Pete Buttigieg has been outed — as someone who has worked with the Salvation Army.
According to a report Tuesday in Out magazine, the South Bend mayor has several times participated in Red Kettle Ring Off for the Christmas season in the Indiana city.
Out linked to reports of the annual charity in local South Bend media from 2015 and 2017, and at least one other photo from 2016 surfaced on Twitter. In 2018, he held the annual Mayor’s Night Out — an open-listening event to let residents quiz city officials — at a Salvation Army community center.
The gay magazine called the Salvation Army a homophobic organization “justified by religion,” noting among other things that it had claimed religious exemptions from a San Francisco ordinance on gay-partner benefits and that a 2012 spokesman had said gay relationships go “against the will of God.”
“Even famously homophobic chicken peddlers Chick-fil-A recently severed its relationship with the Salvation Army, and when you’re gay and less sensitive about anti-queerness than Chick-fil-A, that’s pretty bleak,” Out magazine wrote.
Pro-gay Twitter denizens were even less sympathetic.
“Surprised he’s not eating chic-fil-a in this photo,” wrote one user, while another called him an “Uncle Tom.”
“I still vote we call the gay version of an Uncle Tom an Auntie Em. May be in the family, but no friend of Dorothy,” wrote Jennifer Slattery in reaction to the 2016 photo of Mr. Buttigieg ringing the bell wearing Salvation Army garb.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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