Mike Pence Is A Bigot And Has No Place In America's Future-- A Guest Post By Frank Schaeffer

Chances are Mike Pence might become president through Trump’s resignation, impeachment or arrest.

A Pence presidency is a horrible possibility because every entity related to Trump is either bankrupt, closed or under investigation. Trump Casinos, Trump Golf Courses, The Trump Foundation, Trump University, the Trump Campaign Transition, the Trump Inaugural Committee and the Trump White House all are under some sort of cloud or investigation. We have a crooked loser for “president.” Pence looms.

Trump’s most scandalous action to date was his appointing Mike Pence as vice president. Mike Pence is hostile to LGBTQ people. He has linked same-sex couples to “societal collapse” and supported conversion therapy, a form of torture. A vice president who has expressed such intolerance is a dangerous, mean person and has no more place in American politics than a KKK lynch mob.

In Trump/Pence-dominated 2017, 20 gay, bisexual or queer men were murdered in hate crimes, an increase of 400 percent from the previous year. Every single one died at the hands of people who share Mike Pence’s immoral “views” on homosexuality.

Thus Mike and Karen Pence are figures of great consequence. And their bigotry-- regardless of their white evangelical religious justification-- has to be confronted. Anti-gay evangelical fools have no place in American life. Period. Religious freedom does not mean freedom to lead us to backward hell.

Let’s put this in perspective: Ralph Northam must step down. Agreed. But having Pence in American politics is a bigger scandal than a 40-year-old blackface sin because Pence is a bigot right now! His “black face” equivalent is happening– right now!

The destructive, evil power of blackface and Ku Klux Klan robes in a yearbook picture must never be underestimated. But let’s also ponder the harm of ongoing “respectable” hateful “biblical” homophobia.

The Pences are “deeply religious,” and their views on homosexuality are based on their “sincere religious convictions.” So what? The Bible was used to justify slavery, genocide, murdering girls for losing virginity, war without end. “Religious freedom” is no excuse for evil ugly stupidity.

Female circumcision and mutilation is a religious freedom issue for many people from Muslim cultures. But in America it is against the law. We would not have a vice president who advocated female mutilation in the name of sincere religious belief. Why do we have one that advocates the persecution of gay men and lesbians and who quotes backward evil Bible verses that say they should be killed?

Enough!

Demand the resignation of Mike Pence for his views on homosexuality. Insist Pence’s wife Karen resign from a school that discriminates against gays and lesbians.

White Trumped evangelicals like the ever more dreadful Pences must not ever be given leadership positions in a civilized society. Period. In fact the fact that Trump even appointed an evangelical bigot like Pence is the best reason for Trump’s impeachment.

Demand the resignation of Pence for his hateful, anti-science, lying bigoted “views” on homosexuality. He belongs in the trash can of history, along with the sort of people who think entitled white men dressing up in black face is fine– or that young girls should be tied down while they are mutilated with razor blades because this is a social and religious tradition, or that black youths who glance at a white woman should be lynched.