Pete Buttigieg Fell Victim to the Far-Right’s Child Sexual Abuse Conspiracy Theory: What You Need to Know
Spencer Macnaughton | Uncloseted Media Weekly Newsletter
After I worked at 60 Minutes and before I launched Uncloseted Media, I worked as a producer for Nickelodeon News. I traveled across the country and had the privilege of working with kid correspondents and coaching them on how to conduct interviews and be great on-camera hosts.
One of the most memorable segments we produced was a profile of then-Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. My 11-year-old correspondent Rory Hu and I filmed with Buttigieg in Wisconsin and Washington, D.C. He was professional, kind and fun to work with. He played ball when we asked him to do an impromptu segment called “Digging for Dirt with the Secretary of Transportation,” where Hu asked personal questions in front of a bulldozer as a ticking clock counted down. If he didn’t answer all the questions, he’d get slimed. Spoiler: He passed!
So when I read Buttigieg’s essay from last Friday explaining how Child Protective Services (CPS) came to his door because an anonymous caller accused him of committing “unspeakable violent crimes” and believed his 4-year-old twins were at risk, I was devastated.
While CPS has since verified that the calls were false and “politically motivated,” that was only after Buttigieg was separated from his children. It was after his kids were forced to complete a forensic interview where their parents and other family members were not allowed to sit in.
Buttigieg wrote that the event was “the ugliest thing that has happened to [him] since [his] career in service began.”
He went on to write: “It’s not lost on me that this happened soon after we shared photos of our family on social media for Father’s Day. Or that this occurred during a month meant to make families like ours feel welcome and safe. We’re used to nasty, hateful, and sometimes violent things being said about us and even about our family. But this is the first time someone managed to invade our lives like this - and drag our children into it.”
While what happened to Buttigieg is horrific, it shouldn’t surprise us. False suggestions that LGBTQ people—gay men and trans women in particular—are pedophiles or a danger to children, are embedded in the political fabric of America’s right wing.
Some of the most successful conservative podcasters peddle this narrative: Candace Owens, who has cracked the top 10 American podcasts, has called homosexuality a “social contagion” and blamed gay men for pedophilia in the church. And Joe Rogan, who is number one in the U.S. on Spotify and has over 14 million listeners, has falsely said trans people are “perverts” who commit the majority of school shootings.
These sentiments are also held by some of the most powerful people in American government: Speaker of the House Mike Johnson wrote an op-ed suggesting that gay marriage could lead to giving pedophiles the right to marry children.
And in 2022, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis passed the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, banning K-12 teachers from instructing kids about anything related to sexual orientation or gender identity. Around the passage of the bill, DeSantis’ press secretary tweeted that anyone who opposes it “is probably a groomer.” Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked her millions of viewers “When did our public schools … become what are essentially grooming centers for gender identity radicals?” And conservative podcaster Jack Posobiec encouraged his 1.7 million followers to buy t-shirts that read “Boycott Groomers, bring ammo.”
This conspiracy theory didn’t come out of thin air. Americans have been baselessly accusing LGBTQ people of preying on youth since the Lavender Scare, a 1950s push to remove gay people from the government. A 1950 Senate report stated that “these perverts will frequently attempt to entice normal individuals to engage in perverted practices,” and that that is “particularly true in the case of young and impressionable people.”
What happened to Buttigieg made headlines. But what we don’t read about is the countless everyday LGBTQ Americans who are subjected to the same scrutiny or false accusations from homo/transphobes. In 2022, the same year that DeSantis brought grooming rhetoric back to the spotlight, there was a 400% increase in the narrative’s spread online.
It’s critical that I don’t mince words here. You cannot get lower than accusing gay and trans people of being more likely to rape and abuse children.
But I know the accusers don’t care what I have to say. They see me and other LGBTQ people as subhuman. So it’s on allies of the community—the listeners of these podcasts who say they still love gay people, the Republicans who say they care about economics but don’t back Trump’s anti-LGBTQ attacks and the straight bros who may have friends who claim their anti-LGBTQ statements are just jokes.
It’s long overdue that you start standing the fuck up. Show your allyship.
Push back. Call it out. Walk the walk.
I had an amazing time joining Fabrice Houdart and the Association of LGBTQ+ Corporate Directors to close the New York Stock Exchange on Monday! Thanks to Jon Tilli and Deutsche Bank for sponsoring such a fantastic event! It was great to represent Uncloseted Media and to cap off what’s been a whirlwind of a Pride Month!
There’ll be no story publishing on Saturday. We wish all of you a happy July 4th weekend!
Supreme Court upholds state laws banning transgender girls and women from school athletic teams (Associated Press)
The court’s conservative majority, which has repeatedly ruled against transgender Americans in the past year, ruled that state bans in Idaho and West Virginia don’t violate the Constitution or the federal law known as Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education.
Trump administration moves to restart LGBTQ+ suicide hotline it initially ended (The Guardian)
The Trevor Project non-profit that helped pioneer LGBTQ+ ‘press 3’ option for 988 hotline is being shut out as it restarts.
Alarm over ‘extreme’ sentences for anti-ICE protesters convicted of terrorism (The Guardian)
First amendment groups call 50-to-100-year prison terms chilling as legal experts say sentences unusually long.
Oregon Pride march canceled after organizers say police wouldn’t protect eventgoers (The Advocate)
Eugene Pride organizers said last year’s hate group presence and recent police actions against trans activists made the march untenable.
Pete Buttigieg and his kids subject to CPS, police investigation after false report (NPR)
Buttigieg, who lives with his husband and their twin four-year-old children in Traverse City, Michigan detailed the experience in a Substack post on Friday, saying that a police officer and CPS worker had come to his home and notified him of an anonymous report that alleged his children were at risk.
Over the next week, be on the lookout for new Uncloseted reporting:
🆕 TUESDAY: An exclusive conversation with Silky Nutmeg Ganache. The RuPaul’s Drag Race star, educator and self-described “Reverend Doctor” opens up about her journey, activism and life beyond the runway.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to email me with questions, complaints and story ideas!
Spencer Macnaughton, Editor-In-Chief — spencer@unclosetedmedia.com
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What stood out to me about Buttigieg's substack post is that nowhere in it did he link the incident to the anti-lgbtq+ groomer rhetoric. His reluctance to name it speaks volumes about his centerist position and desire to depoliticize gay identity.
His betrayal of trans people gives this horrible incident a 'leopards ate my face' vibe. You should never concede an inch to transphobes. The bigots will start with easy targets such as trans people but will always move onto the nice 'normal' assimilated gay nuclear families when the opportunity arises. Respectability politics is a dangerous game.
That's why they're pushing for age verification, ... unfortunately, there's a bipartisan push, but we can push back
https://www.badinternetbills.com/
https://thefireorg.substack.com/p/the-kids-act-would-put-washington?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=x5l33