Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at The American Federation of Teachers National Convention Thursday, July 25, 2024, in Houston. Photo: Ricardo B. Brazziell/American-Statesman / USA TODAY NETWORK
Over 25,000 LGBTQ+ people attended the Human Rights Campaign’s “Out for Kamala Harris” virtual event last night. During the event, over 40 LGBTQ+ and allied actors, activists, government officials, and drag performers all shared their enthusiasm for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. Together, the attendees and featured guests helped raise over $300,000 for the Harris campaign, and 1,500 attendees signed up to help get out the vote for Harris.
The event, which was live-streamed via Zoom and YouTube, included queer actors George Takei, Raven Symoné, Sophia Bush, Wilson Cruz, Zachary Quinto, and Jonathan Del Arco; Democratic LGBTQ+ elected officials such as Sen. Laphonza Butler (CA), Rep. Mark Takano (CA), Rep. Becca Balint (VT), Rep. Angie Craig (MN), Delaware state Sen. Sarah McBride, and Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta; drag performers Tara Hoot and Veronica Electronika; CNN anchor Don Lemon; Wonder Woman actress Lynda Carter; and various activists and queer members of the Harris campaign.
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“We were dedicated supporters of Joe Biden,” Takei said, speaking alongside his husband Brad. “But when he made that magnanimous decision to pass the baton to his vice president… we were enthusiastically for her. Just in that act, Joe Biden made history that has never occurred before, and we’re going to continue making history with Kamala Harris. She is going to be a history maker: the first biracial African American, Asian American candidate for the president of the United States.”
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“You can just see it in her big smile and that wonderful guffaw of hers, she brings optimism to the campaign, and that is a winning quality: strength, optimism, and joy. And she is the very personification of diversity. You can see it in her. Her diversity embraces the world, from Jamaica all the way down to South Asia, India, and beyond that what she has done proves her embrace of diversity,” he added, noting that she officiated same-sex marriages as far back as 2004.
When asked why she’s supporting Harris, Black trans activist and author Hope Giselle said, “When I look at what this woman stands for, when I look at where she came from. I see myself, and when I can see myself, I can embody what hope really looks like.” Giselle referred to her own Blackness, queerness, and neurodivergence and said that Harris represents a presence and an advocate for diversity that she never saw while growing up.
“When I think about the other side,” she added, referring to Republicans, “and I think about the exclusivity that they wish to have. I say this all time: ‘Everything exclusive goes on sale at some point.’ And I think that [former President Donald] Trump and the America that he wants have gone on sale so many times that they’re in the bargain bin at Walmart, unable to be fished out by even the most thirsty of grandmothers with a coupon…. We need to remind them of where they belong. We need to remind them of where they will stay.”
Black voices were numerous during the virtual event, including that of Florida’s first gay Black state Sen. Shevrin Jones, who said that anti-LGBTQ+ Republicans and their policies in his home state represent the alternative that awaits if LGBTQ+ people and their allies don’t give their support to Harris.
“We have the opportunity, y’all, we have the opportunity to reshape the future that our children will see. We have the opportunity to reimagine what America can be because we’ve done it before,” Jones said.
“The Republicans are extremely scared, because they know what we have known all the while, and that is that she can win,” Jones added. “And we know she can win, and because they see the fact that she can win, because they see the organizing that’s happening all across this country, they know that they are in trouble.”
Rep. Kenyatta said, “There is nobody more qualified to be our next president” and added that the Republican candidates are “as antagonistic and aggressively backwards as you could possibly be.” However, despite Harris’s strong candidacy, Kenyatta warned, “Candidates don’t win elections — you win elections, the folks who are on this call.”
Kenyatta asked the virtual event’s attendees to think of the person they love best in the world and said, “I want you to think about the world that you think they deserve to live in: a world where hopefully they’re free from the threat of gun violence, a world where hopefully they are able to have a good, family-sustaining job that takes full advantage of their talents and their dreams, a world where they get to be treated with dignity and respect and love who they love, and vote how they want, and be treated with the level of love that you give them every single day. And if you think they are worth all those things, then do what it takes to make sure they have that world. We can build it. We got to do it together.”
Black influencer and entrepreneur RaeShanda Lias-Lockhart noted both the widespread excitement that many Americans felt during former President Barack Obama’s historic 2008 campaign and the pain many felt during former President Donald Trump’s surprise 2016 victory.
“We are in the middle of history in the making,” Lias-Lockhart said. “We can’t give up on this we can’t. It’s a short fight: 103 days we got, correct? We can do this…. We already have been through so much. We have already endured so much. So all we have to do now is finish.”
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