CNN hosts 2020 town hall at SXSW: Live updates – CNN

Pete Buttigieg said gaining the legal ability to marry his husband gave him a personal view of the importance of policy decisions by politicians “who had power over me and millions of others.”

Buttigieg, who came out as gay during his 2015 re-election campaign, said he entered politics “in Mike Pence’s Indiana” at a time that “you could either be out, or you could be in office, but you couldn’t do both.”

He called for a federal equality law to extend non-discrimination protections to LGBT people and said, “We’ve got to end the war on transgender Americans.”

“Let’s be under no illusion: There are attacks on transgender Americans from the Oval Office. Picking on troops, people willing to lay down their lives for this country, not to mention teenagers in high schools,” Buttigieg said.