On his “Focal Point” radio program yesterday, the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer laughably argued that conservatives are free to attack Pete Buttigieg over his sexuality because Democrats have criticized Donald Trump for his multiple marriages and alleged adulterous affairs.
Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, is gay and Fischer is trying to pretend that religious conservatives would have made no mention of that issue were it not for the fact that progressives have now made a candidate’s “sexual behavior” relevant by attacking Trump.
Of course, progressives were not so much criticizing Trump as they were highlighting the absurd hypocrisy of Republican evangelical voters supporting Trump despite his various divorces, infidelities, and transgressions while simultaneously claiming to be the party of God and “family values.”
Fischer, who declared five years ago that “somebody who is engaged in sexually deviant behavior is not qualified to hold public office,” would now have us believe that it is Democrats who are at fault for any attacks on Buttigieg because of his sexuality.
“By making a candidate or a public official’s private sexual life an issue, then you are telling us that we are justified by making it an issue with Pete Buttigieg,” Fischer said. “If you do not want us to make his sexual behavior an issue, then you better stop talking about Donald Trump and what he did 12, 13 years ago and the years before that. Just cut it out. You keep talking about Donald Trump and his sexual peccadilloes, then you are giving us permission to talk about Pete Buttigieg and his sexual indiscretions.”
