Back to Buttigieg

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Apparently, same-sex marriage undermines radical queerness and led to the rise of pseudo-heteronormative Pete Buttigieg, or something.

Via Shannon Keating at BuzzFeed:

But it’s hard for me not to take a more cynical view of the way Buttigieg’s campaign has packaged the world’s most straight-palatable gay narrative: He is a practicing Christian who, according to an op-ed he wrote in 2015 for the South Bend Tribune, believes being gay is no more significant an identity marker than “having brown hair,” and who is safely and monogamously partnered with the first guy he ever dated (whom, he’d like you to know, he met on Hinge — not Grindr). Buttigieg doesn’t have to contend with the implication of a seedy gay past or present; he’s already fulfilled the gay assimilationist dream of marriage, the white picket fence, and a couple of rescue dogs. …
If some white gay men would like to prove they’re no different than your average married straight bro — that they believe in “family values” too! — in order to receive less scrutiny from a prejudiced world (and/or because that’s what they’re actually into), then all power to them. But Buttigieg isn’t just your average white gay guy — he’s running for president, and pretty successfully so far. In doing so, he’s laying out a very public roadmap for gay success at the national level, which in all likelihood wouldn’t be possible without the assimilationist activism of the marriage equality movement. The best way for queer people to get ahead, it seems, is still to act as though we are just like everybody else.

2 Comments for “Back to Buttigieg”

  1. posted by Edward Brown on

    Only a relatively small number of “leftwing” LGBT people dislike mayor Pete. This idea that a few loud mouthed types on twitter have great powet, is a silly one.

  2. posted by Kosh III on

    What Edward Brown said.
    We’ve been together 40+ years; we and most of our friends are no different from the straight folks in the neighborhood and at work so Bravo! to Pete.
    I’d prefer Warren or Klobuchar but I’ll vote D no matter who it is.

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