WASHINGTON — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz praised Vice President Kamala Harris for her record on LGBTQ rights Saturday night, promising a crowd of support if she’s elected president.
Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, chaired a national dinner for the Human Rights Campaign and hailed it as “the best party in the nation.” He walked into a large auditorium of 3,500 attendees for John Mellencamp’s “Small Town” and received a standing ovation from members of the nation’s largest LGBTQ organization.
He noted how Harris has worked with President Joe Biden to pass executive orders protecting the rights of LGBTQ people in health care, the military and education.
“The reason he did it was quite simple. Kamala Harris believes in equal justice before the law, and that means proper, complex, equal justice before the law. It should not be discussed,” Valz said. “It’s not that hard.”
Transgender youth and adults face increasing restrictions in red states. HRC last year declared a state of emergency Because of the proliferation of state laws restricting the rights of LGBTQ people in the United States. Republican Donald Trump has said he would replicate some of these restrictions at the federal level if elected.
Not long after Biden dropped out of the 2024 race and endorsed Harris for president, HRC announced it would endorse him as well. The organization also applauded Walz’s nomination, citing her long record of support for LGBTQ youth and support for same-sex marriage.
On Saturday night, Walz talked about how he taught social studies and coached football at a Minnesota high school in the 1990s — and out of the blue, a student approached him and asked him to work as a faculty advisor He is a member of the Gay-Straight Alliance.
He also touted Harris’ accomplishments on LGBTQ issues, recalling an episode in which, as California’s attorney general, he had to personally call a Los Angeles official who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
According to Walz, Harris told the clerk, “You have to start the marriages right away.” “That’s when he had the best line. He told the clerk, ‘Have a good day. This is going to be fun.'”
He urged the crowd to work to help elect Harris, explaining what could happen if Trump is elected to a second term in the White House. Trump’s policy proposals “will limit freedom, insult this community, demonize vulnerable children,” Walz said.
While running for a second term, Trump has made attacks against transgender people the main focus of his campaign rhetoric. It represents the face of Trump, who in his 2016 address to the Republican National Convention urged the party to protect LGBTQ people.
If re-elected, Trump promised on a policy platform to stop public schools from “promoting gender transition” and to withdraw federal funding from any schools with what he called “radical gender ideology.” In a video posted online last year, Trump also said he would punish doctors who run the show gender-affirming care for transgender youth by cutting them off from Medicare and Medicaid and from teachers who “suggest to the child that they may be trapped in the wrong body.”
At last week’s Mothers for Freedom event, Trump continued to spread and went after Algerian boxer Imane Khelif. Misinformation about Olympic gold medalist being transgender and gaining an unfair advantage over competitors. He then made the outlandish claim that public schools were performing gender-affirming surgeries.
“Your child goes to school. And a few days later, he returns home after surgery,” Trump said at the group’s national summit. He repeated this claim at the rally on Saturday. Transgender youth rarely undergo gender confirmation surgery anywhere.
Campaign spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt, when asked about the comments, was unable to provide any examples to support her claim. But he pointed out that thousands of K-12 schools have rules that prevent teachers from telling parents if their children ask to use pronouns that differ from those on their birth certificates.
“President Trump will ensure that all Americans are treated equally under the law, regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation,” Leavitt said. He added that the former president did not believe children should be allowed to undergo “permanent sex-change operations.”