Former Vice President Mike Pence is not what you would call a “funny” man. As proof, look no further than the “joke” he made about Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg at the annual Gridiron Club dinner on Saturday, according to The Washington Post.
“When Pete’s two children were born, he took two months’ maternity leave whereupon thousands of travelers were stranded in airports, the air traffic system shut down, and airplanes nearly collided on our runways.” The punchline: “Pete is the only person in human history to have a child and everyone else gets postpartum depression.”
While you recover from the fits of laughter Pence inspired, here’s how Buttigieg’s husband, Chasten, responded on Twitter:
The White House has called on Pence to apologize. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that the “homophobic joke about Secretary Buttigieg was offensive and inappropriate, all the more so because he treated women suffering from postpartum depression as a punchline.”
Both Buttigieg and Jean-Pierre are right to call out Pence, whose remarks are par for the course for him as far as the homophobia goes. But it’s Pence’s posture as a champion of the family that is even more galling in light of this gag-worthy gag.
Pence is what’s often still referred to as a “family values” Republican — a euphemistic description of the view that sees anything but a patriarchal nuclear family as a sin. In the name of said “family values,” Republicans like Pence demonize anyone who falls outside so-called “traditional” family bounds. Hence the reference to Buttigieg taking “maternity” leave, despite both him and his husband being men.
Pence’s bid for the White House, like most of his Republican opponents, includes the promotion of “parental rights.” That’s a bloodless way of saying the state should be able to blanket over racism in American history, ostracize trans children and their parents, and threaten anyone who disagrees with…
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