I Am Forced To Defend Pete Buttigieg

If it has not been made clear yet, I hate everything Pete Buttigieg stands for. I hate his socialist economic policies, I hate his theocratic arguments, and I hate the fluff pieces he spends the primary debates insulting trying to call “arguments.” (“Their’s too much debate at this debate,” is still one I cannot get over)

With that said, I am forced to defend him for once as a slew of homophobic non-arguments against him have surfaced from the remaining fragments of the hardcore right.

Take this tweet from First Things editor Matthew Schmitz:

If Christian teaching is wrong, so are voters who oppose Buttigieg because he is married to a man. But if Christian teaching is correct to reject homosexual acts, then it is eminently reasonable to oppose a candidate whose election would normalize them.

Deep thought there Matthew. If something is right, so are the people who agree with it! I’m sure G.K. Chesterton would be proud to see this is where theology is in the 21st century.

Schmitz links to an article from First Things titled “A Gay Couple In The White House,” which is supposed to address the issue of if Christians can vote for a gay man. Mind you, the article doesn’t do that. Instead, all it does is waffle about how it’s perfectly possible for Christians to not vote for a gay man just because he’s gay, in the same way some chose to not vote for Donald Trump because of the Access Hollywood tape. I have no idea who is denying that such a thing could, in fact, be done. But whoever they are, they just got an epic take down by Matthew Schmitz.

Really, it feels like a good number of Buttigieg’s critics cannot get over his sexual orientation. This isn’t an issue — or at least, an issue of honesty — when they just openly admit they’re homophobic, however, a good number of them see him as something he is simply not.

Take this Tweet from Charlie Kirk:

Hey @PeteButtigieg — your entire campaign is built around progress for gay and lesbian people

Why haven’t you said ONE WORD about Ric Grennell being appointed to a CABINET position, the first ever in history?

Maybe because you don’t care about LGBT progress, only your career.

For one, Buttigieg has not said anything about Ric Grennell because he doesn’t exist. The person Charlie is thinking of is Richard Grenell. Cheap shot, I know, but it made this person mildly annoying to look up so I’ll bitch about it.

Oh, and Grenell had only been Director Of National Intelligence of less than a day when Charlie tweeted this, so maybe that has something to do with it. Although how could Pete ignore the fact that Trump gave Grenell the very important role of Ambassador to Germany?

Lastly, Pete’s entire campaign isn’t built around progress for gay and lesbian people. In fact, he denied the idea that he was running as a “gay president” earlier this month! Early on in his campaign, he even denied the label of being the “first gay president,” noting it’s highly likely we had a gay president before this, just not an open one.

(Historians have never found any rock solid evidence of this, but the most popular ex-presidents who get the label of gay are James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln. Although not a President, Benjamin Franklin was a member of the Hellfire Club and that group also engaged in orgies, not all of which were heterosexual.)

But that’s not the main reason I felt I needed to defend Pete. The true cause of this involves some fellows over at our old friend The Daily Wire. Specifically, podcast host Michael Knowles.

According to Knowles, Pete is the most extreme candidate in the race. For the record, Pete is the same guy who said this:

We can’t afford a scenario where it comes down to Donald Trump with his nostalgia for the social order of the 1950’s and Bernie Sanders with his nostalgia for the revolutionary politics of the 1960's.

For the record, everything chaotic about the 1960’s was a result of everything that was part of the social order of the 1950’s. Trying to find a middle ground is trying to stop time at a part that hasn’t happened yet.

Knowles was specifically angry when he saw Pete talk to a nine-year-old who identifies as gay. He had no way of knowing this would happen before hand, was put on the spot, and heard that the child looks up to him.

You see, Knowles took issue with Pete saying the kid was defined by his sexual desires. This is odd because Pete never said that, he did say he was happy the kid knew who he was, in regards to sexual orientation. However, because Pete didn’t specifically say that, Knowles is able to play this word game.

“But how could the kid know he was gay at nine-years-old? After all, I didn’t know who I was at nine.”

This is fair, however, what else was Pete supposed to say? Remember, there’s an entire division of the RNC looking through everything he says to find him saying something perverted. Are you really expecting me to believe that if Pete hadn’t told the kid to keep finding himself and experimenting there wouldn’t also be outrage from these same people?

Pete said the standard politician answer, and that’s perfectly fine. To put it simply, there is no better way he could have put it, even despite my disagreement with what he said.