Opinions
We need to live up to our inclusive standards and claims
Attacking Pete Buttigieg because he is white is unfair
I was born and raised in theocratic Iran, a country where the government denied my existence as a gay man. (Remember, “There are no gays in Iran.”) As a young gay boy coming of age in a conservative society and struggling with my sexual orientation, I was constantly bullied in high school. I was labeled the Farsi equivalents of a sissy and a f****t, and was an outsider with absolutely no friends. I didn’t see a future for myself as a gay man since I was pushed away and ostracized. I ached to belong to a group or community, but I didn’t belong to any. My family and relatives didn’t know the true me, and society didn’t want anything to do with someone like me. For a long time, I thought that I was the only person in the world who was gay. I never had an openly LGBTQ representation or role model to look up to and see myself in them, and I never thought I would see the day after tomorrow when “it will get better.” Those were lonely and dark times for me.
On Feb. 3, when Pete Buttigieg was sworn in as the youngest secretary of transportation and as the first openly LGBTQ Cabinet member in U.S. history, I was once again reminded of the necessity and power of representation. I find his selection and its positive consequences extremely important and thrilling. For the first time, an intelligent, successful, and hardworking person is representing our community in such a capacity on the national stage.
From the day Pete Buttigieg ran for the Democratic presidential nomination I’ve gotten into multiple arguments about him with several of my dear friends. These friends are very strong advocates for inclusivity and had the luxury of coming out to very understanding families and friends. Their coming of age as LGBTQ individuals was a smoother process, and they had many out role models and representations to look up to. However, they believe Secretary Buttigieg running as the first openly gay candidate for the highest office in the nation, and his confirmation as the first openly gay Cabinet member are not important. (Editor’s note: Fred Karger is the first openly gay man to run for president. He sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.) In fact, they find it shocking that a majority of the LGBTQ community is celebrating these milestones. Their arguments mostly revolve around the following two issues:
1) They believe he is not a good representative for the LGBTQ community because he lives a “heteronormative” lifestyle. They are using the same labeling mechanism that we reject as discriminatory, hateful and divisive against our community, to reject Secretary Buttigieg and his successes.
A) Who are we to judge others’ lifestyle and life choices? Isn’t that exactly the kind of judgement we as a community have suffered from for generations?
B) What is so heteronormative about a man who is married to another man anyway?! We claim to be a community of very diverse members. We have LGBTQ pastors, sex workers and everything in between. We have polyamorous open relationships, married monogamous couples with children and so much more in between. So why is it that suddenly Secretary Buttigieg doesn’t deserve to have a space on this wide spectrum that we call our LGBTQ family? He considers himself a cis man who doesn’t paint his nails but shares his last name with his husband. Why are his lifestyle and life choices and the individual that he is, fake and just a “show to get the support of as many straight and conservative people as possible?” Yet other lifestyle options in our family are genuine and real?
2) My friends believe Secretary Buttigieg’s achievements are not significant and not worthy of celebrating because they are the outcome of his “white privilege,” and “he doesn’t acknowledge or recognize that privilege enough.” They have decided to generalize against a portion of our community and based on that generalization punish some of the members of our LGBTQ family for who they are. In this case, it’s Secretary Buttigieg, who was born in a white family.
A) I don’t think it is right nor fair to attribute every single achievement of a white person completely to their white privilege. This is as wrong and misguided as is denying the existence of white privilege.
B) We know that white privilege exists. Secretary Buttigieg himself has acknowledged it many times in several interviews and public engagements, for example, in his April 2019 interview with Trevor Noah. What is the solution for white privilege? Is it to punish the people who were born into it and strip them off of their achievements, even though we cannot quantify how much of their success was due to white privilege? Should all white people publicly acknowledge their white privilege several times a day for us to forgive them? Or is the solution looking at their current actions and beliefs to see how they address the issue of white privilege, how they lift up people of color, and then holding them accountable?
C) It is not a mystery that almost all of the first doors in this country were opened by white people. On top of white privilege, and aside from the first doors that were opened by non-white people and in history were recorded for white individuals, white people are statistically still the single largest racial group in the U.S. (census.gov states more than 60 percent as of 2019.) So simply based on the rule of probability, white people are more likely to open more doors first. Yes, I wish a Black, brown or even olive LGBTQ person was the first openly LGBTQ member of the Cabinet. However, now that they are not, does this mean we should not acknowledge and celebrate the importance and significance of what Secretary Buttigieg has achieved? A door has been opened by a great individual, and this means that hopefully down the road many LGBTQ people of color will be able to follow him. As a marginalized community, any form of advancement for one of us is an advancement for the whole community and vice versa.
In my opinion, these negative attacks on Secretary Buttigieg are hypocritical and a double standard and are in no way helping or advancing any of our causes. We ask the larger society not to label or ostracize us, but then within our own community we do it so brazenly. Sadly, we are labeling ourselves out of the very inclusivity that we yearn for and claim to cherish.
We truly need to believe in inclusivity and commit to it. Adding letters and signs to “LGBTQ,” or adding colors to the rainbow flag or putting slogans on t-shirts are all beautiful for social media, but they do not do the work. We need to do the work, starting with ourselves.
Each of us has a story, and that story is valid. No one knows the details and corners of that story, but there is a lot more to us than what others see. Throwing a blanket on a group of people and treating them all the same comes from a very simplistic point of view and ignores the unique and valid story that each of us has. We need to be better than those we complain about.
For now, let’s wish the representative of our large and diverse family great success and celebrate what this means to younger LGBTQ people who live in not so friendly places around the country and around the world, and to those who at nights go to bed lonely and scared and in the morning wake up hopeless and sad.
Renee Good. Alex Pretti.
During this last year, I wondered who would be the first U.S. citizen to be shot by our government. It was not a matter of if, but when. Always.
And now we know.
I thought it would be soldiers. But the masked men got there first. Because when you mix guns and protests, guns inevitably go off. The powers that be always knew it, hoped for it, and wanted it to happen.
Why? Because masked men and guns instill fear. And that’s the point. Ask yourself when’s the last time you saw masked men and guns in our cities, or anywhere for that matter. I always thought that men masked men with guns robbed banks. I was wrong.
Masked men want to rob us of our dignity as human beings. Of our assurance in the calmness and contentment of our communities. They want to rob us of our trust in our institutions, and our faith in each other. And truly they want to rob us of the happiness and joy that we all constantly yearn to find in our lives.
But our only collective ability as a nation to push back is our protests. Peaceful protests. As Renee and Alex did.
But peaceful protests? Because they are the perfect power to shame the cowardice of those that believe guns and force are the only true authority. Fortunately, our last hope and fiercest ally is our Constitution, which gives us the power — and the right — to protest.
How much more peaceful can you get when you hear Renee Good’s last words, “I’m not mad at you, Dude.” I may be mad at the system, the government, the powers of unknown people pulling the strings but not you personally. “Dude.” Peaceful to the last word.
Yet, what becomes lost in the frantic pace of hair-trigger news cycles, of officials declaring impetuous damnations alongside johnny-on-the spot podcasters spouting their split-second opinions are the two human beings who have lost their lives.
How habituated we’ve become as we instantly devour their instant obituaries. The sum of their lives declared in less than 10 seconds of cellphone video. They haven’t just lost their lives. They’ve lost all of their lives. And now we watch over and over again as their death is re-revealed, re-churned, re-evaluated, and re-consumed. In that endless repetition, we forget the meaning of life itself.
We must remember that Renee and Alex believed in their communities, in the purpose of their work, in the happiness of their loves and lives, and in the dignity and curiosity of life itself. They were singular individuals who did not deserve to die at the end of a gun barrel for any reason, ever.
How fitting that Renee was a poet. Sometimes in confronting the massiveness of loss in our lives, we look to our poetry and our psalms, our hymns and our lullabies, to find a moment of solace in our communal grief, and to remember Renee and Alex, for what they gave us in life.
Yet, at this moment, I cannot escape the reality of what was taken from them so soon, so violently and so forever. They were exceptionally courageous and normal people, and for that reason, I must remember them through a poem to explain to me, and others, the unexplainable.
I dream of this not happening.
I dream this day and night.
For none of this is real.
And none of this is right.
I dream of these sons and daughters
who now will not go home,
and dream of their mothers and fathers,
who now must stand alone.
I dream of all the flowers that they will never hold —
the kisses never shared again, the secrets to not be told.
I dream of all the sunsets that for them will never set,
I dream of all the love they gave and now they must forget.
I dream of all their dinners
with wine to never spill,
or books to read, or bread to break
or babies to be held.
I dream of each one still reaching
in the middle of the night,
for a hand that needs another
to stop a nightmare’s flight.
I dream of them not dreaming,
which I could never do,
for how can you not dream a dream
that never will come true.
I dream of this not happening.
I dream this day and night.
For none of this is real
And none of this is right.
Carew Papritz is the award-winning author of “The Legacy Letters,” who inspires kids to read through his “I Love to Read” and the “First-Ever Book Signing” YouTube series.
Opinions
Gay Treasury Secretary’s silence on LGBTQ issues shows he is scum
Scott Bessent is a betrayal to the community
We all know the felon in the White House is basically a POS. He is an evil, deranged, excuse for a man, out only for himself. But what is just as sad for me is the members of the LGBTQ community serving in his administration who are willing to stand by silently, while he screws the community in so many ways. The leader, with his silence on these issues, is the highest ranking “out” gay ever appointed to the Cabinet; the current secretary of the treasury, the scum who goes by the name, Scott Bessent.
Bessent has an interesting background based on his Wikipedia page. He is from South Carolina and is what I would call obscenely wealthy. According to his financial assets disclosure to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, Bessent’s net worth was at least $521 million as of Dec. 28, 2024; his actual net worth is speculated to be around $600 million. He married John Freeman, a former New York City prosecutor, in 2011. They have two children, born through surrogacy. I often wonder why guys like Bessent conveniently forget how much they owe to the activists in the LGBTQ community who fought for the right for them to marry and have those children. Two additional interesting points in the Wikipedia post are Bessent reportedly has a close friendship with Donald Trump’s brother Robert, whose ex-wife, Blaine Trump, is the godmother of his daughter. The other is disgraced member of the U.S. House of Representatives, John Jenrette, is his uncle.
Bessent has stood silent during all the administrations attacks on the LGBTQ community. What does he fear? This administration has kicked members of the trans community out of the military. Those who bravely risked their lives for our country. The administration’s policies attacking them has literally put their lives in danger. This administration supports removing books about the LGBTQ community from libraries, and at one point even removed information from the Pentagon website on the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb, thinking it might refer to a gay person. It was actually named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Col. Paul Tibbets. That is how dumb they are. Bessent stood silent during WorldPride while countries around the world told their LGBTQ citizens to avoid coming to the United States, as it wouldn’t be safe for them, because of the felon’s policies.
Now the administration has desecrated the one national monument saluting the LGBTQ community, Stonewall, in New York City, by ordering the removal of the rainbow flag. The monument honors the people who get credit for beginning the fight for equality that now allows Bessent, and his husband and children, to live their lives to the fullest. That was before this administration he serves came into office. I hope his children will grow up understanding how disgusting their father’s lack of action was. That they learn the history of the LGBTQ community and understand the guts it took for a college student Zach Wahls, now running for the U.S. Senate from Iowa, to speak out for his “two moms” in the Iowa State Legislature in 2011, defending their right to marry.
Bessent is sadly representative of the slew of gays in the administration, all remaining silent on the attacks on the community. They are mostly members of the Log Cabin Republicans who have given up on their principles, if they ever had any, to be subservient to the felon, and the fascists around him, all for a job.
There are so many like them who supported the felon in the last election. Some who believed in Project 2025, others who didn’t bother to read it. Many continue to stand with him, with the sycophants in the Congress, and the incompetents and fascists in the administration, as they work to destroy our country and end the democracy that has served us so well for 250 years. To keep out all immigrants from a nation of immigrants. They all seem to forget it was immigrants who built our country, who fought against a king, and won. These sycophants now support the man who wants to be king. Who openly says, “I am president I can do anything only based on my own morality,” which history clearly shows us he has none.
I believe we will survive these horrendous times in American history. We have fought a king before and won. We have kept our country alive and thriving through a civil war. We the people will defeat the felon and his minions, along with the likes of those who stood by silently like Scott Bessent. They seem to forget “Silence = Death.”
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.
Opinions
Unconventional love: Or, fuck it, let’s choose each other again
On Valentine’s Day, the kind of connection worth celebrating
There’s a moment at the end of “Love Jones” — the greatest Black love movie of the 21st century — when Darius stands in the rain, stripped of bravado, stripped of pride, stripped of all the cleverness that once protected him.
“I want us to be together again,” he says. “For as long as we can be.”
Not forever. Not happily ever after. Just again. And for as long as we can. That line alone dismantles the fairy tale.
“Love Jones” earns its place in the canon not because it is flawless, but because it is honest. It gave us Black love without sanitizing it. Black intellect without pretension. Black romance without guarantees. It told the truth: that love between two whole people is often clumsy, ego-driven, tender, frustrating, intoxicating—and still worth choosing.
That same emotional truth lives at the end of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” my favorite movie of all time. Joel and Clementine, having erased each other, accidentally fall back into love. When they finally listen to the tapes that reveal exactly how badly they hurt one another, Clementine does something radical: she tells the truth.
“I’m not perfect,” she says. “I’ll get bored. I’ll feel trapped. That’s what happens with me.”
She doesn’t ask Joel to deny reality. She invites him into it. Joel’s response isn’t poetic. It isn’t eloquent. It’s not even particularly brave. He shrugs.
“Ok.”
That “OK” is one of the most honest declarations of love ever written. Because it says: I hear you. I see the ending. I know the risk. And I’m choosing you anyway.
Both films are saying the same thing in different languages. Nina and Darius. Clementine and Joel. Artists and thinkers. Romantics who hurt each other not because they don’t care — but because they do. Deeply. Imperfectly. Humanly.
They argue. They retreat. They miscommunicate. They choose pride over vulnerability and distance over repair. Love doesn’t fail because they’re careless — it fails because love is not clean.
What makes “Love Jones” the greatest Black love movie of the 21st century is that it refuses to lie about this. It doesn’t sell permanence. It sells presence. It doesn’t promise destiny. It offers choice.
And at the end — just like “Eternal Sunshine” — the choice is made again, this time with eyes wide open.
When Nina asks, “How do we do this?” Darius doesn’t pretend to know.
“I don’t know.”
That’s the point.
Love isn’t a blueprint. It’s an agreement to walk forward without one.
I recently asked my partner if he believed in soul mates. He said no—without hesitation. When he asked me, I told him I believe you can have more than one soul mate, romantic or platonic. That a soul mate isn’t someone who saves you — it’s someone whose soul recognizes yours at a particular moment in time.
He paused. Then said, “OK. With those caveats, I believe.”
That felt like a Joel shrug. A grown one.
We’ve been sold a version of love that collapses under scrutiny. Fairy tales promised permanence without effort. Celebrity marriages promised aspiration without truth. And then reality — messy, public, human—stepped in. Will and Jada didn’t kill love for me. They clarified it.
No relationship is perfect. No love is untouched by disappointment. No bond survives without negotiation, humility, and repair. What matters isn’t whether love lasts forever. What matters is whether, when confronted with truth, you still say yes.
“Love Jones” ends in the rain. “Eternal Sunshine” ends in a hallway. No swelling orchestras. No guarantees. Just two people standing at the edge of uncertainty saying: Fuck it. I love you. Let’s do it again.
That’s not naïve love. That’s courageous love.
And on Valentine’s Day — of all days — that’s the kind worth celebrating.
Randal C. Smith is a Chicago-based attorney and writer focusing on labor and employment law, civil rights, and administrative governance.
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