Watch Pete Buttigieg Explain the GOP's New Anti-LGBTQ+ Culture Wars

During a talk at The University of Chicago's Institute of Politics on Wednesday, out U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg took the GOP to task over its focus on reigniting culture wars over LGBTQ+ rights.

In a clip shared on social media, Buttigieg tells the audience, "there's a more superficial political pattern that I think has driven some of the politics of the behavior of people like these people in Florida that don't say gay... that is when all you have is a hammer everything starts to look like a culture war."

He continued that Republicans have concentrated on queer lives because they have nothing substantive to contribute policy-wise to alleviate concerns held by Americans when it comes to prescription drug prices, gas, childcare, and more.

"You got a political faction that really doesn't have a lot of answers for many of the questions that people are wrestling with," Buttigieg says. "So, what do they do? They find somebody vulnerable and pick on, which at the moment is largely the trans community."

Republicans find a talking point that can go anywhere from the "laughable" like Donald Duck making a person's child gay to "incredibly dark" to the existence of someone who is trans, gender nonconforming, or queer becomes an "adult subject," he says.

"If my kids in let's say a first-grade classroom were to mention in passing that over the weekend they had that they had a great time going with their dads to the zoo, that they would have somehow by saying that uttered something age-inappropriate? [That should] get us really fired up about that fight."

Catch the full video of Buttigieg's talk at The University of Chicago below.