Less than 24 hours after Vice President Kamala Harris announced she would run for president following Joe Biden’s exit from the race, queer people flooded the internet with cheeky videos and memes about her candidacy.
A supercut of Harris laughing, set to a Charli XCX song from the album “Brat,” quickly went viral, with more than 1.3 million views. Within hours of the announcement, photos and videos circulated of a group of men on Fire Island Pines, a queer-friendly beach on New York’s Long Island, wearing cropped T-shirts in “brat” lime green — the color of Charli XCX’s album — with “Kamala” emblazoned on the front in the same typeface used on the album.
“BRAT Kamala shirts already on Fire Island. The gays move SO FAST,” a user wrote.
Some LGBTQ people shared their support via memes and videos. And there was no shortage of campy and queer-coded posts referring to Harris as “mother.”
“BIDEN IS OUT!” a person wrote on X. “MOTHER KAMALA… IT’S YOUR TIME.”
Another user wrote, “knee deep in the passenger’s seat and biden dropped out is it kamala now?” using lyrics from queer pop icon Chappell Roan’s song “Casual.”
A TikTok user resurrected photos comparing Harris to “The L Word” character Bette Porter, an ultimate power lesbian with an enviable pantsuit collection, played by Jennifer Beals.
“Bette Porter walked so Madam President Kamala Harris could runnnn,” the TikTok post said.
Others connected a speech Harris gave referring to coconuts to trans pop artist Kim Petras’ song “Coconuts.”
Across the internet, coconuts and the coconut emoji have become expressions of support for Harris.
“All aboard the coconut express!!!” a person wrote on X, alongside a video of Harris featuring RuPaul’s song “Call Me Mother.”
Support for Harris’ candidacy extended offline to LGBTQ rights groups, including the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization. The group touted her work as attorney general of California to end the so-called gay/trans panic defense, which has allowed those accused of homicide to receive lesser sentences by saying they panicked after having found out a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
She has also been endorsed by 10 of the 12 openly LGBTQ members of Congress, including Sens. Tammy Baldwin, of Wisconsin, and Laphonza Butler, of California; and Reps. Angie Craig, of Minnesota; Ritchie Torres, of New York; Becca Balint, of Vermont; and Mark Takano, of California, among others.
The praise has not been uniform across the LGBTQ community, however. Harris faced criticism for supporting the Biden administration’s policies on the Israel-Hamas war.
“Kamala, you will have our votes when you end U.S. support of genocide in Gaza. Simple as that,” drag performer and activist Pattie Gonia wrote Monday on Instagram.
Others noted that during her time as California attorney general, Harris worked to block a trans woman from receiving gender-affirming surgery in prison in 2015.
When a reporter asked Harris about the 2015 case at an LGBTQ presidential forum in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 2019, she said she worked behind the scenes to get the California Department of Corrections to change its policy denying trans inmates such care, The Advocate reported.
“I commit to you that always in these systems there are going to be these things that these agencies do. And I will commit myself, as I always have, to dealing with it,” Harris said at the forum.
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