The race to see who Kamala Harris will choose as her 2024 running mate is officially on, and Pete Buttigieg is earning fresh votes following a stellar response to yet another homophobic attack.
Back in 2019, Buttigieg became one of the first openly gay men to launch a presidential campaign for a major political party, and — despite his loss — that made him a figure to watch for a number of American citizens. The 42-year-old became the secretary of transportation in 2021, and for three years he’s served the Joe Biden administration faithfully.
That, paired with his strong political positions regarding U.S. infrastructure, social and voting rights, campaign finance reform, and the environment have won Buttigieg plenty of fans over the years, but he earned even more with his response to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s archaic and homophobic views on marriage.
During an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Buttigieg responded flawlessly to a question about Johnson’s “awful” track record when it comes to LGBTQ+ issues. Colbert asked how Buttigieg can find the patience and compassion to work with someone who “argued that same-sex relations are ‘the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy,'” particularly when he also stated that homosexual relationships could “doom even the strongest republic.”
Buttigieg hardly missed a beat before offering up the perfect response. First noting that he’ll work with “anybody who can help us get good transportation available to the American people,” Mayor Pete went onto state that perhaps the best way to change Johnson’s mind is to have him experience a same-sex family first-hand.
“Maybe we’ll just have him over,” Buttigieg says. Noting that his house isn’t overly far from the Capitol, the Indiana favorite goes onto outline what a typical evening looks like in the Buttigieg household. And —spoiler alert — it looks a lot like any other household, gay or straight. He and his husband, Chasten, share two children between them, which means that pretty much every evening in the Buttigieg household makes parenting into an Olympic sport.
Outlining the turmoil of providing food for their kids, handling temper tantrums and diaper changes, Buttigieg emphases that his home life is, in fact, chaotic. “Everything about that is chaos,” he says. “But nothing about that is dark. The love of God is in that household.”
It’s a gorgeous response to a hateful quote, and few of us could have said it better ourselves. I couldn’t agree more, as the auntie to two — going on three — gorgeous little ones raised in a gay household. There’s nothing my sister or her wife do that isn’t for those tiny humans, and anyone who thinks it takes a man and a woman to make a complete household needs to catch up with the times. That’s an archaic viewpoint, and if you need confirmation, maybe Mayor Pete will open his doors to you too and prove just how wrong you are.