I've never seen or heard of something like this happening during a campaign on live television.
First things first, this boy is 9. Do you remember being 9? What did you think about? Personally I was thinking about making mud pies and RC cars. This is what our nation has taught very young and impressionable children.
9-year-old Zachary asked, “Thank you for being so brave. Would you help me tell the world I’m gay too? I want to be brave like you.”
Buttigieg was shocked, "WOW" he responded to the question then asked him if he wanted to give a wave. The boy came to the stage.
Buttigieg replied to the boy, “I don’t think you need a lot of advice from me on bravery, you seem pretty strong. To see you…it took me a long time to figure out how to tell even my best friend that I was gay, let alone go out there and tell the world. And to see you willing to come to terms with you who you are in a room full of a thousand people…thousands of people you’ve never met, that’s really something.”
“Let me tell you a couple things that might be useful. The first thing is that it won’t always be easy, but that’s okay because you know who you are and that’s really important because when you know who you are you have a center of gravity that can hold you together when all kinds of chaos is happening around you. That’s the first thing I want you to know.”
“The second thing I want you to know is that you’ll never know who’s taking their lead from you, who’s watching you and deciding that they can be a little braver because you have been brave. When I was trying to figure out who I was, I was afraid that who I was might mean that I could never make a difference, and what wound up happening instead is that it’s a huge part of the difference that I get to make. I never saw that coming and you’ll never know whose life you might be affecting right now just by standing here, right now. There’s a lot of power in that.”
“And the last thing I want you to know even if I can’t promise it’ll always be easy, I can promise you that I’m going to be rooting for you.”
I have nothing against anyone and their sexual orientation. Never have. However, I find this inappropriate because this child is way too young to be thinking about these things.
