• @[email protected]
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    2 days ago

    During a speech in 2019, Pete Buttigieg, then a presidential candidate, stated that he would have taken a pill to make him straight if it had been available when he was younger

    He said this with his husband and newly adopted son in the audience.

    Dude is just another Andrew Cuomo / Gavin Newsom waiting to happen.

    • @[email protected]
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      141 day ago

      I mean I think trying to say that him saying that is shitty is kinda disingenuous. The guy was born in 1982, grew up in South Bend, Indiana, and probably realized he was gay during the 90s, a time that we, the LGBT community, were still reeling from and dealing with the AIDS crisis. I have no doubt a ton of queer kids back then thought the same as him because they just wanted to be normal and not thought of as monsters.

      Plus his parents worked at Notre Dame, a Catholic university. So he was probably around a whole lot of not very accepting Catholics during his childhood.

      What the point of that story was at the time was that he had to accept who he was, and that it was okay to be gay. That’s a thing a lot of queer people have to go through.

      • @[email protected]
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        519 hours ago

        Yeah. Matthew Shepard was murdered when he was 15 or 16. There’s a reason “Pride” is named “Pride”, and it’s not because pride and acceptance is the default state for homosexual youths.

    • @[email protected]
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      1 day ago

      My brother and his husband, both openly gay, stated to me just the other day that in their youth they prayed they were not gay and even shamed themselves for having homoerotic thoughts. What Pete is saying here probably reflects the way a large part of the LGBTQ+ community has felt as they came to grips with the way they feel and identify in contrast to societal expectations.

      I don’t see how this somehow makes the guy a bad politician. If anything it shows he is human and normal.

      • @[email protected]
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        218 hours ago

        My brother and his husband, both openly gay, stated to me just the other day that in their youth they prayed they were not gay and even shamed themselves for having homoerotic thoughts.

        A public figure saying he’s ashamed to be gay during a national debate definitely reinforces the sense of shame and thoughts of self-harm.

    • @[email protected]
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      192 days ago

      Exactly. He doesn’t “believe” anything per se. He’s a cypher. Believes are fungible; having a belief is a transaction for him.

      It’s the fundamental difference between authentic politicians who have a belief and then seek the power to make that belief a reality, versus wanting power and then adopting whatever beliefs it takes to get you there.

      • @[email protected]
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        419 hours ago

        Yeah, my distaste for Buttigieg stemmed not from him being a centrist, but because he doesn’t seem to stand for anything. Like Harris he started the primary in a vague progressive lane and then realized that he wasn’t going to complete with Bernie or Warren and decided Biden was weak in the moderate path and shifted there. If there was a communist revolution, Pete would speak the theory and throw his hat into the ring for Chairman.

        He’s the epitomy of the view that politics is mostly about finely crafting a message and winning the spin game, not policy or action. He may even be right, but I don’t trust him to be anything more than a spokesman.

    • @[email protected]
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      82 days ago

      Yeah, gay men from more prosperous backgrounds have some fucked up coping skills, they get worse as they rise in the world.

      It’s more about class sickness than anything about being gay. Being a sexual minority fucks you up in any scenario, it’s just how the fucked upedness plays out at that level.

      As a good old fashioned working class male homo who can pass as prosperous due to education and natural perspicuity, I have broad experience seeing how class fucks up gay men specifically.

      • @[email protected]
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        21 day ago

        Being a sexual minority fucks you up in any scenario, it’s just how the fucked upedness plays out at that level.

        In my experience, the gay community (at least - the gay male community in Houston that I’m familiar with) is this incredibly tight knit and supportive group of sincere and loving people. The adversity brought this minority group together and bound them into a network of mutual aid and compassion for one another that’s so far removed from anything I see among straight peers.

        As a good old fashioned working class male homo who can pass as prosperous due to education and natural perspicuity, I have broad experience seeing how class fucks up gay men specifically.

        It’s one more wedge issue used by the ruling class to divide and conquer.