Kamala Harris was at the forefront of the battle for same-sex marriage

Two decades ago, when a Democratic presidential candidate would never dream of endorsing gay marriage, a newly elected district attorney named Kamala Harris was performing one of the first same-sex unions in the United States.

It was the so-called Winter of Love in San Francisco. The mayor at the time, Gavin Newsom, had ordered the county clerk to approve same-sex marriages, even though there was no law recognizing them. Her act of rebellion sparked a bipartisan political backlash, but Harris did not hesitate to do so.

“You could tell she was very excited and had a lot of joy about doing this ceremony,” said Brad Witherspoon, whose marriage to Raymond Cobane was officiated by Harris on Valentine’s Day 2004.

The timing 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 during party primaries. And it took another four years for Democratic President Obama, who is running for reelection against Republican Mitt Romney, to endorse same-sex marriage.

For LGBTQ leaders, Harris’ story validates their deep support for the Democratic nominee.

“It’s not just that she has stood up for fundamental equality for gay and lesbian couples. Many politicians take positions and stick to them,” said Chad Griffin, former director of the Human Rights Campaign, who sits on Harris’ national fundraising committee. “Furthermore, fewer are actually taking action and using their power to make people’s lives better.”

His decision to referee was made on the spot.

In her book, “The Truths We Hold,” Harris writes that her decision to officiate weddings was spontaneous. She was on her way to the airport when she decided to stop by City Hall. She and other local officials administered oaths and officiated marriages in “every nook and cranny” of the building, Harris recalled.

“It was such a pleasure to have been a part of this,” she wrote. “There was a wonderful excitement as we welcomed the crowds of loving couples, one by one, to be married at that very moment. It was unlike anything I had ever witnessed before. And it was beautiful.”

Witherspoon recalls that it wasn’t just him and his new husband who were caught up in the excitement.

“She did, too,” she said. “We were crying and hugging each other.” Witherspoon said Harris told them, “I really wanted to be a part of this.”

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

Harris’s early embrace of same-sex marriage is rooted, at least in part, in geography. She grew up in California’s liberal Bay Area and began her political career in San Francisco, a city with a vibrant gay community.

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

“A lot of people didn’t know about LGBTQ people,” Meloy said of the national atmosphere during the Winter of Love. “In San Francisco,[LGBTQ people]were already a political force and were also outspoken, so she understood that we were just people way before that.”

Some of Harris’s early political advisers were gay, including Jim Rivaldo, who had worked with Harvey Milk, California’s first openly gay elected official, as a San Francisco supervisor. During a recent fundraiser, Harris recalled that after Rivaldo became ill with AIDS, his mother helped care for him before she died.

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

Mesloh said Harris paid particular attention to legal and criminal issues involving gay people, and organized a national symposium to train prosecutors on how to handle the “gay panic” defense that was used in Wyoming by the two men who killed Matthew Shepard in 1998. The defense tactic, which suggested suspects could be incited to violence by a victim’s overt sexuality, “just infuriated Kamala,” Mesloh said.

Supporting gay rights was not without political risk for ambitious politicians, a lesson Newsom, now governor of California, learned after ushering in the Winter of Love. He failed to get a speaking slot at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, when Republicans, led by President George W. Bush, made same-sex marriage a contentious issue among voters.

Still, Harris was eager to get involved and officiate weddings, Mesloh recalled.

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

Harris was one of his first supporters when things were politically tense.

Witherspoon and Cobane, the couple Harris married, assumed she would want to rise in the political ranks one day, which increased their admiration for her.

“That adds to the courage of his stance in coming out and having a gay wedding,” Witherspoon said. “It’s one thing to say ‘I support gay marriage,’ but it’s another thing to go on record and have gay marriages, knowing that at some point you’ll want to go national.”

“He had national ambitions, but he supported them early and before anyone else,” Cobane said. “And I give him 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: She knew people closely whose lives she lived,” said Brian Brokaw, a Democratic consultant who worked for Harris on the campaign.

Harris said she would not defend Proposition 8 as the state’s top law enforcement official, but said she would defend the death penalty despite her personal opposition to it.

“He got a lot of flak for that,” Brokaw said, and faced accusations that he was cherry-picking which laws to support. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually struck down Prop 8 in 2013.

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

“Say no more, meet me there,” Griffin recalled Harris telling him. “I bet the call lasted less than 30 seconds,” he said. “She didn’t get in a car and get a ride. She walked to City Hall.”

The Democratic Party embraced gay marriage more broadly in 2012, when Obama became the first presidential candidate to endorse it from the right. His announcement was precipitated by Joe Biden, then vice president, revealing his own support. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee in 2016, did not endorse gay marriage until 2013, after she resigned as secretary of state.

Today, same-sex marriage is a cornerstone of the party platform, and even enjoys occasional support from Republicans. But some Democrats still consider Harris a pioneer 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. She married her partner, Dr. Matthew J.M. Kenyatta, in 2022. “Regardless of whether that’s popular at the time or not, she’s doing the right thing.”

Merica and Megerian write for the Associated Press.