“Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Sunday encouraged evangelical Christians who are reluctant to get vaccinated against COVID-19 to consider that the shots might be a ‘part of God’s plan.’

‘State of the Union’ host Jake Tapper asked Buttigieg, an Episcopalian, about the large portion of white evangelicals who say they won’t get a COVID-19 vaccine. About 40% of white evangelical Protestants said they likely would not get vaccinated, according to a poll conducted last month, compared to about 25% of all Americans, 28% of white mainline Protestants and 27% of Protestants who are not white.”

HuffPost.Com

Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is a Rhodes Scholar, he served as an intelligence officer in the United States Navy Reserve and he’s a practicing Episcopalian. You’d think that the advice of such a prominent scholar, gentleman, military officer and Christian would be heeded by evangelicals.

Unfortunately, Buttigieg is anathema to white evangelicals because he’s a gay man who’s married to a gay man. All of his sterling credentials mean nothing to evangelicals, because the person that he loves and married is another man.

The Transportation Secretary is no fool, he acknowledged in his CNN interview that his opinion won’t sway many white evangelicals. No shit, it won’t sway a single white evangelical to get vaccinated.

I applaud Buttigieg for speaking to white evangelicals in terms that resonate with them, by asking them to consider that shots might be part of God’s plan to defeat the virus.

But evangelicals will never listen to a decent, intelligent and caring statesman like Buttigieg simply because he’s gay. However, they will listen to the thrice married, serial philanderer, narrow-minded racist, corrupt politician, Donald Trump, if he filmed a PSA asking his followers to get vaccinated.

It’s incumbent upon Republican leaders to urge their ignorant, superstitious base to do the right thing and get vaccinated.