(Photo by Matt Cashore)

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg came out as gay in an editorial essay printed in the South Bend Tribune today, saying that it took him years to accept his sexuality and that he hoped by sharing his experience he could help others who may be struggling with their personal identities, as well.

Buttigieg, 33, is a first-term Democratic mayor seeking reelection this year. He wrote that being gay did not have any bearing on his service to his community, home to the conservative University of Notre Dame.

Buttigieg is also a Navy reservist who served a seven month deployment to Afghanistan last year. He is a former Rhodes scholar who studied at Oxford University and graduated from Harvard.

He lost his first political race in 2009 for state treasurer, but won a crowded Democratic primary for mayor and was elected to represent his hometown of South Bend, Indiana’s fourth largest city, three years later at the age of 29.

Buttigieg said in the essay that divulging his sexuality publicly wasn’t easy.

“It took years of struggle and growth for me to recognize that it’s just a fact of life, like having brown hair, and part of who I am,” he wrote. “It makes me no better or worse at handling a spreadsheet, a rifle, a committee meeting, or a hiring decision.”

Buttigieg noted that gender orientation can be a sensitive issue in the state, which saw national backlash earlier this year over the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

“This kind of social change, considered old news in some parts of the country, is still often divisive around here. But it doesn’t have to be,” he wrote.

The news about Buttigieg’s announcement has spread quickly around the country, to mixed reviews. However overall, it seems to have generated mostly positive support. In South Bend, The State Theatre downtown changed its marquee to read “Thanks for being you, Mayor Pete.”

You can read Mayor Buttigieg’s entire essay as printed in the South Bend Tribune on its website.

Source: Indianapolis Star