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In March 2019, a blog on the religion-themed website Patheos featured an article reporting that U.S. Vice President Mike Pence refused to utter the phrase homo sapiens, the Latin term used by scientists to designate the human species. The subject came up in a conversation Pence allegedly had with a college professor named Andrew Canard: The article went on to say that Pence also bristled when questioned about the words homophone (defined as a word that is pronounced the same way as another but that has a different meaning or spelling) and homogeneous (a mathematical term relating to variables in an equation, or a word meaning of the same kind). The post was widely shared by social media users, some of whom may not have realized it was fictional. The name of the Patheos blog that published it is Laughing in Disbelief, and that blog's content, unlike most of the articles published on the website, is satirical. The blog links to a disclaimer identifying its content as such and prompting readers to look for humorous winks (hints) within the stories alerting them to its fictional nature. One of those is its use of the surname Canard (a French word meaning hoax). Among the other Laughing in Disbelief fabrications that have gained traction as putatively true news stories is one reporting that Pence was kicked out of Iceland by government officials for being a religious fanatic. (N such incident occurred.) Pence, a former governor of Indiana and member of the U.S. House of Representatives, is a conservative Christian and well known for his opposition to LGBT rights.
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