Editor’s note: This op-ed was written by Vice President Mike Pence. It was faithfully re-printed from the ancient biblical scroll it was sent to our offices on without any changes.
My Fellow (Hopefully White, Straight, Christian) Americans,
It has come to my attention that a news story has broken about our president saying some mean things about my religious beliefs in the past. The implications in the president’s jokes are that I am a backwards theocratic man who wants to punish people who don’t live their lives according to my own religious beliefs. In particular, there has been a rather big backlash over a joke Mr. Trump made that would seem to imply I want to kill gay people like we could do back in the Bible Times, but that is simply not true. We’ll get to that later though.
First, in case you have not been fully briefed on the situation, I will give you a couple of excerpts from a New Yorker profile on yours truly, and then you should be all caught up on what we’re going to be discussing. The story in the magazine relays a time that the president and I were discussing issues with a legal scholar during the transition from the Black Administration to ours, and that the president mocked my social conservatism.
First he mocked my pro-life beliefs.
“You see?” Trump asked Pence. “You’ve wasted all this time and energy on it, and it’s not going to end abortion anyway.” (The New Yorker)
And then he mocked my anti-gay marriage stance.
When the conversation turned to gay rights, Trump motioned toward Pence and joked, “Don’t ask that guy—he wants to hang them all!” (The New Yorker)
First of all, let me just say how much it hurts my feelings what the president said. Doesn’t anyone look out for the feelings of older, white, conservative Christian males anymore? I mean, besides the Republican Party, Fox News, and conservative media, of course. Who else besides those monoliths defends my right to be offended by butt stuff? But more importantly than all of that, let me reiterate how very wrong the president would be to assume I want to literally execute the gays.
I don’t want to literally kill the LGBTQ community, or anyone else for that matter. I get that no matter how tempting it would be to live our lives as if 2017 years haven’t passed since the Bible Times and now, we can’t. Because there are just too many triggered snowflake cucks out there acting all, like, “Wahhh, the government shouldn’t discriminate against citizens. Wahh! The Constitution doesn’t allow for religious laws!”
So I know better than anyone we have to soften our tactics, and perhaps change our aims, when it comes to issues we social conservatives know matter most.
Categorically, under no uncertain terms, let me reiterate it again — I do not want to literally kill gay people. I do want to do it legally and metaphorically, though. And now let me spend a few hundred words condescending to you while spewing word salad intended to point out what the difference between those things is, if you don’t mind.
You see, I don’t want our courts to recognize homosexuals as an equal class of citizens, full stop. It’s really that simple. At the end of the day, what I’m trying to do is set our courts up so that they take into account Old Testament Bible verses more than modern day constitutional law, and especially the 14th Amendment. Some compare me to the Taliban in that regard, and that comparison is totally false. Because I’m Christian, not Muslim. So, that’s, like, way totally different and stuff.
What I’m aiming for is a society where gay people have no rights, not really anyway. I’ll say stuff like, “No one deserves special treatment” about the issue in order to frame it like what they’re asking for is to be treated differently when it’s the total opposite. What I’d prefer is for whenever a homosexual goes before the court, the judge look that homosexual right in the eyes and say, “Sorry, Homosexual, but under American Constitutional Law, you have no standing here. Because despite what the First Amendment might imply, freedom of speech and expression does not apply to butt stuff.”
Mmm. I just typed butt stuff…
Wait. Where was I? What were we…oh right, how I don’t really want to kill the gays in a literal sense.
We live in a nation of laws, and all I want to do is make it so the laws completely ignore the rights of homosexuals. I want to do that because I want to honor and serve my interpretation of what God wants for us. And the cool part is, that since we live in a country that gives over-deference to spiritual beliefs, if you try to stop me, I will play the victim and say YOU are infringing on MY rights. Isn’t that swell? I sure do think so.
I just don’t see what the big deal about telling a doctor they can deny homosexuals surgery, or county clerks can deny homosexuals a marriage license even if they’re adults really is. In each of those cases, we’d be asking grown adults to set aside their beliefs in unproven mythologies in order to treat other grown adults with even a modicum of respect. If that sounds like America, you need to find God, you evil human beings!
In the end, I simply prefer a society where gay people have no inherent rights to be gay, all while clutching to my inherent right to believe they shouldn’t exist. Is that the same wanting to kill them, if I simply want to shape society in a way that that ignores their existence, therefore making them for all intents and purposes dead?
That’s up to you decide, my fellow Americans.
Go With God Or Else,
Vice-President Mike Pence
Also written by Mike Pence:
