Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg did not mince words on Sunday when asked about the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of a Christian web designer who refused to design websites for same-sex couples, calling the high court’s argument meritless and “a solution looking for problem.”
“As I’m getting ready to go back to my husband and our twins for the rest of this morning, I’m thinking about the fact that the existence of our family is only a reality because of a one vote margin on the Supreme Court a few years ago,” Buttigieg, the first openly gay cabinet secretary confirmed by the Senate, told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
The high court’s 6-3 conservative majority ruled last week in favor of Lorie Smith, a Colorado-based web designer, saying that she could refuse service to same-sex couples on free speech grounds guaranteed by the First Amendment despite the state’s antidiscrimination law.
But since Friday’s ruling, reports have emerged that have called into question the validity of the case’s grounds. Smith cited in court filings a request from a person named “Stewart” who requested her services for a same-sex wedding – but the individual in question says they never made the request, had no idea they were named in the lawsuit until they were contacted by a reporter from The New Republic, and, in fact, is straight and married to a woman.
“I was incredibly surprised given the fact that I’ve been happily married to a woman for the last 15 years,” Stewart, who only went by his first name due to fear of harassment and threats, told The Associated Press, adding that they’re a designer and “could design my own website if I need to.”
“It’s very revealing that there’s no evidence that this web designer was ever even approached by anyone asking for a website for a same-sex wedding,” Buttigieg told CNN’s “State of the Union” in a separate interview on Sunday.
“As a matter of fact, it appears this web designer only went into the wedding business for the purpose of provoking a case like this,” Buttigieg continued, adding: “In that sense, I think there's something in common between this Supreme Court ruling and what we're seeing happening in state legislatures across the country, which is kind of a solution looking for problem … sending these kinds of things to the courts and sending these kinds of things to state legislatures for the clear purpose of chipping away at the equality and the rights that have so recently been won in the LGBTQ+ community.”
“We're seeing more and more of these cases in these circumstances that are designed to get people spun up and designed to chip away at rights,” the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and presidential candidate said on CBS, calling the high court “out of step” with key issues.
A couple of Republican presidential candidates weighed in on Sunday as well, arguing that the free speech element of the case should take precedent.
“I will be frank: This decision makes me uncomfortable because we're protecting speech that I don't agree with, and I don't agree personally with an anti-LGBTQ sentiment,” said former Texas Rep. Will Hurd, who was one of a handful of Republicans who voted to pass a bill that would outlaw LGBTQ+ discrimination in Congress in 2019, told CNN on Sunday. “But we have to be protecting the speech even if we don't like or agree with that speech. That's a foundational element in our country.”
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said on the same program that “as a lawyer and someone who's watched this for a long time, I think Justice [Neil] Gorsuch made a decision that protects all of our First Amendment rights.”
“Most particularly, Democrats don't like this now. But you know what? If they were being ordered by a state to do something that they felt restricted their rights, they'd be angry about it, and should be. We should not be restricting people's First Amendment rights,” he added.
Vice President Mike Pence, who celebrated the ruling last week, told CBS' "Face the Nation" that he believes "the Supreme Court drew a clear line and said yes to religious liberty."
"As you know, I'm a Bible-believing Christian," he said. "I believe that marriage is between one man and one woman. And I believe that every American is entitled to live, to work, to worship according to the dictates of their conscience."
Buttigieg was also asked by CNN anchor Dana Bash about a recent video shared by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign that slammed former President Donald Trump for his previous support of gay and transgender people which was branded “homophobic” by an LGBTQ Republican group, as well as some of his rivals for the GOP nomination.
Buttigieg, cautioning that there’s only so much he can say in his capacity as a cabinet secretary about a political campaign, questioned who the Florida governor is “trying to help” by sharing such a video.
“I'm going to leave aside the strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of you in between oiled-up shirtless bodybuilders, and just get to a bigger issue that is on my mind whenever I see this stuff in the policy space,” Buttigieg said, adding: “Who are you trying to help? Who are you trying to make better off? And what public policy problems do you get up in the morning thinking about how to solve?"
“I just don't understand the mentality of somebody who gets up in the morning thinking that he's going to prove his worth by competing over who can make life hardest for a hard-hit community that is already so vulnerable in America,” he added.
Christie, too, said that he is “not comfortable” with the video, adding: “I'm not comfortable with the way both Gov. DeSantis and Donald Trump are moving our debate in this country.”
“This type of video does nothing to address” issues like education, inflation, hunger and drug use,” Christie added. “It is a teenage food fight between Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump, and I don't think that's what leaders should be doing. And it certainly doesn't make me feel inspired as an American on the Fourth of July weekend to have this type of back-and-forth going on at all.”
“I wish they would focus and focus their attacks on war criminals like Vladimir Putin, not my friends in the LGBTQ community,” Hurd said on CNN. “It is 2023. We should be talking about, how do we embrace our differences? Because here's what I have learned as I have crisscrossed the country. We're better together, and we should be having our leaders that are encouraging that, that are protecting … how we use our diversity to solve the major problems that we're facing.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.