Resurfaced clip of Kamala Harris ordering a clerk to restart gay marriages goes viral
The clip was recently reshared on X (X.com/patrynard)
A resurfaced clip which appears to show vice-president Kamala Harris ordering a Los Angeles clerk to begin offering same-sex marriages after a law banning them was overturned, has gone viral.
The VP made her first official visit to her campaign headquarters on Monday (22 July), after securing enough the support of enough delegates to secure the Democratic presidential nomination, walking out to a track by Beyoncé. And while the excitement around Harris’ White House bid continues to grow, after president Joe Biden decided to not seek four more years, so does the online conversation.
The old clip seemed to show the then San Francisco County district attorney speaking to the clerk on the phone after Proposition 8 – an amendment to the state constitution which had ruled that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognised in California” – was ruled unconstitutional by a federal court.
Vice President Kamala Harris had opposed Prop 8, as it had become known, alongside former governor Jerry Brown.
The battle continued until 2013, by which point, then president Barack Obama was in favour of codifying LGBTQ+ marriage equality nationwide and would do so just a few years later.
“Hi, is this the clerk in Los Angeles?” Harris asks in the clip, which went viral on X/Twitter. “This is Kamala Harris. You must start marriages immediately… have a good day, and enjoy it. It’s gonna be fun.”
What was the history of Prop 8?
Prop 8 was voter-approved state legislation that took away the marriage rights of LGBTQ+ couples in California in 2008.
Both Harris and Brown, who became governor again in 2011, refused to defend the amendment, and it was ruled unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution by US district judge Vaughn Walker in 2010. An appeal court agreed in 2012, as did the US Supreme Court the following year.
In an interview with The Advocate in 2019, Harris said: “It would be inappropriate for a state on the verge of bankruptcy to use all those resources to defend a law found to be unconstitutional.”
Same-sex marriage was finally legalised in the Golden State in 2013.
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