Since many people seem not to be aware of Kamala Harris’ actual record on LGBT issues, or are getting their information solely from sources determined to distort it, I’d recommend looking at this thread on twitter, which has a lot of information with links and context. Some highlights:
-She refused to defend Prop 8 (ban on same sex marriage), officiated the first same-sex wedding after the ruling, and instructed clerks to marry same-sex couples seeking a license with “no exceptions”
- In 2000, she opposed California Proposition 22, which stated that only marriages between a man and a woman are to be considered valid or recognized in California
- As AG, she refused to certify a CA “Kill the Gays” ballot initiative that would have (unconstitutionally) imposed the death penalty for “homosexual acts”
- In Congress she’s co-sponsored various pieces of pro-LGBT legislation, including the Equality Act, the Do No Harm Act, the Census Equality Act, the Gay and Trans Panic Defense Prohibition Act, and the Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act to ban conversion therapy
- Her work on eliminating the ‘’gay and trans panic” defense goes back well over a decade. In 2006, as DA, she convened a national conference of prosecutors to undermine the “gay or trans panic” defense. Later, she co-sponsored a bill in CA Legislature to eliminate the “gay panic” defense in cases of murder or violent crime against LGBT people. The bill was signed in 2014, making California one of only 2 states in the country to ban the plea
-As AG, she filed briefs in favor of Obama administration guidance supporting transgender students, and against North Carolina’s anti-LGBT House Bill 2. As Senator, she signed an amicus brief before the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of transgender student Gavin Grimm’s case
The thread also discusses the litigation over SRS for transgender prison inmates, and includes a link to this article, which mentions that she learned about the appeal only by reading about it in the news (because her office has over 1000 DAs) and when she got involved, the process changed dramatically. “The California AG’s office shifted its handling of these cases significantly after now-Sen. Harris took over[…]initially there was language in briefing for the state that glaringly misunderstood the medical necessity of transition-related medical care and was patently offensive. But then, there was a dramatic change, which seems to have gone along with important policy shifts.”