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Pence Said Being Gay Is ‘Learned Behavior’ or a ‘Choice’ as He Opposed Granting LGBT People Rights in the ’90s

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Despite the White House’s recent false claims that Vice President Mike Pence is not anti-gay, a new investigation by CNN proves the conservative Christian Republican politician has a record of anti-gay comments and policies even worse than previously known.

In the early 1990’s Pence not only advocated against a Lafayette, Indiana city council referendum that would have been the first in his home state to grant anti-discrimination protections to gay people, but Pence went even farther than just opposing the proposed ordinance.

Falsely calling homosexuality is a “choice” or a “learned behavior,” Pence – then president of a conservative think tank, Indiana Policy Review Foundation – advocated against allowing gay people to be given any minority status at all.

“Once you identify homosexuals as a minority, then by definition they would need to be afforded constitutional protection,” Pence wrote. “Up to this point, our legal tradition in America has drawn a line over those things. I do not choose whether I am a black American … the great vast majority of the psychological community says homosexuality at a very minimum is a choice by the individual, and at the maximum, is a learned behavior.”

Pence also argued that claiming gay people are worthy of protecting would unlock “a Pandora’s Box of legal rights and legal difficulties.”

CNN notes that in the early 1990’s public opinion was about evenly split on whether gay people should be granted civil rights protections. And the American Psychological Association “said in 1992 that data did not support the view that homosexuality was a choice and studies at the time in the 1990s suggested homosexuality was biological and genetic.

Pence called granting gay people protections “a very bad move in public policy.”

Related: Ten Times Mike Pence Worked to Defeat the LGBT Community

Later, as a U.S. Congressman, Pence would go on to advocate for harmful conversion therapy and against funding programs to help people with HIV/AIDS.

And as vice president, Pence played a “leading role” in drafting President Trump’s ban on transgender service members.

Meanwhile, as recently as 2016, then-governor Pence questioned whether LGBT protections were “necessary or even possible.”

RELATED STORIES:

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

Mike Pence Blasted for Appearing with Anti-LGBTQ Extremists Three Times in Five Days

Omarosa: ‘Scary’ Mike Pence ‘Thinks Jesus Tells Him to Say Things’

Report: Trump Has ‘Joked’ Mike Pence ‘Wants to Hang’ All Gay People

 

 

Image by Office of Congressman Mike Pence via Wikimedia 

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'VERY FINE PEOPLE'

Trump-Appointed State Dept. Aide With Top Secret Clearance Beat Officers With Riot Shield At Jan. 6 Insurrection: Report

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A Trump-appointed State Dept. aide allegedly beat officers at the U.S. Capitol with a stolen riot shield, used it to force open a Capitol Hill door, verbally engaged with police, and led insurrection rioters into the building, shouting, “We need fresh people, need fresh people.”

These new details come from The Washington Post, after Politico Thursday night broke the news that the State Dept. aide, Federico Klein, appointed by Trump in 2017 after working on the Trump campaign, was arrested by the FBI in connection with the deadly January 6 insurrection.

The New York Times adds Klein was arrested on charges “including unlawful entry, violent and disorderly conduct, obstructing Congress and law enforcement, and assaulting an officer with a dangerous weapon.”

Klein was “seen in video footage and other images dressed in a red ‘Make America Great Again’ hat, slacks and a dress shirt as he tries to break past a line of Metropolitan Police officers in a tunnel near the west terrace, according to the [court] document.”

Klein, 42, previously worked as a researcher for the anti-LGBTQ hate group Family Research Council, according to Politico. That group’s  president, a close informal religious advisor to President Donald Trump, was appointed to the the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom by then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. He served as chairman and later vice chair.

“Klein was still employed at the State Department as a staff assistant on Jan. 6 when he joined a mob in a tunnel leading into the U.S. Capitol, the FBI said,” The Washington Post reports. “Then he allegedly ‘physically and verbally engaged with the officers holding the line’ at the building’s entrance, according to the complaint. After ignoring officers’ orders to move back, he assaulted officers with a riot shield that had been stolen from police, the complaint said, and then used the shield to wedge open a door into the Capitol.”

Klein resigned from the U.S. State Dept. on January 19.

EARLIER: Arrested: Trump State Dept. Appointee, a Former Anti-LGBTQ Hate Group Employee, in Connection With Capitol Riot

 

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‘I’m Not Racist’ Says Arkansas Sheriff Who Used N-Word 9 Times Because Girlfriend Spoke to a Black Guy

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Arkansas County Sheriff Todd Wright

Arkansas County Sheriff Todd Wright has resigned after the circulation of a five-minute audio recording in which he called a Black employee at a local Piggly Wiggly grocery store a “f*cking Black-ass [n-word]” and accused a female friend of his of being an “[n-word] lover” just for talking to him.

Wright seemed to find it personally humiliating that his girlfriend would dare talk to a Black man in his presence and worried what others would think of him if they saw it occurring.

Despite using the n-word nine times in the recording, Wright has said that he’s not racist, much like Tom Eckerle, the former Michigan county road commissioner who repeatedly used the n-word to describe Black Lives Matter protesters.

Wright initially refused to resign, stating on Facebook, “To all I have offended or hurt, I send my sincere apologies and will pray for my enemies.” However, he agreed to resign after a unanimous vote by court leaders. Before offering his resignation, he cried, said that he’s not racist, and added that his words came out during a “heated moment.”

The court agreed to pay him a month more in salary so he could start looking for a new job. Another officer will take over Wright’s duties during his final month, overseeing a county which is 25 percent Black.

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Kenosha ‘Blue Lives Matter’ Gunman Kyle Rittenhouse Arrested for Murder After Cops Let Him Flee Out of State

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An Illinois teenager has been charged with first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of a demonstrator in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, of Antioch, was charged Wednesday with first-degree intentional homicide in a shooting late Tuesday during a clash between protesters of police brutality and right-wing militia group members.

The militia members had gathered to protect a gas station from looters and vandals, and video shows police offer Rittenhouse water shortly before the shooting and thank him for being there.

Another video shows Rittenhouse open fire with a rifle after he fell to the ground and then calmly walk toward police vehicles with his hands raised in surrender. Other people can be heard yelling that he had shot someone.

However, no officers are seen getting out of the vehicles, which continue advancing toward protesters, to apprehend Rittenhouse — who then fled the state and was considered a fugitive.

He was arrested later Wednesday back in his hometown.  He is reportedly being held in the Lake County Juvenile Detention Center near Vernon Hills awaiting an extradition hearing.

According to The Daily Beast, Rittenhouse’s Facebook page “included numerous photos with Blue Lives Matter-style pro-police slogans and imagery, as well as of an Armalite rifle similar to the one he appears to have been photographed carrying in Kenosha.”

 

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