Time Magazine and the Buttigiegs: masterful deception
After the dissolution of my marriage in the late 1990s, my first strategic move to “come out of the closet” was to reach out to a Washington Post investigative reporter who had once interviewed me. He was the only one I could think of who might possibly be gay. I was right. Over lunch in a restaurant in Washington, D.C.’s Dupont Circle, he told me two things that immediately resonated as true: First, gay men are often very successful in their professions because they try harder than others in order to prove themselves. I would quickly discover this to be an accurate description of the many gay men I met who worked at high levels in the White House, the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill, and as heads of large quasi-governmental agencies. Presidential candidate and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg fits that mold: He transformed himself from a dorky kid to a Rhodes Scholar and Oxford crew club member. Buttigieg returned to the town where he grew up and was elected mayor before reachi