Chasten Buttigieg On Being Homeless After Coming Out
May 5, 2020In an Interview for GLAAD’s fundraising event ‘Together in Pride: You Are Not Alone’ Chasten Buttigieg, husband of presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, spoke about his experience with homelessness after he came out to his family, receiving a negative reaction from one of his brothers, according to ‘Metro Weekly’.
“I think young people across the board in this country are so fed up with power and Washington and politics that has continually failed them,” he said. “I remember when I came out growing up in northern Michigan I ran away from home and I absolutely felt like nobody understood me.”
He added: “I remember being 17, sleeping in the back of my car feeling like nobody believed in me and that there was never going to be a future for me. And there are still over 40% of homeless youth in this country are LGBTQ.”
While visiting an LGBTQ youth center and meeting trans youth Buttigieg remembered being told “you don’t get my story.”
“I’d say that’s exactly why I’m here,” Buttigieg said.
“Because it’s time we bring your story to Washington and have leaders in Washington who believe in you and see you. So I think a large part of leadership is just showing up and shutting up.”
He later added: “That’s why it’s so important for us to go out there, do the work and listen. So [LGBTQ youth] absolutely see leaders who are committed to telling their story and showing up for them.”
Former Mayor Pete Buttigieg also spoke at the event, where he agreed that there is a generational divide in terms of LGBT+ support for his campaign stating that the “LGBTQIA+ community is going through that generational experience.”
“I saw and was so moved by that same thing you are talking about where people, especially from an older generation, sometimes would come up to me and couldn’t form words, they’d tear up and I knew what it was they were saying,” he said. “It was very humbling to hear that they were moved to think about my candidacy in the context of that struggle.
He said that it was “a struggle I don’t even fully understand. And to even be able to do this, for Chasten and me to be married, certainly for me to be an out candidate, we are standing on their shoulders,” he continued. “There was something so powerful about that.”
Pete Buttigieg also highlighted the significance of November’s elections, urging people to get out and vote. “If you care about the climate, if you care about wages, if you care about rights for our community, if you care about what’s going to happen on the courts, if you care about each other, this is even more important than ever a time to vote,” he stated.
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