Pete Buttigieg and husband Chasten appear on cover of TIME Magazine
TIME Magazine dedicated the cover to Pete Buttigieg and husband Chasten Buttigieg
The latest TIME magazine cover features gay Presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg and his husband, Chasten Buttigieg.
The pair are the first same-sex couple to pose together on the cover of the magazine since an issue dedicated to equal marriage in 2013.
The May 13 issue cover reflects on the polling rise of the 37-year-old gay Presidential hopeful, with a headline reading: “First Family: The unlikely, untested and unprecedented campaign of Mayor Pete Buttigieg.”
Pete Buttigieg spoke about winning over homophobes
Speaking to TIME, Buttigieg said that while serving in the armed forces before coming out as gay, he often heard homophobic epithets from fellow officers.
However, he said many had since reached out to express their support.
Buttigieg reflected: “I bet some of them still go back and tell gay jokes because that’s their habit, you know? Bad habits and bad instincts is not the same as people being bad people.”
TIME Magazine dedicated the cover to Pete Buttigieg and husband Chasten Buttigieg
He added that he believes in the “power of redemption and forgiveness” after seeing “once-disapproving parents dance at their gay son’s wedding and homophobic military officers take back their words.”
Buttigieg said: “We’ve got to get away from this kill-switch mentality that we see on Twitter.
“The job of politics is to summon the good and beat back the evil.”
— Pete Buttigieg
“This idea that we just sort people into baskets of good and evil ignores the central fact of human existence, which is that each of us is a basket of good and evil.
“The job of politics is to summon the good and beat back the evil.”
Elsewhere in the interview, his husband Chasten Buttigieg spoke about becoming homeless after coming out to his conservative parents.
The 29-year-old prospective First Gentleman said: “Being gay was not culturally acceptable where I grew up, mostly for a lack of understanding, and so my family and I were just at a crossroads, and we didn’t really know how to talk to one another.”
Chasten Buttigieg reflects on campaign launch kiss
The pair are enjoying heightened media attention, with the Washington Post publishing a profile of Chasten on Thursday (May 2).
Speaking to the newspaper, Chasten reflected on the criticism the pair received after sharing an on-stage kiss at Pete’s April 14 campaign launch.
He said: “[It was] the level of intimacy we were comfortable with in that moment.”
“I’m not surrounded by people telling me not to be myself, and if I were, I’d ask them to find a different project to work on.”
South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg greets his husband Chasten Glezman (R) after announcing that he will be seeking the Democratic nomination for president. (Scott Olson/Getty)
The profile also revealed that while Chasten’s parents eventually accepted him, not every member of his family does.
His brother, Rhyan Glezman, is now an evangelical pastor and has not reconnected with his brother.
Glezman told the newspaper: “I want the best for him, I just don’t support the gay lifestyle.”
