Democratic Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has said that, if elected as US President, he plans to overturn anti-LGBT ‘religious freedom’ laws.

The Vermont Senator made the comments on Friday, about laws recently passed in states such as North Carolina and Mississippi, and which are planned in other states.

Speaking on The View, Sanders said: “As president of the United States, I would do everything I can do to overturn those outrageous decisions by Mississippi and North Carolina,”

“We have gone too far as a nation. God knows we have seen so much discrimination in our history,” he continued.

He added: “What we are trying to do is say, ‘You have your political views. That’s fine,’… But I hope we remember what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told us. You judge people on their character, not on the colour of their skin. And I would add to that not on their gender or sexual orientation.”

Noting that he previously voted against the Defence of Marriage Act (DOMA), passed in 1996, and which defined marriage as between one man and one woman.

He said: “I had the courage to vote the right way even when it was not necessarily popular”.

Sanders was criticised today, after he confirmed he will visit the Pope and lavished praise on him – just hours after the Catholic leader reaffirmed his Church’s actively homophobic stances.

Pope Francis today released a long-awaited report on ‘the family’ which was initially expected to relax teachings on sexuality – but actually reaffirmed all of the church’s actively anti-LGBT teachings.

However, just hours after the report came out Bernie Sanders told MSNBC he will go to the Vatican to see the Pope.