Testing Your Vocabulary; Saving Your Democracy; Interferepence July 17, 2016July 18, 2016 This is just fun. About three minutes. How many English words do you know? Mike Pence is deeply religious. Wonderful. Nothing in the Democratic platform would interfere with his right to live as he wants. But his agenda deeply interferes with women’s lives — he would not allow them to control their own bodies — and deeply interferes with my own. He would deny my right to full equality. He would forbid my marrying the person I love. He even favored diverting money from HIV/AIDS prevention in order to fund “conversion therapy.” Better, in his view, to try to change people’s sexual orientation* than try to prevent the spread of AIDS. Welcome to the Republican ticket. In the words of Esquire‘s Charles Pierce, “This Isn’t Funny Anymore. American Democracy Is At Stake.“ Click here. *Can you imagine changing your sexual orientation? Or wanting to? Even back when more than a few gays desperately did want to — so great was the stigma and discrimination — it turned out to be basically impossible. There are so many examples of this, but one I remember best (having written it), is the story of Mitchell Adams, who signed up for literally hundreds of therapy sessions, some including electroshock, to no avail. It turned out, all he needed to do to have a happy, productive life was stop trying to change. Yes, there are some who claim to have “changed.” But often they wind up changing back. E.g.: “The so-called ex-gay movement was left in shambles when Exodus International announced it was shutting down and the group’s leader, Alan Chambers, publicly apologized for the harm it had caused LGBT people over the years for insisting they could be turned straight.”