Buttigieg becomes the administration’s foil for Speaker Johnson on LGBTQ issues

Openly gay Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is making the rounds on TV to hammer House Speaker Mike Johnson on LGBTQ issues.

Mr. Buttigieg was on CNN Friday saying that his family “deserves to be supported just like every American 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 that the speaker of the House sitting under that dome doesn’t even think our family ought to exist,” he said.

On “The Late Show” on Thursday, Mr. Buttigieg invited Mr. Johnson, an evangelical Christian, to come to see the “chaos” and normalcy at his home with his husband, Chasten, and their adopted toddlers. 

The show’s host, Stephen Colbert, said Mr. Johnson’s record on LGBTQ issues was “awful.”

“So, 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,’” he asked Mr. Buttigieg in the Thursday interview.

Mr. Buttigieg, the first openly gay Cabinet secretary confirmed by the Senate, responded: “I’ll work with anybody who can help us get good transportation available to the American people. … Maybe we’ll just have him over, because our little house isn’t that far from the Capitol.” 

Mr. Buttigieg shared what it’s like in his house when he and his husband get home from work and get dinner ready for their twin toddlers.

“Everything about that is chaos,” he said, “but nothing about that is dark.”

Mr. Johnson has defended his Christian views and the views that have offended LGBTQ activists, saying that he loves all people.

“I am a rule-of-law guy. I made a career defending the rule of law. I respect the rule of law,” he said on Fox News. “When the Supreme Court issued the Obergefell opinion [legalizing same-sex marriage], that became the law of the land. I respect the rule of law, but I also genuinely love all people, regardless of their lifestyle choices.”