2024-07-25 13:00
1:00
July 25, 2024
afternoon
The moment President Joe Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for her historic election to the White House, LGBTQ+ groups and voters stood up for her.
Kim Hunt, a veteran LGBTQ+ rights advocate from Chicago, was at brunch when the news broke that Biden was ending his reelection campaign and endorsing Harris. A few hours later, she was on a Zoom conference call with 40,000 Black women rallying their support for Harris.
“The atmosphere is completely different in the LGBTQ community, communities of color, women’s rights organizations,” Hunt said. “It’s different now. People are energized.”
Harris’ candidacy has excited many black LGBTQ+ voters, and queer voters in general, who see new hope as the community faces unprecedented legislative attacks on transgender Americans in particular. Some have grappled with Harris’ checkered record on transgender issues as part of the Biden administration and previously as a prosecutor in California. But they say she has shown growth over time.
Like Hunt, David Johns, executive director of the Black queer advocacy group National Black Justice Coalition, also sprang into action. Within hours, he had held a conference call with more than 53,000 Black men, who raised more than $1 million for Harris in four hours.
“There’s clearly a new kind of interest and energy” emerging from the Harris campaign, Jones said.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the largest LGBTQ+ rights organization in the United States, switched its support from Biden to Harris.
“Vice President Kamala Harris is a trailblazer, having championed LGBTQ+ equality for decades, from leading the fight against hate crimes in San Francisco to working to end the so-called gay and transgender ‘panic defense’ in California to her early support for marriage equality and her leadership as vice president,” HRC Chair Kelly Robinson said in a statement.
“Her leadership is committed to strengthening and elevating efforts to address and respond to the needs of transgender people and ensure the continued progress in our nation’s civil rights history,” Advocates for Transgender Equality said in a statement.
Harris was one of her Washington colleagues’ earliest supporters of LGBTQ+ rights, officiating a same-sex wedding in California on Valentine’s Day in 2004, making her one of the first elected officials to publicly support marriage equality.
In 2008, as San Francisco’s district attorney, she refused to defend Proposition 8, which banned marriage equality.
Tony Huang, executive director of California Equality, and Andre Wade, president of the Silver State Equality Nevada chapter, said in a statement that throughout her career, Harris has exemplified what it means to be an advocate.
“We have seen firsthand her commitment to LGBTQ+ equality,” they said, including her work in the U.S. Senate to pass federal anti-lynching legislation and expand access to the HIV prevention drugs PrEP and PEP.
But Harris has faced tough questions from LGBTQ+ leaders in the past: When she served as California’s attorney general in 2015, she opposed gender-affirming care for incarcerated transgender women. Harris has since apologized and has been praised by some organizations, including HRC, as a candidate who can learn and grow.
Some have expressed hesitation about her record as a prosecutor in a system that disproportionately incarcerates people of color and queer people.
Jennifer Love Williams, vice president of the national LGBTQ+ prison advocacy group Black & Pink and a former incarcerated Black trans woman, acknowledged that Harris’s past may be painful for some.
“I know she’s done her job, and all I have to give her is the generosity to show me what she can do for us as a country,” Williams said. “What other choice do we have? [former President Donald] Trump, I know all my rights will be lost.”
Over the past four years, life has become increasingly difficult for queer Americans as anti-LGBTQ+ bills have flooded state legislatures and hate crimes against queer Americans have increased year after year. In the past two years, states have considered 1,197 anti-transgender bills. Of those, 129 have passed into law.
Before Biden dropped out of the race, some supporters questioned whether he would truly use his presidential power to fight for transgender youth who face restrictions on access to gender-affirming medical care, sports participation and more.
Biden has repeatedly told transgender Americans that he is on their side, and his administration has made significant moves to promote LGBTQ+ equality, including restoring health care protections for transgender Americans and reversing Trump’s ban on transgender military service. The Biden administration is also the first to issue gender-neutral passports. Biden’s Justice Department has stepped in to help transgender women who are incarcerated alongside men.
In contrast, LGBTQ+ groups have condemned Trump as one of the most anti-LGBTQ+ presidents in history, with media advocacy group GLAAD citing 210 total attacks against queer Americans by the Trump administration during his time in office.
Anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric has grown increasingly extreme in recent years, with some in the community expressing concern that a Trump presidency could mean the end of marriage equality. Ostensibly to assuage those concerns, the Republican National Committee’s new pro-Trump platform removed language limiting marriage to “a man and a woman.”
But many of the Republican National Convention’s speakers verbally attacked transgender Americans at the convention in Milwaukee.
The Biden-Harris administration was also embroiled in controversy in early July when the White House said it opposed gender reassignment surgery for transgender youth. The White House later clarified its position in comments to The Advocate, acknowledging that the surgery would only be offered to youth in extreme cases and saying the administration supports it.
The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
Raquel Willis, a nationally known transgender author and advocate, remains skeptical of Harris.
“I think we live in a time when Democratic leaders, including the Biden-Harris administration, are throwing around ineffective platitudes about their beliefs on transgender rights,” Willis said. “I’ve always [Harris] “In particular, she has not been a vocal advocate for transgender people’s access to gender-affirming medical care.”
Willis said that complicated history is peculiar to transgender Americans, and she thinks Harris will inherit some of the disappointment and anxiety queer Americans have felt about Biden’s handling of anti-transgender legislation and the ongoing crisis in Gaza, which has alienated many LGBTQ+ voters.
“Now is the perfect opportunity for accountability to ensure Harris is the better candidate we all want her to be,” Willis said.
Other leaders agree: There’s still a lot we don’t know about Harris, especially when it comes to LGBTQ+ rights. They’re intrigued and eager to hear what she has to say.
“Harris is somewhat of an enigma, but there’s a lot of online feedback that suggests she supports LGBTQ people,” Hunt said, “so I feel good about that and it definitely feels a lot better than the other options.”
