Kamala Harris used the debate for exactly what she needed to do. She told the American people what her goals were, and how they would benefit from them. She showed how smart she is, and looked and sounded presidential. Trump, on the other hand, often appeared certifiably insane. We will shortly know whether independents will see that. Will young people, African Americans, and women, grasp how frightening Trump really is for their future health and safety. Harris managed to goad him into what often sounded like gibberish. 

I had a problem with the moderators who once again allowed him to get away with lie after lie, only calling him on the few that were so egregious they couldn’t help it. They were clearly better than the ones from CNN in the Biden/Trump debate. I like David Muir, and watch him every evening. He is a solid reporter. 

Again, the question we will have answered in the next eight weeks is how independents who viewed Harris favorably in this debate, will end up voting. How those Republicans who have questions about Trump, who are not part of his MAGA cult, will react. Will they see Trump for what he is, or will they vote based on believing his lies.  Harris managed to goad Trump into saying some really dumb things, which isn’t all that hard, as he tends to do that whenever he opens his mouth. But she got him to lose his cool. The more the American public see that the better. Harris went into this debate with close to 30% of voters saying they wanted to know more about her; 90% said they had all they needed to know about Trump. What this indicated to me was there was an upside for Harris if she did well, and she did really well. 

It is hard to imagine nearly 50% of the voters in this county will vote for a sexual predator, who is a convicted felon. Harris managed to get that in, and it rattled Trump. One can only hope the vast majority of young people, women, African Americans, and the LGBTQ community, won’t fall for Trump’s BS. And that is what it is, all BS. The claims he made about being a good businessman were debunked by Harris. When the issue of foreign policy came up Trump lost. He refused to say he would defend Ukraine, he couldn’t deny all the positive things he has said about Putin, and Kim Jong Un. He was even proud that Orban, strongman in Hungary, loves him. Harris gave a strong positive statement on the Israel /Hamas war and her belief that to keep both Israel and the Palestinians safe we need a two-state solution. Trump basically said nothing. He just keeps saying he could end every war, with of course no plan on how. When it came to healthcare, he got caught saying he would develop a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act. The moderators reminded him, “you talked about this nine years ago,” and yet he still has no plan. On abortion Harris walked right over him, leaving him sputtering.

He couldn’t rebut Harris when she said he would give the rich a tax break, and he didn’t respond to any of the programs she mentioned she is proposing including giving first time home buyers assistance, or money to families for their children’s first year of life. He had no program he could mention at all, except tariffs on everything. He had no way to really rebut Harris when she talked about economists saying his tariff plans would cost the average American nearly $4,000 a year. 

When the moderators asked Trump, if he would have done anything different, now knowing what happened on January 6, 2021, he simply doubled down saying he won the election, and said no one in the mob did anything wrong and the only one who died was on his side. The woman who was breaking into the House of Representatives chamber. Harris smartly reminded listeners; many police were injured by Trump’s mob, and some even died. I think she missed out reminding him his Vice President had to escape, and was threatened with hanging. But then she only had a couple of minutes on each of these things. She did take it too him when he kept talking about getting the most votes of any President running for reelection when she said, and yes, Biden got more and the American people ‘fired’ you. She goaded him on the issue of his rallies and he took the bait.

Any rational person who watched this debate saw a strong woman, who spoke intelligently, and passionately. A woman who would be respected around the world. They saw a man who was clearly out of control, yelling his lies, and being generally irrational. After the debate I enjoyed hearing former New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie say how irrational Trump sounded, and how well he felt Harris did. The CNN instant poll mirrored that. It was a poll of debate watchers and Harris won by nearly two to one, 63-37. Donald Trump is now the oldest man to run for president, and it sounds like he is actually losing it. 

Again, I believe Harris did what she had to in this debate, and now will have to follow it up for the next eight weeks. All those who support her will have to work their asses off to ensure the gains she made in this debate will translate to the ballot on Nov. 5. 

Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist. He writes regularly for the Blade.

In conjunction with World Pride 2025, the Rainbow History Project is creating an exhibit on the evolution of Pride. In “Dawn of a New Era of Pride Politics,” we discuss how fewer than a dozen picketers in the 1960s grew the political power to celebrate openness, address police brutality, and rally hundreds of thousands to demand federal action.

By the mid-1980s, the LGBTQ community’s political demands and influence had grown. The AIDS crisis took center stage across the nation and locally. Pride events morphed from the entertainment of the 1970s into speeches, rallies, and protests. Groups like ACT UP, Inner City Aids Network, and GLAA made protests and public pressure year-round events, not just Gay Pride Day. Blacklight, which was the first national Black gay periodical, ran an in-depth cover story on AIDS and its impact on the community in 1983:

“The gay community has to think in terms of what it can do to reduce the incidence of AIDS,” a writer noted in the Q&A section of the article. He added, “If your partner has AIDS that doesn’t mean one shouldn’t show care and concern, and just throw him out… There should be support groups that would help gay people who have AIDS and not just shun them.”

Just about 10 years later, however, support extended to activism, the onus not just on gay people to reduce the incidence of AIDS. On Oct. 11, 1992, ACT UP protesters threw the ashes of their loved ones onto the White House lawn to protest government inaction and negligence.

“If you won’t come to the funeral, we’ll bring the funeral to you,” one protester said about President Bush, according to the National Park Service. 

The Ashes Action and many other protests brought awareness to the issues of the day – the epidemic, government ignorance, and police brutality, among others.

When the first High Heel Race began on Halloween 1986 at JR.’s Bar and Grill, a popular 17th Street gay bar, about 25 drag queens ran up 17th Street, N.W., in their high heels from JR.’s to the upstairs bar at Annie’s Paramount Steakhouse, where they then took a shot and ran back to JR.’s. It was joyous and grew in popularity yearly despite impacting the locals’ “peace, order, and quiet,” according to the Washington Blade in 1991.

In 1990, though, pushback from the neighborhood community against the High Heel Race meant its official cancellation in 1991 – no coordinators, no queens, and no planning. However, despite statements that it wouldn’t occur, people still came. Roughly 100 police officers arrived to break up the crowd for causing a public disturbance. They injured people with nightsticks and arrested four gay men. D.C. residents Drew Banks and Dan Reichard planned to file brutality charges, and lesbian activist Yayo Grassi had her video camera, recording the scene.

“This will set back a lot of the good will between the Gay community and the police,” said Tracy Conaty, former co-chair of the Gay Men and Lesbian Women Against Violence, in a 1991 interview with the Blade. “What people will see and remember now is that police used excessive force on a group of peaceful crowd because of their homophobia.” 

Other protests advocated for equal representation. D.C.’s 1948 sodomy law was first repealed by the City Council in 1981 – but Congress overturned the repeal. Still, gay activists urged the D.C. Council to consider action. 

“Here in the district, we have been thwarted by a bunch of nutty fundamentalists from other places, and so the whole population of Washington remain habitual, recidivist, repetitive, villains, held hostage by a small group of noisy fascists,” Frank Kameny said at a 1992 rally. A successful repeal of the law passed subsequently in 1993, and this time, Congress did not interfere.

Our WorldPride 2025 exhibit, “Pickets, Protests, and Parades: The History of Gay Pride in Washington,” centers the voices of the event organizers and includes the critics of Pride and the intersection of Pride and other movements for equal rights and liberation. But we need your help to do that: we are looking for images and input, so take a look around your attic and get involved.

Vincent Slatt volunteers as director of archiving at the Rainbow History Project. Walker Dalton is a member of RHP. See rainbowhistory.org to get involved. 

Although few Americans heard about it at the time, LGBTQ+ Africans remember that Kamala Harris stood up for them when she visited Africa as vice president in March 2023.  

On March 27, 2023, she appeared at a joint news conference in Accra, Ghana, with Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo. The final question came from Zolan Kanno-Youngs of the New York Times. Referring to the bill that would impose harsh jail terms on LGBTQ+ people, then being considered by the Ghanaian parliament, and citing the Biden administration’s commitment to” calling out any foreign government that advanced anti-gay legislation or violates human rights,” he asked her “what have you said to the president and plan to say to other leaders on this trip about the crackdown on human rights?”

Under the “Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill,” which was passed by the Ghanaian parliament on Feb. 28, 2024, people who engage in same-sex relations will be subject to up to three years imprisonment, anyone who promotes LGBTQ+ rights can be jailed for six to 10 years, and all LGBTQ+ organizations will be banned. The act is now being challenged in the country’s Supreme Court as unconstitutional.

As Nii-Quarterlai Quartner, professor at Pepperdine University, writes in his new book, “Kamala, the Motherland, and Me,” “even before he completed his inquiry, members of the Ghanaian cabinet made their disapproval apparent. You could see their faces get tight and hear the whispers. You could even hear some laughter. Was it nervous laughter? Was it belittling laughter? Was it somewhere in between? I don’t know. But the immediate shift in energy was palpable. Despite the angry stares and even some snickers from around the room, Vice President Harris never paused or hesitated in her response.”

Standing at Akufo-Addo’s side, Harris answered the question directly and at length. 

“I’ll start,” she said, “I have raised this issue, and let me be clear about where we stand. First of all, for the American press who are here, you know that a great deal of work in my career has been to address human rights issues, equality issues across the board, including as it relates to the LGBTQ+ community. And I feel very strongly about the importance of supporting freedom and supporting and fighting for equality among all people, and that all people be treated equally. I will also say that this is an issue that we consider, and I consider to be a human rights issue, and that will not change.”

Former President Donald Trump’s policy, if he wins the election this coming November, would be quite different.  

According to the Project 2025 report, prepared under the direction of the Heritage Foundation by leading Trump advisors, in Trump’s second term, the United States will “stop promoting policies birthed in the American culture wars” and stop pressing African governments to respect the rule of law, human rights/LGBT+ rights, political and civil rights, democracy, and women’s rights, especially abortion rights. “African nations are particularly (and reasonably) non-receptive to the US social policies such as abortion and pro-LGBT initiatives being imposed on them,” by the United States, the report declares. Therefore, “the United States should focus on core security, economic, and human rights engagement with African partners and reject the promotion of divisive policies that hurt the deepening of shared goals between the US and its African partners.”

The fate of LGBTQ+ Africans may not matter much to most American voters, but the results of the US election matter to them. Their safety, freedom, and lives depend on it.

Daniel Volman is the director of the African Security Research Project in Washington, D.C., and a specialist on US national security policy toward Africa and African security issues.