As president of an organization representing millions of LGBT conservatives and their allies, I have a warning: Don’t be fooled by Kamala Harris and Tim Walz‘s attempt to reinvent themselves as moderate, pro-family, “not weird” Democrats who simply stand for LGBT equality.
Their agenda goes far beyond what our community has sought for decades, which is equality for LGBT Americans under the law. In reality, Harris and Walz are crusaders for a small but powerful cabal of the LGBT Left which wants to erase the concept of biological sex from society, expose young children to overtly sexualized and ideological content, and strip parents of their rights to make critical decisions about their children.
To this radical sect, electing a Harris-Walz administration would be a crowning achievement. Make no mistake: If Harris wins in November, this wing of the LGBT Left wouldn’t just have a seat at the table. It’d be sitting at the head, free to quietly execute its agenda throughout the federal bureaucracy and the regulatory state with a stamp of approval from the Oval Office.
Consider what we already know about Kamala Harris and her record in the current administration.
Harris has supported the administration’s attempt to destroy Title IX, the historic civil rights law that secured equality for women in education, by erasing the concept of biological sex from the law entirely and replacing it with “gender identity.” This regulatory change, a top priority for the ideological and gender-obsessed LGBT Left, would codify allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports and would force educational institutions to comply, resulting in dire consequences and lost opportunities for female athletes. Harris has never once stepped up to defend the women who have benefited from Title IX over the last 50 years. Her silence speaks volumes.
Fortunately, the courts have stopped the Biden-Harris administration’s Title IX changes—for now. But make no mistake. If elected president, Harris will double down and accelerate these radical policies for the next four years.
Democratic presidential candidate US Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, disembark from their campaign bus in Savannah, Georgia, August 28, 2024, as they travel across Georgia for a 2-day campaign bus tour.
Getty Images/Saul Loeb/AFP
Harris has also vocally opposed common-sense efforts to keep gender identity “lessons” out of young children’s classrooms, keep overly sexualized content out of school libraries, and keep parents involved with the education of their children. As vice president, she has made clear her contempt for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis‘ law protecting Florida schools. As president, Harris would throw the weight of the federal government behind efforts to punish states and school districts across the country that oppose her.
But what should alarm families most about a potential Harris-Walz administration is the agenda it would push to deny parents any say in life-altering health decisions for their children. As governor, Tim Walz signed a law that declared Minnesota a “sanctuary” for minors seeking “gender-affirming care,” which could mean anything from hormone therapy and puberty blockers to irreversible surgeries. Laws like this may sound tolerant and supportive of the LGBT community. But in reality, they amount to a government endorsement of dangerous and unproven treatments for children—there is little evidence that sex-change surgeries lead to better outcomes for children experiencing gender dysphoria—and pave the way for the state to strip parents of custody of their child if they disagree.
If this policy sounds radical, that’s because it is. In fact, it’s such an extreme step that even California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a similar law that would have required courts to consider “gender affirmation” in custody cases. Nothing about these drastic laws are pro-family, yet Walz’s eagerness to sign such a bill—and Harris’ willingness to select him as her vice president—speaks volumes about how a Biden-Harris administration would embrace them as federal policy.
The Democrats try to distract the public from their support for these radical ideas by fear-mongering about President Donald Trump. They claim he’ll legalize discrimination against the LGBT community, undo marriage equality, and target LGBT families. These attacks may sound scary—that’s the point—but they are all demonstrably false. Not only does President Trump support marriage equality, a position he’s held since his first campaign in 2016, but he supports IVF treatments that enable gay couples to have children and expanding the child tax credit for all families, including LGBT ones. He believes in, as his 2024 platform reads, “equal treatment for all.”
Equal treatment is what the LGBT community has been fighting for for decades. We’ve largely achieved it. Yet far-left demagogues continue to fan the flames and tell us that sex-change surgeries for children, men in women’s sports, or tampons in boys’ bathrooms are the defining civil rights issues of our time. As LGBT conservatives, we’re not buying it. Voters shouldn’t either.
Charles Moran is president of the Log Cabin Republicans.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
