South Bend Mayor and 2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg on Monday discussed how he plans to unite religious Americans from across the political spectrum, arguing during a CNN town hall in New Hampshire that “God does not have a political party.”
A partial transcript is as follows:
CAMILE CALDERA: Mayor Buttigieg, you’ve talked openly about your strong Christian faith, as well as your identity as a happily married gay man. I, myself, am a bi-sexual Christian woman. How will you challenge the right’s moral monopoly on Christianity to unit conservative, moderate, and liberal Christians alike behind you and your platform?
PETE BUTTIGIEG: So, as you know, it can be challenging to be a person of faith, who is also a member of the LGBT community. And yet to me, the core of faith is regard for one another and part of how God’s love is experienced according to my faith and tradition, is in the way that we support one another, and in particular, support the lest among us. […] Frankly, it couldn’t be more radically different than what I see certainly in this White House, where there is a lot of chest-thumping and self-aggrandizing, not to mention abusive behavior, but also political agenda that seems to always be revolving around that idea that somehow it’s too easy for poor people in this country. It’s just so different from what I get when I read scripture. I get that one of the things about scripture is different people see different things in it But, at the very least we should be able to establish that God does not have a political party.