Kamala Harris says she supports adding third gender option to federal IDs

Sen. Kamala Harris said Tuesday that she supports placing a third gender option on federal identification cards and documents, bolstering her record on LGBTQ issues.

Harris was asked about adding a third gender option during an event at Keene State College in New Hampshire. “Sure,” she replied.

Harris — a product of the San Francisco Bay Area with a long record on LGBTQ rights, including refusing to defend a ban on same-sex marriage as attorney general of California — used the question to denounce what she described as rising hate in America.

At the town hall, she criticized the Trump administration’s efforts to ban transgender troops from the military, saying she approaches the issue from a human and civil rights perspective. “These are people who have decided they are willing to sacrifice and serve for the sake of our democracy and freedom, and you’re going to kick them out of the military?” she said.

Harris is not the first 2020 Democratic presidential candidate to be asked about adding a nonbinary gender marker to federal IDs and documents. In February, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said she supported moving toward a practice nationwide that’s already in place in states such as New Jersey and Oregon.

The question to Harris came from a self-identified member of the American Civil Liberties Union, which sending a flood of members to presidential town halls to get the field on the record on a long list of policy questions. On Friday in Rock Hill, S.C., an ACLU-aligned voter asked Harris whether she believed people who are incarcerated should have their voting rights restored. Harris said the United States should eventually get to that point, but she said she first wants to focus on restoring rights for felons who have served their time.

On her first trip to Portsmouth, N.H., Harris made news in similar fashion, telling a voter that she would back a federal renaming of Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day.

“Sign me up,” Harris said at the time.

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