Walz touts his record supporting LGBTQ+ rights in difficult times

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