If there's one way the vice presidential debate could actually provide lasting impact, it's by laying bare Indiana Gov. Mike Pence's shameless record of targeting LGBTQ Americans throughout his career. LGBTQ rights issues not only galvanize the incredibly diverse millennial generation, but mainstream reporters have largely painted Donald Trump as a pro-LGBTQ candidate. Nothing could do more to lance that myth than highlighting his vice presidential pick's lengthy and inspired efforts to exclude LGBTQ people from the basic constitutional rights and protections that form the cornerstone of our democracy. And Pence's endeavor to declare open season on gay and transgender Americans as governor of Indiana are fresh enough to make them easily accessible to this digitally savvy cohort.
After all, just last year Pence re-engineered modern-day "religious freedom" laws that empower and invite the religiously entitled to discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation and gender identity. It granted those discriminatory religious rights to all businesses, regardless of whether they were religious in any way, and allowed them to use the law to defend against any lawsuits brought by employees, tenants, or customers. It also overrode the LGBTQ protections that nearly a dozen local jurisdictions within the state had enacted.
In essence, SB 101—which Pence signed into law in a closed-door meeting surrounded by an elite group of social conservatives—flung open the gates to hatred and bigotry and invited them to find safe haven within Indiana law.
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When that fact quickly came to light and businesses started dropping Indiana like a hot rock, Pence went on a lying tour of press avails, blatantly misrepresenting the law's intentions and effects. Among other things, he famously went on ABC's This Week to defend the law and failed to definitively answer whether the law legalized discrimination, not once, not twice, but six times (video below).
SB 101 is just the most recent example in a long line of Mike Pence's anti-LGBTQ bigotry that included his strong opposition to allowing gays to serve in the military and advocacy for redirecting federal funds away from HIV/AIDS organizations and toward groups that engaged in the abhorrent practice of trying to change people's sexual orientation (often called "conversion" or "reparative" therapy).
Media outlets have been obsessed of late with Hillary Clinton's "soft" support among millennials. In fact, polls reveal that millennials support Clinton at a greater rate than any other age group. That makes giving them a good reason to get to the polls and punch the ticket for Clinton/Kaine even more important.
And while millennials aren't likely to be tuning into the vice presidential debate in record numbers, a clear hit on Pence's shameful LGBTQ record would be seized upon by reporters and reverberate throughout the social media landscape, where millennials live. Hopefully Tim Kaine won't miss this prime opportunity to reach them with a message that definitively sets the Democratic ticket apart from the Republican ticket, yet again.
Pence's This Week performance: