Chasten Buttigieg shares secret for ‘fighting back’ against anti-LGBTQ trolls

The best way to combat anti-LGBTQ rhetoric is to live openly and happily as oneself, according to Chasten Buttigieg, the husband of U.S. Transportation Secretary and former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg.

“I grew up with a litany of Tucker Carlsons,” Chasten Buttigieg said Tuesday on The Daily Beast podcast “The New Abnormal” ahead of the release of his new memoir, “I Have Something to Tell You,” an adaptation of his 2020 bestseller of the same name. “I have felt for years what it is like to have your existence and your humanity questioned.”

“I don’t have it all figured out, I certainly have my bad days,” Buttigieg added. “But my existence, the fact that I exist, is a miracle because I didn’t let them shove me back into the closet. The fact that you exist — and that you’re happy— is a form of protest.”

“I love that you’re so unhappy because I’m happy,” Buttigieg said of his critics. “I love being a dad; I love this life; I love that I’m alive; I love that I made it out of the closet.”

Buttigieg added that it’s important for all LGBTQ people to live their lives openly and joyfully “not only to show other people that you can have it, but to show other people that we’re not going anywhere.”

Buttigieg’s memoir, rewritten for younger audiences, was released Tuesday. It is “the book I wish I could go back in time and hand to younger Chasten,” he said during a recent interview with People.

The memoir, which tells the story of Buttigieg growing up gay in a small Midwestern town, debuts as books with LGBTQ characters and themes are being targeted for removal from school libraries and classrooms nationwide. 

Roughly half of last year’s most frequently challenged books were targeted for containing LGBTQ content deemed “sexually explicit,” according to the American Library Association.