WASHINGTON — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz supported Vice President Kamala Harris’ record defending LGBTQ+ rights Saturday night, promising a crowd of supporters that he would advance her cause if elected president.
Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, headlined a national dinner for the Human Rights Campaign, which he praised as “the best party in the nation.” He entered the massive ballroom of 3,500 attendees in John Mellencamp’s “Small Town” and received a standing ovation from members of the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ organization.
He noted how Harris worked with President Joe Biden to issue executive orders protecting the rights of LGBTQ+ people in health care, the military and education.
“And the reason she did it was very simple. Kamala Harris believes in equal justice under the law and that means proper, complex, equal justice under the law. That’s not up for debate,” Walz said. “It’s not that hard.”
Transgender youth and adults in red states are facing increasing restrictions. Last year, HRC declared a crisis for LGBTQ+ people in the United States due to the proliferation of state laws restricting their rights. If elected, Republican Donald Trump has said he would replicate some of those restrictions at the federal level.
Shortly after Biden dropped out of the 2024 race and endorsed Harris for president, HRC announced it would also endorse him. The organization also applauded her choice of Walz as its running mate, citing her own long record of supporting LGBTQ+ youth and supporting same-sex marriage.
On Saturday night, Walz described how he taught social studies and coached football at a Minnesota high school in the 1990s — and unexpectedly a student asked him to serve as faculty adviser to the Gay-Straight Alliance.
He also outlined Harris’ achievements on LGBTQ+ issues, when, as California’s attorney general, she had to personally call a Los Angeles clerk who was refusing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
“‘You should start the marriage right away,'” Harris told the clerk, according to Walz. “That was her best line at the time. She said to the clerk, ‘Have a nice day. It’s going to be a fun one.'”
Outlining what could happen if Trump gets a second term in the White House, he urged the crowd to work to help elect Harris. Trump’s policy proposals “will restrict freedom, threaten this community, demonize vulnerable children,” Walz said.
Trump has made attacks on transgender people a mainstay of his campaign rhetoric as he seeks his second term in office. It marks an about-face for Trump, who called on the party to protect LGBTQ+ people in his 2016 address to the Republican National Convention.
If re-elected, Trump has pledged in his policy platform to prevent public schools from “promoting gender transition” and to revoke federal funding from any school that he calls a “radical gender ideology.” In a video posted online last year, Trump also said he would punish doctors who administer gender-affirming care to transgender youth by removing them from Medicare and Medicaid and teachers who “suggest to children that they are in the wrong body. can get stuck.”
At an event for Moms for Liberty last week, Trump went after Algerian boxer Imane Khalif, continuing to spread misinformation about the Olympic gold medalist being transgender and gaining an unfair advantage over her competitors. He then pushed the out-and-out claim that public schools were performing gender-affirming surgeries.
“Your child goes to school. And come home a few days after the operation,” Trump said at the group’s national summit. He repeated this statement at a rally on Saturday. Transgender youth rarely undergo gender-affirmation surgery anywhere.
Asked about the comments, campaign spokeswoman Carolyn Levitt could not provide any examples to support her claim. But she pointed to reports that thousands of K-12 schools have rules that prohibit teachers from telling parents if their child asks to use the pronouns on their birth certificate.
“President Trump will ensure that all Americans are treated equally under the law, regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation,” Levitt said. She added that the former president did not believe children should undergo what she called “permanent gender reassignment surgery”.
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