A homophobic op-ed about Democratic
presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg, the openly gay mayor of South
Bend, Indiana, has been retracted by The New Republic.
The opinion piece, titled “My Mayor
Pete Problem,” was written by openly gay literary critic Dale Peck.
In the piece, Peck referred to
Buttigieg as “Mary Pete” and described him as “the gay
equivalent of Uncle Tom.” He argued that because Buttigieg waited
until he was in his 30s to come out he is a “gay teenager” who
would be too obsessed with sex and drugs to make an effective leader.
“All this makes Mary Pete different
from every other left-leaning neoliberal in exactly zero ways,”
Peck wrote. “Because let's face it. The only thing that
distinguishes the mayor of South Bend from all those other
well-educated reasonably intelligent white dudes who wanna be
president is what he does with his dick (and possibly his ass,
although I get a definite top-by-default vibe from him, which is to
say that I bet he thinks about getting fucked but he's too uptight to
do it).”
“You know and I know that Mary Pete
is a gay teenager.”
“He's been out for, what, all of four
years, and if I understand the narrative, he married the first guy he
dated. And we all know what happens when gay people don't get a real
adolescence because they spent theirs in the closet: they go through
it after they come out. … [T]he last thing I want in the White
House is a gay man staring down 40 who suddenly realizes he didn't
get to have all the fun his straight peers did when they were
teenagers,” he said.
The piece was pulled and replaced with
an editor's note apologizing for its publication. Editors said that
they decided to remove the op-ed “in response to criticism of the
piece's inappropriate and invasive content.”
In a statement on Twitter, New
Republic owner Win McCormack apologized to Buttigieg.
“Yesterday we made a mistake, but we
remain committed to honoring the tradition of high standards and
journalistic integrity that have been the hallmark of The New
Republic for more than 100 years,” McCormack said. “As The
New Republic’s owner, I want to extend our sincerest apologies
to Mayor Buttigieg, as well as to our readers.”
Chris Hughes, the openly gay co-founder
of Facebook, purchased the magazine in 2012. He sold it to McCormack
in 2016.