Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg called for cisgender gay, lesbian, and bisexual people to stand in solidarity with transgender people, who are facing numerous attacks from Republicans all over the country. “I think everybody else has to stick up for them,” he said.

In an interview with YouTuber Andrew Callaghan, published yesterday, Buttigieg discussed a range of topics, including AI, the New York mayoral race, and military service.

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They also talked about LGBTQ+ issues, including a rightwing commentator’s accusation that Buttigieg is faking being gay, how many gay conservatives are still closeted, as well as the removal of all mentions of transgender people from the website for the Stonewall National Monument (despite their key role in the Stonewall uprising).

“How did you feel about the T getting removed from the Stonewall website?” Callaghan asked.

“It’s terrible,” Buttigieg responded. “I mean, look, you know, if you look into the history of what made it possible for people like me to have rights — like we do to get married — like, a lot of that was advocates and activists who were transgender in the ’60s or ’70s… who stuck up for everybody’s rights.”

Buttigieg then talked about how some cisgender gay and bi people want to somehow drop transgender people from the community.

“So I get the politics of it,” he said. “I get that it would be politically convenient, honestly, for people to pull up the ladder after them and leave out others, but that’s not OK. People have to stick together. And that’s not just across the LGBTQ community, it’s like, anywhere somebody is getting beat up or having, literally or figuratively, because of who they are, I think everybody else has to stick up for them.”

Just prior to being asked about the Stonewall monument’s website, Callaghan asked Buttigieg about what it was like to come out in the public eye. Buttigieg talked about how his life is more “normal” now that he isn’t hiding a big part of himself, and Callaghan asked, “Speaking of Mike Pence, do you think there’s a pipeline between homophobia and people being closeted?”

“I would like to think that it’s different than when I was in high school, but I think even now a lot of people get the message that, like, you don’t get to just be who you are and not have that define you,” he said. “That’s the part I think we’re still really working on in the gay community, is being able to have that just be like a thing that’s like true about you, among many other things that are true about you.”

The discussion of LGBTQ+ issues starts at around the 6-minute mark in the video below, and the discussion of the National Stonewall Monument starts at 12:40.

Numerous federal webpages began removing all mentions of trans people and gender identity after a January 29 directive from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) telling federal agencies to “end federal funding of gender ideology” in programming, policies, and outward-facing media. The directive reflects Republicans’ larger crusade against all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts by government bodies and private businesses.

Buttigieg commented on transgender rights earlier this year as well. In a July interview with NPR, he said that Democrats have to approach the issue of trans sports participation “with compassion… compassion for transgender people, compassion for families, especially of young people who are going through this, and also empathy for people who are not sure what all of this means for them.”

He then said that “most reasonable people” think that there are “serious fairness issues” with trans girls and women participating in girls’ and women’s sports.

“And that’s why I think these decisions should be in the hands of sports leagues and school boards and not politicians,” he explained, “least of all politicians in Washington trying to use this as a political pawn.”

“I think that chess is different from weightlifting, and weightlifting is different from volleyball, and middle school is different from the Olympics,” he added. “So that’s exactly why I think that we shouldn’t be grandstanding on this as politicians. We should be empowering communities and organizations, and schools to make the right decisions.”

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