For the first time, a gay person is being taken seriously as a legitimate contender for the presidency of the United States of America. Unfortunately, homophobia and structural heterosexism are still present in our social and political systems, and this extends to the coverage of Pete Buttigieg in the Democratic primary race.

Queer erasure

What is so incredibly frustrating in the recent backlash to media coverage of Buttigieg, is that so-called allies and liberals are taking an inherently conservative approach in their criticisms by ignoring Buttigieg’s sexual orientation. You cannot lop off and look at facets of a person’s identity discretely. Buttigieg is always gay. He was born gay, wakes up gay, eats gay, goes to sleep gay, breathes gay, and walks around gay.

By focusing almost exclusively on his race and sex, critics are erasing his status as a gay person to highlight his privileges as a white, cis man. This is heterosexist, queer erasure. Clearly he is also always white and always a cis man. There is no question that membership in these groups gives him unearned social benefits. And yet.

LGBTQ people are consistently removed from their own stories. Because we live in a racist and sexist society, queer erasure often hits women and people of color first and hardest. They live at the intersection of multiple oppressions. Lesbians — and often lesbians of color — are erased. Historically, lesbians with AIDS have been under-served or even outright excluded when it comes to AIDS activism, education, and research.

Trans people are so marginalized even within the queer community that the “T” in LGBT is often treated like a joke or an afterthought. They are subjected to enormous amounts of violence, while still having to argue for their right to exist and to be treated as the women and men that they are.

The recent Freddie Mercury biopic erased a bisexual person from his own biography. The Hays Code kept queer representation in media to a minimum. And the representation that was there, wasn’t particularly great.

That doesn’t even touch ignoring queer people in K-12 education. Several states actively have “no promo homo” laws which forbid schools from integrating LGBTQ education into the classroom. California is the only state that requires LGBTQ inclusive education. Most schools will ignore LGBTQ people and the influence they had on history and culture. This contributes to environments where more than half of LGBTQ students feel unsafe at school.

While LGBTQ women and men of color and LGBTQ white women bear the brunt of erasure, white gay men are also erased — in both media and real life. Years ago, Keith Olbermann hosted a news program called Countdown. During one show, he read an email from a woman who advocated for homophobia by quoting Walt Whitman. Olbermann responded that she should look into Whitman’s probable dating habits. When we erase queer people from their own contributions, we create a society that teaches us queer people contribute nothing.

Erasing queer discrimination

By ignoring a significant part of Buttigieg’s identity, the criticism is perpetuating the queer erasure that has gone on for decades. It further erases the marginalization he has experienced as a gay man, which is significant and systemic.

There are obvious examples. Buttigieg joined and served in the armed forces under “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.” He grew up with the knowledge that he could not get married and have a family like straight people. He believed — because of queer erasure — that he was the lone gay person in high school, and almost certainly would not have been exposed to positive examples of LGBTQ people and the work they did.

But there are other systemic issues as well, which are wrapped up in the way the media and people online talk about him and the others in the race.

It’s fair and necessary to analyze why Buttigieg’s intelligence makes him “charming” to reporters while Warren gets described as a cold professor. But if someone is going to be critical of or diminish Buttigieg’s list of personal accomplishments, it needs to be put in the proper context.

There is a strong argument that closeted gay men and boys are driven to “overachieve” because growing up in a homophobic, heteronormative culture leaves them personally adrift. It’s called the best little boy in the world hypothesis. They instead channel their energies into academic and professional accomplishments. This is literally something Buttigieg has said that he did, in both an Anderson Cooper CNN Townhall and an interview with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. Mocking or minimizing Buttigieg as a “wunderkid” misunderstands and undermines the amount of effort some gay men put into creating a space for themselves where they can be successful.

Likewise, to argue that Buttigieg must be elected to statewide office before running for president or argue that it’s ludicrous that someone with little experience is being taken more seriously than qualified women, ignores that only .1% of elected officials are out LGBTQ people. Which LGBTQ people should be “allowed” to run, exactly? There are hardly any in any elected office!

Of course, women and people of color are also underrepresented. Obviously, LGBTQ people include women and people color. They’ve got vanishingly few positions of political power. It remains true, however, that there are proportionately more straight women in office than queer people of any sex.

Furthermore, the most recent nationwide survey on the topic indicated that people are less likely to vote for an LGBTQ candidate than a woman or a black person (of note is the lack of intersectionality: what about a black woman?). Buttigieg comes from a conservative state that lacks hate crimes legislation. It is simply true that structural homophobia makes it enormously more difficult for him to win a state-wide election in Indiana.

That does not mean that anyone has to accept that a mayor of a mid-sized city is qualified to be president. At the same time, ignoring why his experience looks like it does is to disregard systemic homophobia that keeps LGBTQ politicians from garnering more traditional political experience. Additionally, to say that Buttigieg should not even run for president ignores a huge intangible benefit to his candidacy: creating visibility which can help more LGBTQ people get elected.

Erasing media bias against queer people

It is true, and Buttigieg himself has acknowledged, that white cis men find it easier to get positive media coverage. This has turned into reflexively criticizing his media coverage, without any selectivity. The very same day it was revealed that Buttigieg and his husband, Chasten, were on the cover of TIME magazine, the White House made it easier for healthcare workers to discriminate against them. The TIME magazine cover was specifically and obviously not some frivolous puff piece about the candidate. It was very clearly about the historic nature of his candidacy and family. It was still criticized as an example of how the media is ignoring women. The current administration is openly and actively trying to harm LGBTQ people. Articles like the one in TIME magazine are incredibly necessary, and not worthy of condemnation.

On top of this, more traditional homophobic media coverage is beginning to emerge, and there are few allies calling it out. The media is amplifying and making viral moments out of homophobic protesters at Buttigieg’s events. This can spread and validate people’s homophobia, especially when unchallenged.

Recently, Franklin Graham called on Buttigieg to repent for being gay, Twitter users, thankfully, thoroughly eviscerated him. Less noticed, however, is the next day both CNN and MSNBC had homophobes on to debate Buttigieg’s right to exist. Rick Santorum — yes, that Rick Santorum — was given a platform to discuss whether Buttigieg can be gay and Christian. As though this is still an open question.

There are other microagressions beginning to pop up. After mentioning that he and his husband want to have kids, the anchor on CNN’s New Day tried to get Buttigieg to discuss whether they’d be using a surrogate, fostering, or adopting a kid. This is a bizarrely invasive question to ask someone, and has zero relevance to how Buttigieg would govern.

Why aren’t we calling this out with the same ferocity we call out the sexist coverage of women in the race?

Buttigieg and his team are undoubtedly aware of these challenges, but cannot actively address them in the same way that Obama could not point out racist coverage and Clinton could not point out sexist coverage: he’d be seen as whiner and the media would turn on him. It is up to allies to point these issues out and not enough people are.

Erasing the horror of the closet

One of the most destructive narratives cropping up around Buttigieg’s identity, is the notion that as a gay, white, cis man, with a pretty traditionally masculine gender performance, Buttigieg could (and did) reap the privileges of his whiteness and cisgender maleness while he was closeted.

This is an unconscionable erasure of the harm that being in the closet can do.

The closet kills people. The closet kills people. “Passing” or being closeted is not the type of privilege awarded cishet white men. It is at most a reasonable facsimile of privilege. While closeted, Buttigieg could certainly get paid more than a woman or a person of color, but unlike straight peers was trapped in a heteronormative, psychological ordeal.

This isn’t speculation; Buttigieg has discussed this with remarkable openness and courage. He, like many gay people before him, has exposed himself in some of the most vulnerable parts of person’s identity to explain how and why he is who he is. He has talked about how “humiliating” and “confusing” it was that he was an adult and had never been in love. He has talked about how he had to go to a literal war before being able to tell the world who he was. He has talked about how as a child he wished he could cut out the part of himself that made him gay.

This type of deep, internalized homophobia is not unique. It is exactly what contributes to high suicide rates for LGBTQ children. Yet when we have someone who so eloquently and so personally talks about how heteronormativity and homophobia shaped his life, he’s met with derision that — had he just stayed in the closet — society would see him only as a white man. That is exactly the problem. LGBTQ people shouldn’t have to pass or hide and when they try it is massively damaging to them.

Erasing queer greatness

Not only does this type of criticism erase the challenges and discrimination that Buttigieg faced and faces, but it also erases queer greatness.

One of the very reasonable critiques of LGBTQ representation in the media is the lack of hopeful, happy stories. This is not to imply queer people need to be happy, gay minstrels, but rather they deserve to be seen in the fullness of the human reality. This means highlighting struggles and discrimination, but also happy endings and successes.

People keep jumping into the race, and some of the underlying reporting reveals that people think to themselves, “Well, if the mayor of South Bend can do it, why can’t I?”

There is an easy answer to this question: You’re not as good as Pete Buttigieg.

It is unquestionably true that he has gotten beneficial media coverage in part because he is a white man, but to reduce his success to the privilege of being a white cis man, is ignore just how impressive he is. This goes beyond the laundry list of languages he speaks or his fancy degrees.

Buttigieg is an extraordinarily good politician. His book was so well reviewed and his comms people so good, that it made the New York Times bestseller list before most people knew who he was. The first CNN townhall he participated in was astonishing. He was affecting and polished. He connected with people. His perspective is different than anyone else’s in the race. He understands the new media environment that helped get Trump elected. He understands, for all the backlash he’s now facing, that people vote based on feelings, not logical calculations, so he appropriately led with a strategy that allowed his name and values to get out there.

When he was only 34 years old, before he even ran for the DNC chair, the sitting U.S. President and one of the greatest American politicians to ever live named Buttigieg as a future leader of the Democratic party. You do not get that kind of endorsement at that age and with that admittedly short résumé because you are a mediocre white man who coasts by on privilege.

To reduce Buttigieg to “just another white man” reduces all his talents. But it also deprives the LGBTQ community and others of a chance to celebrate queer greatness. It is not that all (or any!) LGBTQ people need to support him. It is not that he is great solely because he is gay. Instead, it should be an opportunity to show that gay people can also be talented, and smart, and extraordinary. That they can be lauded by presidents as leaders. That they don’t have to hide in the closet. That they can be seen as their full and total selves and be taken seriously for their ideas and what they bring to the table. In other words, Buttigieg’s candidacy shows that queer people can be great.

It is possible and indeed necessary to talk about the benefits Buttigieg gets both within the queer community and the straight community by virtue of being a white cis man. But if you cannot fully unpack the way his sexual orientation influences both his privileges and the oppression that he faces, you are merely erasing a huge part of who he is. And queer erasure is unacceptable.