Here's Every 2020 Democrat's History on LGBTQ Rights

“Allow me to be more direct, escaping the euphemisms of my past—I hated gays,” Booker wrote. “While hate is a four-letter word I never would have admitted to, the sentiment clandestinely pervaded my every interaction with homosexuals.”

Booker’s campaign did not respond to request for comment from Splinter.

Pete Buttigieg

Buttgieg, mayor of South Bend, IN, came out publicly three-and-a-half years ago. In a 2015 op-ed for the South Bend Tribune, he wrote, “I was well into adulthood before I was prepared to acknowledge the simple fact that I am gay. It took years of struggle and growth for me to recognize that it’s just a fact of life, like having brown hair, and part of who I am.”

Given that he’s just the second openly gay man to run for president after Republican Fred Karger, Buttgieg deserves special recognition here.

When Splinter asked Buttgieg’s campaign about his track record on same-sex marriage, they were confused by the question. “What do you mean?” asked political press coordinator Lis Smith in a one-sentence email.

It’s worth noting, however, that Buttigieg has faced recent blowback for criticizing transgender whistleblower Chelsea Manning for leaking classified information. Buttigieg told CBS News Radio that he felt such information should have come out through “congressional oversight, not through a breach of classified information.”

Julián Castro

In 2009, Castro—then the mayor of San Antonio—became the first mayor of his city to serve as grand marshal for Pride. That earned the ire of local right-wing talk show host Adam McManus, who organized a Christian letter-writing campaign in opposition. In an interview with local NBC affiliate WOAI, McManus openly wondered whether Castro “would serve as grand marshal of the pedophile parade, the KKK parade, the adulterers parade, [or] the tax cheats parade.”

Castro formally came out for marriage equality in 2012, when he signed onto the “Mayors for the Freedom to Marry” petition, joining the mayors of over 75 U.S. cities in calling for the federal government to recognize full marriage equality for same-sex couples.

The gesture earned Castro as much as support as it did condemnation. According to the news outlet, locals “lined up” at the city council to “show their appreciation” for the San Antonio mayor.

In 2013, a few months before he left to become the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Castro signed an LGBTQ-inclusive non-discrimination ordinance following an 8–3 vote. When that ordinance was made law, he remarked that it was “about saying there are no second class citizens in San Antonio.” After San Antonio scored poorly on the Human Rights Campaign’s Municipal Equality Index in a 2013 index—at a dim 48 out of 100—he appointed Adam Greenup to be the city’s first-ever LGBTQ liaison. Castro’s campaign declined to comment on his LGBTQ rights record following a request from Splinter.

John Delaney

Delaney, the first Democrat to announce his intention to run for president in 2020, has been on record as a supporter of same-sex marriage since August 2012. At the time, the businessman-turned-politician was profiled by the Washington Blade during his House run for Maryland’s Sixth Congressional District. Although the Beltway LGBTQ newspaper did not quote him directly, the Blade claimed Delaney “supports Maryland’s same-sex marriage law.” Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley signed a marriage equality bill in March 2012, which was upheld in a voter referendum eight months later.

Delaney’s campaign did not respond to a request for clarification as to whether the candidate supported marriage equality prior to 2012.

Tulsi Gabbard

Gabbard has had perhaps the rockiest road on LGBTQ rights among the 2020 candidates.

After the U.S. House Representative declared her intention to run for president in January, a CNN report highlighted her work for Alliance for Traditional Marriage, an organization run by her father, Mike, that supported the discredited practice of conversion therapy on LGBTQ youth. The right-wing group spent over $100,000 working to pass a constitutional amendment banning marriage equality in Hawaii. They won by a landslide; in November 1998, 69 percent of voters elected to limit the definition of marriage to “one man and one woman.”

After that victory, Gabbard’s father urged conservatives to continue monitoring “homosexual activists whose ultimate goal is societal acceptance of homosexuality on an equal basis as heterosexuality,” according to cached pages of the Alliance for Traditional Marriage’s website on the Internet Archive obtained by CNN.

“[W]e must also renew our efforts to reach out with love and compassion to those who are addicted to homosexual behavior, and encourage them to seek help through the National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), ‘ex-gay’ ministries such as Exodus International, Courage, Homosexuals Anonymous and Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (P-FOX),” he reportedly wrote on organization’s website.

Gabbard was a teenager when the 1998 amendment passed, but as CNN noted, she continued making anti-gay comments well into her tenure as a member of the Hawaii state legislature. In 2004, Gabbard claimed “homosexual extremists” were trying to foist civil unions onto the public.

By 2011, Gabbard claimed she had “evolved” on LGBTQ rights. In a blog post for her Vote Tulsi website, the then-congressional candidate said her views changed while she was deployed in Kuwait.

“I realized that whether or not I would choose to have an abortion ought to have no bearing on another woman’s ability to do the same,” she wrote. “And the government has absolutely no business telling either of us what we could do in that intensely personal situation. I realized that a constitutional amendment defining marriage—even the one I and most Hawaii voters had supported—was anathema to the personal freedom we enjoy in America.”

After pledging in that blog post to “fight for the repeal of DOMA” as a U.S. House representative, she signed on as a co-sponsor of the Respect for Marriage Act, an effort to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.

However, Gabbard did not specifically state her support for full marriage equality for same-sex couples until January 2013. While favorable profiles in the Los Angeles Times and the Atlantic in 2012—following a well-received Democratic National Convention speech—noted her shift on LGBTQ rights, neither publication said she supported same-sex marriage outright. But in a subsequent press release, Gabbard took aim at the “two-tiered, discriminatory government policy of ‘marriage’ and ‘civil unions.’”

Following the publication of the CNN report, Gabbard has apologized for her anti-LGBTQ history. Her campaign did not respond to a request for comment from Splinter.

Kirsten Gillibrand

Gillibrand’s record on LGBTQ rights is complicated. During her tenure as a congresswoman from a conservative part of New York, Gillibrand did not endorse the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in 2007 or 2008. She also voted against a proposal that would put the same-sex partners of U.S. citizens on the same playing field as opposite-sex partners when it comes to legal immigration status. These positions reportedly earned her—at the time—the lowest score of any New York House Democrat from the Human Rights Campaign.

By the time she was appointed to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate in January 2009, her views had begun to shift publicly. But even as she was evolving, what exactly her views were remained unclear. The New York Times claimed in an article from that month that she had “pledged her support for gay marriage” in a phone call to the executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, and a New York Observer profile published the same month (on how Gillibrand “got right with the gays”) quoted her as saying she was in “favor of marriage equality.”

But then Gillibrand seemingly contradicted those statements by calling for the legalization of civil unions in all 50 states—without the word “marriage”—in an interview with Inside Out the very same month. The senator (who is married, not civil unioned, to venture capitalist Jonathan Gillibrand) told the magazine that the issue is “so culturally oriented.”

“My mom’s generation, they want their gay friends to have every right and privilege that they should be eligible for as a married couple, but they feel uncomfortable calling it marriage,” she said. “To them, a marriage is a religious word that they learned from the Catholic Church: It’s a covenant between a man, a woman, and God. So they feel uncomfortable with the word. But they don’t feel uncomfortable with the rights and privileges.”

In a February 2009 interview with radio host Fred Dicker, Gillibrand took a similar states’ rights position on marriage equality, claiming states should be able to determine for themselves whether to call relationship recognition for same-sex couples “civil unions” or “marriage.”

“I think we should have a federal protection for civil unions so that everyone can have the benefit of a private contract to allow someone to go to the emergency room, to the hospital,” she said, “but I think the state should decide what to call it. If the state wants to call it ‘marriage,’ the state can decide.”

However, Gillibrand added that she would “support” a same-sex marriage bill in New York and said she was “disappointed” that one such effort had failed to garner enough votes to pass the state’s Senate.

By January 2010, a profile on Gillibrand in The Daily Beast quoted her as saying she had “always supported gay marriage.” “You have not read my record!” she said, adding, “I have always been for repealing ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell!’…there’s a massive misperception of what my record actually is.”

Splinter reached out to Gillibrand’s campaign team to discuss any further misperceptions of her record and did not hear back.

Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris is the candidate with the earliest explicit support for marriage equality. When San Francisco briefly allowed LGBTQ couples to marry between February 11 and March 11 of 2004, Harris performed some ceremonies herself as the city’s district attorney, and she did so again in 2008, when the California Supreme Court overturned the state’s prohibition on same-sex marriage. (Proposition 8, a ballot measure banning same-sex marriage in the state, nullified the court’s decision soon after.)

Harris also fought in favor of marriage equality in her capacity as California’s attorney general. In 2011, she submitted a petition to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn Prop. 8. Reflecting on her experiences at the center of California’s marriage equality movement, Harris told the Los Angeles Daily News that these moments were “extraordinary” to witness.

Given that there’s no public record of Harris ever not supporting marriage equality, Splinter reached out to the candidate to clarify her timeline. Her campaign did not respond.

It’s worth noting, though, that Harris’ LGBTQ rights record is not spotless. She has been met with recent criticism for opposing gender-affirming care for trans inmates while attorney general, and for her support of FOSTA/SESTA, an anti sex-trafficking bill that led the shutdown of sites like Backpage. Sex workers were disproportionately impacted by the loss of that resource to safely organize and look for clients, with critics charging that it could put already vulnerable queer and trans sex workers in jeopardy. Harris has since called for the decriminalization of sex work.

John Hickenlooper

Former Colorado Governor Hickenlooper was the last of the major 2020 candidates to announce his support for same-sex marriage. In March 2014, he told the Associated Press that “every adult couple should… have the freedom to join in marriage.” At the time, the AP claimed Hickenlooper had been “has been a vocal supporter of gay rights but has generally stopped short of formally endorsing same-sex marriage.”

His statement was released amid a campaign for marriage equality in Colorado, one that also coincided with his re-election.

In addition to his late evolution on same-sex marriage, there are undoubtedly some additional problems with Hickenlooper’s LGBTQ rights record. He was governor of Colorado during a time when the state refused to move trans inmate Lindsay Saunders-Velez out of a men’s prison; she was reportedly raped three times in custody. Under his leadership, the state never incarcerated a trans woman as a woman, raising questions about its compliance with the Prison Rape Elimination Act, which requires prisons to house transgender inmates in appropriate facilities on a case-by-case basis.

Hickenlooper’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Jay Inslee

Inslee first called for marriage equality in 2011 while a gubernatorial candidate in Washington. He called same-sex marriage “the next logical step” for Washington, which had allowed LGBTQ couples to register as domestic partners since 2007. Two years later, the Washington state legislature passed what was known colloquially as the “everything but marriage” bill, which greatly expanded relationship recognition for same-sex couples without extending full marriage equality.

Just months after Inslee announced his support for the freedom to marry, Washington finally went all the way by passing a same-sex marriage bill. Voters would upheld the legislation by a 54–46 margin in a November 2012 ballot initiative.

As governor of Washington, Inslee signed a ban on anti-gay conversion therapy last year. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Amy Klobuchar

Klobuchar, a self-described moderate, long sought a middle path on marriage equality—openly opposing same-sex marriage as late as 2009. After that, she continued to drag her feet on the issue for another four years, neither speaking out against the freedom to marry but not endorsing it either.

In 2009, Klobuchar expressed her support for a compromise on relationship recognition for same-sex couples during CNN’s State of the Union. “I think the way to go is civil unions,” she said.

The earliest hints that Klobuchar was shifting on marriage equality date back to 2011, when she backed the Respect for Marriage Act, the bill that would have overturned the Defense of Marriage Act. She joined Democrats Dianne Feinstein, Dick Durbin, Christopher Coons, Chuck Schumer, and Richard Blumenthal in calling for the law’s repeal.

Many, however, initially questioned whether she would sign onto the DOMA repeal bill at all. In March 2011, the LGBTQ advocacy organization the Courage Campaign noted that she was one of two Democratic holdouts on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The other was former Wisconsin Sen. Herb Kohl. The Courage Campaign’s Adam Bink was informed that neither lawmaker had “taken a position on the bill itself yet.”

There was reason for people to worry about where Klobuchar would land. According to a piece written at the time in Minnesota queer website The Column, she was also a late supporter of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and declined to sign onto a resolution censuring Uganda’s notorious Anti-Homosexuality Act, which mandated life in prison for same-sex intercourse.

A month later, Klobuchar voiced her support for the legislation but did not formally sign on as a co-sponsor.

“I would vote to repeal this law because I believe same-sex couples and their families should have access to the same basic rights, including hospital visitation and survivor benefits,” she told the Washington Blade.

Her cosponsorship was finally announced in a Freedom to Marry press release in August 2011.

Klobuchar eventually backed same-sex marriage, telling the Star-Tribune that she agreed with Barack Obama’s endorsement of it in May of 2012. But even that statement showed the distance she was keeping:

We are a country that was founded on equality of rights and I agree with the President’s comments today. Nothing in his statement changes the ability of religious institutions to decide whether or not they perform same-sex marriage.

She was also not listed as one of the senators pushing to include a pro-marriage equality plank in the 2012 Democratic Party platform. She did oppose a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in Minnesota which was on the ballot that year.

Her campaign did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Beto O’Rourke

Beto O’Rourke’s timeline on LGBTQ rights is harder to pin down than most—he’s only recently become a national figure after his near-win against Texas Senator Ted Cruz in November 2018.

A 2011 profile in the Texas Tribune noted that he fought for domestic partner benefits for city employees regardless of sexuality as a member of the El Paso City Council in 2009. At the time, he described issues like the domestic partnership benefits and the legalization of marijuana as his “life’s work.” But although right-wing criticism of O’Rourke’s advocacy accused him of “vainly [trying] to wrap this issue under the cloak of a civil rights issue right out of the ‘60s,” coverage of the debate does not mention whether he supported full marriage equality.

A few months later, O’Rourke clarified his feelings on same-sex unions.

“I am supportive of gay marriage,” he told El Paso’s ABC affiliate, KVIA, during his 2012 campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives. “I think it’s the right thing to do regardless of the political consequences, and I’m the kind of person who has the courage of my convictions, so I’m not going to do things that are politically advantageous or do things to help my career, but do things that are right regardless of the consequences.

“When two people care about each other, love each other and want to make a lifetime commitment to each other, they should be able to marry, regardless of their sexual orientation,” he added.

In January 2013, O’Rourke described marriage equality as a “core civil rights issue.”

Splinter reached out to O’Rourke’s press team to discern whether his support for domestic partner benefits in 2009 and 2011 included full support for marriage equality. This story will be updated if representatives respond.

Bernie Sanders

Sanders has generally been viewed as a longtime supporter of LGBTQ rights. In a 2015 interview with New York Times columnist Gail Collins, the Vermont senator claimed, “I’m not evolving when it comes to gay rights. I was there!”

In many ways, this is true. Sanders called for the abolition of anti-gay laws as early as the 1970s. As mayor of Burlington, VT, he signed a Gay Pride Day proclamation in 1983 and an anti-discrimination housing ordinance in 1984. He opposed DOMA, and joined the 65 Democrats who voted against it in 1996; it passed with overwhelming majorities in both the U.S. House and Senate. He also famously defended gay members of the military on the House floor, opposed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and backed Vermont’s legalization of civil unions in 2000.

But Sanders has taken heat for what critics say is an overstatement of his past support of marriage equality and the centrality of LGBTQ rights in his political platform. He publicly opposed DOMA on states’ rights grounds, for instance, not on equality grounds. (He told the New York Times in 2015 that this was a strategy to gain more public opposition to the bill.) According to Slate, Sanders also said while mayor of Burlington that LGBT rights were not a “major priority” for him.

While Sanders frequently dinged 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton for her relative slowness on LGBTQ rights, he beat her to the punch on same-sex marriage by less time than that might suggest. It wasn’t until 2009 that the Vermont Senator actually came out in favor of marriage equality. Until then, he claimed he was “comfortable” with civil unions as a compromise on the relationship recognition issue; he justified that stance by saying the debate over equal marriage would be too “divisive.” (In 2006, when asked if Vermont should legalize same-sex marriage, he said, “Not right now,” a position he later said he took because there were already many divisions over civil unions in the state.)

Even getting those statements out of him was apparently quite difficult. In 2000, Vermont opinion writer Peter Freyne noted that “obtaining Congressman Bernie Sanders’ position on the gay marriage issue was like pulling teeth…from a rhinoceros.”

Sanders’ campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Elizabeth Warren

Like Kamala Harris, there’s no indication that Warren “evolved” on same-sex marriage. Prior to running for Scott Brown’s seat in the U.S. Senate in 2012, she served as the special advisor for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, where her views on marriage equality were less relevant to the job asked of her.

But Warren’s lack of a public stance on the freedom to marry was first noted by blogger Laurel Ramseyer of the now defunct LGBTQ site Pam’s House Blend during the early days of her Senate candidacy in December 2011. Ramseyer claimed it was “disturbing… that Warren could become such a solid candidate in Massachusetts without first outlining her views on civil rights.” Linking to the “Priorities” page on Warren’s campaign site, she said that a platform on LGBTQ equality was “nowhere to be seen.”

Currently, that page features a 404 warning, along with a Saturday Night Live video of Kate McKinnon’s impression of Warren.

However, shortly after the Pam’s House Blend story went live, Warren’s campaign spokesperson, Kyle Sullivan, reached out to clarify the candidate’s views. Promising a more detailed breakdown of her beliefs “in the coming days,” he said: “I can tell you from hearing Elizabeth talk about these issues that she supports marriage equality, supports repeal of DOMA, and agreed with repeal of DADT. She also supports ENDA [the Employment Non-Discrimination Act] and believes strongly that LGBT individuals should have their rights protected.”

Twelve days later, Warren delivered. In a press release, she called for an “end [to] the two-tiered system created by the Defense of Marriage Act.”

“Our federal government should not be in the business of selecting which married couples it supports and which it treats with contempt,” Warren wrote. “States define marriage among couples, and, once married, all those couples and their families should have the same protections, the same benefits, and the same tax treatments.”

Warren noted in her statement that she had previously had the chance to voice these sentiments “in living rooms and school auditoriums” but not publicly. Splinter could not locate a record of those comments. We reached out to her team to clarify but did not hear back.

Months later, Warren pushed President Barack Obama to evolve on marriage equality. In a March 2012 interview with the Washington Blade, she said, “Any steps that the president can take toward non-discrimination benefit the whole country. I don’t know how else to say it. It’s the right thing to do.”

Marianne Williamson

Perennial longshot presidential candidate Williamson has been in favor of marriage equality since at least 2008. Williamson, who has, among other things, served as a spiritual adviser to Oprah Winfrey, discussed her support for same-sex unions in an 11-year-old blog post where she quoted a “gay friend” on the subject: “All these years, they’ve harped on us because we don’t live a ‘traditional’ lifestyle. Now we want to do the most traditional thing in the world, and they won’t let us!”

At the time, Williamson claimed his argument “sealed the deal” for her.

That post is no longer available on her website, but an excerpt was published on the spirituality blog My Out Spirit. In the brief snippet, Williamson references appearing on Larry King’s CNN talk show to “discuss the legalization of gay marriage.” She claims the only reason she was asked to appear is because she was a “straight person who would vote PRO.” However, the lifestyle guru doesn’t state when the interview took place or link to the discussion.

After the California Supreme Court upheld Prop. 8 the following year, Williamson reaffirmed her support for the freedom to wed in a Huffington Post essay. Citing growing support in favor of LGBTQ equality, she claimed the issue had “already [been] decided in the hearts and minds of Americans.”

Splinter reached out to Williamson’s campaign team for clarification on the date of the Larry King interview. They could not do so, but pointed to other statements regarding the candidate’s support for LGBTQ rights. Williamson has claimed she was “deeply involved” in HIV/AIDS activism since the early 1980s: “facilitating counseling and support groups; non-profit organizations in Los Angeles and New York to provide non-medical support to people living with life-challenging illnesses; and the creation of Project Angel Food, a meals-on-wheels service to homebound people with AIDS that has now served over 11 million meals to people in the Los Angeles area.”

Andrew Yang

Andrew Yang’s evolution on the subject of LGBTQ rights is difficult to determine because he’s not a politician. An entrepreneur turned 2020 hopeful, Yang hasn’t had to disclose his views on issues like same-sex marriage or LGBTQ nondiscrimination laws until he announced his intention to become president.

That has given Yang the chance to grade his own political history, and when it comes to queer allyship, the Venture for America co-founder gives himself high marks. Under the LGBTQ rights section of his website, he claims that he has “always been pro-gay marriage.” “Why should straight people have all of the fun?” he asks. “People are people and all love is beautiful.”

Splinter emailed Yang’s campaign team for further insight into his views or any indication of public support for marriage equality before 2019. They did not respond, though we began receiving generic campaign updates from his team days later.

Judging from his 2020 website, however, the outsider candidate has lofty goals when it comes to advancing equality for LGBTQ people. Yang hopes to “promote any legislation extending protected status to individuals based on sexual orientation and gender identity,” “increase funding for programs directed at educating the public on LGBT+ issues,” and “increase funding for programs meant to help LGBTQ individuals who are facing discrimination because of their identity.”

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Kate Sosin is an award-winning, LGBTQ news and investigative reporter.

Nico Lang is an award-winning reporter and freelance editor. His work has appeared in INTO, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, The A.V. Club, Jezebel, The Guardian, BuzzFeed, Rewire.News, Out, The Advocate, Vox, Washington Post, and the L.A. Times.