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homophobic op-ed about Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg, the openly gay mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has been retracted by The New Republic.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.