Biden says transgender discrimination 'civil rights issue of our time'

Vice President Joe Biden, leaving an Obama campaign office in Sarasota, singled one woman out because she had beautiful eyes, the pool reporter noted:

She said something ...at first inaudible to pool, to which VP responded was the "civil rights issue of our time" Pool later asked the woman, Linda Carragher Bourne of Sarasota about the exchange. She said her daughter was Miss Trans New England and asked if he would help them. "A lot of my friends are being killed, and they don't have the civil rights yet. These guys are gonna make it happen," she told the pool.

Biden has long been a vocal advocate for LGBT rights -- most memorably getting out "a little bit over his skies," as President Obama put it -- when Biden endorsed same sex marriage before the president did earlier this year.

The vice president met with LGBT leaders at his Washington, D.C., home last month, including transgender advocates, according to the Easton Patch. The Obama-Biden administration was the first to send a representative to a trans-gender conference.