Meet Pete Buttigieg: A gay mayor, Afghan War vet and lennial who's nng for print

Contents:

• MEET PETE BUTTIGIEG: A GAY MAYOR, AFGHAN WAR VET AND LENNIAL WHO'S NNG FOR PRINT
• A MARRIED GAY MAN IS NNG FOR PRINT. THAT’S A BIG AL.
• PETE BUTTIGIEG: HOW A YOUNG, GAY MAYOR BEME A DEMOCRATIC STAR
• WILL PETE BUTTIGIEG BE THE FIRST GAY PRINT? OLR LGBTQ AMERINS CELEBRATE HIS N
• A MEMOIR FROM THE YOUNG, GAY MAYOR OF SOUTH BEND RUNNG FOR PRINT
• ELECTED MAYOR AT 22. ALEX MORSE, A GAY JEWISH PROGRSIVE, IS NOW NNG FOR CONGRS.
• PETE BUTTIGIEG IS AN OPENLY GAY ARY VETERAN, RHOS SCHOLAR, AND DEMOCRATIC MAYOR A RED STATE. HE'S ALSO NNG FOR PRINT

MEET PETE BUTTIGIEG: A GAY MAYOR, AFGHAN WAR VET AND LENNIAL WHO'S NNG FOR PRINT

Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, beme the first openly gay ndidate the 2020 printial race Wednday, jog an already crowd field of Democratic hopefuls.

“I’m om the Midwt, so the issu of makg sure that we have a posive way forward for workers and fai the dtrial Midwt — this is not theoretil for me, ’s my home, ” Buttigieg Buttigieg were to overe the long odds and bee the Democratic nomee for print, he would be the first openly gay nomee and the first veteran of the Afghanistan War, where he served a tour as a Naval Rerve officer.

A MARRIED GAY MAN IS NNG FOR PRINT. THAT’S A BIG AL.

“I was well to adulthood before I was prepared to acknowledge the simple fact that I am gay, ” Buttigieg wrote at the time. Should Buttigieg w his long-shot bid for the Democratic nomatn, he will bee the first nomee of a major polil party who publicly intifi as gay.

PETE BUTTIGIEG: HOW A YOUNG, GAY MAYOR BEME A DEMOCRATIC STAR

That a gay married man is nng a ser mpaign for print, however, is a big al, and we shouldn’t let the improbabily of his ndidacy stop om acknowledgg this moment. Gay marriage was legal only two stat January 2009 – Massachetts and Connecticut.

WILL PETE BUTTIGIEG BE THE FIRST GAY PRINT? OLR LGBTQ AMERINS CELEBRATE HIS N

Barack Obama beme Print, and although he was supportive of expandg legal rights for the LGBT muny and gay upl, he was on the rerd durg his mpaign as beg opposed to same-sex marriage. I am not favor of gay marriage, ” Obama told MTV News durg the 2008 mpaign.

In 2010, Print Obama signed to law the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act, endg a policy enacted 1993 that prevent gay men and lbians om servg openly the ary. Three years later, the Supreme Court led that stat nnot ban same-sex marriage, makg legal natnwi for gay and lbian upl to marry. And durg this time, ndidat who publicly intify as gay, bisexual and transgenr have broken barriers wh their ws.

A MEMOIR FROM THE YOUNG, GAY MAYOR OF SOUTH BEND RUNNG FOR PRINT

In 2012, Wisns’s Tammy Baldw beme the first gay person elected to the US Senate (she was re-elected 2018). In last year’s midterm electns, Colorado’s Jared Polis beme the first gay man the US to be elected ernor, Kyrsten Sema, who is bisexual, won a US Senate seat Arizona, and Sharice Davids, a lbian, won her US Hoe race Kansas. All of this is to say, que simply, that a relatively brief perd of time, the polics surroundg gay marriage and LGBT equaly shifted dramatilly.

For a lol stunt stgglg wh her sexualy, might be helpful for an openly gay mayor to send the msage that her muny will always have a place for her. And for a nservative rint om a different generatn, whose unease wh social change is partly rooted the imprsn that he don’t know anyone gay, perhaps a faiar face n be a remr that we’re all this together as a muny. But one thg is for sure: Havg a gay ndidate – or nomee, or print – is no longer such a farfetched ia.

ELECTED MAYOR AT 22. ALEX MORSE, A GAY JEWISH PROGRSIVE, IS NOW NNG FOR CONGRS.

As a young, hyperarticulate, openly gay technocrat who ocsnally read Norwegian novels, Buttigieg appealed to a certa segment of progrsiv who found him nfirmatn that they are supposedly more telligent, tolerant and sophistited than their untrymen. And while the new Congrs that took office last year had a rerd 10 openly LGBTQ+ members, no gay man or lbian had ever ma a credible n for the Whe Hoe. It beme obv that his stat as a gay man was more of a pl than a m, a untry where the speed of progrs on the issu has routely been unrtimated, pecially the 21st century.

“Sce 1972, anytime you asked me what might be like the next three years, I’ve always been too psimistic, ” said Barney Frank, the former Massachetts ngrsman who was the send Hoe member to say he was gay, 1987, and the first to marry his same-sex partner, 2012.

PETE BUTTIGIEG IS AN OPENLY GAY ARY VETERAN, RHOS SCHOLAR, AND DEMOCRATIC MAYOR A RED STATE. HE'S ALSO NNG FOR PRINT

”For olr veterans of the movement like myself, who never expected marriage equaly our own lifetim – much ls a gay man the Whe Hoe – was pecially satisfyg to see this Rhos Scholar, an acplished lguist and ocsnal ncert pianist, charm his way to the top of the printial pack, to see him fish first Iowa and send New Hampshire, ahead of everyone except fied expectatns the bt way imagable to see Chris Wallace terview him on Fox News and never mentn his sexualy. And was thrillg when Rh Limbgh claimed that Ameri was “still not ready to elect a gay guy kissg his hband” – and Buttigieg shot back that his marriage to a man had “never volved me havg to send hh money to a porn star after cheatg on my spoe” mpaign entered the big leagu by raisg more than $80m om nearly a ln small donors. Movement veterans such as Andrew Tobias were pecially thrilled by the succs of someone who so rembled the hero of Tobias’s important novel of 1973, The Bt Ltle Boy the World, whose hero is a gay boy who needs to be better at jt about everythg, orr to succeed spe the fact that he is of who took the time to learn what Buttigieg actually stands for were lighted by how substantive he was.

All of which meant he would not only be the first gay print – he would also be by far the most progrsive ndidate ever elected to the Whe only big surprise of his mpaign was also s biggt disappotment. While rightwg homophob remaed largely silent, Buttigieg’s angrit opponents turned out to be radil queers, who cid that the first male ndidate to kiss his hband on natnal televisn jt wasn’t gay one gay adviser to the Buttigieg mpaign explaed to the Guardian: “There is a perceptn that the fact of likg other men is sufficient to give you any cred, bee no longer brgs any reprsn the circl that all of his crics hab. ” While people my age who me out right after the Stonewall Rts of 1969 were sympathetic to many different paths to openns, some astal thirtysomethg gay men and lbians cid Buttigieg’s failure to e out of the closet until he was 33 was a hopels sign of reactn of the crics to what they perceived as Buttigieg’s nservatism was so visceral that some pretend he was nothg more than an advote of the stat quo.

Charl Kaiser is a Guardian ntributor and the thor of The Gay Metropolis.