Hi. I’m the blogger/artist formerly known as Pachacutec. If you are old enough to remember me as a lefty blogger, you’ve been on this internet thing too long. But I digress.

My friend Ian saw me tweet something, and he asked me if I wanted to do a piece about it. Sure, why not? But I’m going to adopt a prose style that is quick and to the point, with a bit of punch, as an homage to my longtime friend Ian.

I tweeted in response to Congressman Patrick Murphy as he endorsed Peter Buttigieg for Congress. I’m sorry did I say Congress? That’s what mayors usually do, but this guy is running for president. Alrighty then.

Let’s start with Patrick Murphy. My other longtime friend (and gay hero in his own right), Howie Klein, once described Murphy as:

“the perfect Chuck Schumer recruit– a slimy Schumercrat as corrupt as they come. Yesterday we looked at how he’s been selling his vote for campaign cash in regard to EB-5 visas, something I thought only real low-life Republicans did. Oh… that’s right; Murphy is a lifelong low-life Republican and just switched his party registration to get into Congress (where he votes with the GOP anyway).”

From that perspective, the endorsement of Mayor Pete makes perfect sense. But Mayor Pete is getting a fair amount of recognition for being a gay candidate. People who know me know me know that I’m a big old homo. And now with my tiara firmly in place, I’m here to call out Mayor Pete.

Okay, I don’t actually wear a tiara. I’m actually very much like Pete in my gay origins, in that I am a light-skinned person, presumed to be white (though I’m half Latino) with a good education, cis gendered, and a beneficiary of all the presumptions of competence and intelligence that accrue to light-skinned, well-educated men who are not effeminate in their conduct or manner.

Like Mayor Pete, I came out later in life, in my young 30s. That was a pretty traumatic time for me, actually. I made a fair mess of my life, and we won’t get into all that. But as Ian’s readers know, it’s what you do with your suffering that makes or breaks you. If you dive into it and learn from it, with the right support and process, you can turn it into your superpower.

Or you can become a preening, pompous, head-up-his-ass climber who cashes the cultural, social and political checks earned for work done by all the very homos, queers, transgender men and women, and people of color that you personally avoid engaging at all costs.

Everyone in the gay community knows these people. These are the white boys who stand and model, painfully preppy, in bars filled with other white boys, with a few token “ethnics” like black, Asian, or Latino men sprinkled in to provide a little variety, a little sexy “grit” and fetish fodder. Their Grindr profiles say things like “No offense, but I prefer white guys,” or “no fats or fems.”

These are cis gay white boys who might stay for the drag show and enjoy the bawdy jokes, but who feel painfully uncomfortable around effeminate men. As in my tweet, they don’t even see women, non-binary gender rebels, or black folk. Mayor Pete’s relationships with black folk in South Bend are a joke. Gay guys like Mayor Pete never go into a bar if the person of color ratio gets too high–say, higher than 15 percent, unless, for example, they really have a thing for Latin guys and it’s salsa night at the club. Some of these guys really fetishize some groups, be they Asians, black men, or Latinos. It gets very creepy.

I don’t want to belabor the point. This guy has no claim to stand for gay politics when he is precisely the kind of guy who wouldn’t have been caught dead anywhere near the Stonewall Inn, and lacks the self-awareness to know it or understand why. I personally know the type, because, in the beginning of my coming out journey, I had to overcome the legacy of cultural biases, blind spots, and presumptions of privilege (I know Ian hates that word, sorry) that would have made me into one of those guys.

For some people, the experience of coming out, and the experience of being marginalized or oppressed in some fashion, leads to expanded empathy and curiosity for others who are downtrodden or outcast. That’s clearly not Mayor Pete. Pete fundamentally believes in his inherent superiority, and subsequently wants to have it both ways: He wants people to overlook his gayness because he’s not that gay, and then he wants credit for being some kind of LGBTQ pioneer. But whether you look at his policies, his politics, or his presence in a room with real people, he is what he is: A conservative, wannabe frat boy who happens to be gay. No wonder Patrick Murphy loves this guy.

Hard pass. If you want more specifically on Pete from the great Howie Klein, I’ve got you covered.

Coda: