'Mayor Pete' Made the Extraordinary Seem Ordinary

When I "came out of the closet" more than 40 years ago, I never could have imagined an openly gay man introducing his husband — a presidential candidate, whose run for office was both credible and historic.

But there was Chasten Buttigieg on Sunday night on national TV, talking about the man whose name he took when they got married, barely holding it together as the rush of history no doubt swept over him.

Then Pete Buttigieg came on stage, greeting him with a brief kiss on the lips, a gesture at once sweet, radical and altogether ordinary.

When I finally stopped resisting the truth about my sexual orientation in 1978, I was a college sophomore in Ithaca, New York. Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to public office in California was leading the fight against the "Briggs Initiative," which would have banned openly gay and lesbian teachers in California. In Florida, former beauty queen Anita Bryant was promoting a campaign to roll back LGBT rights in Dade County.

Harvey Milk would soon be assassinated. And in that political environment, the notion of a credible, openly gay candidate for president was simply unimaginable.

Fast forward to 2019, when the small-town mayor with a challenging name to pronounce (let alone spell) announced his run for president. Few thought he had a chance of making it past Iowa, much less winning there. But as he showed his fundraising prowess and became something of a media darling, Buttigieg made believers out of many former skeptics.

Part of what made Buttigieg's candidacy so impressive was that his history-making run seemed so ordinary. He wasn't running to become the first gay president (actually, some historians say "bachelor" James Buchanan, the nation's 15th president, beat him to it) but rather, to be the first millennial in the White House who was ready to "turn the page."

Buttigieg tapped into a base of LGBT donors who took pride in his candidacy. Of the $81 million his campaign reported raising, 20% of it came from Californians, many most likely gay.

And yet the LGBT community was in no way monolithic in its preference for Buttigieg — and that in some ways underscores how much things have changed in the U.S. I heard more than a few lesbians angrily echo Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar's complaint that no 38-year-old woman with Buttigieg's experience and resume would ever be taken as seriously as he was.

Other queer 20- and 30-somethings I know supported Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders or Kamala Harris (before she dropped out). They weren't touched by the historic nature of Buttigieg's run, in part because they're so used to having relatively equal rights that they didn't see the imperative of supporting an openly gay candidate. Some were also simply put off by his moderate politics and strong Episcopalian faith, which might have appealed more to rural white Iowans than to residents of San Francisco's Castro neighborhood.

I also spoke to one queer activist of color who helped disrupt an LGBT Buttigieg fundraiser in San Francisco, who parroted Bernie Sanders' criticism that Mayor Pete was getting money from billionaires.

And yet — billionaire bundlers and donors backing a gay presidential candidate? Who'da thunk it?

It speaks to the inroads Buttigieg and the LGBT movement have made in the U.S. A week ago, a poignant online video of Buttigieg and Zachary, a 9-year-old boy at one of his town hall meetings, went viral. His written question was, "Can you help me tell the world I'm gay too? I want to be brave like you." The boy was brought up on stage, where Buttigieg calmly said, "I don't think you need a lot of advice from me on bravery."

That moment encapsulates the real impact of Buttigieg's candidacy. It signals to boys and girls struggling with their sexual identity and fear of being their true authentic selves that they are not alone.

"We sent a message to every kid out there wondering if whatever marks them out as different means they are somehow destined to be less than," Buttigieg said Sunday night, when announcing the suspension of his campaign. "To see that someone who once felt that exact same way can become a leading American presidential candidate with his husband at his side."

A historic candidacy has ended, but it may still open a lot of doors that seemed closed before it began.