LGBTQ Advocates in Georgia Greet Mike Pence with Rainbow Flags

by HRC Staff

Vice President Mike Pence marched in the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Savannah, Georgia, where scores of attendees turned out with rainbow pride flags to defiantly call out Mike Pence’s long track record of attacking LGBTQ people.

Post submitted by Hayley Miller, former HRC Associate Director of Digital and Social

On Saturday, Vice President Mike Pence marched in the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Savannah, Georgia, where scores of attendees turned out with rainbow pride flags to defiantly call out Mike Pence’s long track record of attacking LGBTQ people.

In 2015, Pence notoriously passed a “license to discriminate” bill to allow Indiana businesses to deny service to LGBTQ people -- and subsequently defended the bill over an outcry from the business community and a majority of Hoosier voters. In an infamous interview with ABC shortly after the bill’s passage, Pence dodged eight times answering a direct question about whether the bill enabled discrimination against LGBTQ people.

Pence also opposes marriage equality and Department of Education guidelines supporting transgender students. When serving in Congress, he voted against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, calling it a “radical social agenda.”

Pence’s antipathy toward LGBTQ people is well known. The New Yorker reported an internal conversation last year in which Donald Trump reportedly “joked” about Mike Pence wanting to hang LGBTQ people.