'Our lives are on the line': Why many LGBTQ+ people hope for a Harris win (2024)

SAN FRANCISCO—

At a recent celebration of San Francisco’s vibrant transgender past, one speaker after another directed the crowd’s attention to a worrisome future, casting November’s presidential election as a turning point for the LGBTQ+ community and the nation as a whole.

“This election will determine our fate,” said Sofía Sabina Ríos Dorantes, deputy director of El/La Para TransLatinas, a local advocacy organization. “It will determine whether we continue to face discrimination and marginalization at [a] disproportionate rate, or whether we can continue walking toward the recognition and respect we deserve.”

Last week’s third annual kickoff to Transgender Pride Month — the first to be recognized at the state level as well — was a chance to celebrate the advances of the transgender community in one of the nation’s most enduring havens for LGBTQ+ people, with champagne served beneath the ornate dome of San Francisco City Hall. It was also a show of defiance at a dangerous time for queer folks nationally.

Thousands participate in the All Black Lives Matter solidarity march to mark LGBTQ Pride Month along Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood in 2020.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

In three months, Americans will choose between Vice President Kamala Harris, who is a Bay Area native and longtime LGBTQ+ ally, and former President Trump, who has a long record of attacking queer rights and has aligned himself with some of the nation’s most virulently anti-LGBTQ+ political groups.

In chats with family and on nights out with friends, at gay bars and organizing meetings and on a virtual call of some 20,000 queer people last month, many LGBTQ+ Americans are making it increasingly clear that they view Trump and the broader Republican agenda as an existential threat.

“It is not an exaggeration to say that our lives are on the line,” said Honey Mahogany, executive director of the San Francisco Office of Transgender Initiatives. “It’s whether or not we can survive — or will be in a position where we are in fear for our lives.”

The candidates’ positions

In advance of the 20,000-strong call hosted by the Human Rights Campaign last month, the group released a letter endorsing Harris from more than 1,100 LGBTQ+ leaders, organizers and celebrities.

The letter praised Harris for her decision as California attorney general to not defend Proposition 8, a state ballot measure that barred same-sex marriages, and for her support for the federal Equality Act, which would prohibit anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination in employment, housing and other areas.

Vice President Kamala Harris makes a surprise appearance at Capitol Pride DC in Washington in 2022.

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

The letter heaped praise on the Biden-Harris administration as “the most pro-LGBTQ+ administration in history,” noting its support for anti-discrimination policies and LGBTQ+ healthcare protections in the U.S. and its defense of LGBTQ+ rights globally.

On the call, Mawuli Tugbenyoh, senior co-chair of the Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club in San Francisco, said Harris has been a queer ally since before her first election as San Francisco district attorney in 2003 and is genuine in her allyship.

“Vice President Harris has always been there for us and fought for our community every step of the way,” Tugbenyoh said.

On Tuesday, queer rights groups also hailed Harris’ selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. They noted Walz has a record of allyship going back to the 1990s — when as a teacher he served as an advisor to his school’s gay-straight alliance — and as governor has signed bills banning so-called conversion therapy and protecting gender-affirming care.

The same organizations have called Trump a major threat to queer families.

Trump appointed anti-LGBTQ+ officials throughout his administration. His Department of Education revoked school protections for transgender students, while his Justice and Health and Human Services departments rescinded anti-discrimination protections for transgender people, including in healthcare settings.

Trump appointed a slate of judges viewed as anti-LGBTQ+ and banned transgender people from serving in the military — a policy President Biden reversed. In more recent years, Republicans aligned with Trump have introduced a flood of anti-LGBTQ+ bills at the local, state and federal levels, prompting the Human Rights Campaign to declare a “state of emergency” for queer Americans last year.

Concerns have only increased since Project 2025, a blueprint for a second Trump term produced by a host of former Trump aides, the Heritage Foundation and more than 100 other conservative groups, came into focus. The plan — which Trump has tried to distance himself from despite having close ties to its authors — challenges the existence of transgender people, calls the rainbow flag a “divisive symbol” and demands a “biblically based” definition of marriage and families.

Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, who also has close ties to Project 2025 authors, has attacked LGBTQ+ rights and mocked queer people. Vance has opposed protections for same-sex marriage, LGBTQ+ workers and gender-affirming healthcare, called LGBTQ+ activists “groomers” and held up the confirmation of overseas diplomats by questioning their support for LGBTQ+-friendly initiatives.

Trump also has outlined various anti-LGBTQ+ policies in “Agenda 47,” his plan for a second term. It says Trump would end all federal programs “that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age,” withhold Medicaid and Medicare funding from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to children, ensure “severe consequences” for teachers who acknowledge transgender students’ identities and revoke federal funding from their schools.

He concludes a campaign video about the plan with the demonstrably false assertion that the existence of transgender children “was never heard of” until “the radical left invented it just a few years ago.”

‘We’re not going back’

Not all LGBTQ+ people support Harris. Stephen Schumacher, a gay 33-year-old political consultant, helps lead the Detroit chapter of Log Cabin Republicans, an organization for conservative LGBTQ+ people. He supports Trump.

Schumacher pointed to the Republican Party taking its long-standing opposition to same-sex marriage out of its platform this year — after Trump ordered the document be slimmed down — as proof the party is coming around on the issue. He said Log Cabin events he attended at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last month were well received.

“I feel like my rights are protected,” Schumacher said.

Richard Grenell, a gay Trump loyalist and former acting director of national intelligence in the Trump administration, once called Trump “the most pro-gay president in American history” and this week predicted the GOP nominee will “win 50% of the gay vote.”

Grenell, of California, has railed against transgender youth rights and the Equality Act and been flagged as anti-LGBTQ+ by queer rights groups. On Wednesday he took up a Republican talking point about Walz, saying that Minnesota protections around sexual orientation somehow benefit pedophiles.

Across the country, many queer people find such beliefs flabbergasting — if not repugnant.

Jim Obergefell, the lead plaintiff in the 2015 Supreme Court case that won same-sex couples the right to marry nationally, said it’s obvious that LGBTQ+ rights — including the right to marry — are under threat.

Jim Obergefell, the lead plaintiff in Obergefell vs. Hodges, the Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, arrives for a news conference on the steps of the Texas Capitol in Austin in 2015.

(Eric Gay / Associated Press)

“The Republican Party has made clear through statements, through policies, through basically everything they have done, that they do not believe that queer people deserve the same rights, the same respect, the same dignity,” Obergefell said.

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), who is gay and serves as chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, said LGBTQ+ people have watched in recent years as Republicans have launched one attack after another on gender-affirming care, Pride flags, drag queen story hours, queer books and the mere mention of being gay in schools, and know it will only get worse under Trump.

“In the Republican Party, there is a real regression when it comes to equality, and I could see almost anything being pushed forward,” Pocan said.

Among those attending the Transgender Pride Month celebration in San Francisco was state Sen. Scott Wiener, who is gay. “We know that there are forces in this country — and we’re seeing it more broadly now with Project 2025 — [who] have never gotten over the fact that we’re no longer in 1950 or 1850 or whatever it is that they want to bring us back to,” he said. “They’ve never gotten over that, and they want all of us to go away.”

“Of course,” Wiener said, “we’re not going anywhere.”

Donna Personna, a 77-year-old transgender attendee who has lived in San Francisco since her teens, said Trump and other Republicans pretend people such as her never used to exist because they don’t want to acknowledge that the American past they wish to see returned was a harsh and unjust place for so many.

By contrast, Harris has made “We’re not going back” a campaign slogan, Personna noted. “And I’m with her on that.”