“Many of you have worked for a long time to see this day coming.”

That’s what President Obama told the audience in the East Room of the White House on July 21st 2014, before he signed an Executive Order prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

The President explained how, because of the audience’s “passionate advocacy and the irrefutable rightness of [their] cause, our government — government of the people, by the people, and for the people — will become just a little bit fairer.”

Yesterday’s Executive Order amends Executive Order 11246, issued by President Lyndon B. Johnson, adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protected categories in the existing Executive Order covering federal contractors.

“It doesn’t make much sense,” President Obama said, “but today in America, millions of our fellow citizens wake up and go to work with the awareness that they could lose their job, not because of anything they do or fail to do, but because of who they are — lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender. And that’s wrong.”

Find out more about the President’s Executive Order to protect LGBT workers.