ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Hi, guys. Today’s column speaks directly to the gals about the 2016 races for U.S. Senate seats.

Not all of them, mind you. Just two key blue state races, one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast.

But, guys, please do read along. The information about the women senators and candidates in those races is as instructive to the female gender as it is to those of the male persuasion.

One lesson could easily be titled “Harry Reid’s War Against Women.”

Here are two reasons why:

1) Pay attention to California Attorney General Kamala Harris, a Senate candidate who has an unbelievable task on her shoulders. How she simultaneously handles her job and runs her race will determine whether Democratic women will continue to hold onto both of the state’s Senate seats.

A legal case landed in Ms. Harris‘ lap this month, more than two months after she announced her decision to run for Sen. Barbara Boxer’s seat — the Sodomite Suppression Act, a proposed ballot initiative that calls for the death penalty against members of the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-queer-intersex community (LGBTQI) if they display gender-like gratification toward one another. The method of death: “bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.” Sanctioned vigilantism by any means necessary.

Castrations in the public square? Lunchtime stonings? Circus barker-like lynchings? Perhaps a return to death by burning or drowning?

And what happens if the state firing squad blows away a (gay) man because he gave his neighbor’s college-bound (transgender) son an emotionally charged hug at LAX? Would the state be responsible for killing one or both “offenders?”

No one knows and no one ever should.

Ms. Harris certainly hopes she does not have to decide one way or any other as attorney general, and on Wednesday asked the Superior Court to intervene.

“This is not about whether we like something or not, or whether we simply find it offensive or troubling,” Ms. Harris told The Sacramento Bee. “In this case, we are talking about a proposal that literally is calling for violence. It’s calling for vigilantism. It’s calling for the public to be able to shoot in the head a member of the LGBT community.

“I, frankly, do not want to be in the position of giving any legitimacy to those words,” said Ms. Harris, who was on the East Coast long enough to graduate from Howard University.

Californians think she is a 21st-century Democrat. How she handles the “Sodomite” case could cement the same.

Fortunately for California, Harry Reid isn’t sticking his nebby nose against an up-and-coming Democrat.

2) Barbara Mikulski is a tough cookie and a straight-shooter, and liberals in Maryland will tell you they’re glad she always has been.

Now she and Harry Reid are on opposing sides.

Like her California counterpart, Mrs. Boxer, Ms. Mikulski has decided to step aside in 2016. But Maryland’s and California’s Democratic strategies are not in sync — indeed, you could say they are opposed to one another.

In California, Democratic men and women who hold cachet apparently have formed a united front on Ms. Harris‘ behalf, with the obvious goal of keeping the seat Democratic. Ms. Mikulski and other Maryland Democrats wanted to move in similar fashion and boost a woman’s chances to keep the Senate seat.

Rep. Donna Edwards stepped forward, followed by a long line of Democrats who can click their (high) heels or rub more than two nickels together. They all want to succeed Baltimore’s homegrown “Senator Barb,” America’s longest-serving woman in Congress.

But after working alongside Mr. Reid in the Senate since 1987 and on the House side with Ms. Edwards and Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Ms. Mikulski found out like other Marylanders that Mr. Reid is backing Mr. Van Hollen.

A protege of Nancy Pelosi, Mr. Van Hollen is former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and ranking member of the House Budget Committee. He also made a name for himself as an assistant to Ms. Pelosi when she was House speaker (wink). In fact, she created the post (wink, wink). Ms. Pelosi then appointed him to the bipartisan deficit-reduction panel (wink, wink, wink).

Here’s part of Mr. Reid’s Van Hollen endorsement explanation: “I have no doubt that he is in the best and strongest position to make sure that this Senate seat remains in Democratic hands in a state that just elected a Republican governor.”

What the bleepity, bleep, bleep, bleep does that mean?

A) The state is more conservative than you like?

B) The Republican governor, Larry Hogan, won by campaigning on Mr. Van Hollen’s turf?

C) Maryland Democrats and Republicans will only vote for a white guy?

D) Maryland voters think there really is a war on women?

Oh, that’s right, Mr. Reid already said that.

He thinks women politicians think differently than men.

He just doesn’t think any of them in Maryland is smarter than Mr. Van Hollen.

• Deborah Simmons can be reached at [email protected]

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