Mayor Pete: Being Gay Is "Not The Only Thing That Defines Me"

Mayor Pete Buttigieg (screen capture)

In a chat with the Des Moines Register, Mayor Pete Buttigieg shared that, while he's not shied away from being open about being gay and his marriage, "it's not the only thing that defines" him."

"I am proud of who I am," Buttigieg told the Des Moines Register. "I’m certainly very proud of my marriage and my husband. We don’t shy away from that. It’s also not the only thing that defines me."

“I think some people have an image of what a gay person or an LGBTQ activist is supposed to look like. And I think if you’ve met one gay person, you’ve met one gay person,” he said. “We have different styles and different approaches. But what I try to do is just be who I am … I don’t know who else to be."

Mayor Pete also addressed the topic of “healthy identity” politics in which “each identity [can] connect with every other one.”

And he drew a contrast between himself and how the current occupant of the Oval Office handles those who are 'different' saying, “This is a moment where anybody who can be marked down as different is in some way vulnerable because of the way this administration works.”