What's the latest 'secret gay sex scandal exploding' in Washington?
Speculation is swirling around a GOP member of Congress. But really, there's always a DC gay sex scandal. As LGBTQ rights are under attack, our media needs to report on the hypocrites.
No, this is not about the threat of an alleged outing of Mike Johnson which has for days been blowing up on social media, though no evidence has been presented.
To the contrary, it’s about what corporate media should be reporting—and at least looking into and asking about—when there is evidence suggesting details about public figures’ sexual orientation when it’s relevant to a larger story. And that includes a recent report that points to a member of Congress.
First let me say, I was delighted to watch a recent episode of the hit podcast, “I’ve Had It” in which Jennifer Welch and Angie “Pumps” Sullivan,” two moms from Oklahoma, speculate with their lesbian producer—who brought some receipts—about which MAGA Republican are secretly closeted and gay.
These two red state suburban women are hilarious—biting in their commentary—in addition to being politically adept, skewering Trump and the GOP mercilessly.
As someone who was at the forefront of the discussion about closeted public figures many years ago, reporting on hypocritical politicians and powerful men in business—for which Time magazine coined the term “outing”—and fending off media attacks against me, it was satisfying to see what was once hugely controversial now smack dab in the middle of suburban red state conversations about the the duplicity in the GOP. ( A lot of my early work is documented my 1993 book, Queer in America, much of which was distilled in the 2009 film “Outrage.”)
In the episode, the hosts revisit some of what’s been out there about the current Secretary of State Marco Rubio—including his curious arrest at the age of 18 in a public park known for gay crusing, along with a friend who’d previously run a gay porn webcam location in a home he owned with his family—and they discuss other politicians. This had been out there before about Rubio, as I can remember talking about all of the speculation a decade ago on my SiriusXM program.
But again, it’s good to see others raising these questions—and refreshing our memories!—as we see a ruthless assault against the community by Donald Trump and MAGA. Just last week progressive gay podcaster Keith Edwards brought forth a lot of suggestive evidence about Benny Johnson, the MAGA podcaster who pushes anti-LGBTQ garbage and helped install this awful homophobic and transphobic regime.
Let’s also not forget that masculinity-obsessed Tucker Carlson recently raised questions about “war-crazed” Republican senators who are “secretly gay.” Carlson provided no actual evidence but it’s hard to believe he doesn’t have it.
And it’s time to go to the mat and expose any possible hypocrites working with people who are stripping queer people and many others of their rights during an authoritarian takeover of our country.
With that, let’s discuss a story that caused a lot of buzz a little over a month ago, surfacing in The Daily Mail, which is a right-wing British tabloid. Yes, you take it with a grain of salt for that reason.
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But who can pass up a salacious headline pointing to the hypocrisy of allegedly closeted gay Republicans that supposedly has many people in the GOP worried?
“Secret gay sex scandal explodes in Republican Party as 'closeted' congressman who's engaged to a woman is accused of sordid double life.”
That’s the headline from August 19th, and here’s what the story claims:
A secret gay sex scandal has rocked the Republican Party as married men and a sitting member of Congress have been accused of sleeping with male escorts — even as their party thunders about traditional family values.
In candid interviews, young, muscular sex workers in Washington DC described a booming business fueled by Republican officials, from state lawmakers and high-powered lobbyists to federal government staffers and at least one congressman.
The revelations come as the GOP faces renewed scrutiny over its hypocrisy on homosexuality — publicly championing the traditional nuclear family while privately indulging in the very behavior many Republicans denounce.
One DC-based male escort described having a two-year relationship with a sitting Midwestern congressman who, during that period, had multiple serious girlfriends.
The 29-year-old sex worker with 'boy next door looks' described dinners at downtown DC eatery Butterworth's — a popular MAGA haunt — followed by 'late nights,' he told the Daily Mail, on the condition that neither man was identified.
The unnamed lawmaker is 'closeted, cautious, and carried the weight of a public image that left no room for who he really was,' the escort said.
'It's gotten difficult to ignore the dissonance between the man I know in private and the votes he casts publicly.' He said the Republican is now engaged to a woman.
Another escort, a 35-year-old with chiseled features and a bodybuilder's physique, was also candid. He described officials in the federal government, a state senator, and lobbyists among his clients.
'I see a lot of Republican clients on the low,' he said. 'I am not going to out my clients. But there are many in the Republican Party.'
A process of deduction?
A lot of histrionics here to unpack. First off, there’s nothing new about closeted gay Republicans as we’ve been through scandal after scandal, resignation after resignation over the period of several decades in the “family values” party. There are also a few out gays in MAGA. The New York Times appears to do a profile about the same half dozen or so people, like Richard Grenell, every few months, allowing them to ludicrously claim Trump is somehow pro-LGBTQ.
But this handful of out people—mostly gay men—are helping to protect a much larger group of gay, closeted Republicans in the states and in DC deeply enmeshed in MAGA. There are so many that I will not try to figure out all who are being referred to in the Daily Mail piece. I’m just focusing in on the “Midwestern” congressman who is “engaged.”
Via google searches, I can only find one midwestern member of Congress who is unmarried and currently engaged. There are several who are unmarried, and some who’ve been previously engaged and previously married, and are now divorced.
But, unless I missed someone or the information hasn’t been made too public, there is only one Republican member of the House from the Midwest who I could find who is currently engaged.
Representative Bryan Steil of Wisconsin actually announced his engagement on August 22nd, in the same week the Daily Mail article was published. Curiously, in gleefully discussing the Daily Mail story with The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, former congressman Adam Kinzinger refers to the anonymous congressman discussed in the article as “just” having gotten engaged, even though the Daily Mail story doesn’t say when the congressman was engaged.
I’m not saying Kinzinger is necessarily referring to Steil, and I’m not saying that Steil is gay. I’m simply deducing that he is likely the person to whom the Daily Mail is referring, and the paper could very well be wrong. I have no evidence Steil is gay, nor have I spoken to the Daily Mail’s sources, one of which claims a two-year relationship with a closeted Midwestern congressman while the congressman also had several girlfriends.
Steil could be heterosexual, and may have met the love of his life. Or he could be bisexual. I also don’t believe there’s anything wrong with speculating on who is gay or bisexual. And such speculation, whether or not true, has been upheld in court, no longer considered defamation.
Interestingly, Steil is one of only 46 Republicans in the House to vote for the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022, which codifies the right to same-sex marriage and interracial marriage in federal law.
Democrats introduced it after Justice Clarence Thomas, in his Dobbs concurrence, made clear he wanted the Supreme Court to revisit the Obergefell marriage equality decision. (And Thomas just last week said settled legal precedent is not “gospel.”) The Respect for Marriage Act would not prevent states from banning marriage equality if Obergefell were overturned; it would, however, protect gay and lesbian couples in those states in limited ways.
The Respect for Marriage Act was a pretty high-profile vote, focused on in a major way by the media. It played at the top of the TV news, and on the top of news sites and front pages. Any member would be scrutinized—including by those in the LGBTQ community and far beyond—regarding how they voted.
On other issues that received less attention, Steil has voted consistently anti-LGBTQ. He voted in 2024 for a spending bill that stripped funding for LGBTQ seniors and LGBTQ community centers, and certainly didn’t mention any opposition to those provisions.
He voted for defense spending bills in 2023 and 2024 that included anti-LGBTQ provisions, and in 2025 he voted for Trump’s rescissions resolution that stripped money for USAID, including funding for distribution of HIV and AIDS drugs worldwide. He’s voted against the Equality Act and other measure to ban discrimination against LGBTQ people.
“Unmarried” Republican men in the GOP
While Steil may be the person to whom the Daily Mail is referring, as I noted, there are several “unmarried” Midwest male Congress members, some of whom are divorced, others of whom never married.
The first one that actually came to my mind before I began googling around was Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, who was outed as gay by Matt Gaetz—who later denied he outed him. As I reported back in October of 2023, Smith slammed Gaetz for his continued votes against Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House, while the GOP melted down, and Gaetz shot back, saying Smith was “living a lie”:
Jason Smith says if my lips are moving, I’m lying. Well, you know what? If Jason Smith is breathing, he is living a lie. There might not be another member of Congress who lives a lie every day more than Jason Smith. And Jason Smith knows exactly what I’m talking about. And by the way, so does almost every member of the House Republican caucus.
So, there’s a good deal of projection in Jason Smith calling me a liar when it’s Jason Smith who literally has to live a lie. And I honestly pity him for that because you know, it wouldn’t be something that– I wouldn’t live that way. I’ll just put it that way. So, Jason, I would check yourself before you come at me with any accusations of being dishonest about what I say, when you’re dishonest about how you live and what you do.”
There was a lot of commentary on what Gaetz did.
Gaetz later denied he was outing Smith as gay, but it seems pretty clear he was claiming that, whether it’s true or not.
Is a friend of Aaron Schock a friend of Dorothy?
Smith actually voted against the Respect for Marriage and voted for the spending bills in 2023 and in every year after that added dozens of anti-LGBTQ provisions. He also voted to kill USAID programs for people with AIDS this year in the rescissions resolution.
And yet, one of his closest friends in Congress for years—someone he traveled with on lavish trips—was none other than Illinois GOP Congressman Aaron Schock, the closeted gay House member who resigned in 2015 amid a scandal that focused on his outrageous misuse of government funds, and who eventually was indicted in 2016 for fraud and theft of government funds, among other charges.
Former Congressman Aaron Schock
Schock finally came out of the closet, announcing, “I am gay” in 2020. Attention was brought to his and Jason Smith’s relationship when the spotlight focused on the luxurious trips Schock was taking, often spending taxpayer dollars. As reported by The Hill in 2015:
Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.) joined his close friend Aaron Schock on campaign and government trips and exotic vacations in 2014 that are being scrutinized by federal investigators looking into alleged spending abuses by the former congressman, who resigned in March.
Revelations that Smith, 35, accompanied Schock on the campaign trip come the same week The Hill reported that Smith has hired Schock’s former chief of staff, Mark Roman, who managed the congressman’s office at the time of his spending scandal…
The news has also led to chatter on Capitol Hill, where Roman’s hiring by Smith surprised many.
That story also reported on a trip that Smith took with Schock to Brazil along with two other House members, most of which was paid for by the Brazilian government.
But after the official business, the Hill reports, Schock, Smith, and several of their male aides headed to the Brazilian beach town of Canoa Quebrada, a gay-friendly resort spot.
Smith and Schock also went to Argentina with their aides, and the Hill reported on how unusual it was for members to take their aides on lavish vacations. Schock’s former chief of staff, Roman, who is now Smith’s chief of staff and also traveled with them both, is now also staff director of the House Ways and Means Committee, which Smith chairs.
But there’s one wrinkle in speculating that the Daily Mail might be talking about Smith.
The Mail says their supposedly gay Midwest congressman is someone who is engaged and has had many girlfriends. Smith is unmarried but there are no reports of him having girlfriends in the past or getting engaged.
So, it’s more likely Steil is the Daily Mail’s man.
Does that mean he’s gay? Again, I don’t know. But as in the case of Benny Johnson and the others, some enterprising reporters covering the Hill can easily do that work—and it’s relevant to report on closeted public figures voting antigay—and at the very least they can ask him the question.
There is no limit to the hypocrisy in the GOP. Besides Lindsay and Benny, there must be others who care about issues other than human rights. I don't understand it, but I suspect it has to do with self loathing or wanting to conform to society's clone-like idea of what a man is. I see zero redeeming qualities in the GOP.
Did Tim Scott ever get married?