Are we ready?

Can I ask the unasked question? Is America ready for a gay president? As Pete Buttigieg rises in the Democratic primaries, one is hard put to find any media analysts willing to ask this question.

Yet the first issue for Democrats is electability. We already have a man in the White House because the party can’t do math. Gay Americans make up about 3.8% of the population Almost one quarter of Americans are evangelicals. The gay rights threat to religious freedom is real to evangelicals. The result is President Donald Trump.

One could also consider what it would be like for the leader of the free world to be in a relationship that is illegal in many countries. Wrong as we may find this, the world outside of Europe and North America has little tolerance for homosexuality. How would Buttigieg’s identity fly in the Islamic world? How would he introduce the man to whom he is married? What would the larger world make of him having a “husband”? Could that term even be translated into other languages that have no concept of such a thing?

Finally, one cannot help but ponder the idea of a first family that includes no women. We are in the “Me too” era. Yet we seem unwilling to elect a female to lead the country. My millennial daughter has stated that if we elect a gay man before we elect a woman president, she, for one, is going to be really ticked off.

Thoughts anyone?

James Becker

Spokane