Buttigieg vs Pence and the Politics of Misconstrual and Deflection

Rising star Pete Buttigieg, the gay Indiana mayor who's running for the Democratic presidential nomination, has recently spoken publicly about former Indiana Governor and current Vice President, Mike Pence--most recently in reference to Pence's well-known anti-LGBT commitments, which Pence (like many Evangelical Christians) roots in his religious beliefs.

Earlier today, Pence replied with the following remark: "He's said some things that are critical of my Christian faith and about me personally. And he knows better. He knows me."

What I struggle with here is what Pence is actually referring to. There are two possibilities that I'm aware of. The most obvious is the most recent, since it happened just days ago.

Here's what Buttigieg said, at a Victory Fund speech on Sunday: “Speaking only for myself, I can tell you that if me being gay was a choice, it was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade. And that's the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand. That if you got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.” (You can check out the video here.)

This is a rhetorically effective way of making a point that many LGBT persons have made about their own experience of themselves: their sexuality (for LGB persons) or gender (for trans persons) is not something they chose for some reason or another. It is something they discovered about themselves. It has the kind of givenness that, for LGBT persons of faith like Buttigieg, immediately invokes the thought of divine intent: "If I was made by God, and if this part of me is sewn into my fibers in a way that seems not only a given but a fixed and unchangeable truth about who I am, then it appears as if this is part of God's original design plan for me."

What this comment doesn't do is say anything derogatory about Mike Pence's faith or character.

As someone who recently wrote a book making a Christian case for same-sex marriage, I am well aware than many Christians think all same-sex relationships are morally wrong. I am also well aware that many of these people are persons of deep faith. I don't question their faith. What I question is the accuracy of the moral conclusions they have reached.

It is possible for people of faith to disagree, and to disagree quite strongly, on which moral teachings fit best with their faith tradition, its Scriptures, and its creeds. Such disagreement does not imply any person attack on someone's faith or character.

And so, if this is what Pence was responding to, his response is a kind of non-sequitur. Worse, it is a deliberate misconstrual of Buttigieg's words to make it sound as if Pence were being attacked as a person rather than having the soundness of his views called into question. 

But maybe this recent comment by Buttigieg wasn't what Pence was responding to at all. A little bit of digging shows that this was not Bettigieg's only mention of his state's former governor from the stump. A month ago, Buttigieg had some more extensive remarks about Pence at a town hall in Austin. According to Politico, here are the key elements of those remarks:

...he previously trusted that Pence “at least he believes in our institutions” and did not consider him to be “personally corrupt.” 

“But then how could he get on board with this presidency?” Buttigieg said. 

Buttigieg said that while his understanding of the Bible was rooted in "protecting the stranger and the prisoner and the poor person," Pence's reading of the Gospel "has a lot more to do with sexuality" and "a certain view of rectitude." 

“But even if you buy into that, how could he allow himself to become the cheerleader of the porn star presidency?” Buttigieg added. 

“Is it that he stopped believing in Scripture when he started believing Donald Trump? I don't know.”

Here, Buttigieg opens with an impression of Pence that he formed before Pence became Vice President, an impression that for Buttigieg has started to crumble--because of Pence's role in the Trump presidency.

That Trump has little respect for (or even understanding of) American institutions and is prone towards kleptocratic corruption may be controversial claims among Trump's fans, but for others it seems beyond self-evident given his record. Buttigieg is clearly among the latter. And for the latter, it is surely deeply perplexing how someone who actually respects US institutions and has a sense of personal moral rectitude could function as the kind of uncritical voice and cheerleader for the Trump administration that Pence appears to be.

The reference to "porn star" presidency, of course, is a glancing way to reference the well-known fact that Trump had adulterous sex with porn stars and paid them off to keep them quiet--something that speaks to how deeply Trump defies basic standards of personal ethics to which conservative Christians like Pence cleave.

And even if Pence's version of Christian ethics focuses more on sexuality than on "protecting the stranger and the prisoner and the poor person," the latter must still be something that Christians like Pence care about if they claim to take Scripture as their guide.

To me and Buttigieg and many others, it looks as if many of Trump's policies are sharply at odds with those values--most notably his policies for dealing with poor refugees who have made a desperate trek to our borders in search of a better life. Even if we must as a nation care about security and the rule of law, the rhetorical and literal harshness of the Trump administration's approach to these desperate human beings defies the heart of what Jesus and the Jewish prophets preached. There are ways of securing our borders and upholding the rule of law that don't involve ripping babies out of their mothers' arms and creating concentration camps for refugees and refusing to consider taking in desperate refugees from war-ravaged Muslim-majority nations.

Of course, the Trump administration is hardly the first to be implicated in policy decisions that Christians ought to have trouble with. Both Democratic and Republican administrations before this one have made choices that, from the standpoint of Christian values, warrant concern or even outrage. And Trump is hardly the first president to fall short in terms of Christian standards of sexual fidelity in marriage (Bill Clinton, anyone?).

But it seems to many people today that the current administration has lifted things to a new level, especially when it comes to issues of immigration. And when one listens to the way Trump talks about his political opponents and the poor refugees who have stumbled and struggled hundreds of miles to seek a better life, there is a difference in tone. If one listens to the rhetoric of Obama and Bush and Clinton and Bush Sr. and Reagan and Carter, one would often hear expressions of compassion even in the face of hard policies justified by the perception of political necessity. One would be hard-pressed to find words that sounded gleefully cruel.

But sometimes, unless I am staggeringly misreading him, Trump appears to take a kind of pleasure in responding to the desperation of refugees with a curt dismissal like, "Our country is full." (And as Wayne Cornelius recently noted in a Chicago Tribune commentary, "The reality is quite different.")

The point is this: such a tone is one I could not imagine Mike Pence ever using. Pence calls himself a devout Christian, and he is right now the second-most-powerful politician in the United States. While the separation of church and state means Pence shouldn't use this power to, say, favor Christian churches over other religious institutions, the separation of church and state does not prevent our political leaders from having a conscience and being informed by that conscience as they make decisions. And Pence's conscience is a Christian one.

And yet, based on the publicly available evidence, Pence has been nothing but a bulwark of uncritical support for Trump and his policies.

Buttigieg's perplexity makes perfect sense to me. What does it look like for a man of deep Christian faith to find himself as vice president to Donald Trump? I guess my answer is the same as Buttigieg's: "I don't know."

But if these remarks are what Pence was responding to when he said, "He's said some things that are critical of my Christian faith and about me personally," then one would really hope for something more in response than, "He knows better. He knows me." Because Buttigieg was asking questions. Buttigieg was asking, "How could you?" To treat such questions, rooted in an apparent dissonance between Pence's outward behavior and his professed faith, as nothing but a personal attack is like...

...well, it's like when devout Christians confront atrocities that bring home the magnitude of evil in the world and feel the dissonance between the pervasiveness of such horror and the message that the world is the creation of a God of love. "How could you, God?" they cry. "How could you allow such things?"

That's not a personal attack. And even if it might be fitting for God to answer such a question from the whirlwind with something like, "You're too small to understand," Mike Pence isn't God. He's just a human being like Pete Buttigieg.

Maybe, just maybe, Pence meant something different by his response than, "How dare you attack my faith and character?" Maybe he meant to say, in some subtle way, that he was doing more to minimize the harms of a Trump presidency than it looks like to the public eye. Maybe he was saying something like, "You know me, Pete. You know my character, and so you know there is a reason why things look the way they do, even though you can't see what it is." Maybe, in other words, his comment was intended as a small bit of reassurance: "It looks bad, but I'm doing what I can."

Or maybe it was just a strategy of deflection: to push aside Buttigieg's questions and the dissonance that gives rise to them. If he pretends that Buttigieg's remarks amount to nothing more than a personal attack, he doesn't need to answer the questions or account for the perceived dissonance. He can just be indignant.

But there are many people for whom Buttigieg's questions seem like real questions that call for more than indignation. I, for one, would like to hear Pence's answers.

New Interview about THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE--and some thoughts on the audience for my book

A few weeks back, Candace Chellew-Hodge interviewed me about my new book, The Triumph of Love: Same-Sex Marriage and the Christian Love Ethic. That interview, "Reconsidering 'Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin': An Interview with Ethicist Eric Reitan," is now posted over at Religion Dispatches.

On reading what I said in the interview, there's one thing especially that stands out to me: When asked about who I hoped would read the book, there's a category of people I didn't mention--a category that, as I've been reflecting on this question since that interview, has emerged as the one I most want to reach with the arguments in the book.

The problem is I don't know how. The problem is that I think on some deep level I was talking to a particular group of people as I was writing much of this book, but that the conversation was not merely hypothetical as I was writing, but will be largely hypothetical in reality.

The category I have in mind is this one: closeted LGBT people who are still part of very conservative Christian communities, who have internalized the idea that they are in some fundamental way broken, and who have not had any kind of meaningful or sustained exposure to the idea--expressed in my book and elsewhere--that Christian ethics doesn't have to be understood in the way that is causing them such anguish.

I'm talking about those who have come to see self-repression and mandatory lifelong celibacy as their only path forward consistent with being a faithful Christ-follower, and who have appropriated the language of "costly discipleship" to understand their own struggle and life story--so much so that the liberatory message of those LGBT Christians who have already found joy and meaning in a different vision just strikes them as "too easy."

I think that audience may actually have been the one I had in the back of my mind when I wrote my book--a book which engages seriously with the conservative ideas and arguments that this audience has been immersed in, ideas and arguments that feel not only like a cage, but like an inescapable one.

The thing is this: I have friends who used to live in such cages. And they were told that the bars of the cage were solid steel, that it had no doors, no way out, no escape that didn't lead to their own ruin. Some of them discovered that the cage wasn't inescapable after all, and they ran as far and fast as they could--rejecting the Christianity that had caged them along with everything that went with it. Others languished for too long before they discovered that the cage door was made of tissue, and that beyond it was a road that didn't lead to damnation but to something else: a vital integration of their Christian faith with who they are, a deeper and more joyful connection with God, the possibility of discipleship in communion with a beloved life partner--rather than a requirement of costly discipleship whose demands of self-repression serve as a constant and sometimes debilitating distraction from discipleship itself.

Sometimes I fantasize about what I might say to these friends if I could go back in time, back when they still felt trapped. What could I say, a straight Christian LGBT ally who hasn't been in a cage myself, that might be helpful--that might help them find that escape and that promising road sooner rather than later?

Dismissing the cage--refusing to take seriously the ideas and arguments that seem to bind them--wouldn't be enough. Many LGBT Christians who have escaped their own cages have little patience with the conservative arguments: taking them seriously enough to engage with them, even critically, is like stepping back into the cage in their imaginations. By taking the cage seriously they're giving it some power, some shadow of the kind of power that was once, for them, all-consuming. The refusal to give it that kind of power is not only understandable but essential.

But for those who are still in the cage, any approach that doesn't take it seriously feels like a denial of their lived reality. As a straight ally, I can take it seriously enough to show where the bars are tissue-thin, where there are wide-open spaces and no bars at all, where to look to see that the entire cage is really just a debilitating illusion. And I can do that without finding myself caught once more, even a little, in an illusion that once trapped me. I can do that because, as an ally, I was never a prisoner.

And as a straight cis Christian man, my message can't be dismissed as self-serving, as just an attempt to escape the costly discipleship to which I've been called. And so at least one of the conservative messages that helps to keep the illusion of the cage in place doesn't affect my voice.

Of course, there are so many things that LGBT persons have to say--about their experience, about the traditional Christian condemnations, about their journeys along the more promising road--that are so much more important than anything a straight ally can say or do. But that doesn't mean I'm not called to ask, "What am I uniquely positioned to say and do?", and then do it.

The Triumph of Love is part of my answer to that question. And when I think about the deepest motive for writing it, I picture myself speaking to a friend who's in a cage of teachings and arguments that seem so solid from within. I picture myself in that hypothetical place, saying what I wish I could say.

My hope is that it's not just hypothetical.

Human Solidarity and LGBT Issues

I've been following some (not all) of the discussion inspired by my response to the Nashville Statement that appeared on Religion Dispatches a couple of days ago. A couple of the comments motivated me to reply--including one that I've decided to post here, along with my response, since I think the issue raised--solidarity in the face of sin--is important to think about in connection with LGBT issues. (Also, Disqus marked my reply as spam for some reason, and while I hope that is corrected I want to make sure the remark is preserved here if nowhere else.)

Here is the comment:

OK, I'm struggling with this whole issue. I would probably, at least nominally, place myself in the same camp as the Nashville Statement signers. I have not signed it though. I have read it, and had issues with articles 10 & 13.

So while I share the beliefs of the statement's signers (insofar as I agree with their interpretation of scripture regarding this issue), I'm not settled on whether something like the statement is the proper approach.

I agree with this article's author that Christians ought to listen more, and do a better job of imitating the kind of love represented by the good Samaritan (and I would add the kind of love Jesus showed to the adulteress and the woman at the well). However, like many other things with God, truth and love exist on a sliding scale. We give people false comfort when we offer love without truth; and we tempt people to despair when we present the truth without love. The right place is in the balanced middle.

That said, I don't know where that middle is with this issue. This subject has grown to touch on all the social taboos (e.g. sex, politics, and religion). So, figuring out how to talk about it is difficult. When asked, I feel like I have to first give a history lesson to explain how the Church as a whole erred in the latter half of the 20th century; the Church expressed a preference for legislating people instead of loving them. In doing so, they screwed up and became the bad guy in the eyes of the world.

So, today Christians probably owe the LGBT community an apology while agreeing to disagree on whether or not homosexual sex is OK in God's eyes -- with a huge caveat that many other "respectable sins" (pre-marital sex and divorce being high on the list) are equally not OK in God's eyes. This was a huge missed opportunity to say that we are all in this together, and that the Church is where anyone can come to find help and relief from the painful consequences of our collective struggle with sin.

I think that is my version of the balanced middle. So, it is really hard for me to agree with opinions that are too heavily on the far-end of either side of the scale. I can agree with the truth in the Nashville Statement while rejecting the statement as a silly way to express that truth.

And here is my response:

You are clearly sincere in your commitment to loving your LGBT neighbors, and as such you and I are on the same side with respect to the question that matters the most. But on the question of whether same-sex sex is or is not "OK in God's eyes" (specifically when it occurs in a monogamous and loving context similar to the one that we think renders heterosexual sex "OK"), I want to challenge you just a little in connection with a remark you make.

The challenge has to do with the following remark: "This was a huge missed opportunity to say that we are all in this together, and that the Church is where anyone can come to find help and relief from the painful consequences of our collective struggle with sin." This notion of solidarity before God is important, but I believe that careful attention to the lives of our LGBT neighbors shows that the capacity for cis heterosexuals to extend such solidarity to their LGBT neighbors is compromised by traditional teachings, by imposing on the latter burdensome and often life-strangling constraints that those fortunate enough to be cis heterosexuals have no need to bear.

This is a point I spend considerable time defending in my book, especially in terms of reporting on LGBT experiences (well, not so much trans experience, since the book was focused on same-sex relationships and marriage and in that context I could not do justice to the distinct set of issues that my trans neighbors wrestle with). I can't reproduce all of that here, obviously, but there is one short passage from the book that I want to quote, since I think it sums up the difficulty of promoting solidarity in the face of sin when same-sex intimacy is condemned as sinful.:

"When it comes to the condemnation of adultery, all of us can stand in solidarity with one another, supporting each other in living up to a shared constraint--because all of us have the potential to be attracted to someone who isn't our spouse. But a social norm condemning homosexual sex does not generate solidarity. It creates us/them divisions. When a community condemns homosexuality, the heterosexual majority is imposing a constraint on a minority group, demanding sacrifices that the majority doesn't need to make." (The Triumph of Love, pp. 85-86)

There are, of course, things that can be said in response here. Someone could point out that not everyone experiences the same desires and temptations, and the same problem with solidarity noted above might arise in cases where all of us would agree that a desire some people have is for something wrong, and we wouldn't want to address the problem of solidarity by pretending that the wrong thing isn't wrong.

But we also don't want to magnify problems of human solidarity by imposing moral condemnations where they aren't called for. And in the case of homosexuality, the kind of sacrifice that the privileged majority imposes on the sexual minority cuts to things generally viewed as valuable for psychological health if not central to it: an integrated identity, a loving and stable life partnership with a suitable mate, etc. For a majority to require of a minority that they give up the hope of these things in their lives imposes unique burdens to human solidarity. Given your sincere desire to promote a Christianity in which we all can stand in solidarity in our human struggle against sin, I invite you to wrestle a bit more with this difficulty--first and foremost by seeking out and listening to the stories of Christian and formerly-Christian LGBT neighbors who have become deeply alienated from communities of faith that teach the categorical condemnation of homosexuality.

Book Trailer for THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE

With copious assistance from my son and photo contributions from several friends, I was able to create a book trailer for the new book. Okay, to be honest, my son was able to create a book trailer. I simply provided a bit of violin playing and talked about the book on camera, solicited photos, and then handed it all to him, saying, "Can you turn this into a book trailer?" Then he worked his magic. Here's the result: