One of the more vulnerable moments of Pete Buttigieg’s pioneering campaign for president (as a front-running, openly gay man) came in South Carolina when he talked about how he struggled with his identity, with his sexuality: When I was younger, I would have done anything to not be gay. When I began to halfway realize what it meant that I felt the way I did about people . . . it launched in me something I can only describe as a kind of war. And if that war had been settled on the terms I would have wished for . . . I would not be standing here. If you had offered me a pill to make me straight, I would have swallowed it before you had time to give me a sip of water. It’s a hard thing to think about now. It’s hard to face the truth that there were times in my life when, if you had shown me exactly what it was inside me that made me gay, I would have cut it out with a knife.
No parent ever wants to hear that their kid would like to cut a part of themselves out, that their son or their daughter is at war with themselves. Of course, much of the shame and doubt that Pete felt had nothing to do with his parents and everything to do with the time and culture he was growing up in, but nevertheless.
It’s your job to make sure your kids know that there isn’t a part of them that you’d want them to change if they could. It’s your job to show them that you love the whole them. Through your words, your actions, and your
choices, you must teach and prove to them that they make the world better just by being in it and by being themselves.