South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete
Buttigieg came out gay Tuesday in an op-ed published in the South
Bend Tribune.
“I was well into adulthood before I
was prepared to acknowledge the simple fact that I am gay,” the
33-year-old Buttigieg
wrote. “It took years of struggle and growth for me to
recognize that it's just a fact of life, like having brown hair, and
part of who I am.”
“Putting something this personal on
the pages of a newspaper does not come easy. We Midwesterners are
instinctively private to begin with, and I'm not used to viewing this
as anyone else's business.”
“But it's clear to me that at a
moment like this, being more open about it could do some good. For a
local student struggling with her sexuality, it might be helpful for
an openly gay mayor to send the message that her community will
always have a place for her. And for a conservative resident from a
different generation, whose unease with social change is partly
rooted in the impression that he doesn't know anyone gay, perhaps a
familiar face can be a reminder that we're all in this together as a
community,” he added.
Buttigieg, a Democrat now in his second
term as mayor, became the youngest mayor of a U.S. city with at least
100,000 residents when he first took office in 2011.