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 U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a case brought by parents who say their child’s school district failed to notify them of the student’s social transition, including the use of a new name and different pronouns during school hours.
The high court offered no explanation for declining the appeal, leaving in place a 2-1 ruling from a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that sided with the school district.
The case stems from a dispute involving January and Jeffrey Littlejohn, whose middle-school-aged child, assigned female at birth, told her parents in 2020 that she was questioning her gender and asked to go by "J" and use they/them pronouns. The parents did not agree but told their child, referred to as "A.G." in court documents, that she could use "J" as a nickname at school.
David Green, the founder of the conservative Christian retailer Hobby Lobby, donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Them Before Us, an anti-LGBTQ organization behind the Greater Than Campaign, a national effort seeking to overturn the Supreme Court's marriage equality ruling.
Them Before Us, the lead organization behind the Greater Than campaign, was founded in 2018. It advocates against marriage rights for LGBTQ couples based on the presumption that being raised by same-sex parents is harmful to children.
IRS reports show that, for its first few years, Them Before Us had less than $50,000 in revenue. But after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed a national right to abortion, the group's revenue surged. In 2022, it received $200,000, growing to nearly $1 million in 2024, with founder and president Katy Faust collecting a salary of $135,000.
The U.S. Department of Education has opened a civil rights investigation into Smith College, accusing the all-women's school in Northampton, Massachusetts, of violating federal laws against sex-based discrimination by allowing transgender women to enroll.
The investigation marks the first time the Trump administration has targeted school admissions policies as part of its broader crackdown on transgender rights. Previously, the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights had focused primarily on transgender athletes competing on female sports teams and transgender restroom access.
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