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| Mark Harris |
From Right Wing Watch:
Karen Pence, wife of Vice President Mike Pence, spent time this week in North Carolina campaigning for Mark Harris, a right-wing pastor who upset incumbent Rep. Robert Pittinger in the GOP primary in May.
Karen Pence was seemingly brought in to help Harris deal with fallout from recent controversy over comments Harris had made about women, such as emphasizing Bible verses requiring women to submit to their husbands and questioning whether women having careers is “healthy” for society. WFAE reported that “Pence came to Charlotte as the guest of the Women for Mark Harris Bus Tour,” which kicked off at the University of North Carolina’s Charlotte campus on Monday morning.
. . . Harris is a member of the Family Research Council’s “Watchmen on the Wall” network who wants to push his extreme opposition to abortion rights and LGBT equality into law. One of his “staunchest supporters,” according to the Christian Broadcasting Network, is Christian nationalist David Lane, who has made it a priority to recruit conservative evangelical pastors to run for office.
As we noted after his primary win:
Not surprisingly, Harris has a track record of opposing LGBTQ equality and abortion rights. Harris was an ally of the anti-LGBTQ Benham brothers in opposition to a Charlotte nondiscrimination law, and he was a driving force behind the campaign that put a ban on same-sex couples getting married into the state constitution; his First Baptist Church contributed more than $50,000 to the campaign. Harris, who says being gay is “a choice,” has said the anti-equality amendment was not about discrimination but about “standing up for the values and principles that have been a part of the fabric of American society.”
In August, Media Matters unearthed video of Harris bemoaning, “We have watched in one generation where homosexuality was once criminalized to now we see the criminalization of Christianity.”
Let me guess about Mrs. Pence's participation in his campaign. She felt compelled because Harris reminded her so much of her husband.