Pop superstar Cher raised $2 million for the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris presidential campaign at a virtual, LGBTQ-themed fundraiser Monday.
Cher asked the streaming crowd if they “believe in life after Trump,” riffing on her famous single, “Believe.”
Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and openly gay lawmakers Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., and Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., were also in attendance, according to the Washington Blade.
In his appearance at the fundraiser, Biden promised to sign the Equality Act into law within his first 100 days in office. The Equality Act, which passed the House but has not come up for a vote in the Senate, would amend various civil rights laws to explicitly protect LGBTQ people from discrimination.
Cher has been a donation juggernaut for Democratic presidential candidates in campaigns past. In 2016, she sailed to New York’s gay enclave of Fire Island to host a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton. In 2012, Cher, the actress Julia Roberts and TV host Ellen DeGeneres hosted an LGBTQ fundraiser for President Barack Obama in Los Angeles.
In April, Biden hosted a virtual LGBTQ fundraiser with out entertainers Billy Porter and Melissa Etheridge.
Monday’s LGBTQ fundraiser took place on the same date that the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce, also known as NGLCC, endorsed the former vice president.
Democratic presidential candidates have long courted LGBTQ voters, who comprise one of the most reliable voting blocs for the Democrats: 4 in 5 LGBTQ voters cast their ballot for the Democratic candidate in their local House election in 2018, according to the NBC News Exit Poll.
While Trump in August retweeted a video from Richard Grenell, the openly gay former ambassador to Germany, who claimed Trump has been widely supportive of LGBTQ rights, the party he leads in 2020 re-endorsed its 2016 party platform, which is replete with denunciations of same-sex marriage. The president also banned transgender military participation and has appointed judges with anti-LGBTQ track records to lifetime positions.
Biden, on the other hand, appointed an LGBTQ steering committee and released an expansive LGBTQ platform. He was one of the first and most powerful U.S. elected officials to endorse same-sex marriage when he did so in 2012.
