Pete Buttigieg on Pence: ‘The Vice President Is Entitled to His Religious Beliefs’

‘My problem is when those religious beliefs are used as an excuse to harm other people’

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EXCERPT:

BUTTIGIEG: “The Vice President is entitled to his religious beliefs. My problem is when those religious beliefs are used as an excuse to harm other people. That was a huge issue for us in Indiana, when he advanced a discriminatory bill in 2015, under the guise of religious freedom, that said it was lawful to discriminate, provided you invoked religion as your excuse. I just believe that is wrong. This isn’t about him as a human being. This is about policies that hurt people, policies that hurt children. And to this day, if you listen closely to what he said, you’ll notice that to this day he has not brought himself to say that it shouldn’t be legal to discriminate against people in this country because they are LGBT. In most parts of this country, you can still be fired, denied housing, denied services because of who you are. He seems to be okay with that. I would love to see him evolve on that issue, just as he evolved or sort of evolved on ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell.’ Remember, this is somebody who was against ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ because he felt it was too pro-gay. He wanted to make sure that even closeted members couldn’t serve. That’s where he started out. Then he finally brought himself to say that people like me, while serving, maybe could be allowed to still wear the uniform, unless we reveal that we were gay, and then we should be fired. That is a terrible policy. My quarrel with the Vice President is over that.”

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