My political coming of age coincided with my actual coming of age. In 2004, when I was 12, Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage. I was 23 when Obergefell v. Hodges was decided by the Supreme Court and same-sex marriage became legal across the USA.

I don’t know what you were like between the ages of 12 and 23, but for me, it was a crucial period that sealed many parts of my identity and set my path forward. Those years are what made me such a loyal Democrat, something kind of unusual in people my age.

I’ve voted for a few representatives outside the party: for Sen. Susan Collins in 2014, a vote I regret, and for Don Marean, a Republican-turned-independent state representative (a vote I don’t regret). Other than that, it’s been pretty blue.

The reason for that loyalty is in large part because of those formative years. When I was 12, I told my friends I wanted to marry a woman someday. Some of them said that was gross and that they’d never come to my wedding, which is a devastating insult for a seventh grade girl.

I grew up as a teenager watching people and politicians debate whether or not I, Victoria Hugo-Vidal, should be allowed to marry a woman. And that pissed me off. It still does, honestly. If I could find someone to love me the way my parents loved each other, why should it matter to the government what our genders were?

I grew up watching one of America’s two dominant political parties largely say that it was horrible and disgusting and wrong for me to be in a same-sex marriage and that if it was allowed, something terrible would happen to the country. That would be the Republican Party. On the other side of the TV, I saw one political party standing up for my right to legally and emotionally link myself to another woman. That was the Democratic Party.

Obviously, there were voters and politicians on either side who didn’t line up the party message, but overwhelmingly, the impression I got was if Republicans were in charge, I couldn’t get married, and if Democrats were in charge, I could.

Transgender rights are the new gay rights. Pretty much the only reason something affecting such a small segment of the population got elevated to prime-time political debate coverage is because a lot of Americans have gross, squeamish feelings about people whose gender identity and expression is different from the norm.

This past election season, the Republican party spent $215 million on anti-transgender ads that all boiled down to “that’s gross.” That’s $215 million to express the exact same sentiment as my so-called friends at school did 20 years ago.

There’s a lot of blame to go around for the Democratic losses this election season, and already a bunch of pundits and representatives are lining up to blame trans people and the LGBTQ community. Some of these people include elected officials, like Reps. Tom Suozzi and Seth Moulton, from New York and Massachusetts respectively.

I went to college in Massachusetts; it takes a real political dunce to throw queer people under the bus there. This is not only morally wrong, as being transgender is normal and it’s nobody else’s business but that person’s, but it’s also politically stupid. According to an NBC news poll, 86% of LGBTQ voters voted for Kamala Harris. 86%. You know what Republicans do for their base? Feed a constant diet of bloody red meat to it. The Democrats should try that sometime. It seems to be a way to win.

Vice President Harris didn’t run a super-woke transgender-inclusive campaign at all. She distanced herself as much as possible. Rather than doing what a bold politician might have done and plant a moral stake in the ground and say Americans should have the freedom to live in the gender they see fit and everyone else should just learn to deal with it, Harris said she’d follow the law accordingly.

And that was it. No major outreach to the queer community at all. There are lots of reasons that she lost the election; passionate support of transgender Americans sure as hell wasn’t one of them.

I don’t actually think that many Americans hate trans people. Oh, there’s definitely a chunk of them. But most people, I think, just feel vaguely uncomfortable, probably because being transgender might be a new concept to them, one that goes against information they were raised with.

Maybe they’re uncomfortable because they don’t know any trans people personally. But their discomfort with what my fiancee Bo, a transgender woman, looks like or identifies as, shouldn’t dictate whether or not Bo can fully and safely participate in society.

The same playbook is being run on the transgender community now that was run on the gay community back then. Ooga booga, scary transgender super athletes coming for your children is just the new “gays are trying to recruit your kids.” And I guarantee, the politicians who waffle on equality for trans Americans now are going to be remembered the same way the politicians who waffled on same-sex marriage 20 years ago. At best, you’ll be remembered as silly, and at worst, I will carry a grudge against you for the rest of my natural life.

There’s plenty of blame to go around for Kamala Harris’ loss. But it’s not Bo’s fault.