Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence, who will speak to the GOP convention tonight, regularly condemned adultery on his radio show, asking at one point whether it had become “an antiquated sin no longer en vogue in America.”
“You get this sense in the mainstream media that the trouble is discomfort with adultery, does that trouble anybody else?” said Pence on his 1997 radio program. “I mean, is adultery no longer a big deal in Indiana and in America? Because I for one believe that the seventh commandment contained in the Ten Commandments is still a big deal.”
Pence is on the Republican ticket with Donald Trump who has been married three times, and who has admitted he had numerous affairs during his previous marriages.
“I maintain that other than promises that we make of fidelity in our faith, the promises that we make to our spouses and to our children, the promises that we make in churches and in synagogues and marriage ceremonies around this, it’s the most important promise you’ll ever make,” said Pence. “And holding people accountable to those promises and holding people accountable to respecting the promises that other people make, I, to me, what could possibly be a bigger deal than that in this country?”
Pence did not make clear how to “hold people accountable” for cheating on their spouse. He made the comments after U.S. Air Force Lt. Kelly Flynn had received a general discharge despite having been accused of two adulterous affairs.
In another program Pence said, ““I think it’s time for the media and our leaders to get real and start telling the truth about the impact of adultery on our national life.”
The Republican Platform adopted this year has a variety of moral positions, including opposing abortion rights for women, declaring porn “a public health crisis,” supporting “conversion therapy” for gay teenagers, opposing marriage equality and transgender rights, and supporting the bible being taught as literature in public schools, but it does not hold people accountable to the seventh commandment or mention opposition to adultery.