In a hotel ballroom in Washington, a decent man tried to remind us that the government wasn’t always a weapon, while the press corps frantically zoomed in to see if he blinked too slowly.
On December 5, 2025, the timeline offered us a split-screen moment so jarring it felt like a glitch in the simulation. In one window, we had the current administration, a carnival of grievance and reactionary fury that views the existence of LGBTQ people not as a demographic reality but as a personal insult to their God and their donors. In the other window, we had former President Joe Biden, standing on a stage at the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute’s 41st International LGBTQ+ Leaders Conference, accepting the Chris Abele Impact Award.
The contrast was not subtle. It was the difference between a arsonist holding a gas can and a retired firefighter holding a plaque.
The atmosphere inside the ballroom was thick with a specific kind of nostalgia. It wasn’t the fuzzy, warm nostalgia of a high school reunion. It was the “remember when we weren’t terrified to check the news” nostalgia. It was the longing for a time, just a few years ago, when the President of the United States appointed the first openly transgender person to a Senate-confirmed position instead of threatening to erase transgender people from the census.
Biden, looking every inch the elder statesman—which is a polite way of saying he looks like he has survived fifty years of D.C. swamp warfare and is tired—took the stage to a standing ovation. He was there to receive an award, yes. But he was really there to perform an exorcism. He was there to banish the cynicism that has settled over the progressive movement like a wet wool blanket. He was there to remind the hundreds of elected officials and candidates in the room that the arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend toward justice on its own. You have to grab it with both hands and pull until your knuckles turn white.
The Record vs. The Rhetoric
The speech itself was a vintage Biden performance. It was earnest. It was empathy-heavy. It was rooted in the kind of old-school liberalism that believes in institutions and decency. He cataloged his record not as a victory lap, but as a standard that is currently under siege. He talked about the record number of LGBTQ officials he appointed. He talked about ending the ban on transgender military service. He talked about the passage of pro-equality measures that, in the harsh light of 2025, look like artifacts from a lost civilization.
He framed these achievements as the baseline. The floor. The minimum viable product for a democracy that claims to value freedom. And then he pivoted to the current reality. He condemned the Trump administration’s recent anti-LGBTQ measures with a sharpness that surprised some in the room. This wasn’t “my good friend on the other side of the aisle” Joe. This was “Dark Brandon” coming out of retirement because he sees the fascists marching and he is out of patience.
He urged the activists and donors to mount a sustained pushback. He told them that silence is complicity. He told them that the only way to stop the rollback of rights is to organize, to fundraise, and to win elections. It was a call to arms delivered by a grandfather, but the steel underneath the voice was real.
The Media’s Gaffe Patrol
Naturally, because we live in a media ecosystem that is fundamentally broken, the coverage of the event split instantly into two parallel realities.
In Reality A—the one inhabited by the people in the room and the communities whose rights are on the chopping block—this was a rallying cry. It was a moment of moral clarity. Evan Low, the CEO of the Victory Institute, framed the award as both recognition and a directive. He looked at the room full of gay mayors, trans school board members, and queer state legislators and told them that they are the frontline. They are the ones who have to hold the line while Washington falls apart.
In Reality B—the one inhabited by cable news pundits and the clickbait industrial complex—the story was that Joe Biden is old.
Reporters, bored by the substance of civil rights and desperate for a horse race narrative, seized on a verbal gaffe. Maybe he stuttered. Maybe he mixed up a name. Maybe he cleared his throat for too long. It doesn’t matter what it was. The machinery of political coverage is designed to ignore the burning building in favor of critiquing the fireman’s posture.
The “Biden Stumbles” headlines were written before he even walked on stage. The opponents of equality, the people currently running the federal government like a revenge fantasy, jumped on the clips immediately. They spun the narrative that the opposition is weak, frail, and yesterday’s news. They used the visuals of an octogenarian accepting an award to argue that the fight for LGBTQ rights is a relic of the past, a dusty cause championed by dusty men.
This is the messaging battle that will define the next year. On one side, you have an administration that is actively using the power of the state to marginalize a minority group. On the other side, you have a coalition led by a man who sometimes mumbles, but whose moral compass points true north. And the media, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that the mumble is the bigger scandal.
The Strategy Session in the Bunker
Ignore the noise for a moment and look at what was actually happening in that conference. The Victory Institute isn’t a social club. It is a war room. The hundreds of officials gathered there weren’t swapping cocktail recipes. They were in strategy sessions. They were learning how to run campaigns in districts where the word “groomer” is used as a campaign slogan. They were learning how to protect their constituents from federal overreach.
This is the unglamorous, necessary work of democracy. It is the boring stuff that doesn’t make the evening news. It is candidate training. It is fundraising. It is building a bench of leaders who can step up when the current generation is gone.
Biden’s appearance was strategic. It was about money. It was about morale. It was about validating the existence of these leaders. When a former President looks you in the eye and tells you that your service matters, it acts as a shield against the daily barrage of hate. It reminds you that you are part of a lineage.
The Trump administration knows this. That is why they attack the event. That is why they mock the award. They aren’t afraid of Joe Biden the individual. They are afraid of what he represents. They are afraid of the legitimacy he confers on the movement. If the LGBTQ community is seen as a legitimate political force, fully integrated into the highest levels of power, it becomes much harder to demonize them. So the goal is to strip away that legitimacy, to paint the entire enterprise as a fringe obsession of the “radical left.”
The Optic of the Empty Chair
There was a ghost in the room, of course. The ghost of the current President. Trump wasn’t there, obviously. He wouldn’t be caught dead at a Victory Institute event unless he was there to shut it down. But his absence was a presence.
The juxtaposition was stark. You have the former President, the guy who supposedly “ruined the country,” standing there talking about love, dignity, and equality. And you have the current President, the guy who promised to “make America great again,” sitting in the White House drafting executive orders to ban books and restrict healthcare.
It clarifies the stakes for 2026. The midterms are not going to be about tax rates or infrastructure. They are going to be about the fundamental definition of citizenship. Who gets to be an American? Who gets to live their life without fear of the state?
Biden’s speech was an attempt to frame the election on those terms. He wants the voters to ask themselves if they want a country that looks like that ballroom—diverse, messy, hopeful—or a country that looks like the Trump cabinet—homogenous, angry, punitive.
The Fragility of Progress
The most haunting part of the event was the realization of how fragile it all is. We spent decades thinking that progress was a one-way street. We thought that once you won a right, you kept it. We thought that marriage equality was settled. We thought that open service in the military was the new normal.
But here we are, in December 2025, realizing that rights are rented, not owned. The landlord can change the locks at any time.
Biden’s record, which he recited with such pride, is being dismantled brick by brick. The officials he appointed are being pushed out. The policies he signed are being rescinded. The culture of inclusion he tried to foster is being replaced by a culture of suspicion.
The award he received is called the “Impact Award.” But in this context, “impact” feels like the wrong word. It implies a collision. And that is what we are witnessing. The collision of two Americas. One that is trying to be born, and one that is refusing to die.
The Old Man and the Sea of Hate
Let’s go back to the gaffe. The moment where Biden maybe lost his train of thought or stumbled over a syllable. The critics seized on it like piranhas. They used it to paint a picture of a movement in decline.
But there is another way to look at it.
Here is a man who has given his entire life to public service. He has suffered unimaginable personal tragedy. He has been mocked, dismissed, and underestimated for fifty years. And yet, here he is. He showed up. He stood on that stage. He took the arrows.
There is a dignity in that endurance that the tweets and the hot takes cannot touch. It is the dignity of the fighter who knows he is in the late rounds, who knows his legs are heavy, but who refuses to stay down on the canvas.
He knows he isn’t the future of the party. He knows the people in that room—the young, fierce, diverse leaders—are the future. His job now is to be the bridge. To hold the line long enough for them to cross over.
The media scrutiny of his fitness is a distraction. The real question is the fitness of the country. Are we fit to be a democracy? Are we fit to protect our neighbors? Or are we too exhausted, too cynical, too broken to care?
The Mobilization Machine
The outcome of this event won’t be measured in retweets. It will be measured in dollars raised and doors knocked. The Victory Institute will use the footage of Biden’s speech to energize their donor base. They will use the attacks from the right to prove that the threat is real.
We are going to see a ramped-up fundraising cycle. We are going to see sharper messaging. The “nice” politics of the past are gone. The LGBTQ movement realizes that they are in a knife fight, and they can’t bring a tambourine.
The 2026 cycle is going to be brutal. The administration will use every tool at its disposal to wedge the electorate. They will attack trans kids. They will attack drag queens. They will attack books. They will try to make the existence of queer people the central issue of the campaign.
And the people in that ballroom, emboldened by the old man on the stage, are going to fight back.
Conclusion: The Torch is Heavy
As Biden left the stage, handing the microphone back to Evan Low, there was a palpable sense of transfer. The generation that fought for the right to exist is passing the torch to the generation that is fighting for the right to thrive.
The torch is heavy. It burns the hands. And the wind is blowing hard against it.
But for one night, in a hotel in D.C., the flame was bright. The “Impact Award” sat on the podium, a piece of glass and metal that means nothing and everything.
The critics can laugh. The pundits can analyze the optics. The trolls can make their memes.
But history will record that when the darkness was falling, Joe Biden stood up and turned on a light. It might have been a flickering light. It might have been held by a shaking hand. But it was light. And in 2025, light is the most precious commodity we have.
Receipt Time
The invoice for this moment of clarity is paid in the currency of endurance. The receipt shows a lifetime of service from an imperfect man, weighed against the cheap, disposable commentary of a media class that has lost its way. It lists the cost of freedom, which is eternal vigilance, and the cost of cynicism, which is the surrender of the soul. The total at the bottom is high. It asks us to look past the performance and see the person. It asks us to value the stumble of a man walking toward justice more than the strut of a man walking toward tyranny. And it reminds us that the only thing more expensive than fighting for democracy is losing it.