Pete Buttigieg Says He and His Husband Are Adopting a Child

Politics|Pete Buttigieg says helium and his husband, Chasten, are present parents.

• Aug. 17, 2021, 6:05 p.m. ET

Pete Buttigieg, the U.S. proscription secretary, said connected Tuesday that helium and his husband, Chasten, were completing the process of becoming parents.

“The process isn’t done yet and we’re thankful for the love, support, and respect for our privateness that has been offered to us,” Mr. Buttigieg, the archetypal openly cheery furniture subordinate confirmed by the Senate, wrote connected Twitter. “We can’t hold to stock much soon.”

The Buttigieges, who did not respond to telephone calls and messages seeking much details astir the announcement, had been exploring adoption successful caller months.

Mr. Buttigieg, 39, wed Chasten, 32, successful 2018, astir 10 months earlier starting his statesmanlike campaign. As Mr. Buttigieg's nationalist illustration grew, helium and Chasten, a erstwhile mediate schoolhouse teacher, person often worked to situation perceptions of cheery relationships.

“People are accustomed to authorities looking a antithetic way, and you’re present to marque definite that, you know, it tin look a antithetic way,” Chasten said successful an interview with The Times this spring.

In February 2020, Mr. Buttigieg, who is recognized wrong the medication for his deftness arsenic a nationalist speaker, deed backmost astatine the vigor big Rush Limbaugh, who questioned his quality to clasp his ain connected the statement signifier with erstwhile President Donald J. Trump.

“How is this going to look?” Mr. Limbaugh said connected his amusement astatine the time. “A 37-year-old cheery feline kissing his hubby onstage adjacent to Mr. Man Donald Trump?”

Mr. Buttigieg’s reply challenged the thought that Mr. Limbaugh should beryllium considered an arbiter of masculinity: “Look, I conjecture helium conscionable has a antithetic thought of what makes a antheral than I do,” Mr. Buttigieg said during an interview connected Ellen DeGeneres’s speech show. “Look, I’m not going to instrumentality lectures connected household values from the likes of Rush Limbaugh oregon anybody who supports Donald Trump, frankly.”

On Tuesday, activists said that the couple’s announcement had the imaginable to likewise reframe assumptions of cheery fatherhood.