Mayor Pete Buttigrieg Is Plenty Gay

As regular readers know, I find the current Democrat "purity test" that leaves no allowances for past mistakes, present personal quirks, and the differences in the conversation/culture now versus 10 or even 40 years ago to be totally maddening.  Here in Virginia, we have seen the damage done by this self-defeating standard as the Democrat party attacked its own and seemingly was bent on a suicide pact.  Thankfully, so far none of Virginia's statewide leadership has given in to the demands of those who would destroy the party from within - much to the delight of Republicans. Now, we are seeing similar idiocy and personal destruction being waged as a huge field of candidates chases after the Democrat 2020 presidential nomination.  A column in the New York Times by Frank Bruni (who is gay) which looks at the insane argument that somehow Pete Buttigrieg is not "gay enough" as its launch point looks at what could be a key part of handing Donald Trump a second term.  Distressingly, to the self-anointed purity police, winning elections is less important than satisfying all of their unrealistic sensibilities. Here are column excerpts:

How do Democrats properly vet their candidates for president without cannibalizing them? How do they rightly insist on sensitive and inclusive leaders while making allowances for past mistakes, present quirks, human messiness and the differences in the conversation and the culture now versus 10 or 20 or 40 years ago?

That’s emerging as a central challenge of the Democratic presidential primary. And it’s worrying me.

I’m worried because there was an actual mini-debate on the left recently over whether Pete Buttigieg is gay enough. Do his whiteness, upper-middle-class background and Harvard and Oxford degrees nullify his experience as a minority and undercut his status as a trailblazer? This question is out there, in both senses of that phrase.

I’m worried because it in some ways echoes an earlier question about whether Kamala Harris — whose father came from Jamaica, whose mother came from India and whose husband is white — is black enough.

And I’m worried because of what Joe Biden is going through — because of the intensity of the censure that he faced after the Nevada politician Lucy Flores’s allegation and because of the fixation on precisely what kind of apology he must issue.

I’ve written that I don’t think Biden, 76, should run, for many reasons, including that someone in politics as long as he has been carries too much baggage; that Democratic voters have generally preferred candidates significantly younger than he is; and that he mismanaged and failed miserably in his two prior presidential campaigns.

But I feel just as strongly that Democrats need to show some proportion, realism and reason as they assess and react to candidates (or, in Biden’s case, probable candidates). With Biden especially but with others as well, too many Democrats aren’t doing that.

It’s nonnegotiable that Democrats hold their presidential aspirants to high standards on issues of racial justice, gender equality and more. It’s crucial that the party nominate someone who can credibly represent its proudly diverse ranks. But it’s also important that the party not demand a degree of purity that nobody attains.

I’m not recommending the Republicans’ course in accepting and protecting Donald Trump, which was to bury principles so deep that they may never be exhumed. I’m saying that to turn the Democratic primary into a nonstop apology tour when the nominee will be going up against a president never expected to apologize for anything is a risky strategy. It obsesses over the flaws in candidates who have many strengths, defining them in terms of what they seek forgiveness for. It blurs the line between job interview and inquisition. Taken too far, it rips contenders to shreds before Trump even takes out his scissors.

As for the mini-debate about Buttigieg’s gayness, it arose principally from this column in Slate, which included the following paragraph:

“A marginalized sexual orientation can remain unspoken and unnoticed for as long as a queer person desires. A gay man who conforms to a critical mass of gendered expectations can move through life without his sexuality attending every interaction, even after he comes out. Buttigieg, for instance, would register on only the most finely tuned gaydar. Most people who are aware of his candidacy probably know he’s gay, but his every appearance doesn’t activate the ‘Hey, that’s that homosexual gentleman’ response in the average brain. That doesn’t mean he’s not gay enough — there’s really no such measure. It just means that he might not be up against quite the same hurdles that a gay candidate without such sturdy ties to straight culture would be.”

The author is asserting that Buttigieg, 37, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., doesn’t come across as particularly gay, meaning . . . what? That he lacks stereotypical mannerisms? That his voice isn’t high-pitched? I’m kind of floored, because I and other gay people around my age (54) or older spent most of our lives educating people about the bigotry and inaccuracy of those very stereotypes and trumpeting the message — the truth! — that gay people can be every bit as buttoned-down and strait-laced as, well, Pete Buttigieg! Now his divergence from those stereotypes is deemed remarkable and in need of dissection? Strange days indeed.

[T]his is how he {Buttigrieg] argued that Democrats should reclaim the word “freedom” from Republicans, who have tried to reserve it for their brand:

“You’re not free if you have crushing medical debt. You’re not free if you’re being treated differently because of who you are. What has really affected my personal freedom more: the fact that I don’t have the freedom to pollute a certain river, or the fact that for part of my adult life, I didn’t have the freedom to marry somebody I was in love with? We’re talking about deep, personal freedom.”

He sounds sufficiently gay to me. His powers of empathy seem plenty informed by his sexual orientation. And we need to stop making assumptions about how well someone can understand and address what minorities go through based on his or her looks or vocal inflections or anything of the sort. That’s the quintessence of prejudice. And it’s the antithesis of enlightenment.

Very well said. And I'd also note that under the Slate column standard,  with me being white, having enjoyed a fairly privileged childhood and youth, and having attended a top university and law school, I'm not gay enough.  It's utter idiocy and it needs to stop.