Anthony Fauci calls out “extraordinary stigma” gays face while standing right in front of Mike Pence

Myth No. 5: He hates gay people.

Pence is often seen as the face of anti-gay bigotry. John Oliver parodied a children’s book about bunny rabbits by Pence’s daughter Charlotte with a version about two male bunnies in love. A gay U.S. Olympian refused to meet with Pence at the Winter Olympics last year. LGBTQ activists decried Karen Pence after she began teaching art at a conservative Christian school that bans LGBTQ people from working there. (The Pences responded by saying they were being targeted for discrimination based on their faith.)

Pence may indeed overlook the way his policies affect gay people — as indicated by his righteousness on the issue of religious freedom, where he decries discrimination not against LGBTQ folks but against Christian-right activists. Veteran Indiana LGBTQ activist Rick Sutton noted that Pence’s conservative Christian friends have never committed suicide because of their religion. Sutton cried as he remembered his friends who took their lives in the 1990s, a time when Mike and Karen Pence were actively fighting gay rights and supporting groups that described homosexuality as a sin. One veteran Indiana Republican who is a fellow Christian conservative described Pence’s stance on gay rights this way: “Love the sinner, hate the sin.”

But does all that mean he is personally anti-gay? His friends and advisers say no. To prove the point, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, Ric Grenell, a gay conservative Republican, said he and his partner have been warmly accepted by the Pences in person: “Mike and Karen are great people, they’re godly people, they’re followers of Christ. They don’t have hate in their heart for anyone. They know my partner. They have accepted us.” A White House spokesman argued that Pence was not “anti-gay” because of a cordial meeting he had with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and his gay partner last month.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/five-myths-about-mike-pence/2019/10/11/5f8adb6c-e9f8-11e9-9306-47cb0324fd44_story.html

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