“I literally want a woman to strap me down, force feed me viagra, and ride my gay cock until it can't remember why it was ever gay in the first place. Convert me. Fix my gay dick. Turn me straight. #gaytostraight #conversion #dicksareforchicks”— Twitter user @GoingStr8 on July 8, 2022

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In 2019, at an LGBT SuperPac Event, then-presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg said that in his high school and college years, if he’d known what it was inside him that had made him gay, he would have cut it out with a knife. It was a surprisingly human moment from a candidate who’d always seemed more mech than man. It was also relatable to many gay men, especially those who came of age in less accepting times and places, and even those who disliked Buttigieg’s politics and naked careerism. There was also backlash from some queer circles. The Atlantic’s Spencer Kornhaber noted that Buttigieg’s Twitter critics “called his words ‘the most evil shit’ and ‘vile,’ and said his comments were ‘absolutely going to do damage’ to thousands of ‘vulnerable LGBTQ youth.’ To Buttigieg’s critics, changing one’s sexuality was not merely impossible, as an overwhelming majority of Americans believe, but even desiring to do so as a gay man, or at least admitting to it in the past, was immoral and irresponsible.

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