Dustin Lance Black weighs in on presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg: “It doesn’t seem like an act to me”

Dustin Lance Black, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of the film Milk, has a new memoir out this week called Mama’s Boy.

He’s doing lots of press for it which I like because it’s good to hear from someone so thoughtful.

In a new interview with BuzzFeed News, here is some of what Lance had to say about presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg who a recent Outline piece said presents himself to voters as “the most palatable gay man in America” and tones down his sexuality with a more traditional, Midwestern image: “I actually don’t doubt that that’s who Mayor Pete really is. It doesn’t seem like an act to me. I’ll leave it to other people to see if that’s an act. That’s certainly a way some folks in the LGBTQ community are. I’m probably included in many ways in that more traditional-looking life. I’m married, I have a husband, I have a kid. But I also want to make it clear, and I hope Mayor Pete makes it clear, that not everyone needs to live a life that looks like his life. That’s not the point. I hope that he’s working and fighting for all LGBT people to live as diverse … lives as we’d like to live, and in no way should this be about having to appear heteronormative, as they say.”

Black said he does see in Buttigieg something of Harvey Milk: “Absolutely — certainly in the theme of ‘You gotta give them hope,’ meaning you have to elect gay people. That was Harvey Milk’s speech, because that sends a message of hope. But I think there are other candidates, too, who are sending messages of hope,” he added, “other people of diversity, other people who have been underrepresented and underprotected by the law in our society who are running who are sending messages of hope.”