“It’s hard to face the truth that there were times in my life when, if you had shown me exactly what it was inside me that made me gay, I would have cut it out with a knife,” he said. “If you had offered me a pill to make me straight, I would’ve swallowed it before you had time to give me a sip of water.”
Fortunately, there was no knife and no pill, Buttigieg said. Because then he would not have met his husband, Chasten, who has made him a better person, he said – and their marriage has moved him closer to God. The message many gay people get that there’s something wrong with them, he continued, “is a message that puts you at war not only with yourself, but with your maker.”
“That’s the thing that I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand,” Buttigieg said of the vice president, who has opposed same-sex marriage. “That if you have a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.”
Join the conversation as a VIP Member