Politicians like Joe Biden and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer bow promptly whenever their left-wing minders demand it. Mike Pence refuses to buckle.

Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old presidential candidate and openly homosexual mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has one “thing that I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand.” That’s “If you have a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.”

Unlike many of his peers in the realm of politics, Pence has not apologized. Nor will he. “He’s said some things that are critical of my Christian faith and about me personally,” said the former Hoosier governor. “And he knows better. He knows me.”

Here’s something I wished the Pete Buttigiegs of the word would understand. To affirm the Bible’s teaching on human sexuality is not to affirm hatred, bigotry, or ignorance. It’s to affirm something revealed by our Creator — Buttigieg’s and ours — for our good and His glory.

Buttigieg’s Bible and Church

Frankly, Buttigieg needs to read his Bible. In Romans 1:26-27, the apostle Paul makes clear that homosexual behavior is offensive to God. He describes homosexual conduct as “unnatural,” “indecent,” and worthy of “penalty.”

The New Testament author Jude speaks of homosexual conduct as something deserving of eternal punishment (1:7). And John the apostle describes practicing homosexuals as being “outside” the gates of heaven.

All of us are sinners, deserving of the same condemnation described by Paul, Jude, and John. Sin, of whatever kind, is sin. And homosexual conduct is included in that description.

Buttigieg is an Episcopalian, a church that “affirms” homosexual conduct as pleasing to God and actively endorses same-sex weddings. Since its initial lunge into the sexual revolution, its membership has not just declined but shriveled. The Episcopal Church has gone from 2.3 million members to 1.7 million. Sunday attendance went from 856,000 in 2000 to 556,000 in 2017. Buttigieg is not hearing the truth of God’s Word in a church that has abandoned large portions of it.

Choices and Attractions

Buttigieg also said in his remarks about the vice president, “If my being gay was a choice, it was made far, far above my pay grade.” That’s when he said Pence is arguing with God.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Buttigieg was born with a natural homosexual attraction. Let’s say I was born with a natural heterosexual attraction.

For both of us, our attractions do not justify their fulfillment. In my case, pre-marital sexual intimacy, extra-marital sexual intimacy, and polygamy are all out of the question. The married man’s sexual focus must be his wife.

Buttigieg is married legally to his partner. But he is called to life-long celibacy or to marriage to a woman. That is the standard to which God calls all men. That includes all same-sex-oriented men.

A God Who Gives Grace

This is much easier to write than it is to follow. I cannot imagine how difficult it would be to be drawn sexually to someone of the same sex and never be allowed to fulfill that desire.

God gives grace, over and over. To the person in the wheelchair who longs to walk. To the cancer-ridden child enduring repeated treatments. To the woman wrestling with mental illness or the man whose disability keeps him advancing in his job. To the senior citizen whose pain-wracked body goes through a long and humiliating decline.

God has created each of us. Yet we are all subject to the curse of the fall. His love for us, from conception onward, is not a magical protection against the effects of our inheritance — a bequest from the father of our race, Adam, whose plunge into sin has misshapen each one of us in one way or another.

Unlike churches that compromise the eternal and revealed truth we find in Scripture, followers of the Bible and its God know that love is grounded in truth, and the truth of Scripture about human sexuality is unchanging. And, as important, God’s commands for human sexuality are for our best. They have been given out of love. To deny them is to deny that God had our good in mind when He issued them.

Hard Crosses

Yet good does not mean easy. Crosses are, by definition, hard to bear. Jesus called all of His disciples to come and die to their own selfish desires, however deeply-rooted they might be. To take up their crosses daily and follow Him (Luke 9:23).

Faithful Christians need to pray for Pete Buttigieg and his partner. May they truly hear Scripture, and know what Paul calls “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). May they find in Scripture the life that truly is life.