LGBTQ rights groups on Tuesday celebrated Vice President Harris’s selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, highlighting his longtime support for LGBTQ equality.
Walz, who has served as Minnesota’s governor since 2019, helped make Minnesota a refuge for LGBTQ Americans, and transgender Americans in particular. In 2023, an executive order signed by Walz made Minnesota among the first state to safeguard access to gender-affirming health care, and laws signed by the governor since have banned conversion therapy and the use of the gay and trans “panic” defenses.
Walz’s support for LGBTQ rights goes back further than his political career. As a young teacher at Mankato West High School, Walz advised the school’s first gay-straight alliance, a student-led club supporting LGBTQ students and families.
Reps. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) and Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), co-chairs of Equality PAC, the campaign arm of the Congressional Equality Caucus, reflected on that tidbit Tuesday in a joint statement.
“That story encompasses the type of ally Tim Walz is and will be as Vice President of the United States. In Congress and as governor, Tim has always stood for what is right, even if it didn’t make him the most popular person in the room,” they said. “His support for the LGBTQ community has been steadfast. And at a time when LGBTQ Americans have come under attack from MAGA extremists, we need strong allies now more than ever before.”
This year has been another record-shattering year for anti-LGBTQ legislation, with more than 500 bills filed in state legislatures across the country, according to a tally from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Forty-four bills have become law, all of them in Republican-led states.
In Congress, GOP lawmakers this session filed three separate proposals to ban transgender women and girls from female sports teams and at least two stand-alone bills to ban gender-affirming health care for minors, one of which would make providing treatment to trans youths a felony, punishable by more than a decade in prison.
Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), the Republican nominee for vice president, introduced the latter measure. Vance is also the primary sponsor of a bill to ban “X” gender markers on U.S. passports and has repeated the false and inflammatory claim that LGBTQ people are “grooming” children to abuse them. Former President Trump, the Republican nominee for president, has similarly endorsed policies targeting transgender rights, including a federal law that recognizes only two genders.
“That is the choice we are faced with in America. A Trump-Vance Administration that would demonize LGBTQ+ people, terrorize our families, send our rights and freedoms back to The Land Before Time and install Project 2025. Or a Harris-Walz Administration that will fight for our freedoms, defend our families, and make America a place where people don’t just get by — but can get ahead,” said Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBTQ advocacy group that has endorsed Harris.
Harris, also a longtime supporter of LGBTQ rights, has faced some criticism for her record on transgender rights, including her 2015 defense of a California Department of Corrections policy that prevented a transgender woman from receiving gender-affirming surgery while in prison. Harris has since apologized for defending the policy.
Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of the LGBTQ media advocacy organization GLAAD, said Harris’s selection of Walz “underscores a longstanding commitment to the equality, prosperity, and safety of all Americans, including and especially for LGBTQ people.”
“In this consequential election, we need all voices to speak up for the rights of LGBTQ people to be welcome as we are, live free from discrimination and harm, and pursue our own success and happiness,” Ellis said.
Annise Parker, president and CEO of the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, an organization dedicated to electing more LGBTQ people to public office, argued Harris’s selection of Walz as her running mate will only help to advance LGBTQ rights.
“A Harris-Walz ticket will certainly push the movement for equality forward,” she said Tuesday in a statement.
Some LGBTQ Republicans disagreed that Walz and Harris are the right people to deliver that message, however. Charles Moran, president of Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative LGBTQ rights group, said a Harris-Walz administration “would be an absolute disaster,” citing Walz’s history of embracing progressive causes, including support for gender-affirming care.
“Make no mistake, despite what the media will say, there is nothing pro-LGBT or pro-family about any of this,” Moran said Tuesday in a statement on the social platform X. Moran in his statement repeated a false claim that a Minnesota law signed by Walz last year protecting seekers and providers of gender-affirming medical care allows children to transition without parental consent.
Richard Grenell, the acting director of national intelligence during the Trump administration, described Walz as a left-wing radical who would isolate moderate voters. “Truly the best pick for Republicans,” he wrote Tuesday on X.