Pete Buttigieg Helps 9-year-old Boy Come Out at Campaign Rally

Pete Buttigieg helped a nine-year-old boy come out in a touching moment at a campaign rally in Colorado on Saturday (February 22).

Zachary Ro’s question came as Buttigieg answered prompts from the audience.

“Thank you for being so brave,” Ro said in a question read by Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, according to the Colorado Sun. “Would you help me tell the world I’m gay, too? I want to be brave like you.”

“I don’t think you need a lot of advice from me on bravery, you seem pretty strong,” Buttigieg replied.

The out presidential candidate told Ro it took a long time to come out even to his best friend, let alone the world.

“It took me a long time to figure out how to tell even my best friend that I was gay, let along go out there and tell the world,” he said. “And to see you willing to come to terms with who you are in a room full of thousands of people you never met, that’s really something.”

“Let me tell you a couple things that might be usual,” Buttigieg continued. “The first thing is that it won’t always be easy, but that’s okay because you know who you are and that’s really important, because when you know who you are you have a center of gravity that can hold you together when all kinds of chaos is happening around you.”

As Ro left the stage, the audience chanted, “Love means love!”

“It was exciting, and I felt really happy,” Ro told the Colorado Sun following the rally. “I was glad I was able to tell everyone in the audience that I’m gay.”