CLIO, Michigan — Pete Buttigieg’s brother-in-law is accusing the gay Democratic presidential hopeful of hijacking his family’s history for political advantage by crafting a bogus backstory of poverty, homelessness, and homophobia.
Rhyan Glezman, 34, a pastor in small-town Michigan, said he was inundated by death threats and hate mail when stories surfaced this month claiming he was a bigot who had fallen out with his younger brother Chasten when Chasten came out of the closet.
The reports were based on a Washington Post article, which described how Chasten, 29, was forced out of the family home and never reconciled with his two brothers.
But rather than rejecting his brother Chasten, a would-be “first gentleman,” Glezman, who has run the Clio Community Church for the past two years, said his family has been loving and supportive throughout.
“A mayor from a small city and his husband, a child who grew up with nothing and his parents kicked him out … it makes a perfect political story for the campaign,” he said in an interview with the Washington Examiner at his church in Clio. “To me that’s very sad. If that’s all you have to stand on, you’re not fit to be president of the United States.”
The gray church building stands on the outskirts of Clio, a town of about 2,600 people, along a road of sporting goods stores and nondescript restaurant chains. Inside, worshipers are greeted by a verse from Romans: “The pain that you’ve been feeling can’t compare with the joy that’s coming.” Evangelical services are held in a traditional prayer space or, for more enthusiastic participants, in the gym.
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