June 4, 2021
Chasten Buttigieg Chastises RNC Chair Over Pride Tweet: 'Re-visit Your Party's Platform'
Kilian Melloy READ TIME: 2 MIN.
Chasten Buttigieg, the husband of out Secretary of Transportation and onetime presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg, reminded Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, of the GOP's own anti-LGBTQ platform after McDaniel tweeted a Pride Month greeting, political news outlet The Hill reported.
McDaniel's June 2 tweet wished followers a happy Pride Month and declared that the GOP was "proud to have doubled our LGBTQ support over the last 4 years" and vowed to "continue to grow our big tent by supporting measures that promote fairness and balance protections for LGBTQ Americans and those with deeply held religious beliefs."
"McDaniel's post sharply contradicted Republican-led anti-LGBTQ measures and jarred many," The Huffington Post observed, going on to note how the Trump administration "rescinded a 2016 regulation that mandated healthcare protections for transgender patients under the Affordable Care Act."
The outlet added: "Republican-led legislatures in several states have worked to pass bills limiting access to health care for transgender youth and barring transgender female athletes from competing in women's sports."
Chasten, "who is married to the first openly gay man to be confirmed by the Senate to serve as a member of a president's Cabinet," pointed out the gap between rhetoric and reality in a June 3 retort that was also posted to Twitter, notes The Hill.
After reminding McDaniel that those with "deeply held religious beliefs" sometimes toss their own LGBTQ children out of their homes, Buttigieg invited McDaniel to "re-visit your party's platform before you open your mouth about pride."
As pointed out by credible news sources last year, the RNC's 2020 election-year platform was simply the 2016 platform presented over again – complete with homophobic language that, in 2016, appalled even conservative members of the LGBTQ community.
Among other language, that document declared: "Traditional marriage and family, based on marriage between one man and one woman, is the foundation for a free society and has for millennia been entrusted with rearing children and instilling cultural values."
It also slammed the 2015 Supreme Court ruling that found same-sex families have a constitutional right to enter into marriage, claiming, "In Obergefell, five unelected lawyers robbed 320 million Americans of their legitimate constitutional authority to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman."
Buttigieg was not alone. Other Twitter users responded in a similar vein – see those tweets below:
Kilian Melloy serves as EDGE Media Network's Associate Arts Editor and Staff Contributor. His professional memberships include the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, The Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association, and the Boston Theater Critics Association's Elliot Norton Awards Committee.
