Pete Buttigieg shows up Mike Johnson’s anti-gay rhetoric with words about husband and children
Pete Buttigieg had the perfect response to Mike Johnson’s anti-LGBTQ+ views. (getty)
Gay Democrat Pete Buttigieg wants to counteract Mike Johnson’s anti-LGBTQ+ views by showing the speaker of the House what a happy same-sex couple looks like.
The US transportation secretary suggested last week that he could invite the newly-appoint conservative House Speaker over to witness the reality of married life with his husband.
“I’ll work with anybody who can help us get good transportation available to the American people, but I don’t know, maybe we’ll just have him over, ’cause our little house isn’t that far from the capitol,” Buttigieg said on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Buttigieg’s comments come in response to the years of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric spewed by Johnson during his time in government, from calling for gay sex to be outlawed, to suggesting that homosexuality was a contributing factor to the fall of the Roman empire.
Johnson recently claimed during a Fox News interview that he “loves all people” and “doesn’t even remember” some of the statements he’s made about LGBTQ+ people over the course of his career.
Editorials written in the mid-2000s see Johnson describe homosexuality as “inherently unnatural” and a “dangerous lifestyle”, with claims it could lead to legalised pedophilia and destroy “the entire democratic system.”
The Louisiana politician wrote: “Experts project that homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.”
In another piece, he said: “Your race, creed and sex are what you are, while homosexuality and cross-dressing are things you do.
“This is a free country, but we don’t give special protections for every person’s bizarre choices.”
Pete Buttigieg says ‘nothing’ about LGBTQ+ family life is ‘dark’
Pete Buttigieg, who came out publicly as gay in 2015, has urged Johnson to witness an average day in his home, which involved the typical family business of day-care pick-ups and making dinner for his young twins, Penelope Rose and Joseph August.
“If he could see what it’s like when I come home from work, and [husband] Chasten [Glezman] is bringing the kids home from day care or vice versa, and one of us is getting the mac and cheese ready and the other’s microwaving those freezer meatballs – which are a great cheat code if you’ve got a toddler and you need to feed them quickly – and one won’t take their shoes off and one needs a diaper change,” he said.
In a nod to Johnson’s previous comments, he added: “Everything about it is chaos, but nothing about that is dark.”
When asked by CNN News Central to address Johnson’s controversial comments, Buttigieg said it wasn’t easy to even look at the US Capitol Building without thinking of the speaker’s past.
“I admit it’s a little bit difficult driving the family mini-van to drop our kids off at day care, passing the dome of The Capitol knowing that the speaker of the House sitting under that dome doesn’t even think our family ought to exist.”
Yesterday (7 November), House Republicans – led by Trump fanatic Marjorie Taylor Greene – moved to reduce Buttigieg’s salary as transportation secretary to $1 (80p), as an amendment to a spending bill.
Although it was adopted by a voice vote, the underlying bill needs to be approved by the full House and is highly unlikely to be approved by the Senate, according to The Hill.
