Vice President Mike Pence has spent three of the past five days appearing at conferences and on stage with anti-LGBTQ extremists, including one who calls gay people “terrorists” and compares them to ISIS, and a group that appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of anti-gay hate groups. Some are starting to notice and call him out for it.
“Less than a week after appearing at an Erick Erickson sponsored conference, and a day after appearing with anti-LGBTQ extremist Sam Brownback, Mike Pence continues his anti-LGBTQ crusade with an appearance at an event organized by the anti-LGBTQ hate group the Alliance Defending Freedom,” the Human Rights Campaign says in an email to NCRM. HRC points to the Vice President’s “close ties” to ADF, a group that HRC says “is among the most horrific of any group operating in the United States.”
The Vice President late Tuesday morning addressed the ADF, a group that successfully represented an anti-gay Christian baker at the U.S. Supreme Court and works to deprive LGBTQ people of their civil rights, while offering false narratives. Pence, speaking at the Ritz-Carlton in Arlington, Virginia, bragged that he and the Trump administration have “taken action to protect the conscience rights of doctors and nurses and healthcare providers,” and “gone to court to protect the right to religious expression in the public square,” while praising the ADF for being “there every step of the way.”
The Trump administration claims it is working to decriminalize homosexuality around the world (there do not appear to be any public reports on its progress) and yet the Vice President is bragging about his work with the ADF, a group that, according to HRC, “believes in the re-criminalization of homosexuality in the U.S. and across the globe.”
ADF also “has advocated for the sterilization of trans people,” and its “extremist views have found their way into Trump administration and state legislative actions.”