Watch Pete Buttigieg Give Moving Debate Answer on Coming Out as Gay: Would ‘Just Acknowledging Who I Was’ End My Career?

Mayor Pete Buttigieg gave a stirring answer about his decision to come out as gay when asked at the third Democratic debate to reflect upon a professional setback and what he had learned from it.

For the final question of the debate, ABC News moderator George Stephanopoulos asked all 10 candidates to respond to the same question about how they had dealt with adversity in their lives. When it came to his turn, Buttigieg movingly explained the trepidation and uncertainty that accompanied his choice to come out in 2015, when he was 33 years old and already mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

“As a military officer serving under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and as an elected official in the state of Indiana when Mike Pence was governor, at a certain point, when it came to professional setbacks, I wondered if just acknowledging who I was was going to be the ultimate career-ending professional setback,” Buttigieg recalled. A former intelligence officer in the US Navy Reserves, Buttigieg said he finally decided to speak out after being deployed to Afghanistan in 2014.

“I came back from the deployment and realized that you only get to live one life and I was not interested in not knowing what it was like to be in love any longer,” he said. “So, I just came out. I had no idea what kind of professional setback it would be, especially because inconveniently, it was an election year in my socially conservative community.”

“What happened was that when I trusted voters to judge me based on the job that I did for them, they decided to trust me and re-elected me with 80% of the vote,” Buttigieg said. “And what I learned was that trust can be reciprocated, and that part of how you can win and deserve to win is to know what’s worth more to you than winning.”

Watch the video above, via ABC.