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Mike Pence’s New Chief of Staff Once Attacked Gay People as ‘Sodomites’ and Blasted Their ‘Perverted Lifestyles’

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“Guys like him wanted us to die. And they had an effect,” an AIDS activist says.

Vice President Mike Pence‘s incoming Chief of Staff is under fire even before starting his new job, after revelations that during college he attacked gay people and people living with HIV and AIDS.

In a 1992 opinion piece at the W&L Spectator, a college publication of Washington & Lee University, Marc Short wrote about “AIDS and the Heterosexual,” as The Daily Beast reports.

Short in the article refers to gay people as “sodomites,” attacks “the perverted lifestyles homosexuals pursue,” and warns students should not “glorify homosexuals’ repugnant practices of frequent anal intercourse nor should we consider them brave for coming out of the closet.”

If the name Marc Short is familiar, it should be. He is a former Trump administration senior official who served as the White House Director of Legislative Affairs until mid-July of last year. He begins as Vice President Pence’s Chief of Staff next week.

Referring to efforts to educate the public that HIV and AIDS do not only affect gay people, Short attacked them as a “propaganda campaign,” a “distortion campaign,” and “intentional deception.”

“The campaign’s purpose is both to lobby Congress for more federal funding of AIDS research and to destigmatize the perverted lifestyles homosexuals pursue,” Short wrote.

Short’s uneducated opinion also led him to refer to an “HIV-infected alumnus” who said, “AIDS is not caused by drug use or homosexual sex, it is simply a virus…passed by these and other activities.”

Claiming “we feel sympathy” for the alumnus “and all AIDS victims,” Short opined, “that does not mean that we glorify homosexuals’ repugnant practices of frequent anal intercourse nor should we consider them brave for coming out of the closet.”

Short also quotes the author of “The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS” to suggest heterosexual people are less susceptible to HIV/AIDS, regardless of if they have intercourse with HIV-positive partners, which is false. He also called gay people “dishonest,” and claimed “homosexuals are eager to be defined as heterosexual.”

Not only did Short attack LGBT people, he placed the words HIV epidemic in scare quotes. Short also referred to people living with HIV as “a homosexual AIDS carrier,” and accused them of taxpayer “fraud” and of taking funds away from “victims of other diseases.”

Short, according to The Daily Beast, has apologized for his words.

“I regret using language as an undergraduate college student that was not reflective of the respect I try to show others today,” Short said in a statement to The Daily Beast. “We have all learned a lot about AIDS over the past 30 years and my heart goes out to all the victims of this terrible disease.”

Short’s apology does not fully address his feelings about LGBTQ people.

And his apology is not good enough for Peter Staley, a long-term AIDS and gay rights activist.

“I wrote stuff in college too. And I don’t look back and say, ‘Oh, sorry, it was my college years.’ You’re either on the right side of stuff or the wrong side.” Staley told The Daily Beast. “He was taking classic Jesse Helms-style rhetoric from the late ’80s and putting an early ’90s spin on it and sounding like the fools they all were… Guys like him wanted us to die. And they had an effect.”

Pence’s new hire is likely to yet again place the spotlight on his own anti-LGBT positions and actions. You can read more about Pence’s attacks on LGBT people in our archives, here.

Short’s essay appears on page 11 here. It should be required reading for anyone working to oust the Trump administration.

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BIGOTRY

GOP Lawmaker Wants to Fine Transgender People in North Dakota $1500 if They Use ‘Wrong’ Pronouns

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5 months ago

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January 19, 2023

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The North Dakota House of Representatives has introduced a bill that would strictly prohibit expanded use of pronouns outside of the gender that the person was assigned at birth.

House Bill 2199 restricts the definition of gender to the “individual’s determined sex at birth” and then requires that all pronoun use be reflective of that same gender. Any violation by anyone who works at an institution that receives state funding, including public schools would be subject to a $1,500 fine.

If gender is challenged, the bill puts the responsibility on the individual to prove their gender.

“Say, they’re a boy, but they come to school and say they’re a girl. As far as that school is concerned in this bill, that person is still a boy. If it becomes contested, the burden will be on the girl, the so-called girl, or the boy, to prove that he is a girl,” said North Dakota State Senator David Clemens while speaking in favor of the bill.

IN OTHER NEWS: ‘Marxist Persecution like never before in USA!’ Trump rants about investigations in incoherent post

The bill’s sponsor was the only testimony given in support of the bill, as nearly 100 separate forms of testimony was provided against the bill. Even the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee voted to not pass the proposed bill.

“I see no way this law would pass any sort of legal challenge based on basic legal construction principles,” North Dakota Human Rights’ Christina Sambor said in an interview with KFYR-TV of Bismarck. “It is vague, fails to advance any legitimate state interests, and not only would cause impermissible, gender-based discrimination, its very purpose is gender-based discrimination.”

The bill now moves to the Senate floor.

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BIGOTRY

‘I Made Juneteenth Very Famous’: Trump Raged Against ‘These People’ After Being Forced to Reschedule Tulsa Rally

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1 year ago

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April 29, 2022

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Donald Trump bristled at moving his comeback rally in Tulsa due to a scheduling conflict with Juneteenth.

The former president had scheduled his first rally since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic for June 19, 2020, but he was notified — by a Black Secret Service agent, he says — of the date’s historical significance and the extra weight it carried in the days following the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd, according to excerpts from a new book published by The Hill.

Can you imagine “changing the day of the rally in Oklahoma to accommodate these people?” Trump groused, according to New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy. “Have you ever heard of such a ridiculous thing?”

Murphy and his wife had joined Trump for dinner at his golf club in Bedminster, where the former president told the couple that he was looking forward to packing the arena to show off his electoral strength, but he ultimately agreed to reschedule for a day later — and then claimed credit for popularizing the day marking the end of slavery in the U.S.

“I did something good,” Trump said. “I made Juneteenth very famous. It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it.”

The rally ultimately drew a much smaller crowd than had been expected, with at least a third of the seats empty at BOK Center, and a spokesman for his campaign later blamed the paltry attendance on “radical protesters.”

Meanwhile, Trump is scheduled to speak tonight at a rally at 9pm ET tonight in support of embattled Nebraska Gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster.

After Herbster, a businessman endorsed by former President Donald Trump, was accused of sexually assaulting eight women, including a state senator, Republicans throughout the state washed their hands of him, and sitting Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts told him to end his campaign and “get help.”

But according to POLITICO on Thursday, Trump himself is still all in on Herbster’s candidacy.

“Trump did not withdraw his support for Herbster, or scrap plans to hold a Friday evening rally for the candidate in Nebraska. Instead, he doubled down: The former president relayed word that Herbster wasn’t fighting back hard enough, backing plans for Herbster to hold a press conference aggressively denying the allegations and pushing back at his adversaries,” reported Alex Isenstadt.

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Watch: Newsmax Host Wants to Know Why Movies ‘Have to Be About LGBTQ People?’ in Anti-Gay Rant

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1 year ago

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March 31, 2022

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Newsmax propagandist Greg Kelly is jumping on the right’s rapidly growing anti-LGBTQ extremism by denouncing movies with LGBTQ people in them, while likening being LGBTQ to having a hobby – like trains – that he says no one needs to know about.

“I don’t get this be your whole self routine at work or even in art, even in products that you are creating for other people to consume,” Kelly said on Newsmax Wednesday. “For instance, take me, I love model trains. Did you know that? I actually do.”

“I love trains. I love them,” he continued. “I don’t talk about a lot on TV because it’s a pretty niche hobby and not a lot of people are into it. Alright, especially at my age. That’s my thing. I’ll do it on my time and I’m not going to bother you about it fair? You get it? I think that’s a pretty good analogy.”

It’s actually not. What Kelly is talking about is called a hobby. Being LGBTQ is not.

The Newsmax host who, coincidentally is a former Fox News correspondent and host, and the son of former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, then played what appeared to be an internal Walt Disney Company video of an employee talking about including LGBTQ characters in her work.

Related –
Watch: Newsmax Hosts Warn of ‘Gender Indoctrination Centers’ in Wild Rant Attacking Trans People

The segment included her stating: “Like I was just wherever I could just basically adding queerness to like, if you see anything queer in the show [undiscernable] no one would stop me and no one was trying to stop me.”

Kelly, who, according to Vanity Fair, has a history of “very racist-seeming tweets,” jumped on that immediately.

“Just have fun with your not-so-secret gay agenda,” he said. “And queerness and putting it in movies and cartoons and where is it been so far? I watch this stuff from time to time. I guess over the years. These are movies you’ve heard of I’ve heard of is this what they’ve been up to all along?” he asked, as the camera pans over classic Disney works like “Mary Poppins.”

(LGBTQ people have been creating Disney classics for decades, or longer. )

“Is this what they will be up to from now on? I don’t think it’s going to help the plotline. You know, movies are about people. Uh, why do they have to be about LGBTQ people or anything like, is the orientation really all that?”

(Full anti-LGBTQ segment on YouTube.)

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