As with Hillary Clinton, I became weary of constantly posting links online to remind people that, no, Pete Buttigieg is not our Big Gay Future. Or, well, that he actually is, if we recognise that the mainstream gay movement is a deeply conservative, rapacious, and monstrous entity that hides its cultural, political, and economic conservatism under the guise of “equality.” So, here are some quick thoughts on the Kamala Harris campaign’s search for vice president, a recap of the sheer awfulness of Pete Buttigieg, and several links for you to read and pass around.
First, let’s be clear: No one really cares about the vice presidential candidate. But: this may be the weirdest year in American presidential politics in modern times, now that Joe Biden has stepped out of the race and Kamala Harris has stepped in, with $300 million and counting (for various reasons, not all of them to do with the money, the election is probably hers to lose, even though she has yet to state what her policies might actually be). Donald Trump, whose entire campaign had so far been focused on defeating a clearly ailing Biden, is much less sure of how to handle Harris. Right now, his strategy seems to have pivoted to outright racism, in the hope of riling his base. But the kind of racism that didn’t work against Obama is much less likely to work against Harris because even Republicans now live comfortably in a world of families that are blended in several different ways, with multiple sets of parents, often across racial and ethnic lines. If Harris’s side wants to win, it’s better off mocking Trump than taking him up on his points. And Trump hates nothing more than being mocked.
But, let’s return to the question of the VP candidate, a choice that might actually mean something this year, given all the unusual circumstances. Harris is set to announce her choice in a few days. Already, we’re seeing signs that Josh Shapiro’s presumed front-runner status might be in jeopardy, after various revelations about his stint in the IDF and his past statements about Palestinians. Even four years ago, those wouldn’t have mattered but today, as Americans watch the ongoing genocide in Gaza on their phones, Shapiro’s callousness is likely to keep coming up as a political disadvantage. All of this is in addition to many other issues in his past record, as noted by Chris Lehmann in The Nation. So, we’ll see. These are, to use a popular word, weird times.
For now, Buttigieg seems like an unlikely candidate, and he should be. As I’ve written here, the man loves to run for offices but can’t really stay in a job: his entire life, as Nathan J. Robinson and I have both pointed out, has been about becoming president, but without any commitment to real political action. His brief stint as a mayor of South Bend, Indiana was marked by charges of racism by his African American constituents, and Nathan has exhaustively detailed these here and here. Buttigieg was largely indifferent to their concerns and, indeed, to his job: he took a seven month leave of absence to volunteer in Afghanistan, a quick turn that was clearly designed to let him use the term “veteran” for the rest of his life (his attempts to portray himself as a soldier on the battlefields have been derided as somewhat elliptical with regard to the truth). If he has managed to push himself to the forefront of a line of potential VP candidates, it’s because he’s backed by liberals who equate “gay” with progressive and like to use their support of him to pat themselves on the back for being so very modern and open-minded.
But, as I’ve pointed out in “American Gay: Pete Buttigieg and the Politics of Forgetting,” Buttigieg’s candidacy should also open our eyes to the social and political conservatism of the gay movement. Lefties and liberals think gay=progressive or leftist when in fact, as I’ve written many times, the modern gay movement is socially conservative (can you think of anything worse than forcing people to marry for healthcare, or just placing marriage as the apex of a movement?) and the gay funders of Pete Buttigieg are all about strengthening the military, increasing the scope of the prison industrial complex, and forcing people to marry for healthcare.
There is a huge difference between the mainstream gay movement and a much older, queer radical front (from where I write and act). The issue for the latter is not that Pete Buttigieg isn’t in the sex clubs every night or that he has chosen a conventional married life: one’s radical politics have nothing to do with lifestyle, as I’ve written in my critiques of polyamory, here and here. The issue for us is that he stands for nothing or, as Nathan puts it, “Pete Buttigieg is all about Pete Buttigieg.”
In 2020, Pete Buttigieg sought to use his gay identity to counteract Trump’s narratives, saying: “The idea of the likes of Rush Limbaugh or Donald Trump lecturing anybody on family values — I mean, sorry but, one thing about my marriage is it’s never involved me having to send hush money to a porn star after cheating on my spouse with him or her…So they wanna debate family values? Let’s debate family values. I’m ready.” I don’t think Stormy Daniels cares how people refer to her, and neither do most porn stars, but if you’re on the left, you can easily tell that “porn star” is a dog whistle, a signal of contempt for the men and women who make their living doing sex work (in one of the few industries where women make more money than men).
As for cheating: oh, please. Infidelity, cheating, whatever you want to call, is astonishingly common (I’d argue that relationships are better off without the expectation of monogamy, but let’s take up that conversation elsewhere). Studies show that anywhere between 15% to 25% of married Americans report extramarital affairs: I’m guessing the actual numbers are much higher. Throw a tiny pebble at your next backyard gathering of friends and neighbours, and it will probably bounce off someone “committing infidelity.” Probably with you.
Buttigieg doesn’t just wrap himself in the flag of patriotism, but in the veneer of an All-American Family Man. That the All-American Family is a myth that’s only really relevant to the Right seems to have escaped the notice of his liberal and left fans, even if they wince uncomfortably, wondering if anyone else can see their Pornhub accounts or find out about that affair with their spouse’s cousin for the last five months. Buttigieg’s image of the decorous gay man, his ties to the worst and most rapacious corporate interests (like McKinsey), his willingness to even denounce single-payer healthcare, and his inability to actually articulate any real policy changes other than “Vote for me, a Gay Man”: all of this would have ended the career of any straight candidate. But straight liberals, progressives, and too many on the left, terrified of being called homophobic by their rabid gay friends (whose politics they fail to understand as economically and socially conservative) have either chosen to stay silent or, to be blunt, are incapable of recognising conservative politics amongst gay Democrats.
Pete Buttigieg is unlikely to be a VP choice but, like the Human Rights Campaign and corporate Pride parades, he’s also unlikely to ever go away, forever haunting the political field as he desperately tries, over and over again, to enter the field of presidential nominees and, perhaps, win one day. He is nothing if not stubborn, and he has (as I know too well) a large mass of vicious mainstream gay men and women who are determined to get the first gay president in place.
Of late, I’ve been growing tired of straight/ish people refusing to see the contemporary gay movement for what it is: a socially, politically, and economically conservative entity that wants power for its own sake. Imagine if a group anywhere, not just in the U.S, launched a movement to make it impossible for people to get healthcare outside marriage, kept extolling the virtues of stable, committed marriages, demonised sex workers and mocked those who were not faithful to their partners, praised the virtues of fighting US-led imperial wars, and demanded that more people be chained to the prison industrial complex through mechanisms like hate crime legislation. Such a group would instantly be criticised for its retrograde, backward-looking, shockingly conservative politics. And yet, for too long, liberals, progressives, and leftists everywhere have chosen, instead, to praise the mainstream gay movement as somehow liberatory when it is the exact opposite. This needs to end if we, on the actual left, are to gain any clarity about our politics in the difficult years to come. And we have to start with a clear-eyed look at Pete Buttigieg. As I’ve said before, “The problem with Pete Buttigieg is not that he is homonormative or assimilationist, but that he represents a new will to forgetfulness on the part of the United States, a will embedded in a desire to recreate not just this country but the world in the cast of a new, gayer imperialism.” It’s time to let go of the myth of Pete Buttigieg as the promise of a better world.
Here is a list of critiques of Pete Buttigieg and the contemporary gay movement for you to read and share the next time your well-meaning liberal friend praises him as a history-making candidate. I suspect I’ll have to add to it over the years because we will never see the end of his vacuous bid to become president of the United States.
On Buttigieg’s policies, see Nathan J. Robinson’s in-depth reading of his memoir and more:
“All about Pete.”
You can find more in various other essays in Current Affairs, here.
On Buttigieg’s as a manifestation of the worst of contemporary gay politics, see my American Gay: Pete Buttigieg and the Politics of Forgetting.
Also see my Pete Buttigieg Is Still Playing.
On the deep conservatism of the gay movement, especially on gay marriage, see my Gay Marriage Ruined Everything.
And this, in Current Affairs, “Where The Gay Things Are,” which answers the question: what did gay marriage get us?
And “HRC, Drones, and Space Aliens.”
See also my Interview with Human Rights Campaign’s Joe Solmonese.
This looks at hate crime legislation and related issues, through the case of Matthew Shepard: “Saints and Sinners.”
Chasten Buttigieg wrote a “memoir,” which is really just a thinly-veiled political and social manifesto on behalf of his husband Pete. You can read my review of the book here, in What Chasten Buttigieg Has to Tell Us.
A large and vocal segment of the gay community was deeply displeased with my review, and went at me with intense misogyny and racism (in ways that, I think, some of their straight women friends would be horrified by). I’ll have an entire essay on that kerfuffle (gleefully joined in by certain members of the “socialist” left) sometime in the fall, but for now, here’s what I wrote about it:
I Broke the Internet or, Daily Posts, September 11-15. Again, this is all just a reminder that Pete Buttigieg isn’t just a manifestation of the worst of conservative gay politics (and that gay politics is conservative), but that he and his ilk are only too happy to use the same tactics that you might find among the most rabid, right-wing conservatives.
I wrote this about Stormy Daniels, Olivia Nuzzi Interviews Stormy Daniels, And We Learn Nothing.
On the sillines of the discourse on Polyamoury, see “Polyamory Is Gay Marriage for Straight People.”
See also, “Your Sex Is Not Radical.”
And, most of all, read this book Against Equality: Queer Revolution, Not Mere Inclusion.
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