USADaily -
After repeatedly wooing the LGBT community in his speeches and tweets, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump today announced his choice for vice president: Indiana governor Mike Pence, a rabid homophobe.
Pence is a right-wing culture warrior, as the Daily Beast put it. He is in fact so beholden to the religious right that even his own party finds him too anti-gay.
As an aside, Pence is also a bit of a nutjob across the board. He believes that “smoking doesn’t kill,” for example — yes, he’s a cigarette-truther.
And perhaps Pence’s most vile anti-gay position was the time, back in 2000, when people were still dying, that Pence challenged funding for the Ryan White Care Act — arguably the nation’s most important AIDS legislation — because the bill was too pro-gay. Pence suggested that we take money away from AIDS and spend it instead on curing gays. (The GOP platform this year also advocates curing gays.)
Yet Trump claims he’s the most pro-LGBT Republican presidential candidate ever:
“Ask yourself who is really the friend of women and the LGBT community. Donald Trump with actions, or Hillary Clinton with her words? I will tell you who the better friend is and someday I believe that will be proven out bigly.”
There’s also this:
Pence’s most recent claim to anti-gay fame is pushing a law through the Indiana legislature last year that permits companies in the state to discriminate against people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
It’s the same “religious freedom” law that Arizona passed, and its conservative Republican governor quickly vetoed, after America’s top businesses declared a boycott of the state. In Indiana’s case, the ensuing boycott has already cost his state $250 million in lost business.
Now that Pence is Donald Trump’s vice presidential nominee, the boycott travels with him.
Mike Pence is damaged goods.
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