Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana and a candidate for president, said over the weekend that if he is elected, he probably wouldn’t be the first gay man to win the White House.
In an interview on “Axios on HBO” that aired on Sunday, Buttigieg was asked how he would respond to critics who question his youth, liberal beliefs and sexuality.
The mayor said, "I'll respond by explaining where I want to lead this country. People will elect the person who will make the best president. And we have had excellent presidents who have been young. We have had excellent presidents who have been liberal. I would imagine we've probably had excellent presidents who were gay — we just didn't know which ones."
He added that “statistically, it's almost certain.”
According to the William Institute, about 4.5 percent of the U.S. population is LGBTQ.
Buttigieg declined to speculate as to which president he thinks was gay.
"My gaydar doesn't even work that well in the present, let alone retroactively,” he said. “But one can only assume that's the case."
Historian Jim Loewen told HuffPost in 2016 that former President James Buchanan and former Vice President William Rufus King, who shared a room in a boarding house for 15 years while serving in Congress, “were both homosexual, and that they were known to be by political leaders at the time.”
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