Lindsey Graham’s 10 gayest moments
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/09/lindsey-grahams-10-gayest-moments/
Everybody's got something to hate about Lindsey Graham. And he's right where he wants to be.
The senior senator from South Carolina is nothing if not confounding. He’s a political chameleon cloaked in a MAGA cap. He’s a two-stepping litany of surprises. Everybody’s got something to hate about Lindsey Graham. And he’s right where he wants to be.
Did he loathe Donald Trump, then become his greatest supplicant? Absolutely. Did he call President Joe Biden “the most incompetent president of my lifetime” and say he was “the best man” to lead the country? Of course. Does his schtick include asking his own preemptive questions and then providing the perfectly reasonable, Southern-fried answers? One hundred percent, all of the time. He’s glad you brought that up.
And one more thing, for the record? “I ain’t gay.” You could be forgiven for thinking otherwise.
First: he’s a 67-year-old confirmed bachelor.
Second: all those political boyfriends he’s torn through like a just-released Martha Stewart on Tinder. John McCain is at the top of the list. Joe Lieberman was the object of Graham’s affections for a time. Even Joe Biden was jetting around with Graham for a while. And now there’s Trump.
His latest love reveals his greatest love: proximity to power. The four-term senator spent a lifetime in politics getting to where the action is, from chasing ambulances around South Carolina to the 45th president around Bedminster.
Because that’s what an up-from-his-bootstraps, backwoods Southern lawyer does. Whether he knows all the lyrics to Helen Reddy’s version of The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia is beside the point.
Graham “ain’t gay,” by whatever contorted definition that implies. He’s had plenty of gay moments, though. Here are the top 10 gayest, in order of appearance:
A Ricky Martin Moment
In 2010, Robert Draper of The New York Times reported in a profile of the senator that “during a South Carolina Tea Party rally this spring, one speaker created an uproar by postulating that Graham supported a guest-worker program out of fear that the Democrats might otherwise expose his homosexuality. (Graham smirked when I brought this up. ‘Like maybe I’m having a clandestine affair with Ricky Martin,’ he said. ‘I know it’s really gonna upset a lot of gay men — I’m sure hundreds of ’em are gonna be jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge — but I ain’t available. I ain’t gay. Sorry.’)”
Ambiguously Gay
In 2014, Dave Feliciano, a former police officer from Spartanburg, SC with no political background, joined three other contenders for Graham’s senate seat and signed a pact to support one another. At a news conference after the signing, Feliciano said this, “It’s about time that South Carolina says, ‘Hey, we’re tired of the ambiguously gay senator from South Carolina. We’re ready for a new leader to merge the Republican Party. We’re done with this.'”
Alone at Last
In 2016, after Graham dropped out of the whack-a-mole Republican primary, he threw his support behind Jeb! Bush’s ailing campaign, and accompanied the former Florida governor on the campaign trail. Tim Miller, Bush’s communications director, recounts in his Republican tell-all Why We Did It how the three retired one night to a non-descript bar in midtown Manhattan, where Graham “pummeled” Bush to go after Trump hard. After his share of scotches, Bush slipped out and left Miller alone with Graham and his Chardonnay.
While Miller doesn’t speculate, it must’ve run through the bachelor-senator’s mind that he was sitting alone, late at night, wine glass in hand, with the only out, gay Republican operative in the business. And he was handsome, to boot. Graham continued to rail against Trump, plotting “what we could do to stop the racist menace.”
Sure enough, “for the next few weeks, I would get calls at random hours from blocked numbers. It would almost always be Lindsey with his latest idea for how to ensnare Trump.” And maybe Miller.
Huckabee Hints
During an interview on Laura Ingraham’s radio show in 2017, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, a Republican, criticized Graham for criticizing Republicans.
“I’m very disappointed in Lindsey,” Huckabee said of Graham’s comparison of House Intel Chair Devin Nunes to Inspector Clouseau of Pink Panther fame. “I sometimes wonder what uniform he puts on each morning when goes out to the field to play, and I’m not just talking about the partisan uniform.”
Coming Out Day at the Airport
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Lindsey Graham’s 10 gayest moments
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/09/lindsey-grahams-10-gayest-moments/
