Lady Gaga calls Mike Pence anti-Christian for defending his wife's work at anti-LGBTQ school
Lady Gaga is slamming Vice President Mike Pence for defending his wife Karen’s new teaching position at a school that does not accept LGBTQ students.
While performing Saturday during her new residency at the Park Theater in Vegas, the longtime LGBTQ advocate said, “To Mike Pence, who thinks that it’s okay that his wife works at a school that bans LGBTQ, you’re wrong. You’re the worst representation of what it means to be a Christian.”
She added, “I am a Christian woman, and what I do know about Christianity is that we bear no prejudice and everybody is welcome. So you can take all that disgrace, Mr. Pence, and look yourself in the mirror and you’ll find it right there.”
We need more people like Gaga to not be afraid and to speak up. What she says here, thank you for using your voice @ladygaga #ENIGMA ?????????????????????????????? pic.twitter.com/kPmJim1VUp
— Kara (@gagaamour) January 20, 2019
Her comments come after Second Lady Karen Pence announced this week that she would return to teaching art at a conservative Bible school in the Washington, D.C., area. The school, Immanuel Christian School in Springfield, Virginia, requires that employees agree to a broad set of behavioral guidelines that explicitly discriminate against gay and transgender people.
The school’s employment applications ask applicants to affirm that marriage is “the uniting of one man and one woman” and that they will “maintain a lifestyle based on biblical standards of moral conduct” which precludes “homosexual or lesbian sexual activity” and “transgender identity.”
She did not confirm whether Pence signed the behavioral guidelines in the application. The language in the school’s application form was first reported by the Huffington Post.
Immanuel Christian School also did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
In response to the controversy surrounding his wife’s decision to work at the school, a spokeswoman for Pence described the outcry as ridiculous. “It’s absurd that her decision to teach art to children at a Christian school, and the school’s religious beliefs, are under attack,” Kara Brooks previously told PEOPLE.
Pence defended his wife’s decision on the Catholic news network EWTN in an interview that aired Thursday, saying “to see major news organizations attacking Christian education is deeply offensive to us.”
Pence previously worked at the school for 12 years. Her daughter Charlotte Pence attended as a child, according to the school’s website.
“I am excited to be back in the classroom and doing what I love to do, which is to teach art to elementary students,” she said in a statement, according to NBC. She previously stopped teaching at Immanuel Christian, when her husband left Congress to become governor of Indiana.
