Virginia's bonkers gay sex scandal exposes a big MAGA divide

It will follow Governor Glenn Youngkin into any presidential bid. It also reflects widening fissures in the national GOP that have always been there.

Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia has always positioned himself as straddling between MAGA and a mythical world of normal Republicans. I say “mythical” because there is no world of “normal” or non-MAGA Republicans—just a few stragglers here and there, most of whom are Never Trumpers who are not in elected office.

The myth of the normal non-MAGA Republican is kept alive in part by the Youngkins of the world—a Republican governor who was elected in a blue state—for the sake of courting independents and even to suck in some disaffected Democrats.

For Youngkin, a multi-millionaire investor turned politician, it’s been about putting up a front as a regular guy suburban dad who’s some sort of mainstream Republican—even in cosplay in his signature red fleece vest—but pushing policies that are pure MAGA, religiously bowing to elements of the base, from the Christian nationalists to the rural voters in red caps.

But now Youngkin is overwhelmed by a divide within MAGA itself. And it’s one that won’t go away soon, involving a gay lieutenant governor candidate, drag shows, t-shirts and sexually explicit photos of men.

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Youngkin moved a week and half ago to oust GOP lieutenant governor nominee John Reid in this year’s Virginia elections, an openly gay and very conservative Richmond talk-radio host, who refused to withdraw after insisting that he’s not responsible for the Tumblr page with naked, sexually provocative photos of men that Youngkin pointed to in calling for Reid to drop out. And Reid is now getting support from other MAGA leaders in Virginia, who are pushing back on Youngkin.

Reid revers Donald Trump. He’s a homocon in a party that is stripping LGBTQ rights—and hellbent on ending marriage equality at the Supreme Court—and Trump has been very much a part of that, appointing the three Supreme Court justices who are almost every day creating exemptions to LGBTQ rights by citing “religious liberty.”

Christian nationalists in Virginia, so emboldened by the power they’ve amassed in the Trump era, moved to push Reid out of the race. Christian nationalists have tolerated having MAGA gays—Richard Grenell as a Trump diplomat, or Scott Bessent as Treasury Secretary, for example—but only as long as they weren’t too powerful or promoting the “LGBTQ agenda.”

But having Reid just a heartbeat away from being governor of the state had Virginia Christian nationalists alarmed. And even if he didn’t actually advocate for fighting the GOP’s assault on transgender people and others, he showed signs, to them at least, of potential trouble—by attending drag performances and wearing a t-shirt that called him “liberal in the bedroom.” I kid you not.

The Washington Post reports on their confrontation with Reid:

Several evangelicals had begun agitating against Reid after he won the lieutenant governor nomination by default when his only opponent dropped out for health reasons…

…Reid has been open about his homosexuality for some three decades and is in an eight-year, committed relationship… On April 11, 10 days before [his only opponent] dropped out, three conservative religious activists summoned Reid to the Silver Diner in suburban Richmond to confront him with three photos: Two showed Reid attending a drag performance, the other showed him sporting a T-shirt declaring, “Liberal in the bedroom.”

The activists warned Reid that those pictures — pulled from social media Reid agrees is his, not from Tumblr — would surface publicly in two weeks if he did not quit the race, according to one of the three, Virginia Christian Alliance Chairman Don Blake.

Reid blew them off. But then on April 25, a Youngkin adviser received a routine “vulnerability report” on the candidate conducted by an outside group, and it turned up the Tumblr page. The Tumblr used the same handle as Reid’s other social media, but Reid denied it was his page.

On the now-deleted account, someone had reposted pictures — none of which appeared to depict Reid — ranging from explicit photos of male genitalia to images typical of a racy underwear ad, according to posts that The Post reviewed on the Wayback Machine, an internet archive. As recently as March 2024, the account reposted a photo of a man facing the camera wearing only a baseball cap.

Youngkin, clearly bowing to what he thought were unified MAGA beliefs on the issue, called on Reid to drop out that morning. Except the position of the Christian nationalists wasn’t representative of others in the Virginia MAGA base who’ve now slammed Youngkin. As the Post notes, “some of the most ardent MAGA faithful have rallied for Reid because of his outspoken love for Trump and hard-right stances on issues” and noted the “open criticism of Youngkin by party stalwarts is new.”

But their support of Reid is highly conditional:

“I stand with John Reid,” Rooz Dadabhoy, a suburban Richmond activist who has been among Youngkin’s most prominent cheerleaders, tweeted on Monday. “This is a time where Virginia Republicans should be coming together”…Her tweet has since been deleted.

“He’s with us on every issue that we still have a vote on in this country” — unless the Supreme Court reverses its 2015 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage — “and I couldn’t be more pleased to have him as our nominee,” Virginia Republican national committeewoman Patti Lyman said after a Reid rally in suburban Richmond on Wednesday. While saying she is “completely opposed to the entire LGBT agenda,” Lyman admires Reid’s “spine of steel that he has exhibited through this disgraceful onslaught from the governor.”

This is, of course, bonkers—and so pathetic. They love Reid as long as he doesn’t promote his actual rights and defend who he is. And, at least with Dadabhoy, they don’t love him enough to keep a tweet up in which they support him.

Even the current extreme MAGA lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, the GOP’’s gubernatorial nominee for 2025, defied Youngkin and backed Reid—but only after a week of silence. And she apparently won’t even be seen with Reid:

After nearly a week of silence and canceling joint events, Earle-Sears finally chose a side: She supports Reid’s right to stay in the race, though she has still avoided appearing in public with him.

Republicans were already facing an uphill battled with an extreme MAGA candidate at the top of the ticket—who, unlike Youngkin, has done no window dressing to make herself seem less crazy—in a year in which Trump is bringing out Democrats to vote against the MAGA GOP. But now they’re completely divided going into the election as well.

Whether the Tumblr page was Reid’s—which he staunchly denies—or a setup by opponents, the entire episode shows how much queerness is still the third rail in GOP politics, enraging the Christian nationalist base.

They like to pretend it’s only about trans rights (which is horrendous enough), as they masquerade openly gay men among them as being just like other men—as long as those gay men don’t advocate for their rights or depict anything remotely sexual. This, even as the heterosexual MAGA men are expounding on their sexual conquests (think former Rep. Matt Gaetz and the many bro podcasters in the manosphere) while MAGA women like Rep. Lauren Boebert are groping their boyfriends in theaters.

Youngkin curiously has had an “LGBTQ + Advisory Board” during his term as governor, which saw at least one member resign in protest in recent weeks over his attempt to oust Reid. That board is clearly an artifact of Youngkin’s having portrayed himself in his election in 2022 and the years thereafter as the mythical normal Republican. His trying to oust Reid, however, likely emanates from his perception of the newly anti-DEI wave in MAGA—which is anti-LGBTQ—that Trump 2.0 has ushered in.

Both Youngkin’s LGBTQ advisory board as governor, and the ousting of Reid, will likely haunt Youngkin from different directions if he makes a presidential run, which political observers have been going on about.

But it also points to fissures in the national MAGA movement, where many have thought, at least since Trump’s first term, that it’s okay to be gay as long as you stay quiet about it. Even that, however, is not going to be acceptable as the strictures around queer people—the censoring of government websites and data, and the stripping of rights, healthcare and basic dignity of LGBTQ people—intensify with the Christian nationalists’ rise to power.