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On Saturday Minnesota Governor Tim Walz took a break from campaigning in swing states to address the largest pro-LGBTQ+ rights group in the country about his first run for Congress in 2006 in a Republican district when he was asked about whether he supported civil unions for gay couples.
“I said, ‘sure, if that's your thing,’” Walz told attendees at the Human Rights Campaign’s annual dinner on Saturday evening. “But I said, my marriage, my wife, Gwen is the most important thing in my life. I love her deeply. Why would I stop anybody else from marrying the person they love? That makes no sense.”
At the time, many Democrats had run away from supporting same-sex marriage and had a tenuous relationship with gay rights at best. Two years before, George W Bush had won re-election by supporting a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Shortly after, Walz won his race in 2006 and people praised him for winning despite supporting abortion rights and same-sex marriage.
“And I said, ‘No, no, no, you got this wrong.’” he said. “I won because I was for those positions.”
Walz, who is now Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, has spoken regularly about how he served as a faculty adviser to gay-straight alliance as an assistant football coach and social studies teacher at Mankato West High School.
He took those experiences and explained how they shaped his votes in the House of Representatives. His and Harris’s ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket signifies a change in the party where its nominees for president and vice president have consistently supported gay rights.
In 1996, then-president Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act as he sought re-election. Then-senator Joe Biden voted for the legislation. In 2008, Barack Obama and Biden, now the nominee for vice president, opposed same-sex marriage, though they played both sides by opposing Proposition 8, California’s constitutional amendment that banned same-sex marriage.
By contrast, as attorney general of California, Kamala Harris refused to defend Proposition 8 in court and performed some of the first same-sex marriages when the US Supreme Court killed it in 2013. Ahead of Walz’s speech, the Human Rights Campaign played a video of her telling a Los Angeles County clerk who refused to perform marriages at the time that they must be performed immediately.
“She added the best line of that,” Walz said. “She told the clerk, ‘have a good day and enjoy it. It’s going to be fun’.”
Throughout his speech, Walz talked about how he voted to support gay rights as a congressman from a swing district. Specifically, he touted how he voted to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell, which banned US servicemembers from serving openly in the military. He also talked about how he voted for a hate crime prevention law with the mother of Matthew Shepard, a young gay man who was tortured and killed in Wyoming in 1998, as well as the sheriff who found him.
“I remember walking with a mother who lost her son and hearing the sheriff tell me the only place that wasn’t bloody was where the tears ran down Matthew’s eyes,” he said.
Walz also touted his record as governor banning conversion therapy and backing a “trans refuge bill,” that allowed people to receive gender-affirming care without the threat of subpoena or extradition from other states that have banned it. He also described how Minnesota prevented the banning of books that has LGBTQ+ content.
“This is what these folks are focusing on, spending their time on, like reading about two male penguins who love each other is somehow going to turn your children gay,” he said, which led to extended laughs from the crowd. “Here's what I tell you, it's a fact of life. Some people are gay, but you know what's not a fact of life? That our children need to be shot dead in schools.”
Walz also sought to contrast his and Harris’s policies promoting LGBTQ+ rights with those of Trump, his running mate Senator JD Vance and Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation outline for a potential future Republican administration. Specifically, he noted how the Trump administration banned transgender people serving in the military.
“Thankfully, President Biden and vice president Harris rescinded that stupid, bigoted policy,” he said. “If you want to serve this nation, you should be allowed to, and what we should do is respect that service.”
Walz also took some shots at Vance, mentioning his Republican opponent talking about teachers who are not parents and the country being run by “childless cat ladies.”
“So my pro tip to my opponent on the other side is, quit talking about women's child-bearing issues,” he said. “Because no one cares what your thoughts are on if my family counts or doesn’t. No one cares.”
Walz repeated his regular attack that Vance and Trump were “weird,” seeming to take pleasure that it had gotten under Trump’s skin.
“The other night, Donald Trump did a town hall where he got to control what he said, and he reassured the audience 11 times that he was not weird,” he said. “If you’re reminding someone you’re not weird, you probably are.”
