Pete Buttigieg says it’s 'almost certain' US has already had a gay president

Presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg says it’s “almost certain” that the United States has had gay presidents in the past.

The current mayor of South Bend, Indiana, was asked by 'Axios on HBO' if he worried about Republicans calling him “too young, too liberal, too gay to be commander-in-chief” – in itself quite a statement about how far into the dirt Donald Trump’s rhetoric has dragged expectations of mainstream politicians.

Mr Buttigieg responded: "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.

I mean, statistically, it's almost certain.

When pressed to guess which presidents, Mr Buttigieg tactfully declined, joking:

My gaydar even doesn’t work that well in the present, let alone retroactively.

However, if elected in 2020, the candidate would be the United States' first openly gay president.

A survey of 1,044 voters published in May 2019 suggested that while 70 percent of Americans said they would be happy to vote for a gay candidate, they didn't think America "was ready for" a gay president.

Which, strangely, suggests that either citizens of America need to have more faith in their country - or they're not as happy admitting their own latent homophobia.

Let's hope it's the former.

More: First ever openly gay presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg's speech was remarkable