GOP DEATH WATCH

Mike Pence Complained Of “AIDS Activists” Speaking At GOP Convention

 

mike pence
Mike Pence. Photo by Gage Skidmore, via Flickr. CC 2.0.

Twenty years ago the Republican National Convention was running on a conservative platform, but was also working hard to win independents and more moderate members of their own party. This was all far too liberal for ultraconservative Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence.

Related: Mike Pence’s Seven Most Viciously Antigay Moments

Pence wrote that the 1996 GOP convention had become “an endless line of pro-choice women, AIDS activists, and proponents of Affirmative Action,” in the Indiana Policy Review, the publication of a think tank with the same name that he once ran.

Mary Fisher, an HIV positive Republican who worked in the Ford administration, spoke at the convention, as she had in 1992. She appeared at the 1996 convention on stage with Hydeia Broadbent, then just six-years-old. Broadbent was born HIV positive and was abandoned as an infant.

“Like it or not,” Pence wrote, “traditional Pro-Family conservatives make up the bedrock of modern Republican electoral success.”

Related: Cher Laughs At Donald Trump‘s Promise To Protect The LGBTQ Community, “Oh come on!”

During his time as president of the Indiana Policy Review, the journal published a number of antigay pieces, Right Wing Watch reports.

This includes an article criticizing The Wall Street Journal for taking part in a job fair for gay journalists, claiming editors and journalists should keep their sexual orientation secret so as not to slant their coverage, as well as calling “gaydom” a “pathological condition.” (As opposed to bigotry?)

Another objected to the idea of gay people serving in the military, claiming “homosexuals are not as a group able bodied. They are known to carry extremely high rates of disease brought on because of the nature of their sexual practices and the promiscuity which is a hallmark of their lifestyle.”

Related: Here’s What Donald Trump Said At That Antigay Rally In Orlando

In related news, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has seen his outreach to LGBTQ voters go nowhere. But he is willing to sell you an ugly t-shirt.

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