More years than I care to think of, I was a member of the San Francisco Transgender Civil Rights Implementation Task Force for the City and County of San Francisco. We worked on a number of projects, including getting single-person restrooms in the area designated for all genders, as well as forcing the insurance for San Francisco employees to cover health care related to being transgender. In some ways, I look back at this, amazed at what we managed to get done, other times, frustrated with how little has been done since.
During this time, we heard of a deputy district attorney who wasn’t very good for trans people. Some of us eventually did meet them, as they went on to a position under the city attorney. I found her to be ambitious, and wondered what would happen to her.
Not long after, this same person would end up at the attorney general for California. While there, she argued that a trans prisoner should be denied surgery. She also supported the criminalization of sex work.
This was Kamala Harris.
In late July, faced with mounting concerns over his viability as a presidential candidate for 2024, President Joe Biden halted his reelection campaign — and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris for the position. In the wake of this, she has gained huge endorsements, hundreds of thousands of volunteers, and raised a significant war chest ahead of the election.
Based solely on what I said above, you may feel that I would be against her candidacy. You would be wrong.
First and foremost, it’s obvious that I am not going to vote for her opponent. The racism that Donald Trump and JD Vance represent must be stopped. This simply must be done and, with that in mind, I’d even vote for Pigasus J. Pig for president if that’s what it took to stop them — even though the swine in question likely perished decades ago.
Yes, I absolutely think that Harris made the wrong call in the above cases. So does she.
In 2019, Harris spoke about denying trans care for inmates in California, saying that “there are, unfortunately, situations that occurred where my clients took positions that were contrary to my beliefs… The bottom line is the buck stops with me, and I take full responsibility for what my office did.”
After my time on the aforementioned task force, I became very involved in the anti-transgender murder of a teenager from Newark, California named Gwen Araujo. Her murder was a landmark case, in part due to her murderer’s use of the “trans panic” defense to claim innocence. In short, such a defense is that one cannot be held liable for murder when they discover someone they may have been intimate with is transgender, as they would have felt threatened by this revelation, and not been able to help themselves.
At the time, Kamala Harris was the District Attorney of San Francisco. She had no jurisdiction regarding a murder case in Newark, regardless of the defense in use. This did not stop her from hosting a symposium in the city, titled “Defeating the ‘Panic Defense.'”
“The panic defense is an insidious strategy based upon prejudice and hate,” read a statement from Harris’s office at the time. “It has been raised in homicide and assault cases nationwide, inviting jury nullification and attempting to justify violent crime based upon the identity of the victim.”
Indeed, it is just a second anti-transgender act, but this time on the part of the jury.
Nearly a decade later, it would be Harris, as the attorney general of the State of California, who would co-sponsor legislation to ban such defenses. In 2018, she also attempted to get a federal ban in place while serving as a United States senator.
It’s not the only work she has done, from pushing back on California’s ban on marriage equality, Proposition 8, to a push to investigate the death of Roxsana Hernández, a trans woman who died in ICE custody.
I feel her career has had both hits and misses for trans and LGBTQ+ rights, but I think the hits are significant. They are enough to win my endorsement.
I’m far from alone in this, with Miss Major, a Stonewall veteran and long-time trans advocate, and Advocates for Trans Equality — a group made up of both the former National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) and Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund (TLDEF) — coming out to support Harris.
“A Harris Administration would not only uphold but also expand upon the protections for transgender Americans established by the Biden Administration,” said A4TE via press release. “Her leadership promises to fortify and enhance the efforts to address and meet the needs of transgender people, ensuring continued progress in our nation’s history of civil rights.”
I will add one more thing.
In the wake of Biden’s decision and the birth of the Harris campaign, I have found myself re-energized. I was not aware of the level of malaise I was feeling from watching two ossified white men once again fighting for my votes. And while, once again, I would have been more than willing to vote a second time for Biden to protect my country from the fascists, I still felt I was only voting against something, and not for anything. It’s a hopeless feeling, and one that leads to a disappointing turnout.
Today, I see there being at least some possibility that this never-ending anti-transgender onslaught can be slowed with a new administration in place, one that might actually do more than make claims of having our backs.
Gwen Smith recently did her duty, and wrote to the court to help keep one of Gwen Araujo’s killers behind bars. You’ll find her at www.gwensmith.com.