Pete Buttigieg reflects coming out and says he was fed up of not knowing what it was like to be in love

Words: Steve Brown

Pete Buttigieg reflects on coming out during a Presidential debate and said he was fed up of not knowing what it was like to be in love.

A veteran of the war in Afghanistan, the Indiana-born politician came out publicly as gay in 2015, ten days before the Supreme Court’s historic ruling on marriage equality, writing that “at a moment like this, being more open about it could do some good.”

He began dating his husband, teacher Chasten Glezman, just two months later. The pair announced their engagement in 2017 before marrying in South Bend in June 2018.

And back in April, Mayor Pete launched his 2020 Presidential campaign and is a breakout candidate.

And during a debate, hosted by ABC News, Mayor Pete reflected on coming out and said: “You know, as a military officer serving under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and as an elected official in the state of Indiana when Mike Pence was governor, at a certain point, when it came to professional setbacks, I had to acknowledge whether just being who I was, was going to be the ultimate career ending professional setback.

“I came back from the deployment and realized that you only get to live one life and I was not interested in not knowing what it was like to be in love any longer.

“So, I just came out. I had no idea what kind of professional setback it would be especially because, inconveniently, it was a reelection year in my socially conservative community.

“What happened was when I trusted voters to judge me based on the job that I did for them, they decided to trust me and reelect me with 80 per cent of the vote and what I learned was trust can be reciprocated and that part of how you can win and deserve to win is to know what’s worth more to you than winning.”