So, for starters, you described being closeted as a position of luck and privilege. Which, I think, really helps illustrate my point, so thank you for that, I guess?

pretty fucking disingenuous to dismiss the “Mary Pete” epithet, which is a) homophobic and b) super ancient

I could waste my time trying to explain what’s so wrong about this, but I know from my experience here on Jezebel that disingenuously policing the gayness of others is your entire odious schtick and that there’s no point in anyone trying to convince you otherwise.

Can we put down our wedding planning binders and focus on the actually important fights?

Exactly. The lack of self-awareness is astonishingly glaring.

My problem with the piece (hi, fellow queer here!) was that it was a Really Bad Hot Take, written as if with the authority of All The Gays. Like... you don’t get to speak for me, you don’t get to tell Mayor Pete how to be gay, and you don’t get to tell straight people how gay people are supposed to act. That second…

“It’s almost as offensive/homophobic to say that the exaggerated gay stance and posturing Peck adopted in the article has no place in “respectable” outlets like The New Republic.”

Fine, I’ll say it:

Cue ball Dale Peck is just jealous of Buttigieg’s hair.

It’s convenient to fob off responsibility over the response to this article on “clueless straight allies,” but I don’t think that’s the issue here at all. This is a generational thing within the queer community itself.

/s

Calling him Mary Pete? Saying he’s the gay equivalent of an uncle tom?Speculating about his preferred position? Listen, I love a good Buttigieg takedown piece as much as the next gay, but this was shitty writing that never should’ve been published to begin with.

But that’s literally what people’s problem with the Peck article is? Peck decided that because Buttigieg is a corporate Dem who didn’t emerge from a culture of radical queer activism it’s fair game to belittle his homosexuality and his lifestyle. 

It’s so cool when the “radical gays” try to make people feel like shit for wanting things that 95% of everyone else wants. “That gay wants a husband, like some kind of idiot! Look at how stupid he is! What’ll he say next, that he wants kids?! What a joke!”

Peck’s piece was a mess for a variety of reasons, but the most salient is that he seemed to conflate criticism of Buttigieg as a presidential candidate and Buttigieg as a gay man. It’s not shocking, and to some extent even fair, that Peck would make this mistake, mostly because of the way in which Buttigieg is framing…

Rich, you are the kind of gay man who makes everyone else in this community feel uncomfortable and unwelcome. The lesbians, the late bloomers, the trans people, anyone who isn’t a white gay man who came out at 18 and immediately fucked off to a big expensive city. 

This comes off as internalized homophobia. There’s plenty of tongue-in-cheek womanhood bits I can do with my friends and even my colleagues because they know me, but those jokes would just come off as internalized misogyny on a broader stage. The first rule of writing is to know your audience. He face planted. But at…

He lost me at Mary Pete.

it’s none of his business. Let people be who they are, honestly. This rings like the arguments back in ‘08 that Obama wasn’t black enough. Ridiculous.

Calling someone an Uncle Tom is racist.