For anyone who is yet unaware, Mike Pence, Indiana's governor, is Donald Trump's vice-presidential running mate on the Republican ticket. As someone who has lived in Indiana for my entire life, I can very easily explain why that is a Very Bad Thing. If I'm being completely honest, Mike Pence scares me more than Donald Trump does, and there are tons of reasons for why that is.
Mike Pence is the governor who signed Indiana Senate Bill 101, also known as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, into law in 2015. This law made it possible for privately-owned businesses to deny business to LGBT people for "religious reasons." Many Hoosiers, myself included, considered this to be discrimination, and there was enough protesting to eventually force Pence to add an amendment that was intended to protect against discrimination. The fact that Pence signed this bill into law in the first place is outrageous, but his disgusting behavior doesn't end there.
This year, Pence signed House Bill 1337, which created many exhausting stipulations for both abortion providers and those seeking abortions. It required women to inter or cremate the aborted fetuses, meaning that they could not donate them to science. This was the main point behind Indiana University suing over the bill. There were many reasons that people were outraged by this bill being signed into law, but I won't really go into those. Besides, I already wrote an article about a rally I went to protesting the bill, so I've made it clear for months that I am very firmly against it.
Mike Pence has a lot of problematic beliefs. He doesn't believe in implicit bias, he claimed that smoking doesn't kill, and he has some pretty ridiculous thoughts about condoms. He's so far to the right on his absurd thoughts and beliefs that he actually refutes science at nearly every turn, and that is not something we should want from a vice-presidential nominee.
All in all, there is an overarching reason that Mike Pence should not be the Vice President of the United States: he has done terrible things for Indiana as our governor, so why should he be promoted? When we were all chanting "Fire Mike Pence," we didn't mean "Promote him to the second-highest office in the nation." When we were chanting "Pence must go," we didn't mean that he should go to D.C. or the White House. Those of us who are from Indiana can show you who Mike Pence really is, so I hope that this was enlightening.