Yes, you should give presents to your gay friend’s kids

In mid-November, outgoing U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg gave a talk at Harvard University about his time in the Biden administration. In an anecdote that was supposed to be about bipartisanship, he shared a personal story that offered a fascinating glimpse into his worldview.

Buttigieg is legally married to another man, and the pair adopted twin boys in 2021. Around the time of the adoption, he said, he had lunch with a friend in Congress. The friend brought a gift for the babies. Then, according to Buttigieg, “that same day, [the congressman] went into the United States Capitol and voted against marriage equality.” (Presumably, this was a reference to the Respect for Marriage Act, which passed in 2021 and changed the federal definition of marriage to include same-sex pairings.)

“That takes some real … compartmentalization,” Buttigieg said, to a murmur of knowing laughs from the Harvard crowd.

The implication was that this congressman was a hypocrite. Buttigieg told the story as an apologetic for political utilitarianism. Working with “difficult characters” with bad “ideology” is “how stuff gets done” in politics, he said.

He’s right, of course, that people with differing views should be able to work together toward common goals. But he’s wrong in implying this is some kind of extraordinary act of benevolence on his part—or that people who hold to a natural definition of marriage will have to “compartmentalize” to be kind to people with same-sex attraction.

We don’t know who the congressman in Buttigieg’s story was, but I’m grateful for his testimony. A few years ago, this unnamed congressman found himself sitting across a real table from a real person who had just brought two babies home. An injustice had been committed against those babies—they need, deserve, and have been deliberately kept from a mother—but they are precious, miraculous people, and babies should absolutely always be celebrated and lavishly showered with gifts. The congressman loved the person in front of him and the babies in that person’s home. And then he loved them all again when he went back to the “United States Capitol” and voted against a lie. His acts were consistent with his convictions.

Somewhere in the last three or four presidential election cycles, too many Christians have conflated the personal with the political. Or to put it another way: We talk about “neighbor love” almost exclusively in the abstract and hardly ever in the particular. When that line blurs, voting against a policy our neighbor likes means we’ve forfeited the right to love him “in real life.” Suddenly that love requires “some real … compartmentalization.”

But Christianity is not “other-worldly, unreal, or idealistic,” as Dorothy Sayers wrote. The God of the universe put us in the real world, in a specific time and place. Every day we meet real people who need real things, and we don’t “love” them theoretically. We love them particularly. Navigating from one interaction to the next—from one image-bearer to the next, from one set of circumstances to the next—requires discernment, prayer, and a genuine sense of burden for others’ suffering. There isn’t always a prescription.

Political and civic questions, on the other hand, lend themselves much more easily to principle. Public policy should reflect reality. Marriage policy should prioritize children’s rights. Drug policy should disincentivize addiction. Border policy should promote peace and justice.

When someone struggling with an addiction is shivering on the corner, maybe you give him a blanket. When an immigrant family of ambiguous legal status shows up to your church, you hand them a doughnut and buy the Spanish translation of your Sunday school curriculum. And when your gay friend brings home a baby, you bring him a gift. None of this requires hypocrisy or “compartmentalization.”

The worst caricature of the 1990s “moral majority” is an angry pastor telling you to stay away from gay people because they’re sinners. Today’s version of that caricature is a self-styled “winsome” pastor who tells you that you’ve no right to be kind to gay people unless you also intend to approve of their behavior, reinforce their worldview, and vote the way they want. Both of these are wrong.

In James’ epistle, he writes, “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?” (2:15–16).

We are confronted every day with people who need things “for the body”—a sandwich, a kind word, a gift for a new baby, a cup of cold water. Sometimes, we’ll be called to give these things. Sometimes, for a million possible reasons, we won’t. But we do not have to earn the right to be kind to one another.