Pence, our Dear Vice-President (in charge of controlling the Vices) is a radical Christianist.
Like radical Islamists, he believes that the values, politics and laws of countries (even where most people don't accept his interpretations) should be based on the sex roles that prevailed thousands of years ago in nomadic herding communities. Perhaps coincidentally, it is in those types of ancient communities that we find women's rights to have been the very worst.
Never mind. You knew all that, and so did those right-wing fundamentalists who voted for Trump at least partly because Pence is his wing-man.
A recent Washington Post article on Karen Pence, "the Second Lady," tells us that Karen is opposed to lesbian and gay rights, that he is the power behind Mike's throne or perhaps part of the melted unity that makes the couple with two faces: : Mike's clean, sunny and tight-lipped public face, and Karen's private face: deep in devout prayer trance, but behind closed doors.
I am mean today. That's because the WaPo article is a complete summary of a certain kind of Christian patriarchal marriage where the husband is the head but the wife is the neck which turns the head, though always from behind the stage and with proper indirectness and submission and never in a way which would let her step out of her Old Testament role.
Anyway. The article mentions that in 2002
Mike Pence told the Hill that he never eats alone with a woman other than his wife and that he won’t attend events featuring alcohol without her by his side, either.And the social media exploded! I detest that sentence because it just means that various people tweeted or wrote about that principle as a serious roadblock for women's advancement in the labor force, were it generally adopted. It would serve to keep any top positions which are today held by men that way for almost forever.
This is true. But those who believe that women are such impossible sexual sirens to resist, even when they are talking accounts or political projects, have brethren in other religions. Indeed, the conservative Islam's arguments for sex segregation are based precisely on the same tenet: That women and men cannot mix without immediately engaging in a giant mass orgy and then the society will collapse!
Pence's 2002 views are more moderate, because he sees the danger in only eating alone with other women than his wife*. But the theoretical basis is identical, as you can see from this National Review column by David French on the religious principles the Pences uphold:
Everything is sex, women's bodies are about sex, people cannot meet as people, and what with the desired patriarchal power structures, it is women who must suffer from the necessary restrictions on men and women mingling.
French didn't write that last sentence. I did, because it is an obvious corollary to the principles he describes.
But he does write that the chasm between his views and the views of the left are unbridgeable, and I agree. He takes orders from Mr. Penis, it seems, and firmly believes that we are all similarly under the magical powers of our genitals.
I believe that he is wrong. But if he is correct about himself and Mike Pence, then shouldn't that lead to a very different interpretation about who it is who should be kept out of the labor market and places of power and anywhere women might be?
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* Perhaps not only while having lunch or dinner in a busy restaurant? Would he mind going to a female physician? A female dentist? A female therapist? And would he consider hiring a female aide who might have to travel with him or be in an office alone with him? I doubt it.
These views logically tend towards the segregation of the sexes and the not-hiring of women by religious conservative men.
An ironic and hilarious aside: The Independent Women's Forum, the gals' auxiliary to right-wingnuttery, has given Mike Pence an award:
“The award recognizes an individual who values free markets, works to create a more dynamic and innovative work world, and celebrates the valuable contributions women make to society,” the IWF said in a press release. Which just screams Mike Pence, right? Right.
This is what Mike Pence just did for all the poor women who depend on Planned Parenthood for their gynecological care.