Mike Pence, Donald Trump's running mate, opposed a proposed bill in 2009 that sought to promote gay rights abroad.

Pence served in the House of Representatives for ten years prior to being elected governor of Indiana.

According to the Washington Blade, Pence opposed a bill that sought to extend benefits to the partners of gay employees at the State Department. The House draft of the 2010-2011 Foreign Relations Authorization Act also required the agency to report attacks on the LGBT community and to “encourage the governments of other countries to reform or appeal laws of such countries criminalizing homosexuality or consensual homosexual conduct.”

While the measure failed, Pence backed an amendment that sought to delete the bill's pro-gay language.

Then-Representative Pence said that the proposal was unworkable because it would “tie the hands” of American diplomats by “mandating that they make sexual orientation a foreign policy priority regardless of other national security considerations.”

He added that he's opposed to laws that criminalize sex between consenting adults of the same sex.

Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton extended some benefits to gay employees in the State Department working abroad in 2009. During her tenure at the department, Clinton supported numerous LGBT initiatives.

Brandon Lorenz, a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation's largest LGBT rights advocate, told the paper that while Pence worked “to undermine LGBTQ equality abroad in Congress” Clinton, as secretary of state, “went before the international community to declare that 'gay rights are human rights,' launched the Global Equality Fund and pioneered the first-ever UN resolution protecting LGBTQ people.”