A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - Lindsey Graham Died In The Closet (with Moira Donegan)

Episode Date: July 24, 2026

Lindsey Graham died doing what he loved: fanning the flames of war and hiring queer sex workers while legislating against their basic human rights. What is there to say of an evil gay man who dies in the closet? Lindsey wasn’t the first, and likely won’t be the last. Today, Moira Donegan (of In Bed With The Right) and I perform a psychosexual autopsy on some of America’s worst gays. Good riddance. Listen to bonus episodes on Patreon! Thanks to today’s sponsors! Get an exclusive 60% on Incogni! https://incogni.com/fruity Start managing your money better and cancel unwanted expenses at https://www.rocketmoney.com/fruity Listen to Moira on In Bed With The Right. Follow Moira on Bluesky. Follow Moira on Twitter. Find me on Instagram. Find A Bit Fruity on Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I am very excited for my errand shock interlude. There's just a lot of like awful gay politicians in varying levels of the closet that I've been excited to talk about. And I'm ready to go scorched earth. Oh. For a second, I thought that was your cat. I was like, wow, the cat is also ready to go scorched earth. They don't want us to make this episode. Big closet is scared.

Hello, hello. I'm Matt Bernstein. And welcome to. A BitFruity. Oh, I said that in the wrong order. Wait, hello, hello, and welcome back to A BitFruity. I'm Matt Bernstein, and welcome back to the show. I'm so happy you're here.

I knew that sounded weird. On June 4, 2015, Taylor Snyder traveled to Washington, D.C. Taylor was a 24-year-old transgender sex worker going by the name Allison, and when she traveled, she worked. So she put up a personal ad on Aeros. a website for escorts, notifying potential DC-based clients of her availability. Three days later, on June 7th,

she received a text from a Google voice number. Hello, Allison. Are you available to TOTI? Today, but it's spelled TOTI, interested in an appointment for this afternoon, if possible. Yes, of course. I'll be in DuPont Circle closer to noon. I'm flying in from Atlanta and land in around 10 a.m.

Do you have a specific time in mind? When is the soonest you'll be available? Would 130-2 work with you just so I can check it and freshen up? Sorry, I realize I should do the accent. That works. Donation? I request $400 minimum for my time. Does that work with you? It does.

Are you more of a top or a bottom? I am a bottom. I am 100% versatile. We'll please refrain from speaking explicit over the phone until we get acquainted, please. Okay, sorry. 2 p.m. should work fine. Do you think you'd be able to send me a photo of yourself? I can send one back, smiley face. No, I am very discreet. No pictures, but I am legit. I can give a reference if you'd like.

It's not necessary. I don't like dealing with other advertisers. Thank you, though. Washington Hilton, 1919, Connecticut Avenue Northwest, Washington, D.C. 2,0009. That is where I'm staying. Very close to where I'm at. Perfect. So should I expect you at two? Could you at least describe what you look like? Older white male, salt and pepper hair, stocky build. No problem with me, winky face. Okay, give me a call around 145-ish if you can just let me know you're here. When you arrive, call me and I'll tell you my details. Sounds good to me. See you soon, beautiful. Taylor and her client met at the hotel she was staying at, the Hilton and DuPont Circle. They had sex. He paid her $400, and nothing about it seemed out of the ordinary. Older white men. and in suits do this sort of thing all the time after all.

But a month or so later, Taylor traveled up from D.C. to New York City. She was sitting at a bar with her girlfriend when she looked up at one of the TVs. And there, on national news, was her client. He was running for president on the Republican Party line. His name was Lindsay Graham. All right. So Lindsey Graham just died. while we've all been waiting with bated breath to learn the state of Mitch McConnell,

who has not been seen in 38 days as of this recording, Lindsay's death just kind of came out of nowhere. I got up to pee around 4 a.m. on July 12th, tapped my phone when getting back into bed, not a good habit, I know, and bam, breaking news, Lindsay Graham, Senator from South Carolina, dies at 71. Huh. Lindsay Graham will be remembered for a lot of things. good. His support for the invasion of Iraq, his support for a permanent U.S. presence in Afghanistan,

his support for the occupation of Palestine, his opposition to every human and civil rights initiative in his lifetime, and of course, his pronunciation of Israel, Israel. Israel is not the bad guy. They're the good guy. Israel is in a fight for their lives. Let me tell you about genocide. If Israel wanted to commit genocide, they could. Israel is our friend. If America pulls the plug on Israel, God will pull the plug on us. We're in a religious war here. I am with Israel. Do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself. Level the place. One of the last things I remember him saying was, I will be with Israel till my dying day.

Forget it. I'm not with you. I'm with Israel. I'll be with Israel to our dying day. Yeah, well. I guess he was. But for queer people, Lindsay Graham was a unique source of torment. Lindsay bolstered every anti-LGB cause he could, while many of us have known for decades of his habitual hiring of queer sex workers. Today, I want to do a sort of post-mortem psychosexual analysis of Lindsay Graham, someone who lived and died in the closet while inflicting as much pain on the world as possible. And that doesn't sound that fun, and it's not. But as we do on this podcast, we'll find a way to make it worth your while, I hope.

And I'm so excited today to be joined by the one and only, my friend, host of the In Bed with the Right podcast, Moira Donigan. Welcome back to the show. It's been a minute. Thank you so much for having me, Matt. I'm excited to dig in with you to this. I'm excited. We have a lot to talk about today. But I mean, you as part of your job,

do essentially psychosexual analysis of right-wing figures in politics. And I wonder how you're feeling right now. You know, Lindsay Graham as a sort of closeted or somewhat pretextually closeted, conservative is actually part of a pretty long lineage, right, of gay conservatives. Gay men in particular, although increasingly also gay women. Shout up Barry Weiss. Shout out Barry Weiss. You know, gay people play a prominent role on the American right, the way they play a prominent role in all sections of American life, right?

But with the Graham example in particular, you really see the contradiction of the closet coming into play, right? You see the role of open secrets and plausible deniability and the way who knows what and who gets to say what. what they know becomes in its own sense a source of power and a way to exercise power and domination over others. And in that sense, I think we could compare Lindsay Graham pretty easily to the granddaddy of gay conservatives. One Mr. Roy Cohn. Matt, what do you know about Roy Cohn? Oh my God. You're what do you know about this in to me on my podcast? This is my job. Oh, my God.

Well, I mean, I think he's somebody, either you are obsessed with him like I am. Yeah, we're obsessed. Or you've never heard of him ever, you know? It's like, it could go either way. Exactly. I'm so excited you brought this up because this is exactly where I wanted to start. Before we can get into Lindsay Graham, I feel. Lindsay Graham, who spent, you know, the last decade of his life worshipping Trump and doing everything he could to be on Donald Trump's good side.

It's interesting because Donald Trump is, in some ways, sandwiched between various powerful gay men, both that follow him and that he followed. And not enough people know that Donald Trump's mentor and the reason that Donald Trump is the way that he is, and operates the way that he operates is because of one of those gay men named Roy Cone. Roy Cone, and here's where I'm going to let you fill in a lot of the blanks, but he was a lawyer in I think like the 50s to the 70s. He was responsible for the execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg

in a trial that most legal experts say now was marred by Roy's prosecutorial misconduct because he wanted that couple dead. And he succeeded in that. And I know that he was a man of many secrets, secrets that he lived and died by. And I also think that in many ways, though Roy was a pitiful figure that you're about to explain, I think Lindsay wishes he could have had some of the things that Roy had. I think that's a really great way to frame it.

The simple way to talk about what Roy Cohn did was to say that he was a lawyer, right? But saying that Roy Cohn was a lawyer is a little like saying that the Pope was a Catholic. It's like, well, yes. However, it goes well beyond that. Yeah, Roy Kohn began his career as a very young prosecutor. I think he was like 25, like a baby, gunning to kill Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a couple who were convicted of spying for the Soviet Union. And you know, we look at Lindsey Graham, who is famous for being a warhawk who really came into his own as a neo-conservative, like military interventionist during the War on Terror era. Roy Cohn was an anti-communist agitator and a persecutor of people on the political left from the Cold War era, right? So after he made his name securing

the electric chair for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, including some really egregious misconduct. And, you know, subsequent revelations have suggested that he actually knew that Ethel was innocent of everything he was accusing her of or much of what he was accusing her of and made sure that she got the death penalty anyway nasty guy he goes on to work for joseph mccarthy a senator on an anti-communist mission also by the way a widely alleged closeted homosexual so he becomes the architect of the mccarthy hearings dragging people in front of the senate committee to interrogate them about their alleged communist sympathies. And this also extends, by the way, from the red scare to what we now colloquially refer to as the lavender scare, where people

working, particularly in the State Department, who are suspected of being gay, were dragged in front of these committees and interrogated about their personal lives. If you, my dear listener, have not seen fellow travelers featuring Matt Bowmer and Jonathan Bailey, it is a very fascinating representation of this period in American politics also extremely sexy. You're like the third person who's told me to watch fellow travelers. I have to get on. You haven't? That was like manufactured in a lab for you,

well, I mean, not really because it is kind of manufactured in a lab for like a gay male version of you, which I guess in some ways is me. My brother out there, my twin, he's somewhere in the ether. But you know,

Roy Cohn goes on to be a lawyer, but really a power broker. doing favors. He's a fixer. And he is also all but openly gay. And this goes all the way back to when he was working for Joseph McCarthy, right? He went at one point on a tour of American embassies in Europe to get subversive books out of their libraries. And he took his boyfriend with them. And they had like a little like trip to Italy. And then they would, you know, purge all the seditious books. Like a really like twisted sex weekend, right? Like the worst couple you know. And he, you know, wasn't exactly in the closet. People talk about going over to Roy Cone's like townhouse in Manhattan in the 1970s. And it being

full of very beautiful young men in various states of undress. He would have orgies on his yacht that people just like knew about. And fascinatingly, the yacht was called, because boats have names, It was called the defiance. Oh, that's funny. Yeah. Which I think is so amazing because he was really defying the closet. You know, so I think what's really interesting about the closet is that we can historicize it and it functioned this way for a lot of people. Still does function this way for a lot of people as a state of like defensiveness and fear.

I think for Roy Cohn, that's not really true. Eventually he had enough money, enough power, enough ability to strike fear into people that the clobleness. closet, such as it was, became just an extension of his own power. He was living for all intents and purposes an openly gay life, but he had this pretext of plausible deniability, which functionally amounted to, I dare you to say something. Yeah. You know? You guys on in bed with the right did an amazing series of episodes on Roy Cohn that I think people should go listen to if they are interested in learning more about this wicked, wicked man. But I think that is like one of the single most interesting takeaways about his life to me. His philosophy

was that gay men are weak and effeminate. I am strong and powerful. Therefore, I'm not a gay man. I'm just someone who occasionally has sex with men. And after he died, his close associate, Roger Stone, said, quote, Roy Cohn was not gay. He was a man who liked having sex with men. That was something Roger Stone said after Roy Cone died. I think. it really does get to the, like, contradiction that you're pointing to, right? Like, if being gay is being in a subordinate position, that is not something Roy Cohn was doing. You define gay in sort of homophobic, patriarchal, bigoted terms, and you accept that, then what you're doing is not being gay. What you're doing is having a sex life. However, I think it's important for our dear listeners to know

Roy Cohn died in 1986 of AIDS. Yeah. So you can define yourself outside of the gay community. You can say, those people are not my people. Those people are not my equals. Those people are not my peers. Those people are not my comrades, right? But the political structures that are marginalizing those people can come for you too. You don't actually just get to sort of define your way out of that.

Yeah. I feel like Lindsey Graham wished he could have had some of what Roy Cohn had. I think Lindsay Graham in his ideal world could have muscled his way through all these rumors, through all the allegations, been like walking around with his sort of sex workers in tow so powerful that it's just like, I dare you to say something. I dare you to challenge me on this. But he never quite got there. Yeah. You know, Roy Cohen seemed often to be having fun with the closet, right? If he made the closet a extension of his own power, you could sometimes. see him delighting in it. I don't think you have to like give Roy Cohn any credit as a person. Certainly not. Or absolve anything. You don't have to hand it to him. But like he was funny and he was clearly sort of enjoying a little bit his own capacity to like create and transcend scandal. Right.

Lindsay Graham never had fun with a closet. He got horribly uncomfortable, like visibly uncomfortable. It's like nails on chalkboard just watching him when he was asked about this. And he, you know, denied it for most of his life. He never really denied it in a way that seemed like it had that wink that Roy Cohn always had. He was always running and he ran straight into the grave. So Lindsey Graham was 31 and serving in the military when Roy Cone died in 1986. Let's talk about Lindsay Cram. He was born on July 9th, 19th.

155 in central, South Carolina. This town is called Central. Kind of confusing. Central South Carolina. His dad, F.J. and mom, Millie, Graham, owned a restaurant and bar that the family lived behind. Wait, do you know what it was called? No.

It was called the Sanitary Cafe. That's a deeply unappealing name for a restaurant. Hey, do you want to go hang out at Sanitary? Yeah, Sanitary. Like, it makes you think, like, okay. Has the health inspector actually been in there? Because you guys are protesting a little too much. The name of my bar is making people ask questions answered by the name of my bar.

You know, fascinatingly, but maybe not for scholars of history, the business did not allow black people to drink at the bar. And when Lizzie has explained this, just been like, well, it was the time. But he makes a point of being like, but my dad really didn't like those racist white people. but also we did not allow black people. If they ordered drinks, they had to drink them on the sidewalk. I inserted here a picture for us to briefly gock at of Lindsay Graham as a teenager standing with his family in the woods. He's wearing his very preppy outfit, hands on hips.

And you know, we gays tend to say that there's always those childhood photos that you can look at and be like, yeah, it was always there. And I enjoyed coming across this one because this was one for Lindsay Graham where I'm like, huh, you had that queen in you. He does. He's got his hip a little bit cocked. He's wearing, I think those are pinkish pants. I don't think it's just like the tone of the photograph. I think those are pink pants. It's the hands on the hips for me and just sort of staring down the world with a sassiness, I would call it. Lindsay was the first in his family to attend college where he joined ROTC, ROTC, which is a college military training program that we have here in the great United States sarcasm. Both of Lindsay Graham's parents died within 15 months of each other while Lindsay was at college, making him the legal guardian of his little sister, who is now, by the way, assuming Lindsay's role in the Senate in the wake of his death, despite no democratic process. And also, she's never held political office in her life. So I don't know how it works in this country.

That's just like, well, my sister takes my, like, okay. His sister has said, quote, Lindsay's kind of like a brother, a father, and a mother rolled into one. Lindsay Graham got his law degree in 1981. He entered the Air Force in 1982 at age 27. He served in active duty for five years, but was never a combatant. Lindsay Graham, I think, gets, he derives a lot of his, like, self-mythologized masculinity and hardness to all of his time in the military. But he was never a combatant, just to be clear. He was then in the South Carolina Air National Guard for six years, then joined the U.S. Air Force Reserve in 1995, which he was in for, like, 20 years.

Interestingly, he joined the Air Force Reserve the year after, Don't Ask, Don't Tell. was passed. Do you want to talk a little bit about Don't Ask Don't Tell and Lindsay Graham? Yeah. So don't ask, don't tell was, if you can believe it, supposed to be a pro-gay intervention that prohibited gay people from being out in the military, but also prohibited the military from asking troops if they were gay. So it used to be before Don't Ask, Don't Tell, was passed. as an initiative in the first Bill Clinton administration. It used to be that when you signed up to join the military, they asked, are you now or have you ever been homosexual?

I believe it was a phrasing. And you couldn't be like, oh, a little bit in college, you know, like it was supposed to be disqualifying. Don't ask, don't tell, removed that question, but did not remove the requirement to the gay people in the military be discharged dishonorably. and excluded from veterans benefits. So when he actually originally enlisted in the Air Force in 1982, he would have been asked. They would have said, are you a homosexual?

And presumably he said no, because he did serve for five years in the Air Force proper. And I think it's interesting that you note, Matt, that he was not like a soldier. He was not a pilot. He was not a Marine. He was what's called a JAG or a judge advocate general. which is basically a lawyer within the military's own justice system. So, you know, he had gone to law school by that point. He enlisted at an officer level because he'd been an ROTC.

So he was never like a grunt or a private. And he, you know, is basically a lawyer within the military justice system. And he, like, writes memos for, you know, much of his military career about stuff that it's legal for the military to do. But by the late 80s, he's not really doing it anymore. He switches to the reserve, which is a much lower commitment. It's not full time.

Famously, it's supposed to be like one weekend a month. But he is continually promoted within the U.S. Air Force Reserve because the military brass and his office first in the House and then later in the Senate really like having him do photo ops. So for years and years, they'll fly him to military bases in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in wherever. And they'll put him in a uniform. And they'll have him pose with the people there who are actually doing the work. And he just accumulates promotions. And when he formally retired, he was in fact entitled to a military pension, even though he had not done significant military work in like literal decades. It's so bizarre, like how much of the U.S. military

industrial complex is held up by like theater. Oh yeah. It's a total. It was a total graft for him. It was nuts. In the mid-90s, Lindsay Graham served one two-year term in the South Carolina State House of Representatives. This was his first job in office. And the first bill he ever tried to pass in his political career, in his life, was a ban on gays and lesbians from the South Carolina Army National Guard. Fascinatingly, not from the South Carolina Air Force National Guard, which was what he was in. So I don't know. A part of me wonders if he was like, I need to get the stink off me, but like over there, you know. Look over there. Don't pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Yeah. What a strange way to walk into a political career just to be like,

ban gays and lesbians in this like specific area of the state military. It's like specifically his life too, right? Like I think we're taking the liberty of assuming with, I would say, pretty ample evidence that this is a gay man. It's also a man who's spending a lot of time in South Carolina in the military, right? It's the two parts of his life and he is like, oh, they will never meet. Thank you very much. Yeah. In 1994, Lindsay sets his sights on higher power, looking to fill the U.S. house.

for South Carolina's third congressional district. He won that election and went on to serve four consecutive two-year terms in the seat until 2002, at which point he eyed the Senate. By the way, when he first joined the Senate, he made a promise that he would only serve two of those six-year Senate terms. At the time of his death, he had just won the primary election for his fifth term. Yeah, which I wish I could say that was a problem unique to Lindsay Graham, but all of them are like, I'm not going to hold on to power for 45,000 fucking years. And then guess what? They do. We need term limits yesterday. But I want to touch briefly on Lindsay Graham's record on LGBTQ issues while in office, because this is obviously the theme of today's episode. While he was in the House of, representatives, one of his early fights in U.S. Congress, also anti-gay, was against the legalization of gay marriage. In 1996, he supported DOMA or the Defense of Marriage Act, which federally defined marriage exclusively as a union between one man and one woman. As a senator, Lindsay fought

for a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage. He was like, he was very desperate to get ahead of the idea that gay marriage would one day become legalized, which it did for now. And he was really gunning for a literal constitutional amendment that would define marriage as between a man and a woman. He co-sponsored such an amendment. He voted to ban gay parents from adopting children. He opposed repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell in 2010. He was still technically in the reserves at that point. He loves his closet. He voted against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in 2013, which would have protected LGBTQ people from employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender.

He defended state-level bans on gender-affirming medical care for trans people and more recently co-sponsored a bill that aimed to strip grade schools and colleges of public funding if they allowed trans athletes to compete with their peers. And I don't mean to be tedious by outlining, like, you know, all of these points of someone's political career. But Lindsay Graham caused so much pain to so many people, like a really, really great amount of pain to more people than I think the brain can fathom. Like, such a great amount of suffering. And that's just in the realm of LGBTQ people. Lindsay Graham is of course best known for being a war hawk and for, as I said at the beginning, being in favor of all of these various military invasions, all of which have failed spectacularly, by the way. We'll get into this more later.

But I don't know. I find him to be just like such a waste of life because all he did was suffer privately and make other people suffer. Sorry, I'm going to cut this. I'm going to, we'll get back to it at the end. Yeah, you're on to something here. I think there's something about the closet and, like, dying in the closet that can feel very sad, right? Yeah. It can be like, oh, he never accepted himself.

He never came to terms with this truth about himself, right? And for me, that's really complicated by how much dignity harm and exclusion and really material harm, like money and violence that he inflicted on other people who were struggling with the same problem. It would be one thing if he was only cruel to himself, but he really wasn't. I would like to give a shout out to the sponsor of today's episode, Incogni. I admittedly used to kind of roll my eyes at people who were overly serious, or what I perceived as overly serious about online privacy. And this is just one of those things that I have changed my views on. as time has gone on and I've learned more about how the internet functions and how surveillance

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paired with a hostility for the rights of like cis women. In the case of abortion, he has been at the forefront of pushing bills that would create and have created federal precedent for the concept of fetal personhood, which would, if recognized by the court, ban abortion nationwide and really restrict the freedom of cis women and anybody assigned female at birth with the capacity to give birth, right? Even those who are not pregnant. So he was at the forefront of a bill that made it a fair, federal crime to injure a fetus that sort of doubles the crime of violence or injury

committed against a pregnant person. If you are convicted under this law of violence against a pregnant person that injures their fetus, the law does not construe that as a violation of the pregnant person, right? The law does not construe that person to be especially vulnerable or to have a property interest or a dignity interest in their pregnancy that magnifies their vulnerability. It construes the fetus as a separate person who is also injured unto themselves. That grants a fetus federally recognized rights, which is a step towards making them a federally recognized person. Lindsay Graham also did this like really slimy shit in the wake of the Dobbs versus Jackson women's health decision in 2022, which overturned Roe v. Wade.

So the Dobbs decision overturned Roe saying there's no federal constitutional right to an abortion, and states can ban abortion at will. This caused chaos. It continues to create public health and women's rights and civil rights crises across the country. It has caused people to die. It has caused people to lose their grip on their dreams and lose control over their bodies. Lindsay Graham came in and he says, I have a solution that's going to bring the whole country into a court. And his solution, which he described as a national standard, was in fact a national abortion ban.

He said, I want to make it so that no abortions can be performed in the United States after 15 weeks of gestation. And he pitched this as this is something that everybody across the aisle can get behind because it creates a national. standard, implying falsely that the bill he was proposing would prohibit states from banning abortion before 15 weeks. In fact, it would not. It would prohibit states from allowing abortion after 15 weeks. So he not only proposed limiting the rights of women and women and female people across the country in ways that would harm their dignity and their health and create some particularly tragic circumstances for people with late-term pregnancy complications. But he pitched this. He had the gall to pitch this as a compromise measure that would restore peace and dignity. And I find that shit

so slimy. Yeah. That was beautifully put and the pain that Lindsay Graham has caused and unleashed on this planet knows no bounds. And with that being considered, should we have a little fun? Should we have a little good old tabloid fun? Lindsay's entire career as a senator has been peppered with rumors about his sexuality and bachelor status. What we know about his relationships is limited from his 2015 memoir, aptly titled My Story. He wrote, I've never been married. Sorry, I've never been married. I guess I attribute that to time.

timing too. The opportunity never presented itself at the right time or I never found time to meet the right girl or the right girl was smart enough not to have time for me. Every single time that Lindsay Graham sort of waves away these rumors, I feel myself right back in the back seat of my mom's car when she's like picking me up from school and asking me if there's any girls at school that I'm interested in. And I have to find some way to be like, you know, the classic was like, I'm just focusing on school. I don't know if you ever pulled that one, but I would always be like, I'm focusing on school or I'm just too busy or I'm, and it's like, I'm 11. What am I too busy doing? But I was too busy for girls. It's very familiar to me. It's actually perhaps the most I can relate to

Lindsey Graham on. Yeah, he's so uncomfortable, right? Yeah. Like you can imagine a different politician, a Roy Cohn, writing that sentence. and having fun with it. You know, he's not having fun. He's not playing. He's not winking. He's not breaking the fourth wall. But he's also not doing anything that indicates to me a sense of comfort, which you can be in the closet and not hate the fact that you're gay.

And I'm reading that and I'm like, oh, he really hates this about himself. He has a few stories that he tells about women that he has allegedly dated. Did they live in Canada or go to another school? They go to another school? George Glass. He says that he had a girlfriend in law school named Debbie, that he dated a military officer named Carol, and that he dated a flight attendant named Sylvia.

I love this. None of these women have ever gotten last names. Sylvia, she's a flight attendant. She's at a different name. airline. It's almost like a madlibs. It's like boomer woman name. Job. Exactly. Exactly. But, you know, there have been many memorable confrontations between Lindsay and the public on this issue coming from both sides of the political aisle, notably. From the left, people have long sought to highlight his hypocrisy in being a gay, anti-gay activist. And from the right,

Well, people want to know if he's gay because they don't like it. There's also been a long sort of conspiratorial, like national security accusation that you might be familiar with. Made that like Lindsey Graham's allegiance to Israel or like any other foreign nation or sometimes from the right, they'll say like, you're willing to compromise with Democrats is because these different people and entities could have like gay sexual blackmail on him. which like, I don't know. To me, it's a little far-fetched. Like, a lot of people, especially in the new, like, Groyper adjacent right, are like, Lindsay Graham is devoted to Israel because Massad has sexual blackmail on him

and they know that he's gay. And I'm kind of just like, guys, I think he's a Christian Zionist. There's a lot of them. Yeah. And also this is like, this gets into something that we'll talk more about. But it's like this conspiracy that, like, like we are weakened in national security by like a cabal of closeted gay men is such a convenient way to avoid real topics like oligarchy and capitalism and these like actual

allegiances that people have to power. Yeah. I mean, if Mossad is like blackmailing Lindsay Graham for being gay, then like how are they, what are they blackmailing all the other Republican senators with? You know what I mean? Yeah, right. There's so many people doing this same. thing that the particularities of this guy is like personal life being at the core of the

explanation for it just seems like a bit of a stretch. I will say I think like the closet makes straight people nervous because it it reads as dishonesty. It doesn't read as like this person is ashamed. This person is suffering. This person is protecting themselves. It reads as this person's lying to you and what else might they be lying about. And that is also, I think, a moral pretext for homophobia and just like the visceral disgust that sometimes people feel at like gay sex and gay sexuality. Right. They're like, oh, it's not that I'm like imagining Lindsey Graham doing butt stuff or whatever that like really creeps me out. It's that he's lying.

Right. It also becomes a way. Like I'm not mad that you cheated. I'm mad that you lied about. It's like, girl, you're kind of mad that he cheated. You know what I mean? It's like this pretext where people who don't want to just cop. to being grossed out by gay people can also be like, well, it's that he's covering it up,

is that he's living a double life. This was like core to the pretext in the Lavender Scare as advanced by people like Roy Cohn and other one of Lindsey Graham's like, you know, members of his lineage, right? This notion that you can't have gay people in the State Department or in the Civil Service because they're liable to blackmail. And it's like, well, if you guys were a little nicer to gay people, the blackmail wouldn't have any effect, right? Because everybody would be out of the closet. 100%. Really well said. I want to walk through a timeline of some of these Lindsay Graham rumors and

confrontations and glean from them what we may. So in 2009, amidst confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Lindsay Graham probed her on anonymous rumors that she had poor temperament. And as he left the hearings, there was a blogger named Mike Stark who walked up to Lindsey Graham and said, my name's Mike Stark. I'm with a crooked dope. Okay. So I do this video blog thing. Okay. Remember on hearings with Justice Sotomayor, you would ask about a lot of the rumors you had heard about her temperament. And he said you'd read, you know, these things were rumored on the internet all over the place. You're aware of a lot of anonymous comments made by people that may be afraid of a powerful senator from South Carolina regarding your sexuality.

So do you have to answer questions about that? I mean, I know a lot of people from the Christian right, elect senators from South Carolina. This is different to me. Again, he's squirming. Yeah. It doesn't seem to be something he ever found a line on, even though it was a part of his career for like decades. What's funny to me about this is that video is from 2009 and it's like filmed on a

calculator. This exact thing happened as he was leaving a recent congressional meeting, like a couple months, if that, before he died, where someone went up to him and was just like, why don't you just come out of the closet already? Like something like that. And he, to your point, he never found a line on it. Hey, Lizzie, why don't you just admit that you're gay and then people won't blackmail you anymore? But Lindsey Graham was seen by some Republicans during the Obama years as being too willing to work with the Democrats in power. You know, like I said, a lot of the further right Republicans attributed that to Democrats having like gay blackmail on him.

And in 2010, Lindsay Graham gave an interview to the New York Times where they asked him about this. During a South Carolina Tea Party rally this spring, one speaker created an uproar by postulating that Graham supported a guest worker program at a 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 going to upset a lot of gay men.

I'm sure hundreds of them are going to be jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, but I ain't available. I ain't gay. Sorry. I don't want to be petty, but the idea that hundreds of gay men are jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge because they can't be with Lindsey Graham, first of all, I think they can. Whatever.

This is the closest that he's. He's having fun. He's like, obviously they're all lining up for me. Yeah. You know, it's a little self-deprecating. I'll give him credit for that like side of the joke. He's like, oh, as if they're all in love with me, you know? Yeah.

But also it reveals that he's thought about this a little much. I'm like, okay, so he's got Ricky Martin specifically. Yes. He's also got the Golden Gay Bridge. So he's thinking about the dense concentration of gay men in beautiful San Francisco. I'm like, okay. All right. you've turned some of this over.

He's getting a little, like he's a little more successful, I would say. Yeah. In that one than when he's just like, no, no, no, this is different. Totally, totally. In 2014, Lindsay Graham, who had at that point been serving as a senator from South Carolina for 12 years, two terms, even though he promised at that point that he would no longer be seeking power. Of course he was. And he was at that point facing a primary challenge from a guy named Dave,

Feliciano, who during a press conference called Lindsay Graham, ambiguously gay. Quote, 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. And I just found this one funny because I'm like, what does it mean to be ambiguously gay? It's not that ambiguous.

I mean, I've never heard this term used in my life. Oh, actually, no, it's from, I'm dating myself. I'm a little older than you. Matt, there was a South, not South Park, a Saturday Night Live animated skit that was very much the product of like an Otts era homophobia. It was a pair of superheroes who were called the ambiguously gay duo. Oh. And the joke is that they fight crime, but then there's also a lot of like innuendo in their dialogue. They've got a really catchy theme song.

It's like the ambiguously gay duo. It's actually kind of cute. I didn't know about this. Yeah, you should check out the ambiguously gay duo, but that's definitely what he's referencing. That same year, Bill Maher jokes about Lindsey Graham's sexuality on national TV. New rule, Illinois Congressman Aaron Schock has to either ugly it up a little or... Yes, that's a congressman. Either ugly it up a little or explain how Lindsay Graham is supposed to get any work done around here.

Not a bad joke, Bill Maher, not a bad joke. And if you're listening to the audio-only version of this podcast, Aaron Schock, who at that time was a Republican congressman representing Illinois's 18th congressional district, was on the cover of men's health, abs glistening in perfect lighting. I've never, like, seen this man before. Really? Yeah, no, I don't know this character. Who is Aaron Schott? He looks like he's at a circuit party on the cover of men's health. And he so often is Moira Donigan.

Who is this guy? Aaron Schock is my personal hell embodied. And this isn't an Aaron Schock episode. But while we are talking, like I said, about gay Republicans in varying degrees of the closet, we have to talk about Aaron Schock because he's the subject of Bill Marsh joke. He's saying if Aaron Schock keeps being the... this hot, Lindsay Graham's not going to be able to get anything done. Well, you know who also was a closeted gay Republican congressman in 2014, Bill Mar?

Aaron Schock. This should not have been a shock, pun intended. Because I'm sorry, no, a straight man has a sick, like visible abdominal muscles like that. It's just not happening in that community. The only ones who do are like, I think, like too into themselves. But anyway, Aaron Schock was a Republican. who represented Illinois's 18th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives from 2009 to 2015.

I'm so happy you got to talk about this. It was an open secret in some gay circles that Aaron Schock was gay. Bill Maher not privy to this, I suppose. During his time in office, Aaron Schock voted, similarly to Lindsay Graham, against repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell. He opposed adding sexual orientation and gender identity to federal health. hate crime protections. He voted against the Employment on Discrimination Act. He opposed same-sex marriage. He opposed the repeal of the Defensive Marriage Act. Aaron Schock resigned in disgrace

in 2015 after it was revealed that he misappropriated public funds and campaign funds for private jet flights, for new cars, for his own personal legal expenses, for Super Bowl and country music awards tickets, and over $100,000 on renovating his congressional offices in the style of Downton Abbey. No. And he stayed in the closet after that. That's the gayest scandal. I mean, my goodness.

In any case, the whispers continue whispering. And four years later in 2019, Aaron Schock, made headlines when he was recorded on video at Coachella, you know, shirtless with a bunch of other mussely men with his hand down one of his friend's pants. But he didn't come out immediately. He came out in March 2020, fascinatingly days before COVID lockdown was announced. So in my mind, I'm still like he, he's the reason COVID.

But in March 2020, Aaron Schock posts like a 10 slide Instagram post, which is still on his Instagram, wherein he, quote, unquote, apologized and said that if he were in Congress now, he, quote, would support LGBTQ rights in every way that he could. Easy to say after you're out of office when, yeah, it doesn't matter anymore. Right, right. But, you know, in my mind, and I'm all about forgiveness, like, I really am, you know, restorative justice and all that. And Aaron's shock, you know, despite being out of office, he's still an extremely well-connected, wealthy guy, especially relative to like almost any other LGBTQ person in the country.

No, he can't vote on things in Congress anymore, but he's connected. You know, he can get involved with charities. He can hook people up to, you know, all sorts of political projects. I mean, there's like, there's so much that Aaron Schock can do. And I was very pissed off by this coming out slideshow, which was mostly self-pitying about how hard it was to be in. in the closet. And I'm like, yeah, girl, me too. But I wasn't in office. I, with a much smaller

following back then, posted something pissy on my Instagram story, because I used to, I used to vet myself a little less before I posted things. That said, I would do this again now. I remember, I didn't even tag him. You know, I was just like, how convenient, you know, that you get to gallivant into the sun with your muscle gay friends in West Hollywood or wherever the fuck and live a life that you at one of the highest possible offices in the United States used to deny other people, right? Aaron Schock direct messaged me and he said something to the effect of I would love, I'm going to put the DMs on the screen, something to the effect of I'd love to use my privilege to help the community now that I'm out, you know, tell me how I can. And I was 21 and

he was like in his 40s when this happened. And I was like, dude, really? You can't figure out like what I don't know. The human rights campaign is. Like do something. Google still worked back then. He could have used Google. You know, nonetheless, I had a very long conversation with him for I remember the whole

afternoon. We DMed for hours. I was so patient. I thought, you know, here's this X, Y, and Z thing you can do. I worked with a group at the time called In Circle. which helped the LGBTQ community in Utah, which struggles a lot, obviously, under the thumb of the Mormon church.

And I was like, you could do this. I sent him all the name, everything. Do you know what he did? Guessing a whole lot of nothing at best. Absolutely nothing. And in fact, during Trump's 2024 campaign, he hosted alongside Rick Rinell and Matt Gates, Among others, a Trump unity gaze for Trump fundraiser in Wisconsin, where Aaron Shock was a headlining speaker.

Ugh. Anyway, that's my Aaron Shock rant. I guess we're just getting a lot of different flavors of a shameless gay Republican. I think Lindsay Graham had shame. Aaron Shock has no shame. And Aaron Shock is still alive. I mean, it's just this genre of person. They're always carving out an exception for them.

I'm thinking of like the way I see women on the right. They're often people who have managed to arrange their lives in such a way that they are personally insulated from much of the violence of patriarchy, right? At least for now. And then they work pretty hard at making other people more vulnerable as a way of like proving themselves to the in group, right? Like I'm one of the good ones. And I just want to know how often that works out in the end because what I've seen is a lot of women who wind up getting really screwed over or humiliated in gender terms or hurt in gender terms. I see a lot of gay people who think they can throw other gay people under the bus and then wind up getting sort of excluded by the straight mainstream. And I see people like Lindsay Graham who basically are never able to sort of like outrun their own shame

who are never able to like come to grips with it and live with a degree of like honesty and self-respect and then who die without ever having gotten to a more honorable place you know I just don't think it works out for these guys and to the extent that it does because to an extent sometimes it does and that's a hard thing that I think like I grapple with

and that I think people need to grapple with. When I look at Aaron Schock, I mean, he is technically out. You know, I don't think he will ever be welcomed and rightfully so, like, at a pride event, but maybe he doesn't want that. But, and I talk about this on this podcast a lot, he will be insulated from the worst consequences of his own behavior. He will be. And I know that we, I mean, I think about this in the context of, like,

the LGBTQ community and, like, the way that we talk about, like, gay conservatives, and women and women conservatives, et cetera, et cetera. We always say, like, you know, the leopards will eat your face too. And there are so many examples of that happening. The leopards have eaten Lindsey Graham's face in the way that he died in the closet and miserable. But when I look at someone like Aaron Schock, who still gets lots of love and adoration from gay men on Instagram because he takes steroids and has a nice body, right?

It's like, I don't know, there's an argument to me made about how the leopards are still eating his face because he's hated by the vast majority of the people that should be his own community, etc. But also, I think probably in his own terms, he has a really great life. And that's where the leopard's eating face argument, it's not the whole picture for me. Because I'm like, even if they don't eat your face, like, you got to care about other people. I mean, I think like nobody would make these transactional surrenders to the forces of like patriarchy and homophobia. if those transactions didn't come with real rewards. That's why it's a betrayal,

is because they are getting something in exchange for their cooperation, for their participation in hurting the rest of us. I guess I can say for me, and maybe this is like Pollyanna-ish or naive, but those rewards that you get are not things that I want, you know? Yeah.

I just think you can have fun living a life that is centered around, you know, hanging out with Matt Gates and getting a lot of, like, comments from like, you know, random stranger gay men on Instagram. Yeah. But, like, when you lay your head down to sleep at night, I don't think, I don't think if I was living that life for all kinds of reasons. I don't think I would be satisfied. I think, like, I think you wouldn't like it, Matt, because you're a person with a more

expansive moral vision. You like have a soul is your problem. That's why you can't understand these people. That's very kind of you. And to be very clear, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not considering a pivot. And if you don't mind, I would like to take a quick break from the show to give a shout out to Rocket Money for sponsoring today's episode. I subscribe to a lot of things. I don't know if this is the case for you.

It probably is. but I subscribe to a lot of things, whether it's the various different streaming services. Isn't it great that there are so many goddamn streaming services now that they've basically just reinvented cable where you have to subscribe to different cable packages? Let's just go back to cable. Anyway, the point is I subscribe to a lot of new streaming services, oftentimes ones that I've never heard of because they have the one thing that I want to watch right now. They're always called like plubi, poohy, hiboo, jibbi jibbi.

I also subscribe to a lot of different media properties, mostly, so I, can do research for this show and a lot of times I want to subscribe for an article and not continue paying $10 a month for the rest of my life. One great way to manage subscriptions and stay on top of all of your finances, your spending, your budgeting, all of it is with Rocket Money. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel unwanted subscriptions with just a few clicks, monitor your spending, and helps you grow your savings. The app analyzes your bills, gives you a dashboard where you can see everything all in one place, gives you personalized insights and reports on your spending and saving, and receive real-time alerts for large

transactions, upcoming bills, refunds, and low balances. And the app is free to download. So if you want to download it, you can head over to rocketmoney.com slash fruity to start saving. That is rocketmoney.com slash fruity. Now let's get back to the episode. Let's get back to Lindsay Graham. In 2015, Lindsay Graham runs for president as an establishment alternative to Donald Trump. He was famously extremely against Donald Trump, calling him a, quote, race-baiting xenophobic, bigot and a jackass, and saying, quote, if we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed and we will deserve it. Fascinating. That attitude, of course, lasted until, immediately after Trump won in 2016,

at which point Lindsay Graham said, President Trump is strongly committed to rebuilding our military, which is music to my ears. Nevertheless, during his short-lived run for presidential office, Lindsay Graham made about a million media appearances, including this one with a one Dana Bash. Every evil person gets a cameo in this episode, where Dana Bash played in.

a TV sensor-friendly version of Fuck Mary Kill with Lindsay Graham. Here is how that went. And this is sort of a longer clip, but we simply must suffer through the whole thing because I said so. There's a fun bar game, which I will clean up because we are in mixed company and on television. So I'm going to call it date, marry, or make disappear forever. Okay. You guys know what the real thing is, right? You know what the real thing is, right?

I think I'm going to do a lot of the disappear forever. The first one usually rhymes with truck. Okay. So date, marry, or disappear forever? Hillary Clinton, Carly Fearinga, Sarah Palin. He's like, where's the man? I didn't know we're going to do the Mormon thing here. Date, marry, or make disappear forever?

Take your time, Senator, we've got all night. We can't go beyond dating. That's as far as I'm going dating. Who do you want to date? Do you want to date Hillary, Hillary, Carly, Fioreen, or Sarah Palary? No, no, no. So you have to pick one. One of them you date.

One of them you marry, and one of them you make disappear forever. Sarah Pelin. We'll go hunting on our first date. Okay. Who are you marrying? I got to marry one of the three? Yeah. That's how it works.

Keep up. I got to really watch what I say here. Okay, so it's date, marry, or make disappear forever. Hillary Clinton, Carly Feerina, or Sarah Paylor. and Sarah Palin. Carly because she's rich. You're marrying her? Okay.

She could keep me in the life. I like that. That's very practical. I'm a very practical guy. So that leaves Hillary Clinton that you want to make disappear forever? No. Is she rich? I think so.

She said she was flat broke. I'm going to let you off the hook. She actually like exits her own game. She's like, this is not working. We have to pivot. You know, this does, if anything, make me sympathetic to the idea that Dana Bash at one point did do journalism. Like I said, it just transports me back to the worst moments in the closet where I'm like, get me out of here. You know what I mean?

Yeah, but this is like seventh grade level of like closeted kid absence of self-confidence. Like the degree to which he's squirming at even this like. playful, joking, like quite like attenuated and abstract allusioned to personal life. Like I don't know. Maybe this is just like because I don't hang out with people who are in the closet, but like I don't know any game in who couldn't play this game. Yeah. Right? Like, because it's fun because it doesn't matter. And he's just like so visibly uncomfortable. He never even learned. Again, he like doesn't, he has not seemingly learned to play this for laughs. He has no indication that he's in on the joke at all. In 2018 on National Coming Out Day, Chelsea Handler

tweets, if you're wondering why Republicans took a sick day today, it's probably because it's hashtag National Coming Out Day looking at you at Lindsay Graham, South Carolina. To which Lindsay Graham responded publicly, quote, to the extent that it matters, I'm not gay. To the extent that it matters. I like that. I like that syntax. What about the extent to which it doesn't matter. As far as yours concerned, I'm not gay. For your purposes, sweetheart, I'm not gay. I want to inject a drop of nuance here to say that with some respect to what Chelsea Handler is trying to do here, I don't really like when straight people do this. There's a section of my listenership that is probably going to think I'm like too woke about it.

I don't care. That's fine. But it is one thing when Moira and I, when we gave, sit here and have a thoughtful and, yes, admittedly sometimes fun conversation about a homophobic, closeted politician sexuality. But when it becomes fodder for straight people to say things that if you strip back the politics of it are to me straightforwardly homophobic, I get a little bit uncomfortable. Is that fair in your eyes? I think Chelsea Handler thinks that she's making fun of homophobia here. Yeah. And I think what she's actually doing on intentionally. I'm going to credit her here. I can't read her mind, but I'm pretty sure that she's not intentionally doing this, but I think she's actually sort of relying on being gay as something

shameful a little bit for the underlying humor. There's another Chelsea Handler tweet that I need to find right now. I wasn't going to read this one, but now it's like relevant because I thought it was, I was like, I was like uncomfortable even reading it. From Chelsea Handler, Hey, Lindsay Graham, what kind of dick-sucking video do they have on you for you to be acting like this? Wouldn't coming out be more honorable? I want to contrast this with a tweet from a one, Katya Zamalachakova, who when recently, before Lindsey Graham died, Lindsay Graham tweeted, game on, pray for Israel. Katia replied, life is not a joke and war is not a game,

but you clearly don't give a shit about public service or human life. You're nothing but an abhorrent Zionist, death cult cheering, soulless ghoulist, just quit politics and focus on something you really love like, I don't know, maybe sucking dick after dick in a public bathroom, you despicable closeted faggity piece of shit. Now, we're not mincing words anymore. And I will say that such a tweet comes off very differently from a celebrated and beloved drag queen than it does from Chelsea Handler. Yeah, I think, like, it is always most advisable to avoid trying to reappearance.

appropriate bigotries that have like not been wielded at you. I believe that like if you really sat down and had a heart to heart with Chelsea Handler, she doesn't think that anything is wrong with sucking dick, right? Right. But like this kind of attempted a gotcha does sound really different from a straight person than from somebody who I'm pretty sure has experienced homophobia, maybe a smitch. You know what I mean? Right.

Right, right. Moving on with our timeline. In 2020, we get the big one. Gay porn actor Sean Harding tweets on June 4th, 2020, when we are all sitting at our homes during lockdown, not much going on. This was destined to be a hit on Twitter. Quote, there is a homophobic Republican senator who is no better than Trump, who keeps passing legislation that is damaging to the LGBT and minority communities. every sex worker I know has been hired by this man, wondering if enough of us spoke out if that could get him out of office. I cannot do this alone. If you'd be willing to stand with me against LG, please let me know. So far I have two individuals who would be willing to go public and support my claims. Anyone else?

Now, not much came of this. Not immediately, anyway. Not many people came forward, if anyone at all. And I think that confused people. And I think that's because people often misunderstand how power works, even during the height of scandal. To illustrate what I mean by that, I want to do yet another gay politician interlude and tell you about a man named Barney Frank. In 1985, Barney Frank was a 45-year-old, closeted, Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives representing Massachusetts. That year, he found a classified advertisement in a local newspaper for Steve Gobe, a sex worker in his mid-20s.

Barney Frank paid Steve $80 for sex. They became friends afterwards, and Barney hired Steve to become his personal aid, his housekeeper, his driver, all the things. Steve said that Barney Frank, quote, hoped to reform him out of sex work, which, by the way, find it to be, you know, just a pretty grotesque attitude to have towards someone who you did hire to have sex with you. Nonetheless, Steve continued doing sex work, sometimes using Barney Frank's DC home to host clients, and in 1987, they parted ways after two years. Barney says that he fired Steve after finding out that Steve was using his home to host clients, though Steve would later say that Barney always knew that he was doing this, and Steve says he broke it off with Barney when

Barney's sexual and emotional demands became too much. Afterwards, Steve floated from apartment to apartment in Washington, D.C., struggling to pay rent and facing various evictions. And after two years in August of 1989, Steve Gobi came forward with his story about Barney Frank. He says that he had been tipped off that the Washington Times was investigating a story about an alleged callboy ring run out of a house in D.C. and figured that he'd be caught sooner or later. Steve, for his part, tried to start a bidding war for the story between various newspapers. Ultimately, he gave it to the Washington Times for free in hopes that it would land him a book deal. But it didn't. Steve did sell a version of his story to Penthouse Magazine,

which is available online, by the way, the article is called Mayflower Madam by Art Harris, for an alleged but unconfirmed $50,000. And Gobi insisted at a press conference that he never came forward for money and pledged to give away the $50,000. During the brief 1989-1990-era media fascination with this story, Steve Gobi went on the daytime tabloid talk show,

Heraldo, where the host, Haraldo, repeatedly asks him if he's aware that this story will ruin Barney Frank's career, and why he's trying to ruin Barney Frank's career. You'll meet Steve Gobi, a guy who is single-handedly destroying the career of Barney Frank, the congressman from Massachusetts. He'll tell us why. What do you think about the fact he's destroying Barney Frank's life? Terrible. A bit of disdain from host Geraldo.

Are you pleading the Fifth Amendment? No, I'm not. I've been advised by attorney. Self-incrimination? I think money's a tacky subject to a discuss. Oh yeah, especially if you're going to go down on a tax rat. Do you understand, sir, that if this runs the ordinary course, you have destroyed this man's life? Well, it wasn't my intention.

But did it ruin his career? The U.S. House Ethics Committee investigated Barney Frank for his relationship to Steve Gobi. They dismissed all of Steve's claims that Barney had hired him for sex or that Barney knew Steve used his apartment for sex work. They only found Barney guilty of using his congressional office to fix 33 of Steve Gobey's parking tickets. And the punishment for that was a vote, was brought to the House floor to symbolically reprimand Barney Frank, which the House voted to do. So Barney Frank received an official congressional reprimand.

Was his career ruined? You tell me. He stayed in office for 24 more years. retiring in 2013. He became a close colleague of Barack Obama. He wrote three books. The most recent one, which criticizes the left for going too far in support of trans people, is available now for pre-order.

Barney Frank elaborated on that point of view, by the way, in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on May 3rd of this year. Males and female transsexuals playing sports that are related for women. I understand I thought I'm angry about that and I think in the interest of the transgender community as well as others

it would be better to go like that and it will granular way and not simply announce that if you don't support it you're at home of fault and died 17 days later he literally died complaining

about how trans people took the gay rights movement too far Goodbye, Barney Frank. And where is Steve Gobi? Well, one year after the story broke and interest in it had waned, Steve was arrested for possession of marijuana after getting into a fight with an off-duty cop. And that's pretty much the last information I can find about him before his obituary from 2020 when he died in his late 50s.

You know, I think when people hear this kind of sex scandal, be it somebody who's in the clock, somebody who's cheating on their spouse, somebody who's hiring sex workers, or even somebody who's committing sexual violence. They assume that the person who has this story about a prominent man can make a quick buck. They assume that media attention equals money and opportunity. Yes. They assume that people will pay for the money. they assume that it will be something that redounds to the benefit of the storyteller or the accuser, right?

I think if you actually look at the people who come forward with these stories, even if it's not something like assault, even if it's just some sort of, you know, story of male sexual entitlement or like sexual hypocrisy, the people who challenge that in public do not do well. You can't tell a story of a powerful man behaving in a sexually illicit or abusive or just gross way and come out with your own life intact. It really puts you through the ringer in terms of what it costs in time and humiliation and dignity and money. You have to pay a lot to do that in all those different cases. and you often don't get very much out. Extraordinarily well said,

and that is exactly why I wanted to provide this anecdote with Barney Frank, because also I love telling these stories and about these extremely sort of consequential controversies that the people at the center of them, they don't benefit, they don't become rich. And in the case of sex work, if you are a sex worker in this situation,

you actually have so much to risk. Remember Taylor Snyder, the sex worker from the beginning of this episode who met Lindsay Graham in 2015? In an interview she recently gave about the whole thing with Matt Cullen, which everyone should go watch. It's on YouTube. She explained, quote, there's a reason you're getting paid. It's for discretion, not for sex. If a sex worker comes forward with the identity of a client, even a client the public thinks is worthy of being outed, someone like Lindsey Graham, they still risk so much. their business, you know, who is going to work with you if they don't think you're going to respect their privacy. They risk their safety, their privacy, especially if they are trying to take on a political behemoth. You know, part of the myth that people get rich quick

by telling these stories in public suggest that they don't need another job, right? And what I hear Taylor saying is like, no, I need this job. Like, this is actually my livelihood. I can't risk my future income just to point out that this guy's a hypocrite. Yes, exactly. Sex work is already an inherently unsafe profession. Because it's illegal, almost everywhere in the U.S., sex workers who are mistreated by clients, have very few avenues, if any, for legal protection. And I say all of this because as much as Lindsey Graham is the story of a closeted queer

who legislated against queers, he was also a patron of sex workers who legislated against sex workers. Lindsay Graham helped pass something called Fasta Sesta, which I think everyone should know about. I think it's so important. Fasta Sesta, they are two bills, Fosta and Sesta, that created a carve-out of Section 230. And this is like maybe a whole episode in and of itself, but Section 230, but Section 230, is a bill that we currently have that is so important for privacy online, for our ability to have free speech online, which says that websites are not legally liable for the content posted on them. Section 230 is the reason that a lot of websites can continue to exist without being sued out of existence because people post things on that website that people don't like, whether they be

about information about reproductive health or LGBTQ people or sex work. Fasta Sesta carves out an exception for what it calls sex trafficking, but the vagueness of the way that the law is written forced a lot of websites that consenting adult sex workers used to advertise their services to shut down out of fear of government prosecution. Fosta Sesta was and continues to be devastating for sex workers who once found a layer of protection from meeting and vetting their clients online, but are now forced to engage in these interactions on the street, which is much more dangerous. Lindsay Graham benefited from further disenfranchising the sex workers that he was hiring. Lindsay Graham also co-sponsored the Earnit Act, which further forced websites to quote-unquote

earn the protections that Section 230 provides by more strictly monitoring and censoring their users, and which was called a, quote, disaster for online speech and privacy, especially for the LGBTQ and sex worker communities by the ACLU. So I wanted to include this as just like a real shout out to sex workers who, you know, I think are left out of this story that is so often reduced to like he was a closeted queer person. He was also a patron of sex workers who wanted them. to be as vulnerable as possible. Because the less power that they had,

the more someone like Lindsey Graham can exploit them. You know, something that is striking to me in these accounts from sex workers that we've discussed today, these are not big amounts of money, you know? Barney Frank paid $80. Lindsay Graham paid $400. These are people who are making like low margin business transactions here. And I think that is another thing that we should keep in mind when we're like making these kinds of assessments of like, okay, what do these people owe the public about their stories?

It's like these are often not people who are rolling in it. Yeah. I want to talk about Hunter Biden for a second. Hunter Biden also of hiring sex worker fame and also of crack fame. Good for him. Good for him. Hunter Biden is making a media resurgence for some sort of unclear reason. He's going on all the podcasts.

He's like hitting it big on Twitter. He's highlighting the positive aspects as he claims of his father's legacy. And he recently went on a one Jen Welch's podcast, Jen Welch, who I love so much. But he said something that I found to be really quite odd about what he calls the I believe that the biggest problem in America is in in Washington D.C. with the federal government is a is it not the oligarchy. It's the closetocracy as I call it. It is and I'm being totally serious. Everybody knows there is like this closeted gay mafia largely Republican that exist in Washington, in DC and everybody knows every single one of them who's gay.

And so it's in and what I believe the only reason that that is relevant is because I believe that internal conflict creates so much vitriol inside a person that they take it out on the rest of the world. And they do. And so what they do is their whole lives, they've been closeted until you have this like, black ball inside yourself, this like black, blackened heart by the fact that you can't be who you want to be. And so you take it out on everybody else. And these men, largely men, have done exactly that. And they are, everybody knows who they are. Everybody.

I'm sorry. That shit's just woke homophobia. That stuff pisses me off so much. Love Jen Welch. I have to say. I love Jen Welch so much. Nothing but love to her. I think she's like, maybe you're going to save democracy. But like, if anybody does it, it'll be her, right? But this is two straight people talking to microphones about how gay people have a moral rot that they are not capable of having. It's like positing itself as concern about the deleterious effects of homophobia.

But it also takes this moral failure, this capacity for contempt, this sadism and ascribes that as being a gay trait. And I'm sorry, I don't think Lindsay Graham is a bad person because he was in the closet. I think he's a bad person because he has bad values because he made bad decisions. He is not a bad person because he's a gay man because if that was a determining factor, what about all the fucking straight people doing that shit? It's a long route back to saying gay people are morally different from us and they are morally lesser than us. And I just don't think it's compatible with a commitment to gay rights and dignity.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, I struggle with this a lot because I think that there is like a kernel of something interesting in what he's saying here. Like, I do think on like a, on like a limited psychoanalysis of this one person that we're talking about today, I do wonder if his own personal struggles as it relates to his identity caused him to unleash more violence on other people. That's the fault of homophobia. If you take that moral logic as like correct, right? If you take Hunter Biden's psychological logic or psychoanalysis of Lindsey Graham and others supposedly. Yeah. And like, let's bracket it and say for the sake of argument, it's true. Say that somebody like Lindsey Graham really was

driven by his, you know, gay shame to be a warmonger in Iran or to, you know, cheerlead for Donald Trump at home. Then you would have to, first of all, there'd be a lot more gay men in Washington than I think there are. But then you would also have to blame that function, not on Lindsay Graham being a gay man, but on the social structure of homophobia that makes being a gay man so shameful. Right. and so like self-hating, right?

It's still like, I think what's off to me is like even if you posit it as correct, even if you sort of like accept that there's a little bit of truth there, it's still putting the blame on the gay individual rather than on the homophobic society. Yeah. I mean, my biggest problem with this, which I am seeing more and more and more of on the right specifically is not that there's not interesting psychoanalysis to be done of someone like Lindsey Graham and where the blame should ultimately, of course, be put on homophobia and inspire us to create a society that's less homophobic and therefore we have less violence out of closeted,

angry gay men, right? It's not that. To me, the problem is that this obscures a much larger problem, which is that, no, the biggest problem in this country is oligarchy. It is unregulated capitalism. It is all of these things that, by the way, Joe Biden, his father, championed. Joe Biden didn't help manufacture a genocide on Gaza because he was a closeted homosexual. You know what I mean? And to me, this is just such a convenient way to let off the hook all of the people and power structures that actually are responsible for the greatest amount of harm being exerted on the world from members of the United States government, not because they're closeted, angry gay homophobes, but because they are allegiant to violence and power and capital. Yeah. Like that's what it is to me. And my problem with this line of thinking is that I was looking at the replies and quote tweets of this video.

And there were a lot from avowed Twitter anti-Semites saying, finally, we can talk about how it's the gay Jews controlling the world. Because if you listen to what Hunter Biden is saying here, it sounds a lot like anti-Semitism in its structure, in its way of they're all secretly controlling the world. And it's just, it's, it's not reality. It's not reality. I know it's fun to be like, look, all these closet cases. Oh, the grinder outage at the Republican National Convention, whatever. But this, like, homosexual. This isn't actually what's controlling the world, you guys.

Like, it's just not. If gay men were secretly controlling the world, don't you think some things would be different? First of all, it would not be a secret for very long because they would, they would gossip. They would tell us. They'd be doing their downtown abbey offices. and it will just come out sooner or later. But I just, you know, I think it's like an effort to like push this away from the speaker. Yeah, there's just like nefarious other, right?

And like also something really kind of, I think, a little degrading about our current dystopia is that it's not being done in secret by a shadowy cabal. It's all being done out in the open right in front of us. And that's, I think, you know, an insult. It would at least be, it would be a little more optimistic. I think if the people who were ruining this country and this world for the sake of their own greed were ashamed enough of themselves or scared enough of consequences that they thought they had to hide. But they don't have to hide. I want to talk about the mechanics of how he died because I think it's such a good metaphor.

Do you know like the mechanics of how Lindsay Graham died? Not really. I was trying to read about it this morning. It was like an aortic tear. Yeah. But I don't know what that is. What happened? You know, you can shorthand it as like a heart attack, but that's not quite what it is.

It wasn't like a blockage. What happened that is he had a long-term disease of the heart. And this is, I'm sorry, Matt, this is like such a metaphor. But over time, over the course of years and years, his heart became weak and it became hard, like brittle. And eventually it just tore apart. And I think that's what being a report. Republican will do to you.

If not in like literal physical terms, but I think living the kind of life that Lindsay Graham lived required him to put convenience over principle. It required him to hurt people a lot. It required him to look away from other people's suffering. And it required him to betray things about himself and about his friends. that he could have lived a much more expansive life if he had embraced instead. And I just like, I hate the heavy-handedness of this. I don't think you have to be a bad person to die of that disease, right?

Right, right. But I think in Lindsay Graham's case, I want to make an exception. I think the metaphor is just too apt. Yeah, there's a user on threads called the cooking gene, G-E-N-E, who wrote, this is a humble reminder, Lindsay Graham, this could have turned out different. You could have been a Southern Harvey Milk. He could have done so many amazing things, but he didn't. And I don't know, I was trying to think yesterday when I was taking my notes of what my thesis is on like the life of Lindsay Graham, besides all of the obvious ways that, you know, he was horrible and responsible

for mass death and responsible for mass suffering across the globe. But like, what? Lindsey Graham mongered his entire life for war with Iran, which we are now in and losing. And, you know, he finally got what he wanted, which was this war, yet another war. And then while we're in it, as, you know, U.S. service people are dying, as people in Iran are dying, as this is, you know, aiding in the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the ongoing occupation, and brutalization of Palestine. Like, he just dies. He just dies. There's something so spiritually just bizarre to me

that you can just devote your life to, like, suffering on a mass scale. And now he's just gone. Like, all of that personal satisfaction he got out of making other people suffer while he internally suffered. It was all for nothing. he's one of the most

pathetic people of my entire life and now he's dead and somehow in death it's even more pathetic I really like the guy what can I say you know I think like one take on Lindsay Graham that I've heard that I think is kind of

optimistic is like oh he thought he had time right like he thought he had time to see through this long you know longed for war with Iran and to like change it into I guess something stable. He thought he had time to try and like use Trump for his own ends and then flip back around and say that guy was a mess.

I never liked him. Like he thought he had time maybe even to, you know, come to some sort of settlement with his own sexuality, right? But tomorrow is not guaranteed, folks. Yeah. You might not get to. undo the bad things you're doing tomorrow. You might not live that long. You might not get that opportunity. So it's easier and a little bit of an insurance policy to just try and do the right

thing today. That is beautiful. And also that was my takeaway too, the one that I finally landed on, which is just like Lindsey Graham lived, and this is a little bit inarticulate, but he like, he lived a life of like death and of destruction. interpersonally, politically, professionally, all he did was destroy and tear down and make miserable. And I feel like with what limited time we have on God's green earth, the only way that we can live a life so fundamentally different than Lindsay Graham's is just to live lives of creation and of joy and of being ourselves and of life. I'm not a poet, but that's what I got. That's beautiful, Matt. That's why I love hearing from you.

You better stop. Is that all we got? I think that might be all we got. I can't think of anybody I would rather have thought about this sad, creepy, son of a bitch with. So I'm really glad it was you. I love you so much. Moira Donigan, everybody. Where can people, well, I already told them, but reiterate, where can people find you?

Because they absolutely should. I am the host with my colleague Adrian Daub of the podcast In Bed with the Right. a ton of fun if you're interested in things like gay conservatives and the role of sex and gender on the political right. We're dissecting that once a week. I'm on Twitter. I'm on blue sky. I'm in a column in the guardian. You can find me all over the place. You're always fighting with your words and you're very good at it. And thank you so much for making it through this episode, which was at points fun and at times also dismal. But, you know, it's fucking Lindsey Graham we're talking about. and it is what it is.

I love you so much if you'd like to support this show. We have bonus episodes. We. I have bonus episodes on Patreon. That will be in the episode description. I love and appreciate you so much. Go live a life of life. Go be gay.

And until next time, stay fruity.