Sarah McBride - Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality

Foreword by Joe Biden

I remember the first time I heard about Sarah McBride.

It was 2006 and my son Beau was running in his first election for attorney general of Delaware. We often talked about the issues, fund-raising, and ads. But second only to our family, he talked most of all about the people he metnurses, longshoremen, the single mom working the diner, the children and seniors needing protection from predators, the teachers paying out of pocket for supplies for their students. He knew the campaign was about themand the people who worked for him and shared his belief that his grandfather first taught me, that everyone is entitled to be treated with dignity and respect.

Thats when Beau told me about a smart, sharp teenager who was volunteering on the campaign, knocking on doors, making phone calls, and doing the hard work of democracy.

It was in one of those conversations that Beau gave Sarah his highest praise, telling me she was going to change the world.

Thats how I first heard about Sarah.

But it was only in 2012, when, like most everyone else, we learned who she really was when she came out as transgender. I read her powerful coming-out essay in American Universitys student newspaper, where she didnt just speak her truth, she put a face, name, and voice to an identity that is too often caricatured and demonized.

She was honest and heartfelt. Even at that young age, she was a leader. Not because she thought she was better than anyone else, but because she treated everyone as equals. She was a Biden even then.

Despite her internal struggle, Sarah would be the first to say she was the lucky one and that she stands on the shoulders of famous advocates and everyday activists who marched and fought to create a world where a story like hers might be possible.

Shed remind us of all the people who came before her who lived their secrets until death, or risked their jobs, careers, and sometimes their physical safety when they came out, who never received the acceptance she did from her family and friends.

My admiration for her sense of perspective and purpose grew when she interned at the White House, becoming the first transgender woman to ever do so and giving meaning to what Harvey Milk once said: Hope will never remain silent.

By then, the administration had ended the discriminatory law known as Dont Ask, Dont Tell so our gay service members could openly serve the country they love without hiding who they love. President Obama announced that our government would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Actand just a few days after Sarah wrote her coming-out essay, I went on Meet the Press and told America that love is love is love.

During Sarahs time in the White House, she saw how every issue we cared aboutdelivering affordable health care to millions of people, creating good-paying middle-class jobs, keeping our country safe, addressing climate change, and, yes, advancing equality for LGBTQ Americansall came down to that basic belief held since our founding, that we are all created equal, endowed with basic unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

After her White House internship ended, she worked to secure those rights back home in Delaware. Id read the local papers to learn how she testified in front of the General Assembly on the need for hate-crimes legislation protecting LGBTQ Delawareans. Beau, Delawares attorney general, would tell me how she organized grassroots efforts to help him and Governor Jack Markell enact a law protecting those same Delawareans from being denied housing, employment, or public accommodations.

She was just out of college and she had already changed the world.

It was also around this time when her world changed once again, in the most human, universal, and most cruel way. She fell in love and married a good, decent, honorable man only to watch cancer take his life and love away from her.

For those of us who know, such a loss leaves a black hole in your heart. It wounds your soul. The pain never really goes away. But as the seasons pass, you remember how your loved one would have livedand that picks you up and keeps you going. You think about all the people who have suffered the same as or more than you, but with a lot less help or reason to get throughand that picks you up and keeps you going.

For Sarah, she has gotten up and kept going with Andy still in her heart and soul. And she continues to be there for every transgender person still rejected by their families and friends. For the one in five who will be fired from their jobs because of who they are. For the transgender women of color who continue to live in an epidemic of violence. For the young transgender student bullied and harassed in schools or homeless on the streets. She is there for every transgender American targeted by state legislators and their bathroom bills that serve only to prey on peoples fears.

And as this book is being published, she is there for every transgender service member under attack by a president who lacks the moral clarity of the nation in abundance of it because of people like Sarah and everyone Barack, Michelle, Jill, and I met in our lives and while we were in office. In their homes, on our staff, on the front lines of war, and in houses of worship, we have known, stood with, and supported countless gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans and their families, who are just like us.

Im proud to have been a part of an administration that spoke out and stood up for transgender Americans. But despite that progress, I left the vice presidency knowing that much of the hardest work remains ahead of us in building a more perfect union for all Americans, no matter their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The history of civil rights in America reminds us that progress is precious and can never be taken for granted. In the face of hateful rhetoric or divisive legislation, we cannot remain silent. Thats why Jill and I are proud that our foundation will focus on LGBTQ equality along with other causes that are near and dear to our hearts, from ending violence against women to finding a cure for cancer.