Love, Marriage, and Politics
Mike Pence Wants to Break up My Family
A year ago, whilst in Chicago for work, I met an American boy named Brian. We fell in love and we were married last month with both our families and our closest friends in attendance. It was a fantastic day and we’ve never been happier. There’s plenty of marital bliss to go around.
But there’s also this gnawing fear which keeps me awake into the small hours, nipping at the heels of my brain. And it won’t go away until November. Because Donald Trump and Mike Pence might just win the election.
It’s been demonstrated repeatedly by the man himself, and noted by many others, that Trump’s campaign is one powered by nativism, racism, and a general fear of the Other. As a recent immigrant, this terrifies me. Less has been said about the good, old-fashioned Dominionist homophobia represented by Mike Pence — which he would have significantly fewer issues implementing in office.
Trump gets the lion’s share of media coverage having — somehow — secured the Republican nomination and proceded to stomp all over American political and democratic norms with his rank racism, sexism, xenophobia, and clear fascism. His runnning mate Mike Pence has received comparitively little attention thanks to his status as the human equivalent of a wood-panelled station wagon. He is, however, monumentally homophobic and has not only consistently fought to prevent the advance of LGBT rights but found novel ways to make our lives harder whenever possible.
Mike Pence very clearly hates gay people, even if Donald Trump claims not to. Given he would be the most powerful Vice President in history, we can anticipate his policy agenda taking the lead in any potential Trump administration. And that agenda is inimical to the survival of my family.
In his terms in the House of Representatives and as Governor of Indiana, Pence has enacted an extraordinarily homophobic and hateful series of policies. These include signing a bill that would jail same-sex couples applying for a marriage license, along with the county clerks “abetting” them; and Indiana’s ‘Religious Freedom Restoration Act’, which allows businesses to refuse service to LGBT people based on their religious beliefs. He has argued that marriage equality would bring about “societal collapse”, and actively opposed it for years; claimed being gay is a choice; and opposed both the Employment Nondiscrimination Act and the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. I could go on. There’s a lot of grist for this particular mill.
It’s worth noting that Trump has said he would appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Obergefell vs Hodges (the ruling which makes equal marriage the law of the land in the US), along with a smorgasbord of other decisions which define civil rights in modern America. So not only would Pence have the pulpit and the power to enact his retrograde social agenda, but there would be no judicial check on that agenda. If Trump wins, my husband and I, and every other married lesbian or gay couple out there, will be living on borrowed time.
The Trump campaign represents a constituency which feels, without reason, as if they’ve had something taken away from them by people they consider undeserving. Trump gives a name and a face to the “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror” Franklin D Roosevelt warned of in his First Inaugural Address. The reaction to that fear in about 36% of Americans seems to be a desire to claw away hard-won freedoms from those they view as Other than themselves — whether Muslim, Latino, liberal, or LGBT. Their candidates’ policies (such as they are) are entirely driven by that impulse, heedless of the disastrous human and economic consequences.
These are the politics of sociopathy.
I can’t vote in November. However, when you go to cast your ballot, I ask you to consider the real-world impact of the box you check. This isn’t partisan theatre. This is real, and this matters. Your vote will have an enormous and direct effect on my husband and me, as well as the millions of other people out there upon whose rights and freedoms Trump and Pence intend to trample. If you intend to vote for them, you should be aware exactly what you’re voting for.
Choose wisely.
