Pollster Mallory Newall on Monday said 2020 Democratic hopeful South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, is redefining what it means to be spiritual or religious in the U.S.
“It’s a great example, because he is of the millennial generation, of how spirituality or religion, doesn’t necessarily fit the same mold or the same box that it used to,” Newall, research director at Ipsos Public Affairs, told Hill.TV’s Jamal Simmons on “What America’s Thinking.”
“He said in his own words, you can believe in God, you can go to church and still be a gay man, and still believe in spirituality,” she continued.
Buttigieg has repeatedly invoked his faith on the campaign trail, even using it to criticize Vice President Pence’s beliefs of homosexuality.
“The vice president is entitled to his religious beliefs,” Buttigieg told CNN last week. “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,” he continued, referring to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act that Pence signed into law.
— Julia Manchester
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