Here's the problem with such a bill - these women being victimized by it are likely not able to access or afford contraception at all, thanks to ass - clowns who under Big Pharma's employ like Pence enjoy the ability to villainously price - gouge life - saving and life - protecting resources, such as that of contraception pills. There's nothing protecting these women or allowing them to make the choice to not have kids, due to how abortion is treated in places like Indiana. Pence is just another in a long line of Bible-thumping shit-stains that needs to die out, already, just as badly as the SJWs need to shut the fuck up and disappear already.
Yeah, this is the big issue. Abortion is endlessly debatable (don't fuck up this thread with an abortion debate) but if you don't believe in the personhood of a foetus, then the state's right to tell you how to handle it ends there. Evangelical neocons like Pence are the worst element of the Republican party (even Ghost thinks this was a deal by the establishment) precisely
because they keep bloating government in order to enforce their religious views on the general public.
It's important to see the types of things Pence did as governor and understand them from a "freedom-for-all" perspective. Let's examine the difference between two things Pence did as governor and why one stands out as showing his truest colours...a Bush-era evangelical statist and nowhere near a conservative.
1. Constitutional ban on gay marriage
As late as 2006, Gov. Pence pushed for a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. They term this "defining marriage as one man and one woman", but it has the practical effect of excluding gays from a bureaucratic rig that, alas, has become essential to function on an equal footing in today's economy. Pence misses the mark here even by conservative standards. It's not very conservative of him to create a definition in the constitution for something that was never there in the first place. Additionally, this would be the only amendment that serves the purpose of
restricting citizen's rights rather than expanding them. The last and only time that ever happened was Prohibition, and we all know what a disaster that was.
As usual, more government is the problem, not the solution. A federal marriage amendment moves marriage from the states into the federal government, creating yet another problem that never existed in the first place; state-sanctioned discrimination against gays and lesbians. They can no longer benefit from a government tangle that shouldn't even exist. Straight people remain unaffected. Life goes on for everyone else. You're passing something to bitch at gay people, drive them out of the country, and create massive brain-drain as their friends and family follow suit. Unnecessary federal law fucks something up, what a surprise.
The conservative solution? Get government out of marriage in the first place and replace it with property contracts. Gov. Pence failed here by using Congress to whine about the fact that he doesn't want to see two men holding hands in the street, rather than defending the notion and legal tradition of small government that has made America a diverse superpower. Sorry to say it, but no amount of legislation will erase gays from existence. You're rather liberal to think that the government would be a particularly effective way of doing that in the first place.
2. RFRA (then waffling on RFRA)
RFRA, or the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, was a bill touted at protecting the rights of Christian private business owners to run their establishment as they see fit. This is
not an anti-gay bill, but the left would have you believe that. It merely recused the state from interfering in the affairs of private business; arguably a noble endeavour. When understanding freedom in a constitutional sense, it's important to recall that business owners have as much right to run their shop as they see fit, as gays have to live their personal lives unaffected by government. Liberals created the false dichotomy between gay rights and business owners' rights, because they don't particularly understand that just because your business
shouldn't discriminate, doesn't mean it should be forced not to discriminate.
Where did RFRA fail? RFRA failed by specifically targeting Christian shop owners and their objections against gays, rather than pushing for a general law that rejects all post-1960s civil rights legislation and allows businesses to turn away or hire absolutely anyone they see fit (regardless of religious objection or anything else). Alas, politics is often a game of "death by a thousand cuts", so I can probably excuse it there as a general move toward business freedom. But what does Gov. Pence do when the backlash mounts? Rather than explaining this...he waffles rather than standing on this principle! Did he even
sign this on that principle, or did he sign it because he hates those goddamn queers, and now all the money's going away? Guess he wasn't lying when he said he was a Christian first. That's going to be his thinking pattern in any position of authority.
The conservative solution? Skip RFRA and have the balls to say that no matter what your ideology, as a private establishment you have the right to serve and hire whoever you see fit. Cherry-picking your cause and then
waffling on it kind of shows me you're more concerned about fucking over gays than you are upholding this value.
There are so many other problems with Mike Pence that I can point out. His support for TPP. His support for amping up the drug war. His support for the flag desecration amendment.
Shit-talking Trump and then becoming his VP. And good luck solving the woman problem Trump has with his abortion stances, my personal views on abortion aside. Pence is your usual bureaucrat, a thoroughly unprincipled person who puts his religion/personal ideology above all else, including our very constitutional notion of personal liberty. He's a terrible pick as one heartbeat or impeachment away from the presidency, and with Trump's no-nonsense attitude, Trump stands a pretty good chance of getting fucked over even by his own party. If you loved George W. Bush, his big-government religious statism, and his utter evisceration of the economy, then I guess you'd find Pence to be a great replacement president. If it wasn't Hillary running on the other side, I'd seriously be forced to reconsider voting Trump, but at the end of the day, it's still pretty damn hard to be worse than a Clinton.
