Biden will protect LGBTQ+ people in the Criminal Justice System

The argument

Biden will: Reduce LGBTQ+ interactions with the criminal justice system. Biden believes criminal justice reform must address the system’s disproportionate impact on LGBTQ+ people—particularly transgender women of color. Increase safety for incarcerated transgender individuals. The Obama-Biden Administration issued a Transgender Offender Manual, requiring gender identity be considered when making housing assignments.

Context

The U.S. criminal justice system has a duty to ensure that individuals, including those from the LGBTQ+ community, are treated fairly and with dignity. But discrimination and stigma trap LGBTQ+ people in the criminal justice system at disproportionately high rates. Once in the system, LGBTQ+ people—particularly transgender people—are more likely to be subjected to violence.

Premises

Counter-arguments

"Biden’s actual record, spanning over 40 years in Washington, instead shows a politician who spent his entire career attacking gay people and the LGBT community. From his persistent opposition to gay marriage, to continued support for regimes that murder homosexuals, and even suggesting gay people might be “security risks” as federal employees, Biden’s open support for LGBT rights arrived very late, even among Democrats, and well after great advances toward LGBT equality had already been made."

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The disproportionate harm is not in dispute, but establishing the problem does not identify the remedy or the candidate who would deliver it, which is what the conclusion requires. [Rejecting P2] The evidence offered is a platform commitment and an administrative manual, and a manual can be rescinded by a later administration. Critics also point to the earlier record — including authorship of the 1994 crime legislation that expanded incarceration — and argue it belongs in the assessment alongside the current platform.