Maddow and Buttigieg discuss their coming out stories

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D), who are both openly gay, compared their stories of coming out during an interview Monday on MSNBC’s “Maddow.”

Maddow said she came out while she was in college and that she was the first openly gay American to be a Rhodes scholar. 

{mosads}”I had come out in college. I had applied for the Rhodes scholar as an openly gay person. It definitely came up in the selection process and then I got there and I learned that I was the first American that had ever been out,” Maddow said.

The MSNBC host then noted that Buttigieg, who was also a Rhodes scholar, didn’t come out until he was 33 and serving as mayor of South Bend.

Maddow said “it would have killed me to be closeted for that long” and asked Buttigieg if it was “hurtful” for him to have to not reveal that he was gay.

Buttigieg responded that it was “really hard” and revealed that, prior to coming out publicly, he came out to a “couple of people in my life” before taking office.

“There’s this war that breaks out inside a lot of people when they realize that they might be something they’re afraid of. It took me a very long time to resolve that. I did make sure, as a kind of final way of coming out to myself, to come out to at least a couple of people in my life before I took office because I knew that I didn’t want to have that psychological pressure of at least not being out to somebody,” he said.

NEW: @Maddow and Mayor Buttigieg discuss their decision-making processes for coming out. https://t.co/lRFFV2fyO8

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) April 16, 2019

Buttigieg added that it was his deployment to Afghanistan that “put me over the top.”

“I realized that you only get to be one person,” he said. “You don’t know how long you have on this earth. And by the time I came back, I realized, ‘I gotta do something.’”

The conversation between Maddow and Buttigieg elicited praise on social media. 

Country singer Chely Wright tweeted that she was “in tears” as she watched it. NBC host Willie Geist called the conversation “extraordinary and moving” in a tweet. Brian Fallon, the press secretary for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, called it “profound.”

I’m in tears as I watch @PeteButtigieg on @maddow @MaddowBlog.

Rachel asks Buttigieg an important question about his coming out in 2015. His answer is nuanced and poignant.

I came out 9 years ago and I feel like now— in this very moment— there’s is a tangible shift.

❤️

— Chely Wright (@chelywright) April 16, 2019

That was an extraordinary and moving conversation between @Maddow and Mayor @PeteButtigieg. https://t.co/0z1Xd21eg9

— Willie Geist (@WillieGeist) April 16, 2019

If there is going to be one person who is the gatekeeper interviewer for all 2020 candidates, Rachel Maddow is a great person to play that role. Her interview of Buttigieg just now, and his decision about when to come out, was profound.

— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) April 16, 2019