mark July 4th, the story of the LGBTQ community, but even expansively the story of our country, is the story of every previous generation being able to face and ultimately conquer seemingly insurmountable odds. Whether we are talking about enslaved people in the 1850s who had no reason to believe that an Emancipation Proclamation was on the way; when we are talking about unemployed workers standing in bread lines, who had never heard of a New Deal during the early days of the Great Depression; when we are talking about patrons at the Stonewall Inn who never knew of an America where they could marry the person they loved legally — every single generation of Americans had every reason to believe that change would never come. Yet they persevered and they summoned their hope and they found the light and they changed the world. I truly believe that our generation can do the same.