Before gay marriage became popular, Harris was a pioneer for equal rights

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two decades ago, when a Democratic presidential candidate would never have dreamed of supporting gay marriage, a newly elected district attorney named Kamala Harris performed one of the first same-sex marriages in the United States.

It was the so-called Winter of Love in San Francisco. Then-Mayor Gavin Newsom had ordered the county clerk to approve same-sex marriages, even though there was no law recognizing them. His act of rebellion sparked a political backlash from both parties, but Harris had no qualms.

“You could see that she was completely overwhelmed and had so much joy performing this ceremony,” said Brad Witherspoon, whose wedding to Raymond Cobane on Valentine’s Day 2004 was performed by Harris.

This moment represents a stark difference between Harris and all previous Democratic presidential candidates who did not begin their political careers as supporters of gay marriage. Four years after the Winter of Love, the issue was still off the table in the party’s primaries. And it took another four years before Democratic President Barack Obama, who was running for re-election against Republican Mitt Romney, supported gay marriage.

For leaders of the LGBTQ community, Harris’ past is proof that they fully support the Democratic candidate.

“It’s not just that she’s advocating for fundamental equality for gay and lesbian couples. A lot of politicians take positions and maintain those positions,” said Chad Griffin, former director of the Human Rights Campaign who sits on Harris’ national fundraising committee. “Fewer of them actually roll up their sleeves and use their power to improve people’s lives.”

Her decision to take office came at the moment

In her book, The Truths We Hold, Harris writes that her decision to perform the ceremonies was a spontaneous one. She was on her way to the airport before deciding to stop by City Hall. She and other local officials were sworn in and performed ceremonies in “every nook and cranny” of the building, Harris recalled.

“I was so happy to be there,” she wrote. “It was a wonderful excitement as we greeted the hordes of loving couples getting married one after another there and then. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced before. And it was beautiful.”

Witherspoon remembers that he and his new husband weren’t the only ones caught up in the excitement.

“She was too,” he said. “We were both crying and hugging each other.” Witherspoon said Harris told them, “I really wanted to be there.”

All marriages performed in San Francisco that month were annulled later that year, a move Harris described as “devastating.”

Harris’ early commitment to gay marriage is at least partly due to geography. She grew up in California’s liberal Bay Area and began her political career in San Francisco, a city with a vibrant gay scene.

Sean Meloy, a senior fellow at the Victory Fund, a policy commission that aims to increase LGBTQ representation in politics, calls Harris’ story an example of why “representation matters.”

“A lot of people didn’t know LGBTQ people,” Meloy said of the nationwide atmosphere during the Winter of Love. “In San Francisco, (LGBTQ people) were already a political force and also open, so she understood much earlier that we’re just people.”

Some of Harris’ first political advisers were gay, including Jim Rivaldo, who Harvey Milkthe first openly gay elected official in California as a San Francisco Supervisor. At a recent fundraiser, Harris recalled that her mother cared for Rivaldo after he contracted AIDS before he died.

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Growing up in the Bay Area, “almost everyone knows a gay couple who have been together for a long time,” says Debbie Mesloh, who was Harris’ communications director when she was district attorney.

Mesloh said Harris has paid special attention to legal and criminal issues related to homosexuals and organized a national symposium to train prosecutors in dealing with the “gay panic” defense used in Wyoming by the two men who Matthew Shepard in 1998. The defense’s tactic of suggesting that suspects could be incited to violence by the victim’s open display of sexuality “just made Kamala angry,” Mesloh said.

Supporting gay rights was not without political risk for ambitious politicians, a lesson Newsom, now governor of California, learned after the Winter of Love began. He was denied a speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention because Republicans under President George W. Bush made gay marriage a contentious issue with voters.

Nevertheless, Harris enjoyed attending and conducting weddings, Mesloh recalls.

“There was no judgment or analysis,” Mesloh said. “She wanted to do it. She was excited. She loved it.”

Harris was one of the first supporters when the situation was politically tense

Witherspoon and Cobane, the couple Harris married, assumed that she would one day want to advance in politics, which only increased their admiration for her.

“It underscores the courage of her stance in coming out and having a gay wedding,” Witherspoon said. “It’s one thing to say I support gay marriage, but it’s quite another to publicly declare that I support gay marriage and have gay weddings, even though you know you want to talk about it on a national level at some point.”

“She had national ambitions, but she supported them in advance and before anyone else,” Cobane said. “And I give her credit for that.”

The issue of gay marriage resurfaced when Harris ran for California attorney general in 2010, just two years after the state’s voters banned same-sex unions with Proposition 8.

“For her, it wasn’t an academic issue. It was also a personal issue – it involved people whose lives she knew intimately,” said Brian Brokaw, a Democratic consultant who worked for Harris on the campaign trail.

Harris said she would not defend Proposition 8 as the state’s top law enforcement officer. However, she said she would defend the death penalty, even though she personally opposes it.

“She took a lot of criticism for it,” Brokaw said, and was accused of cherry-picking the laws she supported. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually struck down Proposition 8 in 2013.

When Griffin heard a rumor that same-sex marriage would soon be legal in San Francisco, he called Harris as Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, two of the plaintiffs in the case, were on their way to City Hall so she could marry them.

“‘Don’t say anything else – I’ll meet you there,'” Griffin recalled Harris saying. “I bet the conversation lasted less than 30 seconds,” he said. “She didn’t jump in a car and get a ride. She walked to City Hall.”

The Democratic Party more broadly endorsed gay marriage in 2012, when Obama became the first presidential candidate to support the right. His announcement was prompted by Joe Biden, then vice president. disclose his own supportHillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic candidate, did not support same-sex marriage until 2013, after she resigned as Secretary of State.

Today, gay marriage is a cornerstone of the party’s platform and even occasionally gets support from Republicans, but some Democrats still view Harris as a leader on the issue because of her early involvement.

“It’s not lost on me in a very personal way,” said Malcolm Kenyatta, Pennsylvania’s Democratic candidate for auditor general, who married his partner, Dr. Matthew JM Kenyatta, in 2022. “Whether that’s popular at the time or not, she’s doing what’s right.”