Biden to award Presidential Citizens Medal to abortion and gay marriage activists

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jan 2, 2025 / 17:00 pm (CNA).

President Joe Biden will award a pro-abortion activist and two same-sex marriage proponents with the Presidential Citizens Medal — one of the highest civilian awards an American can receive.

The medal is awarded to Americans who “have performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens,” according to a Thursday, Jan. 2, news release from the White House. The pro-abortion and same-sex marriage activists were three of 20 people to receive the honor at a White House ceremony on Thursday.

“President Biden believes these Americans are bonded by their common decency and commitment to serving others,” the White House news release stated. “The country is better because of their dedication and sacrifice.”

Biden, the nation’s second Catholic president, has long been at odds with Church teachings about the sanctity of human life and human sexuality. Earlier this year, Biden awarded former Planned Parenthood leader Cecile Richards with the highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom.

Other recipients named included civil rights activists, lawmakers, and veterans. 

Eleanor Smeal, abortion activist

The longtime feminist activist Eleanor Smeal, who is the president of the Feminist Majority Foundation and former president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), was one of Thursday’s Presidential Citizens Medal recipients. 

While working as the president of NOW in 1986, Smeal led the first national abortion rights march in Washington, D.C., with more than 100,000 protesters, according to the Feminist Majority Foundation. She has campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment and has spoken against pro-life laws that restrict abortion.

Smeal, who was raised Catholic, has also been critical of the Vatican and the Catholic Church for its teachings about the sanctity of life, its opposition to birth control, and its teachings about human sexuality.

In 1987, Smeal was arrested during a protest at the Apostolic Nunciature of the Holy See — the Vatican’s embassy — in which speakers criticized the Church’s teachings about homosexuality, abortion, and birth control, according to the Washington Post.

“Because of my sex, I am second-class forever in my church,” Smeal said at the time. “Because of my sex, I could have been condemned to death at an early age [if I did not disobey the Church ban on birth control].”

When President George W. Bush nominated Samuel Alito to serve as a Supreme Court justice in 2005, Smeal warned about his Catholic faith, writing that “the majority of the court would be Roman Catholics, which would underrepresent other religions, not to mention nonbelievers.”

Mary L. Bonauto, gay marriage activist

One of the lawyers who argued on behalf of same-sex marriage in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, Mary L. Bonauto, was also awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal on Thursday. 

Bonauto, who was also raised Catholic, is the senior director of civil rights and legal strategies for GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders (GLAD). She argued on behalf of clients in Michigan and Kentucky who were fighting against the states’ bans on same-sex marriage. 

In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that state bans on same-sex marriage violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution and forced all 50 states to provide marriage licenses to homosexual couples who sought them.

Before the Supreme Court ruling, Bonauto also fought legal cases in favor of same-sex marriage in Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Maine. 

“Her efforts made millions of families whole and forged a more perfect union,” the White House news release stated.

Bonauto also wrote an amicus brief in favor of Philadelphia’s refusal to contract with Catholic Social Services because of its policy of not placing children with same-sex couples. The Supreme Court unanimously sided with Catholic Social Services on religious freedom grounds.

Evan Wolfson, advocate for same-sex marriage

Biden also awarded Evan Wolfson, a lawyer and the founder of Freedom to Marry who advocated for the nationwide legality of same-sex marriage, with the Presidential Citizens Medal.

“For 32 years, starting with a visionary law school thesis, Evan Wolfson worked with singular focus and untiring optimism to change not just the law, but society — pioneering a political playbook for change and sharing its lessons, even now, with countless causes worldwide,” the White House statement read. 

Wolfson also served as co-counsel in a Hawaii lawsuit against the state’s ban on same-sex marriage in the 1990s, according to Freedom to Marry. He has worked on numerous other legal cases in favor of legal rights for homosexuals and in cases related to HIV and AIDS, according to the organization.

Civil rights activists, lawmakers, and veterans receive medals

Biden also awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to 17 other people, including civil rights activists, lawmakers, and veterans.

This included a posthumous award to Collins J. Seitz, who was the first judge to integrate a white public school, which the White House news release stated “tore down walls of separation to help us see each other as fellow Americans.” Another posthumous medal went to Louis Lorenzo Redding, a Black attorney who argued against racial segregation in two cases, which “[laid] the legal framework for Brown v. Board of Education,” according to the White House.

Biden also awarded a medal to former Republican Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, who represented Kansas from 1978 to 1987 for “supporting a woman’s right to choose [and] reforming health care” among other things. In 1983, Kassebaum was one of 19 Republicans to oppose a constitutional amendment, which would have allowed states to pass pro-life laws restricting abortion. 

The president also awarded the medal to lawmakers who served on the United States House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 Attack, including former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney and Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson. 

Biden also presented a medal to Thomas J. Vallely, a Vietnam War veteran who helped restore relations with the country after the war; and Diane Carlson Evans, an Army nurse in the Vietnam War who founded the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation.

Source: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/261345/biden-to-award-presidential-citizens-medal-to-abortion-and-gay-marriage-activists