IN THE SPRING of 1987, Republican Congressman Stewart McKinney died of HIV-related complications. Though his family denied it, McKinney was long rumored to be gay or bisexual.
Prior to McKinney, the first two out — and not by choice — gay members of Congress were Republicans, and both left under a swirl of controversy and criminal activity. In October of 1980, while running for reelection, Maryland Congressman Robert Bauman was arrested and charged with soliciting sex from a 16-year-old male sex worker. He lost his reelection bid. The following year, Mississippi Republican Congressman Jon Hinson was arrested at a bathroom stall in a D.C. federal building, along with a male Library of Congress employee, on an oral sodomy charge; Hinson was forced to resign. Bauman, Hinson, and to a lesser extent, McKinney have essentially been erased from the meager history of LGBTQ+ Republican politicians.
Forty years after these three men served in Congress, things haven’t changed much in terms of LGBTQ+ Republicans officeholders, particularly at the federal level. There is one Republican member of Congress, who, coincidentally, is lying about himself, has a sexual harassment complaint against him, and is under federal criminal investigation. The only difference is that George Santos was first elected as an out gay man.
To understand why there has not been more of an effort to field LGBTQ+ candidates and why the party still hasn’t made headway with queer voters, it’s important to note that the GOP made anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and policies an unofficial (and later official) cornerstone of its platform for four decades. That means that overwhelmingly, LGBTQ+ voters consider the Democratic Party an ally — or, at least, less of an enemy than the GOP. According to a GLAAD poll conducted after the 2020 presidential election, 81 percent of LGBTQ+ voters went with Joe Biden.
The negative feelings LGBTQ+ voters have about Republicans stretch back decades.
Only one month before McKinney’s death, President Ronald Reagan, the standard-bearer of the party at the time, gave his first speech about AIDS at a luncheon for members of the College of Physicians. Reagan had been silent about the disease since it started to rage in 1982. Because it overwhelmingly affected gay men, Reagan, who had gay friends in Hollywood, stayed away from mentioning AIDS and its sufferers.
James Ki rchick, says the intersection of gay identity and AIDS for Republicans likely started within the Beltway, when Republican operative Terry Dolan, the founder and chairman of the National Conservative Political Action Committee, died of HIV-related complications in December of 1986.
