Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Mayor Pete didn’t say ‘gay’

Pete Buttigieg

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg speaks at the Democratic National Committee.

Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Tseng is an equity strategy program manager at Google, a Paul and Daisy Soros fellow, and a public voices fellow of The OpEd Project.

In his speech at the Democratic National Convention, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg never said the word “gay.” Not once. He didn’t mention his husband, Chasten, by name or even use the term “husband.” He never mentioned that he is a man who loves another man, nor did he give any explanation of why his family seemed like an impossibility just 25 years ago, beyond saying that it did.

In fact, the only thing that might have tipped you off about his sexuality was his mention of pro wrestling, a very queer sport. The omission of any aspect of his gayness made me long for a much broader pool of candidates onto whom I could project my hopes and dreams as a gay man.


To be fair, “Mayor Pete” is unequivocally the most famous gay man in American politics. He’s the highest ranking LGBTQ+ federal official ( 14th in line for the presidency) and has a personal story that is known to a broad swath of the country due to his own campaign for president in 2020. He is widely recognized as one of the Democratic Party’s best communicators and as the nation’s first credible Millennial candidate for president.

So a good-faith reading of these omissions is that he assumes his audience already knows the biographical elements that powered his meteoric rise. And perhaps a more realistic reading is that Buttigieg plans to one day run for president (or governor of Michigan, where he now lives) and is betting that respectability politics will be his most effective strategy for appealing to the broadest set of voters. I would even grant him the generous reading that he is genuinely uninterested in discussing his identity in depth, and so this calibration is authentic to who he is.

Still, Mayor Pete’s reticence to discuss his identity in any way that might cause an “ick factor” for his future constituents makes me feel like rolling my eyes with my entire body. As New Yorker contributor Masha Gessen wrote in 2020, Buttigieg’s “politics of being ‘just like you’ leaves out the people who cannot or do not want to be just like conventional straight people, whether in appearance or in the way we construct our lives and families.” Implicit in that is the idea that his “passing privilege” — his ability to appear heterosexual, and the fact that he is an otherwise anodyne cis-white guy — is what he believes is his greatest selling point: that being a”palatable gay” is the only way any gay man could ever get elected to higher office in the United States.

But even as a palatable gay myself, with my husband of nearly 10 years and twin girls we adopted almost exactly a year before Pete and Chasten adopted their twins (his most relatable line in his speech: “when the dog is barking, and the air fryer is beeping, and the mac and cheese is boiling over, and it feels like all the political negotiating experience in the world is not enough for me to get our 3-year-old son and daughter to just wash their hands and sit at the table”), I can’t help but feel a sense of loss that our chance to be represented on a national stage is so contingent on us living our lives in such a prescribed way. And since he doesn’t seem willing to handle conversations about the less heteronormative aspects of queer identity and intersectionality, those crucial parts of our community’s shared struggle seem far from the national discourse.

The truth is that I’m still rooting for Mayor Pete. I hope he does well. I hope he gets elected to additional positions and is able to use his power and influence to make lives better, because I truly believe that is his goal. But I don’t want to be forced to put all of my gay politics eggs in the Pete Buttigieg basket. Unfortunately, the pipeline of queer political talent is thin. Of the 480 congressional and gubernatorial seats up for election this year, there are only 13 LGBTQ candidates endorsed by the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, the public affairs committee supporting queer candidates. Because the bench is so shallow, we don’t have enough representation to truly encompass the wide spectrum of queer identity. Perhaps our most radical gay federal official, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), who is unabashedly gay and speaks often of his queerness, is still a cis-man who wears a suit to work every day.

It’s easy to say that we queer folks need to get off the couch and run for office, to be the representation we want to see in the world. But it’s not hard to see how thick a skin it takes to be a queer public figure, particularly in a politically charged (and increasingly threatening) America. Mayor Pete knows that too; he’s lived it with every step of his career. It’s gotten him far, but now that he has risen so high on the national stage, it’s time for him to take the next courageous step and talk about it.

He might advocate for care infrastructure for aging LGBTQ seniors, or talk about the impact that PrEP and the mPox vaccine have had on public health, or maybe even mention once in a while that trans rights are human rights. It’s time for Mayor Pete to shine the light on how beautiful, and legitimate, all parts of the queer coalition are, and to lift up other gay politicians so he no longer has to be the be-all and end-all for those of us looking for someone to speak for us.

Read More

A Promise in the Making: Thirty-Five Years of the ADA

Americans with Disabilities Act ADA and glasses.

Getty Images

A Promise in the Making: Thirty-Five Years of the ADA

One July morning in 1990, a crowd gathered on the White House lawn, some in wheelchairs, others holding signs, many with tears in their eyes. President George H.W. Bush lifted his pen and signed his name to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)—the most sweeping civil rights law for people with disabilities in the nation's history. It was a moment three decades in the making: a rare convergence of activism, outrage, and legislative will. The ADA's promise was simple—no longer would disability mean exclusion from public life—but its implications were anything but.

Thirty-five years later, the ADA remains a landmark, a legal bulwark against discrimination, and a symbol of hard-won visibility for a community that has been too often relegated to the margins. Yet, like every civil rights law, the ADA's story is more complex than a single signature or a morning in Washington. Its passage and its legacy have always been about more than ramps and regulations.

Keep ReadingShow less
Illinois Camp Gives Underrepresented Kids an Opportunity To Explore New Pathways

Kuumba Family Festival at Evanston Township High School

Illinois Camp Gives Underrepresented Kids an Opportunity To Explore New Pathways

Summer camps in Evanston, Illinois — a quiet suburb just north of Chicago — usually consist of an array of different sports, educational programs, and even learning how to sail. But one thing is obviously apparent throughout the city’s camps: they’re almost all white.

Despite Black or African American families making up nearly 16% of Evanston’s population, Black kids are massively underrepresented throughout the city's summer camps.

Keep ReadingShow less
Students in a classroom.​

Today, Hispanic-Serving Institutions enroll 64 percent of all Latino college students.

Getty Images, andresr

Tennessee’s Attack on Federal Support for Hispanic-Serving Colleges Hurts Us All

The Tennessee Attorney General has partnered with a conservative legal nonprofit to sue the U.S. Department of Education over programming that supports Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), colleges, and universities where at least 25% of the undergraduate full-time equivalent student enrollment is Hispanic. On its face, this action claims to oppose “discriminatory” federal funding. In reality, it is part of a broader and deeply troubling trend: a coordinated effort to dismantle educational opportunity for communities of color under the guise of anti-DEI rhetoric.

As a scholar of educational policy and leadership in higher education, I believe we must confront policies that narrow access and undermine equity in education for those who have been historically underserved. What is happening in Tennessee is not just a misguided action—it’s a self-inflicted wound that will harm the state's economic future and deepen historical inequality.

Keep ReadingShow less
Inclusion Is Not a Slogan. It’s the Ground We Walk On.

A miniature globe between a row of blue human figures

Getty Images//Stock Photo

Inclusion Is Not a Slogan. It’s the Ground We Walk On.

After political pressure and a federal investigation, Harvard University recently renamed and restructured its Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging. MIT announced the closure of its DEI office, stating that it would no longer support centralized diversity initiatives. Meanwhile, Purdue University shut down its Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging and removed cultural center programs that once served as safe spaces for marginalized students. I am aware of the costs of not engaging with ideas surrounding diversity and difference, and I have witnessed the consequences of the current administration's actions— and the pace at which universities are responding. It’s nowhere good.

I was forced to move to the United States from Russia, a country where the words inclusion, diversity, and equality are either misunderstood, mocked, or treated as dangerous ideology. In this country, a woman over fifty is considered “unfit” for the job market. Disability is not viewed as a condition that warrants accommodation, but rather as a reason to deny employment. LGBTQ+ individuals are treated not as equal citizens but as people who, ideally, shouldn’t exist, where the image of a rainbow on a toy or an ice cream wrapper can result in legal prosecution.

Keep ReadingShow less