The Advocate, the nation’s oldest and largest LGBTQ-focused publication, on Tuesday endorsed Vice President Harris for president.
“Harris, the Democratic nominee, is exponentially better on every issue than her Republican opponent, Donald Trump — issues including reproductive freedom, the economy, and climate change. But our endorsement focuses on her LGBTQ+ rights record, which is stellar, and what she promises to do in that realm as president,” the publication’s editors wrote in Tuesday’s editorial. “Her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is a strong LGBTQ+ ally too, something that certainly cannot be said of Trump’s vice-presidential pick, U.S. Sen. JD Vance.”
Harris has long advocated for LGBTQ rights. As San Francisco’s district attorney, she officiated 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 refused to defend Proposition 8, a state constitutional amendment that banned same-sex marriage, in court. She advocated for the repeal of the amendment in 2013.
Harris has, however, faced some criticism for her record on transgender rights. In 2015, while serving as California’s attorney general, she worked to block a trans woman in a state prison from receiving gender-affirming surgery. During her first presidential run in 2019, Harris said she took “full responsibility” for her actions in the case and said she later worked “behind the scenes” to get the state’s corrections department to change its policy denying transgender inmates gender-affirming care.
Walz has similarly supported LGBTQ causes for decades. As a schoolteacher and football coach at a Minnesota high school in the late 1990s, he advised the school’s first gay-straight alliance, a student-led club supporting LGBTQ students and families. As governor, Walz helped pass legislation protecting seekers and providers of gender-affirming health care from prosecution by states with bans in effect.
Former President Trump has pledged to enact a slate of policies targeting members of the LGBTQ community if he is reelected, including a nationwide ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors and a federal law recognizing only two genders. He has promised to reinstate a ban on transgender people serving openly in the military.
A poll from the Human Rights Campaign in September found that Harris holds a nearly 67-point lead over Trump among LGBTQ voters.
The Advocate’s endorsement of Harris comes on the heels of similar endorsements from The Atlantic and The New York Times, which wrote late last month that Harris is “the only patriotic choice for president.” Most major news outlets endorsed Hillary Clinton and President Biden against Trump during his White House runs in 2016 and 2020.
