Matt Walsh, a right-wing blowhard with the conservative website The Daily Wire, has criticized Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for taking paternity leave to help his husband raise their adopted newborn twins.
Walsh said it was “absurd… luxury” for public employees like Buttigieg to receive two months off to care for their children on the taxpayer dime because the U.S. is deeply in debt and facing a “transportation crisis.” But then he showed his true concern: gays raising kids.
Related: Pete Buttigieg on being a new dad: “I catch myself grinning half the time”
“Babies need their mothers, which is why two men shouldn’t be allowed to adopt babies in the first place,” Walsh recently said, repeating a decades-old anti-LGBTQ line that “every child deserves a mother and father.”
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“The outrage mob can now start a secondary campaign over that comment,” he continued. “But I’ll say it again. Two men should not be allowed to adopt babies because babies need mothers. They also need fathers, which is why two women shouldn’t be allowed either.”
Not only is Walsh repeating lies used by anti-LGBTQ organizations around the world, but he’s also wrong. Numerous studies have shown that same-sex couples raise children just as healthy as mixed-gender parents. Also, he’s inadvertently arguing that single parents shouldn’t be allowed to raise kids either.
Furthermore, more than 120 countries around the world give parents time off after the birth of a baby to bond with the child and make it easier to handle all of the myriad stresses and work that come with a newborn. The United States does not, but President Joe Biden has made it a priority for his administration.
Walsh is just the latest conservative to criticize Buttigieg for daring to care for his children.
Last week, Fox News’ most popular white supremacist and homophobic bigot Tucker Carlson said that Buttigieg and his husband took paternity leave because they were “trying to figure out how to breastfeed.” Buttigieg responded by noting that Carlson supported the murderer of a gay politician and that most Republican voters actually support same-sex families.
This last Sunday, Meet the Press host Chuck Todd described the recent line of attack on Buttigieg as “bizarre,” acknowledging that Republicans launching an attack on a politician for being a good parent.
As for Walsh, he recently rented a home in Loundon County, Virginia just so he could speak against the county school district’s pro-transgender student policies. So it’s hardly surprising to hear anti-LGBTQ speaking points dribbling out of his mouth.
