Jennifer Lawrence Takes Mike Pence to Task Over Conversion Therapy

Jennifer Lawrence has chilled out a little since the peak of her self-deprecating relatable-girl interview era, but she can still be relied upon to deliver some key zingers when it matters. On Saturday, for example, Lawrence delivered a speech at the GLAAD Awards in New York City in which she made her disdain for former Vice President Mike Pence very obvious. “He’s in New York tonight... receiving a Kid’s Choice Award for weirdest dick,” she told the audience, breaking into laughter. “I didn’t write that one.”

“Hi gays,” was how Lawrence, who was attending the GLAAD event to honor queer country star Orville Peck, began her speech. “I love seeing so many humans who can top their field while still being power bottoms.”

“I love the gay community. In fact, I was in love with a homosexual. I tried to convert him for years, but now I know conversion therapy doesn’t work,” she said. “Did you hear me, Mike Pence? I said conversion therapy isn’t real, even though I know you think it worked on you.”

Pence, who said earlier this year that he would not endorse Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, has made no secret of his lack of respect for the LGBTQ community. Pence reportedly backed funding for conversion therapies such as “reparative therapy” or “sexual orientation change efforts.”

Conversion therapy practices have been found to be ineffective and dangerous and have been dismissed by every mainstream mental health and medical organization, for decades, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

Pence also said last summer that he believes allowing transgender Americans to serve in the military “erodes unit cohesion in a very unique way.” Pence also said in 2023 that it’s his view that gender affirming care for trans youth has “profound negative effects.”

Lawrence remained mum on politics for most of her meteoric ascent as an actress, but in the aftermath of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, Lawrence told Vogue that she “can’t fuck with people who aren’t political anymore. You live in the United States of America. You have to be political. It’s too dire. Politics are killing people.”

Lawrence grew up in a conservative Republican household, she told the magazine, but her views eventually evolved as she observed the huge gap between the extremely wealthy and the not-as-fortunate in America and other countries.

Having a son also radicalized her, she told Vogue. “I’m raising a little boy who is going to go to school one day,” Lawrence said. “Guns are the number-one cause of death for children in the United States. And people are still voting for politicians who receive money from the NRA. It blows my mind.”

Jennifer Lawrence and Kim Kardashian West Play ‘Who’d You Rather’: Donald Trump or Kim Jong-un?

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