Life

A right-wing podcaster tried to smear Pete Buttigieg. It gloriously backfired

Conservative radio host Jesse Kelly
Conservative radio host Jesse Kelly Photo: Screenshot, YouTube

Anti-LGBTQ+ conservative podcaster Jesse Kelly has been repeatedly and hilariously mocked on Twitter after he tried to whip up homophobic outrage against out Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and his husband Chasten.

In a Thursday tweet, Kelly posted a photo of the same-sex couple smiling at one another while holding onto their newborn infant sons.

Kelly wrote, “I can’t think of a single image that better explains where our country is now. If there is one, I’d like to see it. This is just… exactly what we’ve become.”

Kelly didn’t have the chutzpah, this time, to make a bald-faced anti-gay comment. So instead, he left the insinuation hanging, possibly hoping that his conservative followers would provide a homophobic pile-on.

But it didn’t go exactly as he might’ve hoped. Instead, he received a flood of replies supporting the proud fathers.

Noting Kelly’s comment that the same-sex parents are “what we’ve become,” one Twitter user asked, “Who are ‘WE’ Jesse? You have become gay from watching a loving family, Is that what you are saying?”

Another commenter asked, “A loving family upsets you? I’ll say it again, the right’s continual obsession with Pete tells me one thing: they fear him. It’s quite obvious now.”

“Oh no! Babies are loved and cared for! This is somehow bad,” one commenter joked, with another writing, “A happy loving family with two kids? The horror.”

Another Twitter user wrote, “This is a beautiful image and I am thrilled for both of them. I honestly struggle to see why this would bother a single soul. And if it does, you need to ask yourself why joy enrages you.”

Yet another commented, “Yes we’ve become a country where two successful, intelligent people who are a married couple can adopt a baby and give them a great upbringing. I’d say we are in a pretty good place.”

One savvy commenter replied, “Here is a picture of how bad it has become,” and included an image of Kelly being announced as a host of the far-right network The First TV.

Kelly is a notorious queerphobe. In a December 2021 interview with fellow queerphobe Tucker Carlson, Kelly said, “We don’t need a military that’s woman-friendly, that’s gay-friendly.”

During the 2022 World Cup soccer tournament, Kelly called America “awful” because it embraces “degeneracy” by not jailing gay and transgender individuals.

In a now-deleted April 2022 tweet, Kelly wrote that The Trevor Project, an organization that fights LGBTQ+ youth suicide, was trying to “break” children by offering them a way to privately access online resources without potentially outing them to their parents.

In another now-deleted tweet, Kelly insinuated that all male kindergarten teachers deserved to be suspected as child predators.

Buttigieg has long endured homophobic attacks from other right-wing figures for being a proud gay father raising babies in a same-sex marriage.

“Pete Buttigieg has been on leave from his job since August after adopting a child. Paternity leave, they call it, trying to figure out how to breastfeed. No word on how that went,” Tucker Carlson ranted on his Fox News show in October 2021.

“The guy was not working! Because why? He was trying to figure out how to chestfeed,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) said in November 2021, using a term often used by transmasculine and non-binary parents. “Maybe someone should tell him, please, so he can get back to work.”

Anti-trans Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh said it was “absurd… luxury” for public employees like Pete Buttigieg to receive two months off to care for his infants and also said that the Buttigieges shouldn’t be allowed to be parents.

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