The New Republic recently published a disgusting op-ed by gay writer Dale Peck in which he called Pete Buttigieg “Mary Pete” (instead of Mayor Pete), mused about his preferred role in anal sex and compared him to a underage minor who sleeps with a much older man.

In Peck’s long, rambling diatribe —which has since been removed from the site with an editor’s note calling it “inappropriate and invasive” — he wrote this offensive passage:

All this makes Mary Pete different from every other left-leaning neoliberal in exactly zero ways. Because let’s face it. The only thing that distinguishes the mayor of South Bend from all those other well-educated reasonably intelligent white dudes who wanna be president is what he does with his d*ck (and possibly his *ss, although I get a definite top-by-default vibe from him, which is to say that I bet he thinks about getting f*cked but he’s too uptight to do it). So let’s dish the dish, homos. You know and I know that Mary Pete is a gay teenager. He’s a fifteen-year-old boy in a Chicago bus station wondering if it’s a good idea to go home with a fifty-year-old man so that he’ll finally understand what he is.

The article was barely up for one day before finally being removed from the site last night. In a note upon the article’s page, New Republic editor Chris Lehmann wrote, “The New Republic recognizes that this post crossed a line, and while it was largely intended as satire, it was inappropriate and invasive.”

Lehmann has not commented on why or how he allowed the piece to be published in the first place.

Related: Indiana Republican asks Buttigieg ‘how gay are you?’ in shockingly vulgar diatribe about sex

The New Republic is a political magazine generally considered liberal. Its readership is typically older, influential establishment types, though its readership and circulation have both fallen in recent years. Even gay Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes abandoned his $20 million investment in the publication barely three years after buying into it.

In a statement issued today, Win McCormack, owner and editor-in-chief of The New Republic, wrote:

Yesterday The New Republic’s website published an opinion piece about Mayor Pete Buttigieg that should not have appeared there. As The New Republic’s owner, I want to extend our sincerest apologies to Mayor Buttigieg, as well as to our readers, for an article that was both inappropriate and offensive. It has been removed from our site. We have high standards at The New Republic, but sometimes we fall short. Yesterday we made a mistake, but we remain committed to honoring the tradition of high standards and journalistic integrity that have been the hallmark of The New Republic for more than 100 years. Please know that moving forward, we will do everything we can to prove that commitment to our readers and to the public.

Buttigieg also briefly responded to the article:

I asked Pete Buttigieg about the controversial TNR piece that compared him to a gay Uncle Tom. He said he was glad it was taken down and pivoted to Pence touring border facilities. pic.twitter.com/zATNz22aQA — Alexandra Jaffe (@ajjaffe) July 13, 2019

After his article was removed, Peck issued the following tweet: