Trump is Terrible but Pence May Well be Worse
By Eric Segall
Donald Trump is certainly
terrible but Mike Pence may well be worse. Whereas Trump wears his Neanderthal sexism
on his sleeve slobbering over women wherever he slinks, Pence has an actual history
of advocating for and signing horrific anti-
Pence’s career-long
crusade against equality for women actually began before he held public office. As a talk radio host in the late 90’s, Pence wrote an op-ed about
seeing the movie Mulan with his children. According to Pence, the Disney
movie, about a young girl who becomes a successful warrior, was thought up by “some
mischievous liberal at Disney [who] assumes that Mulan’s story will cause a
quiet change in the next generation’s attitude about women in combat and they
just might be right.” Pence thought it ludicrous that despite “her delicate
features and voice, Disney expects us to believe that Mulan’s ingenuity and
courage were enough to carry her to military success on an equal basis with her
cloddish cohorts.” He concludes with these thoughts about the relationship
between the sexes: “many young men find many young women to be attractive
sexually. Many young women find many young men to be attractive sexually. Put
them together, in close quarters, for long periods of time, and things will get
interesting. Just like they eventually did for young Mulan. Moral of story:
women in military, bad idea.” My moral, Pence is the most sexist film critic in history.
As a member of the House
of Representatives, Pence conducted a one man war
against Planned Parenthood. He sponsored the very first House Bill to defund
Planned Parenthood and kept at it obsessively until it passed the House in
2011. He said
at the time, "If Planned Parenthood wants to be involved in providing
counseling services and HIV testing, they ought not be in the business of
providing abortions. As long as they aspire to do that, I’ll be after
them." He also fought
for a federal personhood bill called the “Life at Conception Act,” which would
mandate that life begins at
As Governor of Indiana,
Pence has advocated for and signed eight anti-abortion laws in four years. In
addition to trying to make it as hard as possible for women to be able to pay
for abortions, Pence signed a truly cruel bill
that prohibited abortions if the woman’s decision was based on the race,
gender, or disability of the fetus,
and applied criminal punishments to doctors who assisted in any such abortion.
Imagine being pregnant and told that your fetus has a serious fetal abnormality,
and now learning that if you make the decision to abort, you may well be
breaking the law and your doctor may go to prison. Thankfully, and mercifully, a
federal court has already enjoined
the law from taking effect.
Pence has also advocated
against LGBTQ rights. Despite being warned again and again that a purported “religious
liberty” bill was actually a “discriminate against gay people” bill in
disguise, Pence signed
the law in March, 2015. As a member of Congress, he supported a constitutional
amendment banning gay marriage saying
he wanted to protect “God’s plan,” and opining that “societal collapse was always
brought about following an advent of the deterioration of marriage and family.”
Pence felt so strongly that gay people shouldn’t get married that he signed a law
in 2013 as Governor making it a felony for same-sex couples to apply for a marriage license.” This man is not only against same-sex marriage, he is against people who are in favor of same-sex marriage. In other words, he is a classic bigot.
I could go on and on but
to even pretend to be able to catalog all of Pence’s anti-gay, anti-women past,
would be disingenuous because I would need around 10,000 words (at least). But,
I would be committing blog malpractice if I didn’t also mention that, not only
does Pence not believe
in evolution, of course, but he also has “impeccable political evangelical
credentials, having chaired the Republican Study Group, a coalition of
conservative House Republicans,” according
to a Christian website. In other words, and to be crystal clear, despite what the media is concluding from Pence's moderate debate behavior, the man is an extreme right-wing politician even by right-wing conservative standards. He is, quite simply, an extremist.
There may be some doubt about what policies Trump would
support as President but there is none about Pence. He is vehemently and openly
anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-science, anti-women, and, even, apparently,
anti-Disney. As I said at the outset, Trump is terrible, but Pence may well be worse.