Still Fighting the God-Vs.-Gays Battle: Twitter Reaction to Presidential Candidate Pete Buttigieg’s Identification as a Gay Member of the Christian Left

ABSTRACT

A computational analysis of 2.6 million original tweets from March 2019 to March 2020 about presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, a self-identified gay man and member of the Christian left, showed more interest in his sexuality than his religion. Examination of the most shared tweets suggests that the Twitterverse did not explicitly portray Buttigieg’s dual identities as contradictory, a departure from the typical “God-vs.-gay” rhetoric associated with religion and sexuality. However, the most shared tweet in the data set, from evangelist Franklin Graham, negatively characterized both Buttigieg’s religious and sexual identities and questioned whether a gay man could be a true Christian.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Tokens used to identify religion-focused tweets are 146 Stemmed Religious Tokens: almighti, almighty, amen, angel, angelic, angels, apostl, apostle, backslid, baptism, baptiz, baptize, believ, believer, bibl, bible, biblic, biblical, bless, cathedr, cathedral, christ, christian, church, churches, churchgo, clergi, clergy, command, commandment, communion, confess, confession, congreg, congregation, consecrat, coven, covenant, creator, creed, crusad, crusade, denomin, denomination, devot, devotion, devout, discipl, disciple, epistl, epistle, evil, faith, fellowship, fruit, fruits, genesi, genesis, god, gospel, grace, hallow, heaven, holi, holy, hymn, immort, immortal, jew, lamp, lord, martyr, miracl, miracle, mission, orthodox, parabl, parable, pastor, peacemak, peacemaker, penanc, penance, pieti, piety, piou, pious, pope, pray, priest, proph, prophe, proverb, psalm, pulpit, rabbi, reap, rebirth, reborn, redeem, redempt, redemption, religi, religio, religion, repent, restor, resurrect, reverend, sabbath, sacr, sacrament, sacred, saint, salvat, salvation, sanctifi, sanctify, sanctiti, sanctity, sanctuari, sanctuary, scriptur, sermon, servant, shrine, sin, sinned, sinner, sinners, sinning, sins, solemn, soul, sow, sowed, sown, sows, spirit, templ, temple, testament, theolog, triniti, trinity, worship.