Pete Buttigieg Clashes with Beto on Churches Losing Tax Exempt Status Over Anti-Gay Discrimination: 'I'm Not Sure He Understood the Implications'

Mayor Pete Buttigieg clashed with fellow Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke’s view that churches that discriminate against gay people should lose their tax exempt statues. Buttigieg made his remarks in an interview Sunday with Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union.

Asked Tapper: “Your 2020 opponent Beto O’Rourke said at the CNN forum on LGBT rights on Thursday night that he thinks religious institutions that do not hire or provide services to LGBTQ people, such as charities or colleges, even churches, that they should lose their tax- exempt status. Do you agree with that?”

Replied Buttigieg: “I agree that anti-discrimination law ought to be applied to all institutions. But the idea that you’re going to strip churches of their tax-exempt status if they haven’t found their way toward blessing same-sex marriage, I’m not sure he understood the implications of what he was saying. I mean, that means going to war, not only with churches, but I would think with mosques and a lot of organizations that may not have the same view of various religious principles that I do, but also, because of the separation of church and state, are acknowledged as nonprofits in this country.”

“So, if we want to talk about anti-discrimination law for a school or an organization, absolutely, they should not be able to discriminate,” Buttigieg added. “But going after the tax exemption of churches, Islamic centers or other religious facilities in this country, I think that’s just going to deepen the divisions that we’re already experiencing, at a moment when we’re actually seeing more and more people, motivated often by compassion and by people they love, moving in the right direction on LGBTQ rights, which is obviously extremely important to me personally.”