Vice President-elect Mike Pence beats Trump, Putin to win ‘homophobe of the year’
Vice President-elect Mike Pence has been voted ‘homophobe of the year’ by members of a global online community.
More than half of All Out members who voted around the world chose Pence as the recipient of the honour.
52 percent of the more than 30,000 people who voted chose the Vice President-elect for the former Governor of Indiana.
Others in the running for the gong were President-elect Donald trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Under the Obama administration, we have seen a welcome investment in the protection of LGBT rights across the world. All the indicators suggest that this will not be the case under the new administration. In every public role he has had, Mike Pence has gone out of his way to expose LGBT people to discrimination, denial of family rights and violence.
“Here at All Out, we are ready to fight for the rights that so many have fought so long and hard to achieve. We are ready to mobilise our millions of members to stand firm against any backlash Pence wants to unleash in the U.S. or other parts of the world”, said Matt Beard, All Out’s Executive Director.
Earlier this year, Pence’s evangelical voting bloc helped add a plank to the Republican platform opposing a ban on gay cure therapy on ‘religious freedom’ grounds. His spokesperson did not address this to the NYT.
Of course, the former Governor of Indiana has a much longer anti-LGBT record.
Pence, who has been influential in packing the Trump administration with anti-LGBTconservatives, recently confirmed plans to roll back Barack Obama’s executive protections on LGBT rights, so that “the transgender bathroom issue can be resolved with common sense at the local level”.
Pence earlier this year appeared unable to answer when asked whether it should be legal to fire people because of their sexuality.
The Governor of Indiana stirred up international outrage last year when he signed Indiana’s controversial ‘Religious Freedom Restoration Act’, giving businesses the right to discriminate against gay people on the grounds of religion.
Pence claimed the law was intended to “protect” organisations from having to provide services for same-sex weddings, saying: “I support the freedom of religion for every Hoosier [Indiana citizen] of every faith.
“The Constitution of the United States and the Indiana Constitution both provide strong recognition of the freedom of religion but today, many people of faith feel their religious liberty is under attack.”
An investigation also found that Pence approved extreme anti-LGBT articles when he was the head of the Indiana Policy Review journal in the 1990s.
