Pete Buttigieg is determined to turn Vice President Mike Pence into the lead boogeyman of evangelical Christians.
The Democratic presidential candidate claims he is tolerant, that he believes people should live and let live, but that’s not what his unprovoked attacks against Pence seem to suggest.
Here’s the thing: the vice president is not actually Buttigieg’s target. He, like so many on the left, are really just gaslighting all of us. His real target is tolerance — an endangered species in this brave new world.
Pence, the former governor of Indiana, hasn’t actually made a public comment about the South Bend mayor since 2015, when he said he holds Buttigieg — who is gay — in “the highest personal regard,” adding he has a “great working relationship” with the Democrat, whom he called a “dedicated public servant and a patriot.”
So there’s no actual problem between Pence and Buttigieg. The real issue is the fact that Buttigieg finds tolerance to be personally affronting and Pence has proven himself time and again to be the poster child for tolerance.
As governor, Pence, who is devoutly Christian and sees marriage as a religious institution between one man and one woman, said he would not darken the doors of a restaurant if he saw the owner “refuse to serve a gay couple.”
He’s also part of a White House that has launched a global campaign to decriminalize homosexuality in countries like Brunei, where gay people are fatally stoned and whipped over their sexual orientations.
Pence has proven someone can walk the line between religious liberty and personal freedom. While personally opposed to same-sex marriage, because of his Christian convictions, the vice president has stayed true to one of his other convictions: that every human life has innate value and dignity.
Buttigieg, on the other hand, wants to pick and choose which aspects of Christianity to elevate, then he wants every other Christian to not only tolerate but embrace his cherrypicked theology.
“That’s the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand,” Buttigieg said of his sexual orientation. “If you’ve got a problem with who I am, then your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.”
And during a town-hall event with CNN last month, he suggested Pence “stopped believing in Scripture when he started believing in Donald Trump.”
Pence isn’t really the target here. He’s just the weapon the left is using to finally bludgeon tolerance to death.
Ironically, Buttigieg has shown he’s actually pretty intolerant of … tolerance. The progressive left has cherrypicked its theology, and in 2020, plans to set up camp in the brave new world of double standards.
If all goes as planned, tolerance will be a distant memory by then.