Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg is the 37-year-old combat veteran and mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and I don’t know if you’ve heard, but he is running for president of the United States of America. The media refers to him as ”Mayor Pete”, and I think that’s a fine moniker.
Mayor Pete and his husband Chasten (born Chasten Glezman) met in the summer of 2015 on some app called Hinge, which puts itself out there as a more serious, less superficial app than Tinder or Grindr, and more relationship oriented than most hookup sites.
At the time, the two guys were living in different states. Chasten was in Michigan and he offered to visit Pete in South Bend. When Chasten got out of his car in front of Mayor Pete’s house, they both said “Howdy” at the same time. Chasten:
“So gross, but my heart fluttered.”
They flirted over Scotch eggs, as one does, then they went to a baseball game which featured fireworks. Chasten:
“Literally, there were fireworks on our first date. It was kind of ridiculous, I know, but I was hooked.”
Mayor Pete proposed at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Sweetly, it was in that airport that Chasten first saw Pete’s profile on Hinge.
They were married at Saint James Episcopal Cathedral in South Bend in June 2018. Their New York Times wedding announcement included this tid-bit:
”The reception that followed featured tacos from the Rico Suave food truck; sliders from South Bend’s the Beard & the Boss (even the pork was local, provided by Gunthorp Farms, a fourth-generation Indiana operation); beer from South Bend Brew Works; an assortment of regional cheeses from Oh Mamma’s deli; salads from Cafe Navarre; lattes and coffee from Zen Cafe, housed inside LangLab; artisanal chocolates from local Violet Sky chocolatier; specially created ice cream from the Outside Scoop, flavored with honey harvested from community gardens or whiskey from an Indiana distillery.”
Mr. and Mr. Buttigieg at a Grassroots Fundraising Event in Austin, August 2019, photo by Lawrence Jackson, public domain
At the Democratic Presidential Debate on Thursday night, Mayor Pete recounted his decision to come out as gay:
”I came back from the deployment in Afghanistan and realized that you only get to live one life. And I was not interested in not knowing what it was like to be in love any longer, so I just came out. I had no idea what kind of professional setback it would be, especially because inconveniently it was an election year in my socially conservative community.”
