Pete Buttigieg calls gay pride and Dylan Mulvaney culture war fights ‘maddening’
Breccan F. Thies
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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Republican focus on cultural issues like “gay pride” and gender transitions is “maddening.”
Speaking with the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the gay Cabinet secretary referenced conservative opposition to drag shows and the backlash against Bud Light for promoting Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender influencer.
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“When I’m out in Wheeling, West Virginia, or Pittsburgh at the airport or anywhere else, the questions are not about beer bottles or drag queens,” Buttigieg said in a Thursday interview. “The questions are about making sure that we can deliver these transportation assets that people can count on.
“It is maddening sometimes to look at the split screen on cable TV, and I’m trying to make sure people are aware of the literally tens of thousands of good projects we’ve already supported around the country,” he added.
Bud Light lost its top spot as America’s most popular beer and billions in market share after its promotion of Mulvaney.
Buttigieg’s comments come after a heated Appropriations Committee hearing, where Republicans advanced a plan to slash his department’s budget and attached amendments to defund gay community centers, some of which would have used taxpayer dollars to promote transgender drugs and surgeries.
Many committee Democrats spoke out against the amendment, and ranking member Rosa DeLaura (D-CT) called her Republican colleagues “terrorists” before having her remarks stricken from the record. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI), a gay progressive member on the committee, shouted that his Republican colleagues were “bigots” and later had to have further personal attacks on members of Congress removed from the record.
Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) made clear that the amendment was not a product of bigotry but rather one about what the government should be involved in funding with public money.
Buttigieg said he had not “very closely” paid attention to the congressional kerfuffle.
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“We need to do two things, and it should not be hard to do,” he said. “One is to safeguard vulnerable groups as a matter of policy, which is something we believe in as administration and is the right thing to do, and another is to keep doing the work of taking care of the basics.”
The funding measure before Congress is one that must be passed to avoid a government shutdown but is sure to meet opposition in the Democratic-controlled Senate. The final bill approved by both chambers must abide by budget constraints set out by the debt ceiling agreement reached last month.