How Pete Buttigieg is already changing the conversation about being gay in America

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In an interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Monday night, the two men recounted – in emotional and moving terms – how they fought with their sexuality and when to publicly admit that they were homosexuals. Maddow, who graduated from high school, asked Buttigieg how he managed to keep his sexuality secret for so long. (Buttigieg was released at age 33, while he was already Mayor of South Bend.)

"I guess I really needed to not be [gay]. There is this war that breaks out inside many people when they realize that they might be something they are afraid of. It took me a very long time to solve this problem. "

This echoes a sentiment that Buttigieg expressed about her sexuality at an LGBT fundraiser earlier this month:

"If you could have offered me a pill that could cure me, I would have swallowed it before you could give me a sip of water," Buttigieg said. "It's a hard thing to think about now.If you've shown me exactly what made me gay, I'd have cut it with a knife ….. Thank god, it does not. There was no pill, thank God there was no knife.

The humanity there is obvious to you. He is an extremely accomplished person – Rhodes scholar, veteran, elected mayor of his hometown at age 29 – who has wished for years that he could be anything other than what he knew to be. Someone who "did not have to be gay." Someone who, at one point in his life, would have gladly taken a pill to make him non-gay – or even remove his "gayness" if he could.

It's amazing. And if Buttigieg's fight may be familiar to many homosexuals, it will probably be the first time that many heterosexuals will hear the story of someone who will come out, presented in such a raw and personal way.

There is also a universality in the internal struggle that Buttigieg describes. You do not have to be gay to understand what it's like to deny a part of yourself, to wish to be something different from what you are. Pray for an easy way to dissolve all your inner turmoil. Be willing to do almost anything to make him leave. The terms in which Buttigieg speaks of the struggle against his homosexuality also describe, for many of us, the human condition: A struggle for life to accept who we are, with all the positive and negative aspects that relate to it.

If the first step – or one of the first steps – towards tolerance is understanding and empathy, Buttigieg's candidacy already has an impact greater than him.

Now, all this does not mean that there will not be a group of voters who simply will not vote for a gay candidate. There will be. And that is probably more than the number of people who tell pollsters that they would not be comfortable with a gay president. (Ask yourself if you would tell a stranger who calls you on the phone that you would not want to vote for a gay candidate.) For many people, they would not – and they are not.

With this caveat, it is striking how many mindsets have changed over the last fifteen years with regard to a homosexual president. In 2006, just 43% of respondents said that they would be either "comfortable" or "enthusiastic" at the thought of a gay presidential candidate, according to a survey of the NBC-Wall Street Journal. By 2019, this number had climbed to 68%. These numbers have increased in all ages. In 2006, 47% of 18- to 34-year-olds said that they would be comfortable or enthusiastic about a gay candidate. Now? It's 75%. And even among those 65 and over, 56% now say that they would be comfortable or enthusiastic about the idea of ​​a gay presidential candidate while only 31% have declared the same thing 13 years ago.

It's social change at the speed of the chain. (Compare the movement of gay marriage surveys to, say, the legality of abortion, day and night.) Buttigieg's candidacy – and the way he chose to talk about his homosexuality and launch his own Internal struggles to combat what that meant (and mean) to him – is the next logical step in society's changing views on being gay. Even if he does not qualify for the Democratic candidate in 2020, Buttigieg's candidacy will be that of the history books.

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