Is America ready for a gay president? No way say the people who currently support with blind fealty and reverence a president who is a corrupt serial adulterer rapist half-wit.
A president can be many things, but not a homo. That is a bridge too far for the American people!
But some people are starting to freak out a little bit, because there’s been polling that shows Sworn Gay Pete Buttigieg leading in Iowa. Which obviously means he has this whole thing in the bag and also that this whole thing is gay now, as is the bag.
Even if Buttigieg does win the Iowa caucus, that hardly means he’s going to go on to win the nomination. Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, for example, all lost Iowa but ended up becoming their party’s Numero Uno.
A win in Iowa for a candidate like Buttigieg isn’t insignificant, however. It would bestow some extra credibility on his candidacy that has seemed like a long shot to many. It would also prime the fundraising pump. But it would also be a historic “holy shit, a gay dude just won the Iowa caucus” kind of moment.
Buttigieg’s appeal stems in part from his vocal embrace of his Christian faith, something that has rankled right-wing Christians like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, an organization dedicated to dismantling any gains LGBTQ people have made in the U.S. and preventing any others.
On the Nov. 21 edition of the Family Research Council’s “Washington Watch” podcast, Perkins and David Closson, also of the FRC, claim that Buttigieg can’t possibly be a real Christian.
“[Buttigieg is] actually twisting God’s word to advance a political agenda that is antithetical to biblical Christianity,” Closson says, presumably with a straight face.
I mean, come on. As if the religious right doesn’t conveniently cherry-pick parts of the Bible to support their ideology. They literally HAVE TO DO THAT in order to support Trump.
In a justification for why the right-wing Christians supported Trump, someone on the right said something about Trump being an “imperfect messenger.” According to Vox, evangelicals see Trump as an “unlikely ‘vessel’: someone God has chosen for an important historical purpose, despite not looking like — or having the religious character of — an obvious man of God.”
In other words, we don’t care if this man is trash so long as he can bring about the end to Roe v. Wade and gay marriage.
Perkins zeroes in on an interview Buttigieg did with Rolling Stone magazine in which he criticized “people who are avowedly Christian” who “get themselves into bed with a president like [Trump.]”
Perkins resends by asking, “Well, what about supporting a man who gets in bed with another man? I think that’s really the issue here when you talk about biblical Christianity. The Bible speaks very clearly about the issue of homosexuality, and … it’s amazing to me that he would so use Scripture when he is … openly in a lifestyle that is contrary to the teaching of both the Old and the New Testaments.”
It’s a curious response, notable for the fact that while Trump gets a pass with it comes to all of his sins and transgressions, Buttigieg does not. Because to Perkins being gay is worse than literally anything else. Buttigieg cannot be an “unlikely vessel.” He doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt. Buttigieg professes his faith while Trump couldn’t even give an example of a favorite Bible verse when asked, it is Trump who is considered more Biblical.
Closson says, “The irony of Mayor Pete Buttigieg lecturing Christians on the ethical content of Christianity when, like you just said, this is a man who is married to another man, again, when Scripture is just super clear.”
Ahem. Scripture is also clear about adultery. Not to mention the fact that Trump apparently interpreted the Seven Deadly Sins not as a cautionary list, but an aspirational one.
But please, do go on about how Buttigieg’s happy marriage to his husband Chasten is the deal-breaker here.
Being gay, argues Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, “is the ultimate blasphemy” and that Buttigieg “is making a farce out of Christianity.”
“The media will pretend that a man like Peter Buttigieg kissing his so-called husband is just like a man kissing his wife,” LaBarbera told OneNewsNow. “But the average Joe on the street, the average American, will not believe that. And I do not believe that an openly homosexual, far-left progressive candidate like Pete Buttigieg — I do not think the American public is ready for that.”
And so we’ve come full circle. Actually, scratch that. “Full circle” implies that there’s something orderly and logical to the argument that Trump is a divine gift while Buttigieg is the spawn of the devil. Who was it again making a farce out of Christianity?
D’Anne Witkowski is a poet, writer and comedian living in Michigan with her wife and son. She has been writing about LGBT politics for over a decade. Follow her on Twitter @MamaDWitkowski.