Pete Buttigieg Is Struggling With Mike Johnson Being in Power

Pete Buttigieg, the openly gay U.S. Secretary of Transportation, admits that it is difficult having Mike Johnson, a far-right Christian conservative, as speaker of the House.

Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, was voted in as speaker on October 25 after the GOP struggled for three weeks to elect a replacement for Representative Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, who was ousted on October 3.

Johnson became second in line to the presidency during a time of increased LGBTQ+ hate and violence in America. On June 6, the Human Rights Campaign declared a first-of-its-kind national state of emergency for the LGBTQ+ community while leading advocacy group GLAAD has dubbed 2023 "a year of unprecedented challenge."

In early October, President Joe Biden spoke about the rising threat to the LBGTQ+ community on the 25th anniversary of the death of Matthew Shepard, a gay college freshman who was beaten to death in 1998.

"Today, as threats and violence targeting the LGBTQI+ community continue to rise, our work is far from finished," Biden said. "No American should face hate or violence for who they are or who they love."

Critics have pointed to Johnson and his wife's extreme religious views and their work promoting a Christian lifestyle.

Before becoming a politician, Johnson was a lawyer. In the mid-to-late 2000s, he gave legal advice to the now-defunct Exodus International that promoted conversion therapy, according to a CNN KFile review. In 2008, Johnson told a radio host: "Homosexual behavior is something you do, it's not something that you are."

Conversion therapy is a discredited practice that aims at changing the sexual orientation of members of the LGBTQ+ community to make them heterosexual through religious and counseling methods.

"I also genuinely love all people, regardless of their lifestyle choices," Johnson said on Fox News after becoming speaker.

Buttigieg said Friday on CNN News Central that his lifestyle is that of a typical American family.

"I've often said if being gay was a choice, that was a choice that was made way above my paygrade," he said. "But my lifestyle is that I'm a dad. I'm a married father of two....And our family deserves to be protected. It deserves to be supported just like every American family."

Buttigieg said he has found it tough to have a House speaker he believes does not support a non-heteronormative family.

"I will admit it's a little bit difficult driving the family minivan to drop our kids off at daycare passing the dome of the Capitol knowing the speaker of the House sitting under that dome doesn't even think our family ought to exist," he said.

Newsweek reached out to Johnson via email for comment.

While on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on Thursday night, Buttigieg showed a willingness to work with Johnson.

Colbert asked Buttigieg: "How do you work with a guy who argued that same-sex relations are 'the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic?'' Buttigieg told Colbert: "I'll work with anybody who can help us get good transportation available to the American people."

Buttigieg then said in a joking manner, "Maybe we'll just have him over....If you could see what it's like when I come home from work and Chasten [Buttigieg] is bringing the kids home from day care or vice versa, and one of us is getting the mac and cheese ready....Everything about that is chaos. But nothing about that is dark. The love of God is in that house."

Newsweek reached out to Buttigieg via email for comment.