Dear Mayor Pete Buttigieg,
Last Saturday morning, I went for a hike and was surprised to pass by you and your husband, Chasten, at Memory Grove Park in downtown Salt Lake City.
While my Great Dane came right up to lean in and slobber on you, I was so amazed to see you two that I could barely string together a few semi-coherent sentences. I at least had the presence to get this socially distanced selfie before wishing you both a good day. Back in my car, I was overcome with emotion as I started to think about all the things I didn’t manage to say to you in person. Here’s what I wish I had told you:
Mayor Pete, you and I actually have several things in common. We’re the same age, we both went to Catholic school, we’re active in politics, we’re both left-handed, and we both have funny sounding last names. Also, we’re both gay.
While kids making fun of our last names were likely struggles for us both growing up, I’ll bet the struggle of acknowledging and accepting our sexual orientation is what we had a harder time with back then. I’ll speak for myself. Coming out as gay was something that took a long time for me to do, even to myself, much less to other people. As a high school and college student, I dated women, policed my mannerisms and convinced myself that I could fit in and be happy by “acting” straight.
Fast forward to 2020: Your presidential campaign represented a significant achievement for the LGBT community by breaking the rainbow ceiling. You and I exist as openly gay men today, thanks to so many people before who helped us feel more confident to burst open the closet door and live an authentic life. Your candidacy, however, gave us all the chance to see ourselves in positions that don’t just influence local perception, but also influence national policy.
Your candidacy gives LGBT youths growing up now the confidence to go beyond acknowledging and accepting their queerness, but to embrace and celebrate themselves. It gives a high school student in the school where I work the conviction to not just recognize the need for an LGBT-affirming student organization at our school, but to successfully petition our administration for its inception. It gives me the inspiration to not just stand out, but to stand up.
On this National Coming Out Day, as I reflect on our chance meeting, I think about all the ways you exemplify the person we needed to look up to when we were younger, and I finally know what I wanted to say to you on the trail that morning: Thank you.
John Michael Pantlik grew up in Memphis, Tenn., and has lived in Salt Lake City since 2014. He is a doctoral candidate in the College of Education at the University of Utah and the director of admissions at Judge Memorial Catholic High School.
