• Jonathan Capehart to Rick Perry: It's a Run for President, Not Pope

Jonathan Capehart to Rick Perry: It's a Run for President, Not Pope

By Lucas Grindley

Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart has called out Rick Perry for not seeming “Christ-like” in his response to a bisexual teenager who confronted the presidential candidate about his antigay television commercial this week.

“How what Perry proposes is Christ-like escapes me,” writes Capehart, who is gay, of Perry’s reasoning for wanting to reinstate the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which forces gay and lesbian troops to hide their sexuality.

Rebecka Green, 14, had asked Perry “why you want to deny them that freedom when they’re fighting and dying for your right to run for president.”

“This is about my faith,” Perry readily admitted.

“There are a whole hosts of sins, homosexuality being one of them,” he told the girl, who is bisexual and attended the campaign event with her father. “I’m a sinner, and so I’m not going to be the first one to throw a stone.”

But Capehart sees a stone in the policy proposal itself.

“Perry hates the sin so much that he would use his power as president to harm ‘the sinner’ because it is about his faith?” Capehart asks. “We’re electing a president next year, not a Pope.”

But Capehart says it’s the whole GOP — which he renames as “the Gay-Obsessed Party” — that is in a “tizzy” about gay people. And he suggests Republicans pay closer attention to two scriptures, courtesy of Brent Childers from Faith in America.

Romans 14:13 — Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another….

Ephesians 4:2 — Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.