Kamala Harris Won’t Say Where She Stands on Trans Issues — but Her Record Is Clear

Kamala Harris won’t say where she stands on the medicalization of gender-dysphoric kids, the intrusion of men into women’s private spaces, or males competing in female sports.

Asked for clarification on those issues, Harris’s campaign declined to comment.

But a review of her record suggests that the former California attorney general, U.S. Senator, and vice president has done her best to keep up with the views on gender and sexuality that happen to be in vogue among the Left’s activist class at any given time.

As California attorney general in 2015, Harris signed off on her office’s appeal of a court order that would require the state to provide gender-transition surgery for a transgender-identifying prison inmate.

And yet, despite all the criticism of the decision, Harris says it never reflected her personal beliefs.

“There are, unfortunately, situations that occurred where my clients took positions that were contrary to my beliefs,” she said in 2019 when asked about the decision. “The bottom line is the buck stops with me, and I take full responsibility for what my office did.”

She said the state’s policy of denying gender-transition surgery to inmates was in place long before she took office and she was merely acting on behalf of her client – the state.

Harris even said she worked “behind the scenes” to change the policy, which was in fact changed later in 2015.

The truth of the matter, as Slate recently reported, is that Harris has a long, radical record on the transgender issue.

One need look no further than a recent endorsement from Advocates for Trans Equality last month. The group said Harris has “demonstrated an unwavering commitment to advancing the well-being of the transgender community.”

And Jessie McGarth, a transgender prosecutor in the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office who previously worked with Harris on multi-jurisdictional cases when Harris was the San Francisco district attorney, told USA Today that the vice president “has always been very, very supportive of the community.”

Even back during her time as the San Francisco DA in the early 2000s, Harris spoke at the city’s third annual Trans March and was honored then as having “championed transgender rights” with her role in implementing several initiatives, including the launch of a hate-crimes unit focused on crimes against “queer” teenagers.

And in 2016, Harris, in her role as California state AG, Harris joined two friend-of-the-court briefs in federal cases related to transgender rights: one challenging North Carolina’s bathroom law, which required individuals to use the bathroom that aligned with the sex on their birth certificate, and a second supporting U.S. efforts to “ensure that transgender individuals are protected against discriminatory practices that threaten their privacy and public safety.”

“In 2016, I was proud to join two cases supporting transgender rights that opposed North Carolina’s hateful so-called ‘bathroom bill.’ These laws only serve to attack transgender and non-binary people. As president, I will defend the dignity and rights of the trans community,” Harris said in 2019 during her unsuccessful first bid for president.

As a short-lived Democratic presidential-primary candidate in 2019, Harris even filled out a questionnaire saying she supported taxpayer-funded gender-transition treatment for illegal immigrants in detention centers.

“I think Kamala’s record really speaks for itself, and it’s not even just as vice president, although her position in the Biden-Harris administration has been very clear on cutting down women by destroying Title 9 and this actually goes all the way back to the early 2000s before before Kamala was even a known figure,” said Janae Stracke, VP of outreach and advocacy at Heritage Action.

And then there’s Harris’s work as vice president.

“Much as the administration wants to say that they are pro-women, they continue to cut women down, essentially erase women by wanting to force them to share their private spaces with men,” Stracke said of the Biden-Harris administration’s changes to Title IX.

“This is cutting down their opportunities in athletic arenas, but it goes so far beyond that. This is for them in their locker rooms, in their dorm rooms, on field trips, and putting them in really vulnerable and uncomfortable positions.”

The revised rule adds sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protected classes, which could allow legal challenges against schools that receive federal funding and refuse to allow students to access private spaces reserved for the opposite sex, such as bathrooms and locker rooms. While the rule does not specifically address the issue of women’s sports, the revised language could also be used to bring legal challenges against a school that refuses to allow a male student to compete against females. 

The Biden-Harris administration made clear its position on the issue early on with the formation of an “interagency working group focused on safety, inclusion, and opportunity for transgender individuals” in June 2021.

In addition to the Title IX changes, the administration has also allowed U.S. citizens to choose the gender marker “X” on their passports and had allocated $10 million in the 2023 Fiscal Year budget for “critical research aimed at effectively incorporating inquiries about gender identity and sexual orientation into the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.”

Biden also issued an executive order directing federal agencies to ensure that federally funded programs do not offer conversion therapy, a practice that has historically included efforts to change a person’s sexual orientation through therapy, but has grown in recent years to also include any mental-health services that do not call for immediately affirming a gender-dysphoric child’s stated gender identity.

The order also asks the Federal Trade Commission to consider policing the practice of conversion therapy as a deceptive business offering. Legal experts have warned that restrictions on conversion therapy could prevent a therapist from telling a child to consider embracing their biological sex instead of immediately affirming that child’s chosen gender identity, as National Review previously reported.

The administration also finalized a rule to strengthen Affordable Care Act protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

“Even just the PR aspect of it, of them celebrating and inviting these activists into the White House, the photo ops that they have with them, the speeches that they have, they go out of their way to make sure that they are propping up an ideology that actually very few Americans agree with and they have clearly made that their priority in juxtaposition to what the previous Trump administration had been doing and has vowed to do if he gets back into office,” Stracke said.

Even Harris’s choice in running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, is indicative of her radical stance on the issues.

During his time as governor of the Land of 10,000 Lakes, Walz has issued an executive order directing the state departments of health, commerce, and human rights to “investigate and take administrative actions for unfair or deceptive practices related to the denial of gender affirming health care services.”

He also greenlit a law to protect transgender people and their families from legal repercussions if they travel to Minnesota to receive transgender health care and signed a bill to ban conversion therapy, defined in the measure as any practice by a mental-health practitioner that “seeks to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same gender.” However, opponents of the ban say it infringes upon religious freedom and would make it difficult for families to seek counseling for children who need help with gender dysphoria.

“I think the fact that Kamala chose Walz as her running mate says a lot about her priorities as a candidate for the president of the United States,” said Stracke, the Heritage Action VP. “He has taken very radical positions in his state and wants to ban any work to protect women’s spaces.”

Meanwhile, LGBT campaign strategist Peter Imhoff offered USA Today a look at what transgender policy could look like under a potential Harris-Walz administration.

Imhoff told the outlet he would like to see Harris push for a federal ban on conversion therapy for minors and grant federal protections against some of the state legislation that strips rights away from LGBTQ Americans.