I listened to about half of the Pete B. Interview, and then my screen froze, so I am now unfortunately one of that statistic of people who dropped off, and that surely is not because I am not interested in the interview.
What I have heard so far was very interesting, even though I thought that Adam was nervous, and strangely a bit unprepared. Major Pete talks for 5 minutes about his experiences in Afghanistan, Adam's eyes glaze over, and then, a minute later he says: Oh yes, so you have military background...Wut? Did he not read Mayor Pete's resume beyond that common birthplace of Indiana?
Also, after just one question, he was searching for another question to ask, it was not at the end of the interview, when you might review your notes to see whether you missed something. They were only on question two. So, I thought that Adam should have done a bit more homework there, tbh. Having said that, he gave Major Pete ample opportunity to shine and he did. So I am looking forward to catching the rest of the interview a bit later.
To me, these two men have more in common than just a birth place and age. The biggest one is that they both had to be very brave. Brave to make the decision to step into the public space as gay men, at times and in places where others had told them they could not do it.
Adam gave up his career and safety net to go onto that show, and had been told one too many times that as an openly gay man he had no chance to get a major music contract, that he had to 'tone it down', which often got translated to 'you have to hide your orientation'.
The only gay men in the music business until then, had initially hidden their orientation, become famous, and then eventually, they came out of the closet, treating that whole public process like a confessional, which has always annoyed me, because being gay should not be something that you have to confess, it is a part of you that you either choose or not choose to publicly declare.
Making this public 'confession'-speech that they were gay meant that it unwillingly fed into that false 'it is something sinful' perception of the wider public, and the public ate it up, because it fitted their perception. Somehow gay men had to go through this ordeal, that no straight person is ever asked to go through. And as such it cemented a negative public perception about being gay.
Adam came onto the stage loud and proud, and saying, well are you not paying attention, of course I am gay. Deal with it.
And that in spite of the fact that his music career was on the line. He was brave. And he was himself, un-apologetically.
Mayor Pete had to show that same braveness, and 'go-deal-with-it-attitude' when he stepped onto the political and public stage. He had to face that twice, once when he came out as Mayor, while running for reelection in his conservative South Bend, IN, where he did not know, whether taking this public stance would end his political career. It did not, even conservative Hosiers re-elected him, because he was good for South Bend.
And then, he had to be brave a second time, when he stepped into the presidential race, when this had never been done by an openly gay man before. He did not know how that would go and I am sure many had told him that he could forget that.
He came onto the scene with an impressive resume, great stage presence, centrist values and opinions within the democratic field, and he found his following. That does not mean that we will have a gay president tomorrow.
In the end, while many of us here think of Democrats as generally LGBT friendly, and Republicans as mostly not, especially after more recent events, the truth is, that the Democratic party has a huge group of very socially conservative voters (i.e. most of the old traditional union worker democrats), and the Republican party has a socially liberal wing that does not give a hoot about anyone's orientation. When Major Pete was still running, I once saw a statistic that showed that 29 % of Democrats said that they would never vote for anyone who is gay, and 26 % of Republicans answered that they would not care. Obviously, no democratic candidate can win against a block of 29 % of target voters from within their own party. That is a huge number to overcome. But it is probably fair to assume that a lot of these people are older voters, and therefore 10 -20 years from now, that might look different. Major Pete opened those doors, and he made a huge splash and clearly he is not done. I would totally expect Biden to pull him into his cabinet or some other leadership position come January, and I refuse to assume anything but that, just for my own sanity, tbh.
Meanwhile, as different as these two men are, they do share that fact that they both bravely sought their opportunity that otherwise would have not been realized by either of them, and that is always worthy of a celebration.
And now, I need to find myself the rest of this interview to watch, because I still refuse to have an Instagram account. Maybe it is meanwhile on youtube. See you on the other side.