WASHINGTON — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz praised Vice President Kamala Harris’s record of defending LGBTQ+ rights on Saturday night, telling a supportive crowd that she will advance their cause if elected president.
Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, was the featured speaker at the national dinner for the Human Rights Campaign, which he called “the best party in the nation.” He entered the ballroom, filled with 3,500 attendees from the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ organization, to the tune of John Mellencamp’s “Small Town,” receiving a boisterous standing ovation.
He highlighted how Harris collaborated with President Joe Biden to issue executive orders safeguarding the rights of LGBTQ+ people in healthcare, the military, and education.
“And the reason she did it was pretty simple. Kamala Harris believes in equal justice under law, and that means proper, complicated, equal justice under law. It is not to be debated,” Walz said. “It’s not that difficult.”
Transgender youth and adults are facing increasing restrictions in conservative states. Last year, HRC declared an emergency for LGBTQ+ people in the United States due to the rise of state laws limiting their rights. If elected, Republican Donald Trump has stated he would replicate some of those restrictions at the federal level.
Shortly after Biden withdrew from the 2024 race and endorsed Harris for president, HRC announced it would also support her candidacy. The organization also applauded the selection of Walz as her running mate, acknowledging his long history of supporting LGBTQ+ youth and advocating for same-sex marriage.
On Saturday night, Walz recounted his experience as a social studies teacher and football coach at a Minnesota high school in the 1990s, when he was unexpectedly asked by a student to serve as the faculty advisor for the Gay-Straight Alliance.
He also detailed a series of Harris’s achievements on LGBTQ+ issues, recalling an incident where, as California’s attorney general, she personally called a Los Angeles clerk who was refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
“’You must start the marriages immediately,’” Harris told the clerk, according to Walz. “She had the best line then. She told the clerk, ‘Have a good day. It’s going to be a fun one.’”
He urged the crowd to work towards electing Harris, outlining the potential consequences of a Trump presidency. Trump’s policy proposals would “restrict freedom, bully this community, demonize vulnerable children,” Walz said.
Trump has made attacks on transgender people a key element of his campaign rhetoric as he seeks a second term. This represents a reversal from his 2016 Republican National Convention address, where he called for the party to protect LGBTQ+ people.
If reelected, Trump has pledged in his policy platform to prevent public schools “from promoting gender transition” and to revoke federal funding from any school that teaches what he calls “radical gender ideology.” In a video posted online last year, Trump also said he would punish doctors who provide gender-affirming care to transgender youth by cutting them off from Medicare and Medicaid, and teachers who “suggest to a child that they could be trapped in the wrong body.”
At an event last week for Moms for Liberty, Trump targeted Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, continuing to spread misinformation about the Olympic gold medalist being transgender and having an unfair advantage over her competitors. He then asserted, without evidence, that public schools are performing gender-affirming surgeries.
“Your kid goes to school. And comes home a few days later with an operation,” Trump said at the group’s national summit. He repeated the assertion at a rally Saturday. Transgender youth rarely undergo gender-confirmation surgery anywhere.
Asked about the comments, a campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt could not provide any examples to support his claim. However, she pointed to reports that thousands of K-12 schools have policies that prohibit teachers from informing parents if their child requests to use pronouns that differ from those on their birth certificate.
“President Trump will ensure all Americans are treated equally under the law regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation,” Leavitt said. She added that the former president does not believe children should be allowed to have what she called “permanent gender mutilation surgeries.”
