Leading LGBTQ organizations and leaders have supported Vice President Harris’ historic bid for the White House, highlighting her positive record on LGBTQ rights during her decades-long political career and what a Harris presidency would mean for the community.
“Kamala Harris stood up for LGBTQ+ people at a time when it wasn’t politically easy to do so,” said Brandon Wolf, spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBTQ advocacy group that supports Harris.
As San Francisco’s district attorney, Harris officiated the nation’s first same-sex marriage ceremony during the city’s “Winter of Love” in 2004. Then, as California’s attorney general, she refused to defend Proposition 8, a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, in court. Harris argued to repeal the amendment in 2013, but the Supreme Court rejected that repeal later that year.
During her time as San Francisco’s district attorney, Harris also established a Hate Crimes Unit to investigate crimes against LGBTQ children and teens in schools, and helped California become the first state to ban the use of the gay and transgender “panic” defense, which allows individuals charged with violent crimes to reduce their sentences by arguing that a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity caused panic.
In 2017, then-California Senator Harris co-sponsored the Senate Equality Act, a landmark proposal to amend existing federal anti-discrimination laws to include protections for sexual orientation and gender identity. Her bill, introduced in 2019, sought to require private health insurance to cover HIV-prevention prescription drugs, testing, and clinical follow-up.
But Harris has faced criticism over her record on transgender rights. As California’s attorney general in 2015, Harris tried to block transgender women incarcerated in state prisons from receiving gender reassignment surgery. When she first ran for president in 2019, she said she took “full responsibility” for her actions in the case, adding that she worked “behind the scenes” to lobby the California Department of Corrections to change its policy of denying gender reassignment surgery to transgender inmates.
“Certainly, her stance on this case was discouraging and harmful to transgender 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, who represented Michelle Norseworthy in court. “But it also needs to be considered in the context of the enormous contributions she has made to inspire and advocate for the transgender community in the years since, in a variety of capacities.”
Chesnut said that in the Senate, Senator Harris was instrumental in pressuring other government agencies to release information related to the death of Roxana Hernandez, a transgender woman from Honduras who died in 2018 while in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.
“She really took advantage of the opportunity to speak out for accountability in Roxana’s death, which is very important and that’s how we make change,” they said.Hernandez’s death remains under investigation.
Harris has also come under fire for her support of FOSTA-SESTA, a 2018 law that combats sex trafficking, which makes it easier for law enforcement to crack down on websites that facilitate sex trafficking but also targets consensual sex work, hindering an industry that is disproportionately represented by LGBTQ people, particularly transgender people.
Her support for the Biden administration’s Israel-Hamas war policies has alienated some LGBTQ voters who see the conflict as a key voting issue, and tensions have risen at Pride Month events across the country this year, with boycotts and demonstrations exposing deep divisions within the community.
After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington on Thursday, Harris said Israel has the right to defend itself against Hamas but “will not be silent” about the suffering of the Palestinians. In her statement, Harris also condemned the protests against Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday.
Some transgender Americans have expressed hesitation about the Biden administration’s opposition to gender reassignment surgery for minors, a comment that has surprised advocates and angered leading LGBTQ rights groups such as the Human Rights Campaign.
The administration later clarified that it does not support state or federal bans on gender-affirming care, and that “families should be free to make the medical decisions they and their physicians determine are best.”
Gender reassignment surgery is generally not recommended for transgender youth under the age of 18. Genital, or “bottom,” surgery is not available to minors.
The administration has generally made significant strides in advancing LGBTQ rights over the past four years, and President Biden, who suspended his reelection campaign last week, has frequently touted his and Harris’ administration as the most pro-LGBTQ in history.
Wolf, of the Human Rights Campaign, said voters in November “will [Harris’s] She will set a new record if she is endorsed as the party’s official candidate at the Democratic National Convention next month. Let’s not forget who she’s running against.
Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump has pledged to enact at least 12 policies targeting members of the LGBTQ community if re-elected, including a nationwide ban on transgender student-athletes from competing according to their gender identity and a federal law that only recognizes two genders.
The former president has also vowed to punish doctors who perform gender-reassignment procedures on minors, roll back new protections for LGBTQ students put in place by the Biden administration, and cut federal funding to schools that admit transgender students.
Meanwhile, Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, has pushed bills in the Senate that would make it a felony to provide gender-affirming medical care to transgender minors and ban the use of “X” in gender-affirming labels on U.S. passports. During his first term, Vance also repeatedly made false and inflammatory claims that LGBTQ people are “training” children to abuse, and opposed marriage equality legislation during his 2022 Senate campaign.
“The contrast is really stark,” Wolf said.
When Harris formally announced her White House bid on Sunday, prominent LGBTQ leaders and organizations quickly endorsed her.
A fundraiser hosted Thursday night by the Human Rights Campaign, the National Center for Transgender Equality and other state and national organizations raised more than $300,000 for Harris and registered 1,500 campaign volunteers, the groups announced Friday.
