Mike Pence goes off the extremist deep end
Last week, former Vice President Mike Pence broke his silence for the first time since the events of January 6th. A murderous mob incited by the previous president and some far-right members of Congress forced Pence and his family to seek safety in the Capitol. Despite the violence of the insurrection and possibly coming close to a gruesome death, Pence has been mostly quiet except to feebly announce his continued fealty to the president who nearly cost him his life. Pence focused most of his op-ed on letting us know that he’s opposed to equal voting rights.
We’ve learned that Pence will make his first public speech since leaving office. Unsurprisingly, Pence has chosen to make his speech to an anti-LGBTQ hate group in South Carolina. Palmetto Family Council is a regressive pro-theocracy group that thrives on hate and exclusion in the name of evangelical Christianity. The group believes that the Ten Commandments should be imposed on the population in public places, and it thinks off-campus Bible study should be a legitimate way to earn school credit. The group is out of sync with most Americans and seeks to do as much harm as it can in the name of one particular brand of religion.
It’s clear Pence is still running with the same crowd of religious extremists. These groups do much harm to many people. Despite claiming they’re pro-life, they show little respect for life that doesn’t fit nicely into their bigoted worldview. It’s refreshing to no longer have this kind of toxicity in the West Wing now that we have the Biden-Harris administration, but we must keep in mind that we still have to combat rightist entities that would prefer a feudalistic theocracy bereft of basic human rights for many. It remains unclear if Pence has a political agenda at this time.
