The Frightening Prospect of a Pence Presidency

The Pences - members of the American Taliban.

No one knows where the impeachment train will end up, but one political writer and veteran of the Hill believes Trump has at last met a scandal that he will not be able to survive.  If this proves to be a correct forecast, then the LGBT community will be faced with a true enemy and anti-LGBT fanatic in the White House for what hopefully would be a brief stint. Pence is a darling of the Christofascists and would likely retain their support but many question whether Pence could retain the support of Trump's white supremacist cultists.  Then too, Pence's extreme anti-gay stances and long history of hateful statements - all of which will be dredged up and help depict Pence for the extremist that he is in fact - could prove to help to be his undoing. Here are highlights from a piece in The Advocate:

A prediction from a political veteran and junkie: Trump is going to go sooner than we think. The evidence seems clear and conclusive. Republicans can’t sustain him anymore, and their tepid reaction to impeachment on Tuesday and the Senate’s unanimous consent for the Whistleblower report are forewarnings. The partial transcripts implicate the attorney general; now it seems there was a White House-wide cover-up. It will get worse. Much worse. The Speaker has always maintained that she wouldn’t move on impeachment until the evidence was clear and it could succeed in the Senate. She knows far more than she’s saying. 

It will all come together fast, and the band-aid will be ripped off. Polling numbers for Trump against most of the Democratic field are dismal. He's bringing down the Republican ticket and races across the board. When Trump becomes toxic, people cut ties, and the Republicans will soon, and then we’ll have a new President from Indiana, probably before the year is out.

Back in the late 1980s and early '90s when I worked on the Hill, there was always a legitimate fear that if something happened to President Bush, we would be left with another pseudo President from Indiana, Dan Quayle.  

Quayle was as scary as Pence. He believed homosexuality was wrong. “That is not gay bashing…I’m just saying that from my point of view and from the view of most Americans, they think that lifestyle is wrong. That’s not saying people don’t have the right to make that choice.” 

Sound familiar? Consider who might have uttered this gem around the same time Quayle was lobbing lunacy: “I do not choose whether I am a black American ... the great vast majority of the psychological community says homosexuality at a very minimum is a choice by the individual, and at the maximum, is a learned behavior," said the future vice president we have today.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the Indiana vice presidents’ tree. If Donald Trump is impeached, Mike Pence, the queer-quashing, choice-chastising, trans-trashing vice president will assume the presidency. And, we, as a community, must prepare ourselves for Mike and Karen Pence, the new first couple of straight America. But it won’t be for long.

I don’t feel like bringing you, and myself down by listing all the ways Mike Pence's policy beliefs discriminate, dishearten, and deceive our community..

And that agenda will only come further to light when/if he assumes the presidency. This impeachment scenario is moving at warp speed, and that means Mike and Karen Pence better call a mover or at least start carrying their membership plaques for the Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, Family Research Council, Traditional Values Coalition, and their autographed 8” x10's" of Jerry Falwell, Anita Bryant and the Reverend Fred Phelps from the Naval Observatory to 1600 Pennsylvania.

My guess is that if the impeachment does happen, and the Pences move into the White House, they won’t be there very long. The Pences' beliefs are far removed from those of most Americans, and the main issue that would cost him a longer stay in the White House is ironically their anti-LGBTQ stances.

A spokesman for Pence, told CNN recently in a statement that the vice president "has always opposed discrimination in any form and defends the Constitution's protection of the rights of all Americans regardless of race, sex or religion." A pointed omission of sexual orientation or gender identity was made.

Plus, there will be a stinking stench from, and revolting reaction to, all the criminality of the Trump administration. And, Mike Pence ain’t no Donald Trump, so would the Republicans even nominate him, with other GOPers already pursuing the nomination? Possibly not.

Let’s prepare ourselves because the impeachment stories will get worse, deeper and then theoretical, i.e.,“What would a Pence presidency look like?” And inevitably, how he’s treated our community will be a hot topic, because the Pences have made it that way. We might have to be the whipping boys and girls for a brief Pence presidency, and for the duration of a general election that Pence is at the center of — it that ever happens. However, if it does, it just might help us get a president we want — and one we deserve.

Karen Pence Again Proves She's a Self-Centered Hypocrite

Karen Pence - Hypocrite badly
in need of gay friends for fashion advice.

As readers may recall, Karen Pence, the wife of the sinister Mike Pence, works at a school that bars gays and their children.  She also proudly parades around supporting other aspects of Christofascist hatred towards others while putting on a show of feigned piety. Thus, it is no surprise that she got her (likely ugly) panties in a wad over Pete Buttigieg’s comments this week (i) challenging “the Mike Pence’s of the world” for believing homosexuality is a choice, and (ii) noting that the form of "Christianity" practiced by evangelicals bears little resemblance to Christ's social gospel message.  Ms. Pence whined that people should not be attacked for their religious beliefs no matter how toxic and hypocrisy laden and that children need to learn that at a young age that it is "okay what faith people have," again, no matter how toxic and hate driven. Meanwhile, she thinks it is perfectly fine for evangelicals to abuse and attack those, including gays, who do not share her blind allegiance to Bronze Age myths. 

Sadly, Ms. Pence is the face of Christofascists' self-centered and hypocrisy-filled belief system.  They want one standard of tolerance and respect for themselves but see no one else as deserving similar respect or tolerance. Plainly put, she is not a nice individual no matter how much she pretends otherwise.

Karen Pence's and Christofascists' Fraudulent Embrace of Victimhood

Karen Pence: a bigot playing the victim card.

According to Karen and Mike Pence they are the victims of persecution by those who find it inappropriate for the wife of the Vice President to be employed at a vitriolically anti-LGBT school.  It's not as if there are not a multitude of other schools - both public and private - in Northern Virginia at which Karen Pence could have chosen to work.  Mike Pence finds criticism of his wife's choice "offensive" and whines that they are being "persecuted" for being "Christian."  Never mind that Immanuel Christian School not only bans LGBT individuals and seemingly wants them to cease to exist, but the school also bans anyone that does not embrace its bigotry and homophobia. The Pence's hypocrisy and dis-ingenuousness is the norm nowadays among Christofascists who whine that any restriction on their ability to mistreat others is "persecution." "Modern day Pharisee" is too kind a label for these vicious and falsely pious hypocrites.  A piece at NBCNews looks at this display of false victimhood.  Here are excerpts:

Karen Pence, currently the second lady of the United States, is returning to Immanuel Christian School, a private K-8 elementary school that is a part of the Immanuel Bible Church, to teach art part-time to students.

Civil rights and LGBTQ activists, including most recently Lady Gaga, criticized the SLOTUS’s new position because the school explicitly “refuse[s] admission” to students who do not live according to the “biblical lifestyle” — which means no rough-and-tumble homosexual or bisexual activity. Likewise, the school discriminates against job applicants who do not “live a life of moral purity;” disqualifying conduct includes everything from “lesbian sexual activity” to transgender identity” to “heterosexual activity outside of marriage.”

“It’s disturbing Second Lady Karen Pence would put her stamp of approval on an institution that actively targets LGBTQ students at one of the places where they should feel the safest,” Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement through the organization.

Legally, Immanual Christian School can discriminate against the LGBTQ community. Virginia, in addition to 38 other states, does not prohibit private workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Increasingly, this is the desperate defense of those who find themselves on the wrong side of history — as well as societal and legal norms. While LGBTQ individuals still suffer from hate crimes (especially trans Americans) and prejudice, the majority of Americans have no problem with gay marriage or other civil and legal rights. Realizing this, one pocket of America is now attempting to hide its own historical privilege in the language of the oppressed.

But I have to tell you, to see major news organizations attacking Christian education, is deeply offensive to us,” Vice President Mike Pence said in an interview with Eternal World Television. . . . . Or, as David French wrote at the National Review: “No one is forced to attend the church. No one is forced to attend the school. It’s a voluntary association that is protected by the First Amendment and rooted in the faith that guides the lives of tens of millions of Americans.”

French is correct, actually. Despite having a lifestyle at least partially funded by the American taxpayer, Karen Pence has the freedom to believe in her evangelical Christian faith; she has the freedom to work at a school that espouses this faith — a faith constructed by a morality that is fundamentally patriarchal, sexist and homophobic. And her freedom to do so is indeed protected by the First Amendment.

The ground lines of the cultural battle have been set — and they’re in favor of the bigots, who have strategically positioned themselves as the victims of an attack on their religious freedom.

Through a manipulation of First Amendment language, freedom of religion currently serves as code for bigots to justify not only their discriminatory beliefs but the continuation of verbal and physical violence against minority communities. Even though they project the language of the snowflake at civil rights advocates and liberal-leaning citizens, it is they who cry “victim” when their moral values are exposed as promoting hate and violence. Using a quite simple two-pronged logic, they circumvent accountability by projecting blame onto those people who they discriminate against while obfuscating the bigotry of their own beliefs.

And the refusal to hold oneself accountable is a strategy for dominance that unethically burdens, and potentially harms, others. A more critical interrogation of historical values — here, religious values steeped in misogyny and homophobia — gets crushed by the moral panic of Karen Pence’s defenders, who are frothing at the mouth to evangelize the rightness of America’s “culture wars.”

Here, they even have an unexpected ally in people who perceive Pence’s return to the workplace as an equal rights issue.

However, a woman entering the workforce is not a feminist victory if the work performed is in the service of bigotry and discrimination. Remember, you cannot divorce the act from the identity. This equation is akin to the mislabeling of white suffragists as feminists. White women who fought for other white women to have the vote, and aligned themselves with racist patriarchs in order to finance their constitutional battle for the 19th Amendment, were not feminists.

Karen Pence is not, contrary to what her defenders say, a victim. Willfully ignorant about the harmful cultural messaging of her actions, and complicit with oppressive systems built on bigoted beliefs, she is the unimpeachable mother — white and heterosexual — who, actually, has always been the idol of “good,” Christian, white America. Her defenders are knights in white robes who shout “freedom!” as they cut down their enemy.

This is American history, and, it seems, mother will continue to teach it.

Karen and Mike Pence's Moral Hypocrisy

Mike and Karen Pence: modern day Pharisees.

In today's America, nothing more defines evangelical Christians than their hypocrisy.  And no one better personifies this hypocrisy better than Mike Pence - a man who, to me, has all the hallmarks of a self-loathing, closeted gay - and Karen Pence who is now working for a stridently anti-gay "Christian" school.  Of course, if one believes in Christ's gospel message as set forth in the New Testament, there is little Christian about this school and its policies of exclusion and condemnation.  Instead, it more closely mirrors a gathering of Pharisees of the type repeatedly condemned by Christ in the New Testament.  Meanwhile, the Pences and the vast majority of evangelicals continue to blindly support Donald Trump, the most morally bankrupt individual to ever occupy the White House.  With such hypocrisy - and hatred on others - on such open display, it's little wonder that now 40% of the under 30 generations have walked away from religion.  A piece at CNN calls out the Pences' hypocrisy.  Here are highlights:

Karen Pence, the wife of America's vice president, Mike Pence will be teaching art at a Christian school in Virginia that bans LGBTQ children and requires employees to declare their religious beliefs. Like a real-life setting for "The Handmaid's Tale," Immanuel Christian School insists applicants initial a pledge to "live a personal life of moral purity."

Listen to what else the pledge says: "I understand that the term 'marriage' has only one meaning; the uniting of one man and one woman in a single, exclusive covenant union as delineated in Scripture." It asserts that God intended sexual acts only between "a man and a woman who are married to each other." It identifies "moral misconduct" that would disqualify employees as premarital sex, cohabitation, extramarital sex, homosexual or lesbian sexual activity, polygamy, transgender identity, any other violation of the unique roles of male and female."

This language is disgusting and insults millions of taxpaying American citizens, many who have served their country. That it is acceptable to the wife of the man who is a heartbeat away from the presidency should horrify and alarm all Americans. For all their professed beliefs, Pence, and his wife, show unwavering support for a man who has been married three times, divorced twice, has had five children with three women and who has been accused of (though denies) paying a porn star and a Playboy model hundreds of thousands of dollars to conceal affairs he'd had with them. The hypocrisy here, and indeed from white evangelical Trump supporters, is astonishing. . . . . Obama, a man who had no sex scandals, was never accused of sexual harassment, had two children with the same woman, couldn't crack 25% white evangelicals. Of course, race is a huge reason, but Hillary Clinton only received 16% of the white evangelical vote.
 For white evangelicals, it appears to be Trump over country -- and Karen Pence is a glowing example.   The school where Karen Pence will work — and indeed she has taught there in the past, for 12 years -- does have a legal right to its brand of hate. But it is deplorable for the wife of the vice president to work in this space. If the Pences love their God so much, then they would not sit in a White House with a man who shows no moral compass and said he never asks for forgiveness. They would be on the White House lawn, with the King James Bible in hand, disavowing a President who is a horrible representation for our children. If Karen Pence loves "moral purity," she would have denounced Melania Trump for — for example -- posing naked and in handcuffs for a men's magazine when she worked as a model. If she and her husband want to sign a pledge of moral purity, they should first hand it to the President of the United States for his own signature. Do Karen and Mike Pence (who, incidentally, supports conversion therapy) not see LGBTQ people as humans deserving the same respect and rights as anyone?

Mike and Karen Pence, where is your Jesus?