The New Republic has dropped out
of an upcoming presidential climate summit after publishing a
controversial op-ed on presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg, the
openly gay mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
The summit, planned for September 23 in
New York City, is being co-hosted by Gizmodo, which announced on
Saturday that The New Republic had dropped out of the event.
A day after its publication, The New
Republic retracted the opinion piece titled “My Mayor Pete
Problem” and written by 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
president.
The op-ed 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.”
The New Republic's decision to
pull out of the climate summit came after at least three sponsors
announced they would no longer participate in the event in response
to the op-ed's publication.
“The piece, and the choice to run it,
are inconsistent with our values,” tweeted the League of
Conservation Voters, which was scheduled to discuss the candidates'
positions on climate change at the summit.