Pride Month feels a little different this year for White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
She made history in May 2022 when she became the first openly gay person and first Black person to hold the position. Since then, she has seen her boss, President Joe Biden, sign marriage equality into federal law – but also watched as state after state passed bills to limit LGBTQ+ rights.
“This is hard stuff,” she told Spectrum News in an interview on Tuesday. “Even though I get to be at the podium and represent this president and many different communities that I represent, it still hurts to see or to read or to hear hundreds of pieces of legislation that are out to attack the community that I love.”
The Human Rights Campaign declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ Americans at the start of June due to the spike in state laws limiting access to gender-affirming care, banning books and otherwise leaving the community feeling excluded from normal life. Some advocates have also blamed these bills and the rhetoric around them for an increase in violence against the community.
Jean-Pierre said it makes her think of the protests of the 1970s that helped launch the gay rights movement and the early days of Pride.
"It's a reminder, for me at least, this year, how we have to continue to fight, how we have to continue to lift each other up," she said.
Her own experience of embracing who she is was not an easy one. Jean-Pierre recounted in a Twitter thread in 2021 how she told her mother she was gay at 16 years old.
“The revolted look on her face sent me running back into the proverbial closet and slamming the door shut,” she wrote. “After that, my sexuality became a family secret and it would stay that way for years.”
Jean-Pierre wrote in her 2019 memoir “Moving Forward” that she even contemplated becoming a nun to make the issue irrelevant.
Part of her mother’s response was fear, Jean-Pierre explains, pointing out that she’s already at risk for discrimination as a Black woman and an immigrant.
“It scared her for what that meant for her daughter, and what she had to come around to was that as long as I'm supported and loved, that I will be okay,” Jean-Pierre said.
Now, after what she calls a journey for the two of them, “we are at a place where she loves me for, fully for, who I am, and it is a beautiful thing.”
Jean-Pierre credits having a supportive LGBTQ+ community around her for her ability to feel confident in herself.
“I had the fortitude to say, 'Okay, you know what, this person may not approve of who I am, this person may not approve of who I am. But that doesn't matter. Because I have a community that loves me, and I believe in who I am,'” she said.
That fortitude, which developed over time, has come in handy in other parts of her life, too.
Born in Martinique in the Caribbean, Jean-Pierre grew up in Queens, N.Y., and on Long Island, part of an immigrant family that at times struggled to make ends meet. Her parents worked as a taxi driver and a home health aide.
She eventually found her calling in politics, first getting her feet wet in the rough and tumble of New York City politics, as an aide to Councilman James Gennaro and later Councilman James Sanders, Jr.
“You gotta have grit growing up in New York. It is a different beast, it is a different place,” she said. “I don't think I would be the type of political operative that I am now, if it wasn't for my experience at the City Council.”
Since then, Jean-Pierre has worked on both local and presidential campaigns. She was part of the Obama White House team and the public face of the progressive organization, MoveOn.
Some of her earliest TV appearances were on Spectrum News NY1’s political program "Inside City Hall" in 2015, and 2016. She said at the time, she “absolutely” did not anticipate that she would one day become the chief spokesperson for the president.
“I would tell her to stay focused. You got this. Believe in yourself. Trust your gut. trust your instinct. Don't listen to the naysayers,” she said.
In addition to signing the Respect for Marriage Act, Biden and his administration have taken other steps to show support for the LGBTQ+ community, including providing funding for mental health care and advising school districts on the impact of book bans.
But Jean-Pierre says there is more to do, calling for Congress to pass the Equality Act, which would amend the Civil Rights Act to specifically prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation or gender identity.
Now than more than a year into her high-profile job, Jean-Pierre says she continues to grow in the role and has no plan to go “anywhere anytime soon.”
Her presence behind that podium, she hopes, serves as a daily dose of encouragement to the LGBTQ+ community that she is now proudly – and very publicly – a part of.
“I hope if there's a little kid out there who's not sure, who is trying to figure it out, or who's afraid to be who they are, who is not sure if they're going to be accepted, I want them to know by seeing me up there is that they are accepted, that they are enough,” she said. “We see you, we love you. And we're going to continue to fight for you.”
“It sends a message of: We got you.”