Major LGBTQ organizations and leaders are rallying around Vice President Harris’s historic bid for the White House, highlighting her positive record on LGBTQ rights over a decades-long political career and what a Harris presidency could mean for the community.
“Kamala Harris was a supporter of LGBTQ+ people when that was not an easy thing to do politically,” said Brandon Wolf, press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBTQ advocacy group that has endorsed Harris.
As San Francisco’s district attorney, Harris officiated some of the nation’s first same-sex marriage ceremonies during the city’s “Winter of Love” in 2004. Later, as California’s attorney general, Harris refused to defend Proposition 8, a state constitutional amendment that banned same-sex marriage, in court. She advocated for the repeal of the amendment in 2013, which the Supreme Court struck down later that year.
During her time as San Francisco’s district attorney, Harris also created a hate crimes unit to investigate crimes against LGBTQ children and teens in schools and helped make California the first state to ban the use of the gay and transgender “panic” defense, which allows individuals accused of violent crimes to receive lesser sentences by arguing that the victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity caused them to panic.
In 2017, the then-California senator co-sponsored the Senate’s Equality Act, a landmark proposal to amend existing federal antidiscrimination law to make sexual orientation and gender identity protected classes. A 2019 bill introduced by Harris sought to require private health plans to cover prescription HIV prevention medications, screenings and clinical follow-ups.
Harris has, however, faced some criticism for her record on transgender rights. As California attorney general in 2015, Harris worked to block a transgender woman in a state prison from receiving gender-affirming surgery. In 2019, during Harris’s first presidential run, she said she took “full responsibility” for her actions in the case, adding that she worked “behind the scenes” to get the California Department of Corrections to change its policy denying trans inmates gender-affirming care.
“Certainly, her stance on the case was discouraging and harmful to trans people in the state at the time, and there’s no question how devastating it was for our client,” said Shelby Chestnut, executive director of the Transgender Law Center, which defended the woman, Michelle Norsworthy, in court. “But we also have to put it in the context that in subsequent years, in various different positions, she has done a lot to impact the trans community and stay on their side.”
In the Senate, Harris helped put pressure on other offices to release information related to the death of Roxsana Hernandez, a transgender Honduran woman who died in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2018, Chestnut said.
“She really took the opportunity to push for accountability in Roxsana’s death, which is critical, and that’s how we get change,” they said. Hernandez’s death is still under investigation.
Harris has also come under fire for her support of FOSTA-SESTA, 2018 law addressing sex trafficking. The law, which makes it easier for law enforcement agencies to go after websites that facilitate sex trafficking, also targets consensual sex work, hobbling an industry where LGBTQ people, and transgender people in particular, are disproportionately represented.
Her support for the Biden administration’s policies on the Israel-Hamas war has also isolated some LGBTQ voters who consider the conflict a major voting issue. Tensions boiled over during Pride Month events across the U.S. this year, with boycotts and demonstrations exposing deep divisions within the community.
Following a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington on Thursday, Harris said Israel has a right to defend itself against Hamas, but she “will not be silent” on Palestinian suffering. In a statement, Harris also condemned protests over Netanyahu’s address to a joint meeting of Congress on Wednesday.
Some transgender Americans have also expressed hesitancy over the Biden administration’s opposition to gender-affirming surgeries for minors, a statement that surprised supporters and angered major LGBTQ rights organizations, including the Human Rights Campaign.
The administration later clarified that it does not support state or national bans on gender-affirming care, and “families should have the freedom to make the medical decisions that they and their doctors determine are best for them.”
Gender-affirming surgeries are not typically recommended for transgender youths under 18. Genital, or “bottom” surgery, is never available to minors.
The administration has, for the most part, made strides in advancing LGBTQ rights over the past four years, and President Biden, who suspended his own reelection campaign last week, frequently touts his and Harris’s administration as the most pro-LGBTQ in history.
Wolf, of the Human Rights Campaign, said voters in November should consider the “totality of [Harris’s] record” if she is confirmed as the party’s official nominee at next month’s Democratic National Convention. They should also remember who she’s running against.
Former President Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has promised to enact at least a dozen policies targeting members of the LGBTQ community if he is reelected, including a nationwide ban on transgender student-athletes competing in accordance with their gender identity and a federal law that recognizes only two genders.
The former president has also vowed to punish doctors who administer gender-affirming care to minors, roll back new LGBTQ student protections instituted by the Biden administration and cut federal funding for schools that accommodate transgender students.
Meanwhile, Trump’s running mate, Ohio Republican Sen. JD Vance, has championed legislation in the Senate to make providing gender-affirming medical care to transgender minors a felony and ban “X” gender markers on U.S. passports. The first-term senator has also repeated the false and inflammatory claim that LGBTQ people are “grooming” children to abuse them, and during his 2022 Senate campaign he opposed legislation safeguarding marriage equality.
“The contrast really could not be clearer,” Wolf said.
Prominent LGBTQ leaders and organizations immediately lined up behind Harris after she formally announced her White House bid on Sunday.
A fundraising call hosted Thursday evening by the Human Rights Campaign, the National Center for Transgender Equality and other state and national organizations raked in more than $300,000 for Harris and registered 1,500 campaign volunteers, the groups said Friday.