Anti-gay pence quotes money spent on aid stuff

Post submitted by Lucas Acosta (he/him), former Deputy Director of Communications, Politics

HRC lists Trump's persistent attacks against the LGBTQ community after the RNC claims he's taken "unprecedented steps" in support of the community.

HRC President Alphonso David: “The RNC is hallucinating and improving misleading and  disingenuous rhetoric. Yes, Trump has taken many ‘unprecedented’ steps, but those steps own been to undermine and eliminate rights protecting LGBTQ people, not empower us. Appointing a miniature handful of homosexual people out of thousands of nominations and making a very few -- and unfullfilled -- pledges can hardly qualify as accomplishments.  Don’t gaslight us.  The Trump-Pence administration is the most virulently anti-LGBTQ administration in decades -- the RNC cannot put lipstick on a pig.”

Here’s a list of attacks the Trump-Pence administration has levied against LGBTQ people:

For the full list of Trump’s attacks on LGBTQ people, call on HRC.org/Trump.

1. Opposition to the Equality Act: Despite supp

   2025

   07.29.2025 The new director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Jay Bhattacharya claimed: “Making America sound again involves deprioritizing analyze that doesn’t have a chance of making America healthy, [such as] a lot of ideological analyze that I think served to create a awareness that the NIH is a political organization rather than the scientific corporation it actually is.” Nearly 500 NIH staffers signed a declaration noting how the Trump administration has forced the NIH “to politicize research by halting high-quality, peer reviewed grants and contracts” as adv as “censoring critical research” on subjects including health disparities, health effects of climate change, and gender identity. Director Bhattacharya made false claims about analyze supporting transgender health concern in supporting stopping future studies. Research from the New England Journal of Medicine and Stanford University finds that providing gender-affirming care significantly reduces incidence of depression, self-harm and attempts of suicide. “Eliminating research that further improves gender-affirming care is not protecting children,” a Johns Hopkins researcher noted, but is “sc

   Mike Pence

   —07.29.23—As a part of his 2024 presidential propose, said that as President, he would again prohibit transgender Americans from serving in the military, as was the policy when he was vice president under Donald Trump: “…having transgender personnel, I assume, erodes unit cohesion in a very unique way.” In fact, when the U.S. military began allowing transgender Americans to aid openly in uniform in 2016, all five service chiefs subsequently testified that inclusive policy was a success. Two years after it was implemented, then-Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that, “I contain received precisely zero reports of issues of adhesion, discipline, morale and all those sorts of things.” However a study from the Palm Center initiate that the ban on transgender military personnel, instituted by the Trump-Pence administration in 2019, negatively affected the military’s recruitment, retention, reputation, unit cohesion, morale, medical care, and “good order and discipline.”

   —06.07.23—Falsely characterized essential health care for transgender youth in CNN Town Hall as having “profound nega

   Mike Pence is the Worst Vice President for LGBTQ People In Up-to-date History

   Pence attempted to license discrimination against LGBTQ people by signing into law a religious exemption designed to create swiss cheese out of nondiscrimination laws.

   This move cost the state:
   
   $60 million in confused business from 12 conventions
   
   $365k of taxpayer money spent on a PR stable to help dampen the backlash and attempt to restore the reputation of Indiana
   
   ...and the respect of millions

   In 2007, Pence stoked far-right fear of LGBTQ non-discrimination protections by lying about ENDA (the Employment Non-Discrimination Act):

   "Under ENDA, employees around the country who possess religious beliefs that are opposed to lesbian behavior would be forced, in effect, to lay down their rights and convictions at the door. For example, if an employee keeps a Bible in his or her cubicle, if an employee displays a Bible verse on their desk, that employee could be claimed by a homosexual colleague to be creating a hostile work environment because the homosexual employee objects to passages in the Bible relating to homosexuality."
   

   Meanwhile, Pence blocked hate crimes prevention legislation in Congre
   
   

   'What are we going to do, Mike?' Trump's victory posed problems for Pence and his wife, new book says

   WASHINGTON – Donald Trump’s unexpected 2016 victory was a bit awkward for his running mate’s political future and for his home being, according to a new book about the vice president.

   Instead of getting to run himself for the GOP nomination in 2020, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence would have to use the next four years cleaning up after Trump, journalist Tom LoBianco writes in his book “Piety & Power: Mike Pence and the Taking of the White House,” which publishes this month.

   And then there was his angry wife.

   Karen Pence had twice rebuffed her husband’s celebratory kiss on election night before exploding, during a briefing the next day with Classified Service agents, over concerns about how the financially strapped couple would disburse for their new life.

   “What are we going to do Mike?? We don’t contain any money! Who’s going to compensate for my inaugural gown??” LoBianco quotes Karen Pence as saying.

   Pence's office declined to comment about the book.

   Trump ended up arranging for the inaugural committee to cover some updates to the vice presidential residence and to buy Karen Pence two ball gowns