Mike Pence Hires New Homophobic Chief of Staff

Homophobe Marc Short.

While writers at the Washington Post were manufacturing attacks on the First Lady of Virginia, Vice President Mike Pence was hiring a new chief of staff who has a history of outspoken homophobia.  A piece in LGBTQ Nation looks at the past bigotry of Marc Short, Pence's new chief of staff as well as Pence's own long history of homophobia, attacks on LGBT citizens, and obstruction of efforts to curb HIV/AIDS which is increasingly a heterosexual problem in the black (of, course, Pence is anti-black as well).  The take away is that Short and Pence would happily see LGBT citizens simply die and disappear. Here are article highlights:

Mike Pence’s incoming chief of staff Marc Short has come under fire for a homophobic column he wrote about a man living with HIV.

Writing in his college newspaper at Washington & Lee University in Virginia, Short denounced, “the propaganda campaign ignited by gay activists and carelessly perpetuated by journalists whose intent is to scare all heterosexuals into believing they are prime targets for” HIV and AIDS.

“The campaign’s purpose is both to lobby Congress for more federal funding of AIDS research and to destigmatize the perverted lifestyles homosexuals pursue.”

The column, entitled “AIDS & The Heterosexual,” appeared in The Spectator, a student newspaper that Short co-founded and edited.

His column was ostensibly a response to an interview that appeared in the main student newspaper with Edwin Wright, a Washington & Lee alum who talked about watching several of his friends die from complications from AIDS and his own pending death.

Short said that he had “sympathy” for Wright, but “that does not mean that we glorify homosexuals’ repugnant practices of frequent anal intercourse nor should we consider them brave for coming out of the closet.”

“Homosexuals who pursue unhealthy lifestyles and engage in high risk sexual behavior, specifically anal intercourse, may very well end up like Mr. Wright.”

“Rhetoric like that killed us,” said Peter Staley, an ACT-UP activist who appeared in the documentary How to Survive a Plague. “Guys like him wanted us to die. And they had an effect.”

Pence has yet to comment on Short’s column. Pence himself has a long history of opposing LGBTQ rights both in the U.S. House and as governor of Indiana, even supporting federal funding for conversion therapy in 2000 as a means to fight HIV.

“His boss [Mike Pence] is responsible for enabling the single worst outbreak of HIV and AIDS in the history of Indiana due to his irresponsible and universally-criticized effort to end funding for needle exchange programs and HIV and AIDS testing centers. Mike Pence has spent his career attacking LGBTQ people and building a record of undermining HIV awareness and prevention initiatives.”

“After all this and being in the inner circle of Mike Pence for the past decade, the hiring of Marc Short is not surprising.”