SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) – South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg came out as gay Tuesday, declaring in a lengthy and personal newspaper editorial that it took him years to accept that his sexuality is just “part of who I am.”
Buttigieg, the first-term Democratic mayor of Indiana’s fourth-largest city, said in the essay published in the South Bend Tribune (http://bit.ly/1dHOJza ) that it wasn’t easy for him to divulge his sexuality, in part because Midwesterners “are instinctively private to begin with.”
But Buttigieg, 33, noted he was well into adulthood before he was prepared to acknowledge to friends and relatives that he’s gay.
“It took years of struggle and growth for me to recognize that it’s just a fact of life, like having brown hair, and part of who I am,” he wrote.
Buttigieg, who is seeking re-election this year, writes that being gay has no bearing on his service as a Navy reservist or his performance as mayor of the city that’s home to the conservative University of Notre Dame.