【Bayo (2025)】

If you were a kid growing up in the '80s,Bayo (2025) '90s, or '00s, likely the only time you heard about a gay politician was when they were unceremoniously outed. The very existence of a presidential candidate like Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is openly gay and married to a male teacher, was unimaginable.

That's why, when Mayor Pete Buttigieg kissed his husband, Chasten Buttigieg, at a presidential rally this Sunday, the moment inspired loud cheers from the South Bend, Indiana crowd.

"It wasn't just a young crowd, either," former mayor of Houston Annise Parker and president of the Victory Fund, told Mashable in a phone interview. "I'm 62 years old ... I would not have thought to have seen something like that in my lifetime."

Ignore, for a moment, the multiple complex takes out there claiming that Buttigieg has minimized his gay identity, or that his candidacy is a setback for the gay community.

Instead, consider the visual of a 37-year-old gay man embracing his husband on a presidential stage. Imagine seeing something like this happening in 2005, ten years before same-sex marriage was legalized.

It's a radical shift on a presidential level. Let's walk through the history. In the '80s, AIDS advocates criticized then President Ronald Reagan for his indifferent response to the AIDS crisis:

“Dear President Reagan, I have all these patients and they are dying and no one’s doing anything," Dr. Marcus Conant, one of the first physicians to identify the disease, reportedly wrote to President Reagan a letter. "It is incumbent on your administration to direct the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health to begin efforts to find the cause and treatment for this disease.”

"Nancy and I thank you for your support," Reagan allegedly -- and curtly -- wrote back.

Later, in 1988, Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis argued that heterosexual parents simply made better parents.

"I think, all things being equal, that it is best for a youngster to grow up in a household with a mother, a father and other children," Dukakis said at the time.

Dukakis later went on to say that an anti-discrimination executive order, specifically for the LGBTQ community, would be "redundant."

Or consider the way former President George H.W. Bush famously responded to a question about the AIDS crisis during a presidential debate.

"It’s one of the few diseases where behavior matters," Bush said at the time. "And I once called on somebody, 'Well, change your behavior!' "If the behavior you’re using is prone to cause AIDs, change the behavior!' Next thing I know, one of these ACT UP groups is saying, 'Bush ought to change his behavior!' You can’t talk about it rationally!"

Bush's message was clear: AIDS was a personal, moral failure of the gay community. There was something wrong with the community, not the medical establishment.

Fast forward to the election of President Bill Clinton. While Clinton's language about the gay community might have been softer, his legislative priorities were similarly punitive. The "liberal president" was responsible for "Don't Ask Don't Tell," which permitted gay soldiers to stay in the military if they didn't publicly admit their identity. He also signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law in 1996, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman.

Hell, George W. Bush sought to completely ban same-sex marriage and President Obama didn't openly support same-sex marriage until May 2012.

Juxtapose all this brutal history to the image of Mayor Pete and his husband Chasten sharing a seemingly-radical smooch at Buttigeg's announcement ceremony in Indiana, the heart of conservative America.

"We've seen this [same-sex affection between politicians] on local stages," Parker told Mashable. "It's happening in bigger cities, bigger states, and now the presidential stage."

PDA between consenting heterosexual adults hasn't always been embraced. But affection between same-sex couples has been even more stigmatized, sometimes violently so. That's what made Mayor Pete's open, physical, embrace of his husband so transformational.

"[Pete's kiss] was a moment in history," Parker says. "The interesting thing ... We've all seen spouses on stage. There are staged kisses. But this felt so natural. This seems like the way they relate to each other.

Twitter felt similarly.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Mayor Pete may not be radically queer enough for some folks. He is, for some, the safest possible representation of gay identity: white, educated, handsome, a veteran, religious, and an active board game enthusiast.

But regardless of how you feel about Mayor Pete the man, you've got to appreciate the historical timeline that made his kiss with his husband both a profoundly radical moment in presidential history and a normal, everyday act between a man and his husband.

When a transformational kiss like that can feel boring, you know that change has already happened. More, we can hope, is on its way.