Vice President Kamala Harris is set to become the Democratic presidential nominee after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race to endorse her, a long-time and strong supporter of LGBTQ+ equality, reproductive freedom and other progressive causes.
If elected in November, Harris would make history as the first woman president, the first woman of color, the first Black woman and the first South Asian woman to hold the nation’s highest office, and likely also become the most pro-LGBTQ+ president ever.
Harris was born on October 20, 1964 in Oakland, California, and grew up in Berkeley and the eastern San Francisco Bay Area, spending several years in Montreal. She is the daughter of two immigrants; her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was born in India, and her father, Donald Harris, was born in Jamaica. Gopalan was an academic and Harris an economist. Her parents were active in the civil rights movement, taking young Kamala to demonstrations in a stroller. She graduated from Howard University, one of the nation’s leading historically black colleges, and earned her law degree from Hastings College of the Law. She married lawyer Douglas Emhoff in 2014. The couple have two children, Ella and Cole.
Harris began her legal career in 1990 in the Alameda County, California District Attorney’s Office, where she specialized in prosecuting child sexual assault cases. In 2003, she was elected District Attorney for the City and County of San Francisco. The following year, after San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom legalized same-sex marriage in the city, Harris officiated at a same-sex wedding (although the marriage was subsequently annulled). “One of the most joyous moments was, [moments of my career] “I had my wedding there in 2004, and it was such a joy,” Harris told The Advocate in 2023. This year, she reunited with the couple she wed, Bradley Witherspoon and Raymond Cobain, via video call. “I’ll never forget getting to see all of my family in all its different configurations, and the pure joy and happiness,” she said during the call. “It was such a special moment, and it was about love.”
She established hate crimes and environmental justice units within the district attorney’s office, and created a program that gives first-time drug offenders a chance to earn a high school degree and get a job, which the Department of Justice called a national model for law enforcement innovation.
In 2010, she was elected California Attorney General, overseeing the nation’s largest state-level Department of Justice. As Attorney General, she played a key role in restoring marriage equality in the Golden State. One of her signature campaign issues was opposing Proposition 8, a voter-approved ballot initiative that would have overturned the state Supreme Court’s 2008 decision that struck down marriage equality in California and allowed same-sex couples to marry. Both she and Jerry Brown, who was elected Governor in 2010, have said they would not defend Proposition 8 in court, as did Brown’s predecessor, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The fate of this ballot measure might have been different if Harris’s opponent in the Attorney General race, Steve Cooley, who had vowed to defend Proposition 8, had won.
Eventually, supporters of the proposition had to defend themselves against challenges in court, and courts all the way up to the Supreme Court agreed they had no legal basis to do so, resulting in the repeal of Proposition 8. After Proposition 8 was struck down in 2013, she officiated California’s first same-sex wedding since Proposition 8, that of Chris Perry and Sandy Steer, who were both present in court.
As attorney general, she led the effort to eliminate the gay and transgender “panic” defense in criminal cases. As attorney general, she was criticized for her support of California when it tried to deny gender reassignment surgery to transgender prisoners. But Harris noted that as attorney general, the state’s Department of Corrections was her client and she had to represent its interests. But she worked behind the scenes to change policy to ensure that all prisoners who needed such surgery could get it.
As Attorney General, she also won $20 billion in settlements for residents who lost their homes to foreclosure and $1.1 billion in settlements for people defrauded by for-profit education companies. She defended the Affordable Care Act in court and enforced environmental laws.
She was elected to the United States Senate in 2016. Before leaving the Senate to become Vice President, she received a perfect score of 100 on the Human Rights Campaign’s Congressional Scorecard, which measures support for LGBTQ+ equality. Her record also includes perfect ratings from reproductive rights groups, including Planned Parenthood Action Fund, NARAL Pro-Choice America (now known as Reproductive Freedom for All), and NARAL Pro-Choice California.
As a senator, she introduced legislation to require insurance coverage for pre-exposure prophylaxis, stumped Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh with a question about marriage equality during his confirmation hearing, and, according to her official White House biography, “she pushed legislation to fight hunger, provide rent relief, improve maternal and child health, expand access to capital for small businesses, revitalize America’s infrastructure, and combat the climate crisis.”
Her work to champion progressive causes has continued during her time as vice president. She has spoken out against a flurry of anti-LGBTQ+ bills enacted in conservative states across the country, including “don’t say gay” laws affecting education and bans on gender-affirming care for transgender youth. “I hate bullies,” she told The Advocate in a 2023 interview. She noted that politicians who attack LGBTQ+ people and reproductive rights are often the same people. “The issue of reproductive care and trans care and the ability of families to care for their children and their families is really an intersection around an attack on identity,” she said.
She hosted a Pride Month reception and visited the Stonewall Inn in New York City, where riots against police harassment of gay bars in 1969 sparked the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. She met with WNBA star Britney Griner and her wife, Sherrelle Griner, before Britney’s first game since being released from captivity in Russia.
President Biden honored her work on marriage equality by presenting her with the pen he used to sign the Respect Marriage Act in December 2022. The act wrote marriage equality into federal law, protecting it from future negative Supreme Court rulings.
The possibility of this measure has received the most attention in 2022 after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that established a national right to abortion, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. States are currently free to ban or severely restrict abortion, and about half of states do so. Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the opinion, said the decision should not be interpreted as the start of an attack on other precedents, but Justice Clarence Thomas, a fellow conservative, said he would like to see the Supreme Court’s 2015 marriage equality decision overturned. Justice Thomas also called for overturning decisions that struck down sodomy laws and state contraception bans. That would require litigation on any of the issues that come before the Supreme Court, but that’s a possibility.
Since the Dobbs decision, Harris has spoken frequently about the importance of reproductive freedom. She and Biden have called on Congress to pass legislation to restore Roe’s protections. Americans need to send a message to anti-abortion politicians that their actions are unacceptable, she said at a reproductive rights rally in Virginia this year.
She continues to be equally outspoken on LGBTQ+ rights. “Fighting for equal rights is patriotic,” she said at a Pride reception in 2023. “We believe in the foundational principles of this country. We believe in the promise of freedom and equality and justice. So fighting for equal rights is an expression of love for our country.”
