![mike penc on gays mike penc on gays](https://s2.r29static.com/bin/entry/ad6/0,0,3809,2000/x,80/1728759/image.jpg)
“It hits so directly at the heart of the right of LGBT people to exist,” said Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Gay rights groups say they’ve been vocal in their criticism of Pence on this issue - even if they acknowledge his record is not as clear as it is on other issues they care about - because so many in their community have been pressured to change who they are. "He's not saying that he supports conversion therapy bans. He's not saying that he opposes conversion therapy," Winterhof said. Gay rights advocates say if Pence wants to convince them he's opposed to the practice, he needs to denounce it. (The American Psychological Association says conversion therapy is typically promoted by those with close ties to religious groups and is “based on a view of homosexuality that has been rejected by all the major mental health professions.”) "He’s been abundantly clear on the matter.”īut Pence, who previously has suggested homosexuality is a choice, declined to say whether or not he believes conversion therapy has merit. Any reports to the contrary are patently false," spokeswoman Alyssa Farah said Thursday.
![mike penc on gays mike penc on gays](https://assets.teenvogue.com/photos/584073b78a1851540f7e53bd/16:9/w_1280,c_limit/GettyImages-624039768-fb.jpg)
![mike penc on gays mike penc on gays](https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/5a5fab971e0000d900c97d12.jpeg)
"The vice president has never supported conversion therapy and doesn’t support it now. Pence’s office says the campaign statement from 2000 indicated support for groups promoting “safe sexual practices.” “And if Mike Pence and his folks are asking the LGBTQ community and our allies to trust that he didn’t want to figure out another way to discriminate against us, our response to that is: `Hell no.’” “Mike Pence has spent his entire career figuring out ways to discriminate against our community,” Winterhof said. Plus, the meaning is clear in the context of Pence’s overall record, argues JoDee Winterhof, senior vice president for policy and political affairs at the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay rights organization. While Pence's office says he's been "abundantly clear" that he's never supported conversion therapy, the current debate centers on a nearly two-decade-old paragraph from the website of Pence’s 2000 campaign during his first successful bid for Congress.Īlthough the paragraph doesn’t use the words “conversion therapy,” gay rights groups say it’s language that both supporters and opponents of the practice would recognize as a clear reference. It's an issue that has been debated in news articles, Twitter and television interviews in recent days in a high-profile back-and-forth between Pence and gay Olympic figure skater Adam Rippon - a spat that included an unusual pushback from Pence, whose long record of being on the opposite side of issues important to the gay and lesbian community is otherwise undisputed. WASHINGTON - What is Vice President Mike Pence's position on the discredited practice of trying to change a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation through “ conversion therapy”?