Actor attends awards to honour singer Orville Peck for contribution to LGBT+ community

Jennifer Lawrence roasted former US vice president Mike Pence for his alleged beliefs on conversion therapy at the 35th annual GLAAD Media Awards in New York last night.

The Hunger Games actor was attending the event to honour singer Orville Peck, 36, who received the Vito Russo Award. The Vito Russo award is given to an LGBT+ media professional with a significant contribution in accelerating acceptance for the community.

The 33-year-old actor started her monologue with a joke: “I love seeing so many humans who can top their field while still being power bottoms.”

Speaking about her love for the gay community, Lawrence said: “In fact, I was in love with a homosexual, it was my first love. I tried to convert him for years but now I know conversion therapy doesn’t work.”

“Did you hear me Mike Pence? I said conversion therapy isn’t real even though I know you think it worked on you,” she added.

“He’s in New York tonight. He’s receiving a Kid’s Choice Award for weirdest d***.”

Conversion therapy is a harmful practice that has been discredited widely by medical and mental health experts including the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association, that aims to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

Supporters of conversion therapy say that it can “repair” someone’s attraction to the same gender and turn someone “straight”.

Experts have said repeatedly that not only does conversion therapy not work, it can in fact cause severe harm, and lead to depression, drug use, homelessness, and suicide.

Medical associations have said the idea of conversion therapy worked on the idea that homosexuality is a disorder, an idea “that has been rejected by all the major mental health professions”.

Pence has been accused of opposing LGBT+ rights, and said in a speech during his 2000 congressional campaign that he supported redirecting resources “toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behaviour”.

Receiving his award, Peck talked about queer people turning “tragedy into art, humour and culture”, as he looked at his career in the country music genre, which has not always been accepting of the LGBT+ community.

“I’m one of many of us here who have felt excluded or held back because of who we are.”

The awards saw more drama that night, as drag performer and trans advocate Chiquitita interrupted host Ross Mathews’s opening monologue by shouting, “GLAAD is complicit in genocide” before being escorted out.

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