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August 28, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — Former vice president Joe Biden’s presidential campaign has a new online ad attacking current Vice President Mike Pence for his support of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), while neglecting to mention that Biden himself had supported the same law before the Democrat Party moved farther to the left on LGBT issues.

The ad flashes comparisons between Pence’s stances and those of Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.). Among the slides is that Harris has been “marrying same sex couples since 2004,” whereas Pence “supported the Defense of Marriage Act.”

What the ad fails to mention is that earlier in his career, Biden also supported DOMA, which protect states’ right not to recognize same-sex “marriages” and defined marriage as a monogamous heterosexual union for the purposes of federal law.

“We already have a law, the Defense of Marriage Act,” then-senator Biden said in a 2006 interview with Meet the Press. “We’ve all voted — not, where I’ve voted, and others have said, look, marriage is between a man and a woman and states must respect that. Nobody’s violated that law, there’s been no challenge to that law. Why do we need a constitutional amendment? Marriage is between a man and a woman.”

Other comparisons listed in the ad are that Harris “fought against the ‘gay/trans panic’” (how is not specified) while Pence “opposed the use of Obama-era guidance for Transgender students under Title X” and that Harris “declined to defend Prop 8” (the 2008 California constitutional amendment that defined marriage as between a man and a woman), while Pence “voted against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.”

The conflict underscores how muddled the political battle lines have become on LGBT issues in recent years. While traditional conservatives cite Biden’s abandonment of DOMA as yet another example of him and the Democrat Party growing steadily more radical, more libertarian or moderate Republicans have attacked Biden for his original position rather than for changing it in an effort to reframe the GOP as pro-LGBT.

“President Trump is the most pro-gay president in American history,” declared Richard Grenell, a homosexual Republican and former acting director of National Intelligence (DNI) and ambassador to Germany. The president endorsed Grenell’s characterization of him, calling it “my great honor.”

While the Trump administration has been consistently pro-life, supportive of religious liberty and conscience rights, and largely conservative on transgenderism, Trump himself supports same-sex “marriage,” and his record has been more mixed on homosexuality and recognition of LGBT “pride.” Pence, by contrast, is a staunch social conservative who shares Trump’s pro-life convictions while also holding to his longstanding convictions on faith, marriage, and sexuality.