#Pencementum — can you feel it? Apparently, no one but the fly

He still has some supporters. . . .

The irony is that the Insurrectionists tried to make him into a Democratic martyr.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/19/pence-flatlines-2024-499919

Which is a shame, because I'd vote for him in a heartbeat. Would have infinitely preferred him to Trump as the 2016/2020 candidate.

Also, the fly is a legend.

I'd vote for that fly.

I heard he secured ninety-eight billion votes in the Fly 2021 caucus. That's like, 6% of the fly demographic. He polled especially well amongst rural flies and flies that live near truck stops, as well as a surprising margin amongst garden flies (I suspect the amnesty-for-all-spiders policy touted by his opponent helped there, given how garden spiders are massacring garden flies.

I'd never vote for him, but I argued with my liberal friends a number of times that he was much, much less dangerous than trump.

LGBTQ+ rights are and will be in no danger unless a majority in Congress and most of the nation's courts suddenly flip to a homophobic nature. Just because Pence opposes something as a person doesn't mean that'd be reflected in his policy. I've not seen him advocate for actually removing legal protections, just making it clear he opposes them. I for one am in that boat. People are as free to live how they want as I am to call it out if I feel it's immoral.

Who better than the president to change the courts that way? The recent Supreme Court decision about Philadelphia foster care will reduce the chances of parents there of getting children -- and be echoed in practice around the country, keeping thousands more deserving parents from helping thousands more children in need.

If that was the Catholic foster care decision, then clearly you never read the brief. It was a 9-0 ruling for a clear and compelling reason. No LGBTQ+ rights were infringed upon.

The decision clears the path for discriminatory foster placement. The Supreme Court may not have said as much, but they gave a green light to faith-based organizations to do this. Here's what the Inky said about how it affected families:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210618214607/https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/foster-adoption-lgbtq-gay-same-sex-philly-bethany-archdiocese-20180313.html

No it doesn't. Nothing in that ruling affected nonreligious foster groups or anyone involved with foster care other than the Catholic service. Nobody is forced to put kids into that service or adopt from them.

The thing you folks miss is that this is a classic case of, "The right to swing my fist ends where the next nose begins." The right of Catholic adoption agencies to "swing their fist" (run their service within Church teaching) still stops at the "nose" of nonreligious services and people (who have no legal compunction to listen to anything Rome says or do business with these Catholic agencies).

If we get into a situation where the only foster services in the U.S are Catholic then I could see a need to do something, but that is a minute possibility.

We've been in a long slow shift towards privatizing many public services of this kind, so loopholes where religious providers get to choose who does and does not benefit start to add up.

According to this article https://www.heritage.org/civil-society/report/the-role-faith-based-agencies-child-welfare , "Catholic Charities alone provided adoption services to over 82,000 children from 2006–2016.7 These include different types of adoptions including infant, foster care, and inter-country. In 2016 alone, Catholic Charities agencies around the country served around 10,500 children through foster care and adoption services."

That's a lot of children -- a lot of families.

And finally, because the cookie crumbles both ways, an example of faith-based discrimination AGAINST Catholic foster parents:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/06/10/adoption-agencies-latest-front-religious-freedom-fight/1359072001/

The fists here are big, and the noses are unprotected.

Usually the VP is more extreme than the candidate to make the candidate more attractive to moderates. Trump bucked every trend and, in this on, bigly.

When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. And flies.