A rainbow banner shouting ‘Make America Gay Again‘ now takes pride of place outside US Vice-President Mike Pence‘s Aspen holiday house. His friendly neighbourinos hung the banner on a stone pillar between the driveways of their two homes earlier this week.
And we’re not taking the piss with the phrase “friendly neighbourinos“: they’re actually wholesome as fuck – according to Pitkin County Sheriff’s Deputy Michael Buglione, they took chili and corn muffins to the deputies and Secret Service assembled on the driveway.
One of County’s Sheriff Joe DiSalvo‘s deputies was apparently outside the Pence home when the banner was first displayed.
DiSalvo says:
He was real sheepish and thought he might be confronted by the Secret Service or deputies who’d tell him he couldn’t do it.
When they said, ‘We’re not here to control your free speech rights,’ they came out with chili and began feeding them.
They’ve been really nice to us.
Shannon Slade told an Aspen Times reporter in an email that the rainbow banner was “hung by the daughters of the couple who live in the home, and one of their girlfriends (I’m one of them!) with the full support of their parents“.
Pence has a pretty shitty track record when it comes to LGBTIQA issues. In 2007, he opposed the introduction of a workplace anti-discrimination law on the basis of freedom of religion. In 2010, he was against the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ in the military, describing it as “a backdrop for social experimentation“. Just last year, Pence totally rejected Obama‘s directive for school districts to allow students to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with.
Oh, and in 2006, he supported a John Howard-style constitutional amendment which would have defined marriage as between a man and a woman: “Societal collapse was always brought about following an advent of the deterioration of marriage and family.”
Pence and his family have been staying in Aspen since Tuesday, and are expected to head off tomorrow.
