Chasten and Pete Buttigieg — Photo: @Chasten / Twitter
Pete Buttigieg has voices his concerns about the future of his marriage should Amy Coney Barrett be confirmed to the Supreme Court.
The former mayor of South Bend, Ind., was appearing on Fox News on Sunday, Oct. 18 to discuss Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court.
Buttigieg, who married husband Chasten in 2018, told Fox News’ host Chris Wallace that the legality of their union could be in question should Barrett — who has a history of anti-LGBTQ sentiments — be confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate.
He noted that there are “all kinds of interesting questions on the future of the American judiciary,” before pivoting from health care to same-sex marriage.
“Right now as we speak the pre-existing condition coverage of millions of Americans might depend on what is about to happen in the senate with regard to this justice,” he continued. “My marriage might depend on what is about to happen in the Senate with regard to this justice.”
Same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide in 2015, following the Supreme Court’s landmark Obergefell decision.
However, earlier this month two Supreme Court justices called for the Obergefell decision to be overturned — effectively revoking marriage equality in those states without existing same-sex marriage laws.
In a dissent written for a separate case related to same-sex marriages, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas argued that the court had bypassed the democratic process in Obergefell, and said the landmark ruling would “continue to have ‘ruinous consequences for religious liberty.'”
Barrett, a social conservative, has been accused of “hostility” towards marginalized groups, with LGBTQ advocates alleging that she would “dismantle” LGBTQ rights should she be confirmed by the Senate.
During her confirmation hearings, Barrett had to apologize after calling sexual orientation a “preference,” a term Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) noted is “used by anti-LGBTQ activists to suggest that sexual orientation is a choice.”
“It is not,” Hirono continued. “Sexual orientation is a key part of a person’s identity.”
On Fox News, where he has gained a reputation for strong condemnations of the Trump administration as a surrogate for former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, Buttigieg slammed Senate Republicans for trying to jam through Barrett’s nomination before the election.
“It’s not in the spirit of our constitution, or our legal system, or political system for them to do this,” he said. “Most Americans believe that the American people ought to have a say. We’re not talking about an election that’s coming up, we’re in the middle of an election, millions of Americans are voting and want their voice to be heard.
“There’s an enormous amount of frustration that this Senate can’t even bring itself, with Mitch McConnell, to vote through a Covid relief package. People are suffering, people are hurting, there’s no clear end in sight,” he continued. “There’s been a bill we brought to them months ago coming out of the house, they won’t touch it, they won’t do anything but suddenly they have time to rush through a nomination that the American people don’t want. Whatever specific word you use for it, wrong is the word I would use.”
The former Kentucky clerk -- and anti-LGBTQ culture warrior -- who went to jail rather than issue licenses to same-sex couples is now targeting the landmark 2015 ruling.
A decade after catapulting to right-wing stardom, Kim Davis -- the former Rowan County, Kentucky county clerk who chose jail over issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples -- has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn its landmark 2015 decision that legalized marriage equality nationwide.
Represented by the anti-LGBTQ Liberty Counsel, Davis has formally asked the nation’s highest court to strip away the right of same-sex couples to marry.
A Mike Huckabee acolyte and four-time married fundamentalist zealot, Davis rose to fame in 2015 when she refused to issue marriage licenses to any couple -- gay or straight -- after the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision struck down all state-level bans on same-sex marriage, including Kentucky’s. Ordered to comply, she instead spent six days in jail for contempt of court.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has reposted a CNN clip featuring Doug Wilson, leader of the Christian evangelical movement he follows, in which the pastor calls for making gay sex illegal.
“In the late ’70s and early ’80s, sodomy was a felony in all 50 states. That America of that day was not a totalitarian hellhole,” Wilson says in the seven-minute segment, reports the Daily Beast.
Wilson goes on to say he wishes the United States would revive anti-sodomy laws, which criminalized same-sex relations -- and, in some states, even certain non-vaginal sex acts between consenting heterosexual partners.
California Democrat says House Oversight Chair James Comer made a "homophobic" remark after Democrats challenged his handling of the Epstein investigation.
U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, fired back at Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) after Comer dismissed him as a "real big drama queen."
Comer's jab came after Democrats released a sexually suggestive letter allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and convicted sex offender who died in jail while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.
The letter, featuring a drawing of a curvaceous woman used as the backdrop for birthday wishes, was allegedly signed by Donald Trump and included in a 2003 album celebrating Epstein's 50th birthday. Trump had been friendly with Epstein during the 1980s and 1990s.
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