Mike Pence first rose to the national stage during a crisis that pundits said had “exploded”, “plummeted” and “crumbled” his chances of representing the GOP in the next presidential election.

It was March 2015 and same-sex marriage was on the verge of becoming legal nationwide – carried by probably the swiftest change in public opinion in US history – but the Indiana governor and establishment favorite going into 2016 was standing firm.

The state’s residents, big business and the rest of the country had quickly turned against Pence for signing into law a religious freedom bill that was interpreted as state-sanctioned discrimination against LGBT people and a bad faith reaction to the legalization of same-sex marriage in Indiana against the governor’s wishes.

But today, as his party’s vice-presidential nominee, Pence’s name now sits just below Donald Trump’s on bumper stickers and placards stuck in front yards across the country.

On this ticket, Pence is the GOP’s steady pair of hands compared with the politically inexperienced Trump, but the impact of the religious freedom battle lingers, and his decades of anti-LGBT attitudes that preceded it remain.

“I have seen no growth, no change, no evidence of nuance,” said Sheila Suess Kennedy, an Indiana University professor who first met Pence as a guest on his radio show, which was broadcast from 1994 to 1999. Like Pence, Kennedy was the Republican candidate for an Indiana congressional seat, but she lost her 1980 race and has been an Indiana political insider ever since. “He is convinced that God doesn’t like gay people and that’s it.”

He is convinced that God doesn’t like gay people and that’s it. Sheila Suess Kennedy

Pence failed to win two congressional elections in 1988 and 1990 (his latter campaign is remembered as one of the nastiest in Indiana history) – but finally made it to the Capitol in 2000, where he began a 12-year congressional career defined by relentless conservatism. “I was Tea Party before it was cool,” he explained in 2011.



As a congressman, he advocated for a flat tax rate, defunding Planned Parenthood and defining marriage as an act between a man and a woman. In a 2006 speech to Congress, Pence cited a Harvard sociologist to make his case for defining marriage. “Societal collapse was always brought about following an advent of the deterioration of marriage and family,” Pence said.

This message was in keeping with his 2002 campaign platform. Pence wrote then that Congress should oppose same-sex marriage, oppose efforts to give LGBT people anti-discrimination protections and stop giving federal money to Aids/HIV groups that “celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus”.

A year later, Pence supported a controversial part of George W Bush’s program to fight Aids across the globe which specified that 33% of funds would be spent on abstinence and monogamy programs. The plan was enacted with the stipulation intact (this year, researchers found the $1.4bn spent on abstinence programs failed to change sexual behavior).

“The timeless values of abstinence and marital faithfulness before condom distribution are the cure for what ails the families of Africa,” Pence told Congress in 2003. “It is important that we not just send them money, but we must send them values that work.”

Three years earlier, in his 2000 campaign platform, Pence had even advocated for taxpayer money to be diverted from supporting groups providing critical HIV/Aids care to vulnerable people to “those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior”. This has been widely interpreted to refer to groups that provide controversial gay conversion therapy treatments, which have since been outlawed in five states.

Pence’s campaign did not respond to a request for clarity on his current position on gay conversion therapy, and there has been no evidence to suggest a shift in his views since 2000.

Pence has often said that he is “a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order”, and that Christian values message permeates his congressional record. But his convictions were never enough to drive successful legislation.

Of the 90 standalone bills he introduced in Congress, only 21 were agreed to by the House of Representatives and were “simple resolutions”, which do not have the power of a law and are often used to elect people to a committee or do things like name a room in the Capitol. “As far as I know, his entire tenure in Congress was being a cultural warrior,” said Kennedy.

But now, this “cultural warrior” is on the ticket with a Republican presidential nominee who has been married multiple times, opposes laws that permit discrimination against LGBT people (but also opposes same-sex marriage) and stopped being pro-choice sometime between 1999 and 2011.

Republican strategist Charlie Black, who served as a senior adviser to presidents Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush, said it is the vice-presidential nominee’s role to adopt the nominee’s positions – even if they are out of step with his own beliefs.

“Pence accepts Trump’s view, which is that Trump is open to all lifestyles and that Donald Trump is not going to try to legislate against anybody’s lifestyle,” said Black.

The Trump campaign and Indiana governor’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Black said that in this presidential election, the first since same-sex marriage was made legal nationwide, the party had to recognize the culture had changed to be more accepting of LGBT people.

“Even if some of us don’t agree with all of the public policies surrounding lifestyle issues, we accept it and we move on,” Black said. “It is our job to have goodwill toward everyone.”

He said Pence also had that attitude. “The courts, and the government, and the public has spoken on this and he [Pence] was a little behind the curve, that is all,” Black said.

Leslie Lenkowsky, who has known Pence for 20 years, agreed. He does not think Pence would say he discriminates against LGBT groups, but that his positions are firmly rooted in another time. “Small-town Indiana today was not small-town Indiana when Pence grew up,” Lenkowsky said.

“He’s defending those who he feels, whose voice he feels, doesn’t get sufficient attention in the national political debate,” said Lenkowsky, a professor of public affairs and philanthropic studies at Indiana University.

He's defending those … whose voice he feels doesn’t get sufficient attention in the national political debate Leslie Lenkowsky

But for some of Pence’s colleagues in the Indiana statehouse, Pence’s views toward the LGBT community have been harmful to its citizens. Democrat Tim Lanane, the state senate minority leader, said that while Pence is warm and cordial, he is “hostile” towards LGBT rights.

“It made Indiana look like we were backward, intolerant and that we sanctioned discrimination against people of the LGBT community,” said Lanane of the Religious Freedom Rights Act (RFRA) battle from March 2015.

LGBT rights campaigners saw this legislation as a response to same-sex marriage being made legal in Indiana in October 2014 through a surprise supreme court decision. Pence fuelled this feeling with an interview on ABC’s This Week where he was given six opportunities to say the RFRA was not meant to discriminate against LGBT people, but failed to do so.

“RIFRAs have become a symbol of the resentment of a certain slice of right-wing Christianity that feels its social hegemony and privileged cultural and political position slipping away,” wrote Steve Sanders, a professor of constitutional and family law at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, in a March 2016 blogpost.

The backlash was led by major businesses that threatened to cancel plans for expansion in Indiana, or leave the state completely, unless the bill were changed. Mayors of cities including Seattle and San Francisco called for a boycott of Indiana. Pence eventually amended the bill, but has failed to instill confidence that his internal beliefs had changed. “He’s done nothing to indicate a change of attitude on whether or not LGBT should be added to our protections,” Lanane said.

“I don’t think you could expect him to be very enthusiastic about championing those rights, however they might exist or play out on a federal level,” said Lanane.

The vice-presidential candidate’s role during a campaign is ultimately to reflect his running mate’s views. As such, Pence’s history has faded into the background.



“Trump does not have a problem with the LGBT community and never has,” said Black. “He’s always been very open about his views on it.

“So that’s now Mike’s obligation to reflect Trump’s views.”