Top LGBT group targets Pence in new campaign

The nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights organization is launching a campaign effort to “expose” Vice President Pence’s views on the LGBTQ community.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) on Thursday released “The Real Mike Pence,” a report and video series on “the most powerful and least scrutinized Vice President in American history.”

“Mike Pence has made a career out of attacking the rights and equal dignity of LGBTQ people, women and other marginalized communities. Now as vice president, he poses one of the greatest threats to equality in the history of our movement,” HRC President Chad Griffin said in a statement.

“With the world distracted by Donald Trump’s scandal-ridden White House, Mike Pence’s nefarious agenda has been allowed to fly under the radar for too long.”

{mosads} The report examines Pence’s history on LGBTQ issues and legislation.

As Indiana governor, Pence signed a religious freedom law that was criticized as a pathway to legal anti-LGBTQ discrimination, it notes, adding that as a congressman, Pence supported a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage.

According to the report, Pence took to the floor of the House in 2007 to insist that hate crime laws “serve no practical purpose.”

It also highlights Pence’s record on HIV and AIDS care, including his advocacy for abstinence-only sexual education programs.

The report details how his cuts to public funding as governor “helped fuel the worst outbreak of HIV and AIDS in the state’s history” with the closing of a local Planned Parenthood clinic — the only HIV testing site in the county.

“This is just another politically-motivated attack on the VP by a left-wing organization closely aligned with the Democratic Party,”  Pence press secretary Alyssa Farah told Politico.

President Trump once joked that Pence “wants to hang” all gay people, The New Yorker reported in October.

Last weekend, more than 2,000 people attended the first gay pride festival held in Pence’s hometown of Columbus, Ind.