During a campaign event in Denver on
Sunday, a 9-year-old boy asked presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg
for advice on coming out.
A moderator read the question submitted
by Zachary Ro: “Thank you for being so brave. Would you help me
tell the world I'm gay too? I want to be brave like you.”
“Well, I don't think you need a lot
of advice from me on bravery. You seem pretty strong,” Buttigieg
answered.
“It took me a long time to figure out
how to tell my best friend that I was gay, let alone go out there and
tell the world. And to see you come to terms with who you are in a
room full of thousands of people you've never met. That's really
something.”
The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana
came out after he was elected to his first term as mayor and after
serving in Afghanistan. Three years after he came out publicly at 33
in 2015, Buttigieg married his husband, Chasten Buttigieg.
“It won't always be easy,”
Buttigieg continued, “but that's okay, because you know who you
are, and that's really important. Because when you know who you are,
you have a center of gravity that can hold you together when all
kinds of chaos is happening around you.”
Buttigieg also told Zachary that he was
leading by example and could be affecting others simply by standing
on the stage.
“You will never know who's taking
their lead from you, who's watching you and deciding that they can be
a little braver because you've been brave,” he said to applause
from the audience.
“When I was trying to figure out who
I was, I was afraid that who I was might mean that I could never make
a difference. And what wound up happening instead is that it's a huge
part of the difference I get to make.”
Buttigieg added that while he couldn't
promise that it would always be easy, he would “rooting” for
Zachary.