Senator Hillary Clinton addressed guests via satellite Saturday night at the Human Rights Campaign annual fund-raiser in Washington D.C. in place of vice presidential candidate Senator Joseph Biden, who cancelled all his weekend campaign events due to his mother-in-law becoming critically ill.

Clinton told the room of nearly 3,000 people it was a “privilege” to fill in for Sen. Biden because of the work she had proudly done with HRC is previous political battles. “Together with the Human Rights Campaign on the front lines, we took back the Congress in 2006 and together we’re going to take back the White House,” she said.

Instead of speaking for herself, Clinton said she would share the remarks that Sen. Biden intended to deliver. “One of the fundamental questions, Joe was going to say, at stake in this election, is whether America is going to continue to be a place of equality and opportunity where people are treated with dignity, entitled to privacy and protected from violence and discrimination, a place where we all truly are equals and no one is left out, kept down by some misguided sense of hatred or fear,” Clinton said.

For the past eight years, Clinton said some politicians had tried to enshrine discrimination into the Constitution, interfere with private decisions about whom people choose to share their lives with, raise their children with, and be their advocates in their final moments. “These questions speak to whether or not we are truly free, as Americans and as human beings,” Clinton said.

Clinton then invited a trip down memory lane. “Think back with me, eight years ago a man ran for president who claimed he was different, not a typical Republican, he called himself a reformer.” she recalled. “He even spoke about his gay friends in Texas and met with a group he called the Austin 12, and he promised moderation in social policies. That candidate was George W. Bush,” Clinton said. “Eight years later, we’ve got another Republican nominee who’s telling us the exact same things … and just like the Austin 12, this time he has a running mate who says she has gay friends. We’ve seen this movie before folks. But as everyone knows, the sequel is always worse than the original.”

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