Pete Buttigieg is the homosexual mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who is running for president on the Democratic ticket. Like Hillary Clinton and Jimmy Carter, Buttigieg claims to be an evangelical Christian while adopting a political platform that is little more than a list of things God hates.
Buttigieg is also trying to hustle the black evangelical vote, according to CBS News, realizing that support from that community will be vitally important if he is to win primaries in Bible Belt states. To accomplish this, Buttigieg is courting notable leaders in the black and evangelical communities.
However, the black community is hard to persuade on the issue of homosexuality.
According to Pastor Joe Darby of the Nichols Chapel AME Church in South Carolina, “Black church folks, particularly Southern black church folks, tend to be very progressive when it comes to issues of advocacy, equity, justice, that kind of thing but tend to [be] socially conservative on issues of the flesh…there’s slight discomfort that I’ve learned, with someone simply being LGBT.”
He added, “It’s unfortunate because he’s got a good message…and he does an excellent job in articulating his faith, so I think if folks look beyond the issue of [sexuality] and listened to what he said, they would probably be impressed [but] I don’t know if a lot of folks are going to do that.”
In the state of South Carolina, 81% of black people say religion is important and 59% say that homosexuality is a sin or in some way oppose same-sex marriage.
Pastor Josh Gadsden of St. Stephens AME church said, “It’s not the fact that we won’t be able to accept him as a person with his own beliefs, but I think it will conflict with the morals of our beliefs. Whether [a candidate] be gay or lesbian or whomever, they do have a place [in the Democratic field] and I feel very strongly about that, but it doesn’t mean that I have to be totally accept[ing].”
Statistics seem to indicate that black evangelicals aren’t noticeably more likely to embrace homosexuality than their white counterparts. Ironically, this means that Buttigieg’s presidential chances may ultimately be scuttled by the black community, which some might find counter-intuitive in regard to the topic of inclusivity.
We might all do well to remember that someone’s Biblical views on any given subject may not be determined by melanin count, something denied by the proponents of Critical Race Theory. Individual black people are certainly capable of thinking for themselves, and in the Bible Belt they do not uniformly approve of homosexuality.
Watch this clip from a Birmingham pastor testifying on the subject of homosexuality. It’s a classic.
