Major LGBTQ organizations and leaders are mobilizing around Vice President Harris’ historic run for the White House, highlighting her positive record on LGBTQ rights over a decades-long political career and what a Harris presidency could mean to the community.
“Kamala Harris supported LGBTQ+ people when that wasn’t an easy thing to do politically,” said Brandon Wolf, press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBTQ advocacy group that supported Harris.
As San Francisco’s district attorney, Harris officiated at 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 declined to defend Proposition 8, a state constitutional amendment that prohibited same-sex marriage, in court. She advocated the repeal of the amendment in 2013, which the Supreme Court struck down later that year.
During her time as San Francisco 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 “panic” defense. and transgender, 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, then-California Sen. co-sponsored the Senate Equality Act, a landmark proposal to amend existing federal anti-discrimination law to make sexual orientation and gender identity protected classes. A 2019 bill presented by Harris sought to require private health plans to cover prescribed medications for HIV prevention, exams and clinical monitoring.
Harris, however, has faced some criticism for her record on transgender rights. As California’s attorney general in 2015, Harris worked to prevent a transgender woman in a state prison from receiving gender-affirming surgery. In 2019, during Harris’ 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 of denying the claim of gender to trans inmates. Careful.
“Certainly, his stance on the case was disheartening and harmful to transgender people in the state at the time, and there is no doubt how devastating it was for our client,” said Shelby Chestnut, executive director of the Transgender Law Center, which defended the case. woman, Michelle Norsworthy, in court. “But we also have to contextualize that in the years since, in several different roles, she has done so much to impact the trans community and stand by their side.”
In the Senate, Harris helped pressure other offices to release information related to the death of Roxsana Hernandez, a Honduran transgender woman who died in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in 2018, Chestnut said.
“She really took the opportunity to push for accountability for Roxsana’s death, which is critical, and that’s how we achieve change,” they said. Hernandez’s death is still under investigation.
Harris has also been criticized for supporting FOSTA-SESTA, a 2018 law that addresses 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, harming an industry where LGBTQ people, and transgender people in particular, are disproportionately represented.
His support for the Biden administration’s policies on the Israel-Hamas war has also isolated some LGBTQ voters who consider the conflict an important election issue. Tensions have risen during Pride Month events in the US 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 the right to defend itself against Hamas but “will not remain silent” about Palestinian suffering. In a statement, Harris also condemned protests against Netanyahu’s speech at a joint meeting of Congress on Wednesday.
Some transgender Americans have also expressed hesitation over the Biden administration’s opposition to gender-affirming surgeries for minors, a statement that surprised supporters and angered mainstream 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 that “families should have the freedom to make the medical decisions that they and their doctors determine are best for them.”
Gender-affirming surgeries are typically not recommended for transgender youth under the age of 18. Genital, or “bottom,” surgery is never available to minors.
The administration has, for the most part, made progress in advancing LGBTQ rights over the past four years, and President Biden, who suspended his own re-election campaign last week, has frequently praised his and Harris’ administration as the most pro- -LGBTQ from 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 candidate at next month’s Democratic National Convention. They should also remember who she is 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 re-elected, including a nationwide ban on transgender student-athletes competing according to their gender identity and a federal law which recognizes only two genders.
The former president also promised to punish doctors who administer gender-affirming care to minors, roll back new protections for LGBTQ students instituted by the Biden administration and cut federal funding for schools that accommodate transgender students.
Meanwhile, Trump’s running mate, Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance, has championed legislation in the Senate to make it a crime to provide gender-affirming medical care to transgender minors and to ban “X” gender markers on U.S. passports. The first-term senator also repeated the false and inflammatory claim that LGBTQ people are “grooming” children to abuse them and, during his 2022 Senate campaign, opposed legislation safeguarding marriage equality .
“The contrast really couldn’t be clearer,” Wolf said.
Prominent LGBTQ leaders and organizations immediately lined up behind Harris after she formally announced her candidacy for the White House on Sunday.
A fundraiser organized 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 signed up 1,500 campaign volunteers, they said. groups on Friday.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
