Amy Klobuchar Quietly Released an LGBTQ Platform a Month Ago
Every Democratic presidential candidate who has released an LGBTQ platform has done so with some flair: Mike Bloomberg personally spoke to reporters on a press call, Elizabeth Warren sent on her 12-pager to media in advance of the release, and Pete Buttigieg widely promoted his on social media.
Senator Amy Klobuchar is an exception, who dropped an LGBTQ platform on her website sometime late January without announcement. You won't find it via a Google search, or see it promoted on her social media. For that reason, it appears to have largely escaped notice for the last month.
The Klobuchar campaign flagged NewNowNext on the policy after it was reported that the senator had not released the policy. The campaign did not respond to a follow-up request to comment.
Klobuchar speaks at the Democratic National Committee's annual LGBTQ gala, June 17, 2019 in New York City.
Klobuchar’s 12-point plan tackles policy items at home and abroad. While it’s more modest than proposals pitched by Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg, it does dig deeper into policy than the one put forth by Senator Bernie Sanders.
For months, Klobuchar and former Vice President Joe Biden had been two lone front-runners without LGBTQ policy proposals. Biden now holds that distinction alone.
“America is a nation founded on equality for all people and Senator Klobuchar believes that we must never stop fighting to advance that equality for the LGBTQ community,” the plan starts out.
Klobuchar proposes a nationwide ban on conversion therapy, ending the gay blood ban, an office of LGBTQ anti-discrimination within the White House Domestic Policy Council, recognizing nonbinary gender markers at the federal level, outlawing gay and transgender panic defenses, bolstering hate crime laws, updating the Prison Rape Elimination Act to curb assaults against queer people behind bars, lifting the transgender military ban, and restoring asylum for victims of gender-based violence, among other things.
Klobuchar speaks at an LGBTQ presidential forum at Coe College’s Sinclair Auditorium on September 20, 2019 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
“Senator Klobuchar will prioritize combating domestic terrorism and empower law enforcement to investigate and prosecute perpetrators of hate-motivated violence, including against minorities, people of color, immigrants, and the LGBTQ community,” the policy states. “She will direct the Department of Homeland Security to resume its work tracking right wing extremism, including white nationalism.”
One area where Klobuchar differs with some of her Democratic rivals is on the issue of sex work decriminalization, which LGBTQ advocates say is essential to stemming the tide of violence against transgender women.
Klobuchar has had a complicated history when it comes to backing LGBTQ rights. In 2009, she favored civil unions over marriage for same-sex couples, she said.
In 2011, she backed the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, but she didn’t sign onto the Democratic Party’s Freedom to Marry Plank the following year.
Klobuchar also voted for anti-LGBTQ Trump-appointee David Ryan Stras to the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, a move her campaign spokesperson, Carlie Waibel, told the Washington Blade was because she feared another nominee could be worse. Stras didn’t make it through the confirmation process.