Episode Summary
In public opinion surveys, people who are gay and lesbian tend to overwhelmingly back the Democratic party. According to Gallup, 83 percent of both groups identify or lean toward Democrats. This seems like such an obvious preference given the Republican alternative, but the extremely lopsided support that Democrats get from gays and lesbians is actually a relatively recent development.
Although the contemporary Republican Party is known as an identity group for straight White Christians, long before Stonewall, more than a few gay politicos thought that shrinking government generally was a way to keep it out of the bedroom as well.
That viewpoint very clearly does not belong in today’s Republican party of Donald Trump and JD Vance with its hateful obsessions over imaginary pedophiles and trans athletes, but it’s still important to learn about the gay Republican experience, not just because it gives us a fuller picture of the past, but also because it may give some guidance as to where the far-right is headed in the future.
I’ll be talking about all of this with my guest in today’s episode, his name is Neil J. Young, and he’s written a very interesting book called Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right, which is now available.
The video of this discussion is available. The transcript of audio is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.
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Audio Chapters
00:00 — Introduction
03:20 — The closet was a bipartisan thing in the beginning
05:51 — Libertarianism and gay Republicans
09:51 — Anti-communism and the closet
14:23 — Marvin Liebman and William Rusher's hopes for limited government
27:10 — Ronald Reagan's more libertarian term as California governor
34:15 — Terry Dolan and the gay DC Republican subculture
The chapters below are for paid subscribers only
41:02 — How concerns about a possible “gay gene” motivated some activists against abortion rights
43:38 — Arthur Finkelstein, influential gay Republican activist and fundraiser
46:21 — How mainstream media became the only real place for gay conservatives
52:01 — LGBTQ media's response to the Christian Right takeover of the Republican party
56:26 — The bipartisan spirit of early LGBTQ political organizations
58:54 — Did bipartisanship make same-sex marriage and nondiscrimination laws easier and more secure?
01:04:07 — The precarious position of right-wing drag queens
01:10:54 — Today's gay Republicans are much more extreme than their predecessors
01:15:00 — How hyper-masculine gay reactionaries are reaching out to fundamentalists and incels
01:32:20 — Conclusion and further resources
Audio Transcript
The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.
MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So this is a book that I think is long overdue because gay and lesbian people in the Republican party have always been some of the highest and most influential operatives and activists.
And yet most people are not aware of that. Like if you live in DC and you work in politics there, you know that, but most people outside of that very limited world are not aware of any of these stories or any of these people. Or at least the, their personal lives, we'll say they, they might know them from their professional achievement, shall we say?
But your book starts off with the concept of the double life, which would seem inevitable, for somebody working in a reactionary political movement who is not heterosexual.
NEIL J. YOUNG: Yeah. I mean, I think one of the big themes of this book is the ongoing presence of the closet. And I think people who follow the news probably can think of some recent examples of that. I mean, it's a, it's a fairly, I think regular feature of political news in this country that, Republicans get outed as gay where it's Larry Craig or Aaron Schock after the fact, or there's some sort of more recent ones.
But I was impressed to discover how much that was the case, even more so than I expected. And one of the things I realized if the history of the closet was going to be such a huge [00:04:00] part of this story, that it actually made sense to begin in the era of the closet and sort of mid century America.
Where everyone was closeted for the most part, and that being closeted wasn't a condition of one's politics as much as it was just the state of life at the time in the 1950s and 60s. So, I thought this book was going to begin in the late 70s, and that's in fact where my book proposal started, but as I really delved more into the history, And realized again, the importance of the closet as this ongoing aspect.
I want to just start in the air of the closet when one, no matter if you're a Republican or if you're a Democrat your life is really closeted because I think there's just this conception people have that like Republicans. Not gay, anti gay, and therefore anyone who's associated with it had to be closeted, and there's a very different history for the Democratic Party.
And so I wanted to start in a period of time in which that, that difference wasn't the case and what does it mean for Republican men? in the 1950s to have been homosexuals.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And and it's true. I mean, in, in essence, in a lot of ways, this was the same starting point for both left wing and right wing gays, basically.
That's right. Exactly.
Libertarianism and gay Republicans
SHEFFIELD: Um, and, and, and in some sense because in, in some sense, because the in the mid 20th century, there was, the development of, of libertarianism as, kind of a, a right wing form of liberalism. And that some of the earliest the earliest libertarians were in fact atheists.
And so in some sense, like there. For some people, they may actually have started, had a little bit easier freedom of movement to be gay, if not, to the public, at least have it be known, within the movement that they operated in. Do you, would you agree with that?
YOUNG: [00:06:00] Yeah, I think a lot of gay men in the fifties and the sixties who are sort of right of center, they found libertarianism particularly.
Useful for sort of, I think, understanding their life and as a sort of model for what they hope the nation would pursue politically, because their sort of sense of, especially at the time, the 1950s, I mean, this is the Cold War era, right? So huge federal, governmental repression and criminalization of gay people.
And of course this was happening in a bipartisan effort. Democrats and Republicans alike were joined in creating, what historians have called the lavender scare this cold war repressive state that sought to, especially in DC and in, in the, in the in the, within the federal government to root out and find homosexuals and to fire them from their jobs and really to ruin their lives.
But that wasn't just the case in D. C. It was the case all across the country. I mean, law enforcement everywhere was targeting homosexuals. And so you have a good number of people who I was really surprised to discover how many there were of gay men who said, okay, the path to freedom here is through Curtailing government power through restricting the powers of the government and that sort of libertarian vision of how the government should operate was one in which they imagined freedom for the, for themselves which is, of course, different than the sort of rights based civil rights connected.
Notion of freedom and equality that's developing on the left for gay persons.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, that's right. And and this, this moment in time, also the, the mid 20th century was kind of when there was the, the bifurcation of liberalism into progressivism and Libertarianism, right? And and it's, it's interesting because I think even today, a lot of people who [00:08:00] identify well, who, who very obviously have right wing libertarian views like Joe Rogan people in his orbit, they actually think that they're, On the left, it's kind of incredible, but, but, but you can see the starting point, like, for instance, in the, the whole in the hippie movement and some of these, kind of, I mean, like the phrase, if it feels good, do it.
That was both that was a ended up being more about. Personal liberation in the views of some people and less about political liberation,
YOUNG: right? Right, right. Yeah. These different sort of notions of freedom that could operate in this period that aren't necessarily tied to one partisan position or another, but like serve as sort of an imaginative, an imaginative theory of the world.
And also as a really I think useful discourse but like tweaked in different directions depending on sort of the larger political commitments.
Anti-communism and the closet
SHEFFIELD: so obviously on the right, while there was this kind of burgeoning libertarian tradition, there was Joe McCarthy, who was really the biggest perpetrator of the lavender scare. And, among other things, he made it very clear that he, not only was he trying to root out. Supposed communist in the government.
He was also going after homosexual men. And so, and then of course he had a gay man on his own staff. Let's maybe talk about Roy Cohn in that context. We'll have, we'll come back to him later. I don't want to talk all the way about it yet. But he's certainly an interesting character and very emblematic to this story.
YOUNG: Yeah. And I don't really write about Conan the book because he's been covered so much. But he's obviously relevant to this history here. And I actually focus on some. Some characters who are less well known to most readers but the, who do have connections to McCarthy some of them directly, some of them just are sort of aligned with him politically.
And it took me a really long time to even figure out what [00:10:00] is this about? Because I think. You have someone like Cone, who's like a complicated psychological figure, right? Like, there's, and, and, a lot of people have sort of wrestled with him and his psychology and what that means for his period of history.
But for some of these other folks who, are not as well known and who I didn't necessarily have access to, their personal papers as much as to really delve into like, what is their inner psychology of this? But I wanted to make sense of like, why would they be aligned with someone like McCarthy?
Why would they, why are they not also libertarians? Like, why do they have what is seen as more of sort of hard edge conservatism in this period? And one of the things that I, I sort of discovered and and that I make an argument of this section of the book is that a lot of these guys. found that sort of fierce anti communism as a way that they actually maintain the closet for themselves.
And so in some ways that seems a little bit contradictory. You would think, why would you want to be aligned or close to a person like this? Because wouldn't you be worried that you would be exposed, right? But I found that a lot of these figures their way of sort of maintaining their position and even their idea of how they might gain power and in Washington, D.
C. was to assist this anti communist fervor, even as it had a sort of anti homosexual focus, at the forefront. as a way that they themselves passed. And I think, does that make them hypocrites? Does that make them sellouts? Like, yes, probably. But I don't think that's necessarily even the most interesting thing that we can understand about these folks.
Although it's certainly relevant, but I think sort of understanding how. In a period of heavy repression and heavy fear that some, a lot of folks actually used this anti communist fervor and sort of the ugly [00:12:00] dimensions of this politics as their own way of building as their way of building their particular closets.
SHEFFIELD: Well, and also I think to some extent. It seems like they also thought that they could steer things in a more, as you were saying earlier that a more limited government direction. So, because like, I mean, originally, for instance, when you look at William F. Buckley's, God and Man.
At Yale book, that book is extremely, right wing Christian, social conservative book including it calling out, people for, if I forget how many people specifically he called out as gay, but there were a couple that he did and said that that was nefarious. But, like, and then he wanted people to be fired for saying Jesus didn't rise from the dead and various things like that.
So, but, but eventually he, he fell in with William Rusher, who is one of the, one of these people that you're talking about as kind of a post McCarthy figure him and along with Marvin Liebman.
Marvin Liebman and William Rusher's hopes for limited government
SHEFFIELD: Um, so, For these, both of these guys are not very widely known now. So why don't you tell us a little, for those, for tell us who they are and what they, what they did.
YOUNG: Yeah, so Marvin Liebman is a huge character of my book. He's a really important figure. He was born in Brooklyn. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland, from Eastern Europe, who'd come to the U. S. in the early 20th century. And he grew up in Brooklyn, and in a very sort of immigrant area of Italians and Poles and a large Jewish community.
And he As many people in his community did in this period of time in the 1920s and 30s, he became very active in the Communist Party, USA, first through an organization and his high school, and then ultimately he was very active in the Manhattan chapter of the Communist Party, USA, and he went off to war.
He served in World War Two. He [00:14:00] was outed and discharged because one of his commanding officers read some letters that he was writing to another day soldier. And he came back home and in the 1940s he was involved in fundraising efforts on the left, but he slowly moved to the right. And especially as, and I think a lot of, as, as most people who know this history know, a lot of people broke with the communist party.
USA in the late 1940s because of the stuff they were learning about the atrocities of Stalin and Stalinism that were coming out of the Soviet Union in the time. And so by the late 1940s, he's sort of moved to a right of center position and becomes increasingly anti communist in the 1950s. And through that development of his politics, he becomes connected to William F.
Buckley and Buckley, he meets with Buckley when Buckley has this idea to launch the National Review and Liebman doesn't think that the National Review is going to work because it's You know, he thinks there's not really a conservative movement in the country and this at the time, and like, who would read this magazine but he's, he's committed to helping Buckley, and so he provides a lot of the early fundraising that keeps the National Review afloat in those early years, and, a lot of people have said that if it hadn't been for Liebman's fundraising prowess the National Review would have never made it through those early years. He ultimately helps Buckley and he considers William F. Buckley his best friend. So he's very close to Buckley and his wife. He helps Buckley found the American Conservative Union and the Young Americans for Freedom organizations that are developing in the 1960s that are really foundational institutions for the rise of modern conservatism.
And he's closeted, he's a closeted homosexual this whole time and mostly [00:16:00] living in New York. And so in New York, he's able to have a little bit more personal freedom than a lot of the folks I'm writing about who lived in D. C. and, and had to guard their sort of personal lives a lot more closely but he's a fascinating figure and, and he, he continues through the book and we can talk more about sort of where his life heads in the 1980s, but that's sort of the period we're talking about here with, with his close association with Buckley in the 1950s.
And then William Rusher is, is who Buckley hires to be the publisher of the National Review and did that job for a very long time. Rusher is someone we don't necessarily know. is definitively gay, but someone who other historians have speculated was probably gay. And I did a really close reading of his correspondence.
And especially, I mean, there's thousands and thousands of letters of his at the Library of Congress. And I knew the sort of speculations about him and even the stuff from his own personal biography. He never married. When he eventually retires from his job as the publisher of the National Review, he moves to San Francisco, and he had said that this was a lifelong ambition to move out there.
And I was even, I didn't put this in the book, but I was even able to find in public records that he lived in San Francisco with another man for A very, very long time. And that man was one of only a handful of people that was at his burial when he died. But I do a sort of close reading of his correspondence and again, of his biographical details to, to say that I think there's a, there's a strong reason to believe that he was also a, a closeted gay man.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And, and, and I mean, it was obviously. Something he felt was a need to guard that as a secret, whatever the answer was. I mean, never, he never denied it or said affirmatively in any, in any way.
YOUNG: Yeah. And I think a lot of these guys sort of have this [00:18:00] personal philosophy of like, this is my private business.
And it doesn't really bear upon my public life. And of course, that's a sort of conservative worldview, right? That aligns with a larger conservative politics. But certainly I think was, and that again is a position that a lot of gay men had regardless of their politics for much of the 20th century.
It's just one that had, I think, Had less and less purchase on a lot of gay people's lives as we move into like the 70s and the 80s. But for these right of center conservative folks, I think it aligned with sort of traditional or conservative notions about like public versus private.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah. And.
Yeah. And you don't talk too much about this or maybe at all. I guess you don't, I don't think in the book, but like the part of the, perhaps part of the, the turn against communism or leftism on the part of Liebman and some of these other guys might have been the fact that Joseph Stalin criminalized homosexuality.
Yeah, absolutely. In fact, Conducted a pretty extensive persecution of gays within the Soviet Union as well, including putting them in concentration camps.
YOUNG: Yeah, I mean, that certainly wasn't what they were publicly arguing as a chief reason to oppose communism, right? But I do think it actually, shaped a lot of their thoughts.
And someone like Liebman, who actually was, a member of the Communist Party USA, he says in his memoir that that was sort of his one objection to communism when he was, a full fledged member of the party was its, opposition to homosexuality. And often when he was a teenager and he was coming in to the city and to Manhattan from his Brooklyn home to, Purportedly go to these communist party meetings in midtown Manhattan.
He actually wouldn't go to the meetings. He would instead go to, like, the department store bathrooms at Macy's and other places where he knew, homosexual men met up. And [00:20:00] so, He was sort of already leading this, I think it's just worth remembering that, people were living all sorts of divided lives and it wasn't because they were Republican.
It was because they lived in a time in which homosexuality, no matter what sort of community or what sort of politics you were associated with was, frowned upon or, or worse. And so, so that was definitely the case for Liebman. And I think in the example of some of the other folks they're anti communism.
Part of what they thought was they had to defeat this threat to freedom. And if they did that, then maybe eventually things in the U. S. would be different as well, including around questions of sexuality. Yeah,
SHEFFIELD: yeah. And, and it is interesting, those social conservative views that were prevalent in the Soviet Union during so and so.
Mm hmm. They're kind of, they, they're echoing in the present day now, actually, when you look at some people who call themselves tankies, quote, unquote, that they have in many cases, some of the spillover that happens and, people have this idea of horseshoe theory and whatnot. So whether that's true or not, but it is.
The case that for several of these people who have flip flopped from, identify calling themselves communist or whatever, and then now saying that they're pro Trump and they love fascism. The one thing that a lot of them have in common is that they hate LGBTQ. Um, And this same idea of, degeneracy, quote unquote, it never fully went away on the, on the extreme left, because, everything has to be about economics and the class struggle. And so, talking about sexual liberation or the freedom to live your personal life, that's a distraction. It's wrong.
YOUNG: Right. Yeah, I think especially when sexual, sexuality and sexual identity is tied to notions of personal freedom, the politics of that become pretty complex, or at least that we can see sort of a far right and a far [00:22:00] left having having sort of objections to that, or having a politics that sort of brings them in alignment even if they can't see, even if like they wouldn't see themselves as allies in any way.
I mean, one of the like wonderful challenges of this book was, and I didn't anticipate this when I started it, was there were too many people for me to write about and so, I mean, there's lots of like out gay Republicans and out gay conservatives that I just didn't get to include in this book because you have to, make some decisions there.
And so, that was the case for again, people who are publicly out. And then there were lots of folks who were in the closet, or I assumed were in the closet. And I could only selectively write about some of them. But it was a good problem to have. And certainly when I was starting out for this project and worried about the opposite situation.
I'm not having enough to enough to write about. That, that was definitely not the case.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. No, there, there is just a lot. And one of the other kind of in these earlier years before the, the rise of the evangelical, right. There, there, I think there was more of a, A freedom of movement.
Paradoxically, even though society as a whole was much more repressive toward homosexuality, the Republican party was not run by, basically confederate Christians. And so, so now it's much more difficult to be a gay Republican nowadays, I think in some ways. And we'll, we can get into that later, but I mean, just keep it to the current The older period.
I'm sorry.
YOUNG: No, but I think again, that's why I wanted to start the book as early as I did in the 1950s because, really a question that I was sort of writing against or this sort of overwhelming assumption that I knew is out there and that I had to tackle is, is this question of like, why would any gay person belong to the Republican party?
And I think, anyone sitting here [00:24:00] today, like, That's an understandable question and understandable assumption given, the last couple of decades of history, but I, and in order to, to really confront that question, again, I wanted to start at a time and place when it didn't make any more sense to be a gay Republican than it made sense to be a gay Democrat, that both parties were inhospitable to the homosexual.
And so that one wasn't, Aligned with either party because of their sexual identity, but in spite of it and to start at that point, so then you can see how history is evolving within both parties, how things are changing and how that sort of decision in that calculation really changes over time.
Ronald Reagan's more libertarian term as California governor
YOUNG: But one of the things that I found really interesting was in writing in the 1970s which is when in the late 1970s is when the first gay Republican organizations Begin these early grassroots groups that ultimately in 1990 coalesce into the national organization known as log cabin Republicans, which is the oldest and largest gay Republican organization in the country.
But that starts from all these grassroots groups that start springing up in California in 1977, 1978, in response to a ballot initiative on in the state that would have made it illegal for any gay person to work in the public school system. And all these gay people and the Republican Party in California start organizing these grassroots groups to fight back against the Briggs Initiative.
That's what the, the, the Bell Initiative was called, Proposition 6, and also to ensure that the Republican Party continue to be the party that they believed in, that they believed was the sort of it's historic commitment to issue to things like freedom, equality, liberty and it was fascinating to look at this organization moment of these groups and the things that they were saying in their meetings where they were basically like, who are these Bible beaters that are trying to come into our political party and take it over?
And as someone who wrote my first book about the [00:26:00] rise of the religious, right. It's, I think it's often hard to imagine and to remember a Republican party that isn't controlled by white evangelicals, even as a historian who spent a lot of time, writing a book project to show that that wasn't an inevitable development.
So to, to be in the 1970s and to see these guys saying like, This is our political party. This is our, we are the best embodiment of conservatism and republicanism, right? Who better than us who wants the government out of our life in every form, out of our wallet, out of our bedroom. We are the true embodiment of a libertarian, freedom oriented entrepreneurial spirit like Republican Republican politics and these Bible beaters who want to moralize and to bring their, their ideas about morality into the public square.
They aren't conservatives. They aren't Republicans. And I love seeing that at work, in their minds and in their organizational strategy, strategies in the late seventies and also knowing. What else, what, what more is going to happen and how history is going to shift so much in the coming years.
It was sort of fascinating just to, to observe and to think about the Republican party through the vantage point of these gay Republicans.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and it's, and that struggle is one that really did continue from that moment, in, into the present and I mean, and it, but it, and it's something that distinction you're making there, it is one that I think a lot of people don't get that these Bible thumping evangelicals who came in and took over the party, they weren't conservative.
In fact, they were. Reactionaries, like reactionaries, conservative is somebody who wants to, keep things the same basically. And a reactionary wants to roll them back and to some halcyon day of your whatever that might happen to be [00:28:00] is different. But yeah,
YOUNG: and also to use the federal government for expansive purposes.
I mean, this is one of the arguments gay Republicans make. In the late seventies about the Briggs initiative. And this is how they actually bring Ronald Reagan over to stating his opposition to the Briggs initiative. In 1978, Reagan obviously was the former governor of California. Everyone knows he's about to run for president in 1980.
This huge figure, both in California and in national politics and gay Republicans make this argument and they're sort of public campaigning against the Briggs initiative and also. They make it this argument to Reagan and Reagan echo, voices this in an editorial that's huge, has a huge impact on on the Briggs initiative being defeated at the ballot box that year, but their argument is if something like this is created, if the Briggs initiative passes, This will create an enormous federal bureaucracy whose job will be to surveil its citizens to determine whether or not they are homosexual and to, root them out of their jobs.
And that's a huge expansion of government power. That's an abuse of and a bureaucratic use of government. And also it's going to. Take people out of their professions and we shouldn't be, we shouldn't be harming people's professional careers as Republicans. And so there were all sorts of ways they made these conservative arguments against the social conservative model of how.
The religious right wanted government to be used that again, had a lot of effectiveness in these early years. Ultimately they, they don't win because they don't have the numbers. I mean, religious conservatives take over the party because there's, there's more of them. But it was interesting and fascinating to watch the gay Republicans making these conservative arguments against the religious right types who they saw as reactionary and as not conservative in terms of how they anticipated and plan to use government power.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, [00:30:00] yeah, no, exactly. And I mean, and this is unfortunately one of many stories, though, in which the more moderate Republicans became overwhelmed by the reaction. I mean, that, that is the story of the Republican party beginning in the mid 20th century that happens every few years, uh, into all of them.
And. But, but they, they never seem to learn, they don't know their own history and so that the more moderate ones never band together or, try to create some sort of alternative media. I mean, like that's, that is the thing is that in the Republican party, all of the media is on the far right.
There isn't, any sort of gravitational center pole. And so these conversations just are never had anymore. Like they were in the, in that 20th century or let's say let's say maybe 1970s up until the nineties. Like, everything kind of ended maybe at least in terms of the philosophical debates.
Yeah. And then, think other things were details. All right. Well, so yeah, and you mentioned Reagan.
Terry Dolan and the gay DC Republican subculture
SHEFFIELD: So, I mean, yeah, Reagan is interesting, I think, because as a governor, he. And not just on, on that issue, but also on abortion there were some, he, he did start off as more libertarian oriented compared to where he ended up obviously flip flopped on abortion as well once he became the president yeah, and so, but, he also did know, he, he, his rise was also related or somebody who was, who was Involved very heavily in that from also fundraising standpoint was Terry Dolan.
Yeah, let's talk about him if we can.
YOUNG: Yeah. So Terry Dolan was enormously important figure especially on the far right, and grassroots organizing and a closeted homosexual also his brother, Tony Dolan worked in Reagan's White House as a speech writer, but in the 1970s Terry Dolan helped found one of the most important organizations of the conservative movement [00:32:00] NCPAC the National Conservative Political Action Conference and in partnership with Jesse Helms and other figures on the far right.
And this was really about, in the 1970s, sort of bringing together a national network of grassroots conservatives. And Really mostly on social issues. Things like anti busing pro school prayer anti abortion was really taking shape in the 1970s as a sort of, as a, as a politics. And certainly something that was organizing grassroots conservatives across the country.
And Dolan Along with other, conservative figures in this period, really masterminded direct mail as a way of mobilizing millions and millions of Americans into conservative activism and into supporting the Republican party. And ultimately also in supporting Reagan's rise to the nomination in 1980, Dolan as a closeted homosexual, didn't want his organization to, you really do much about, I mean, he really tried to keep the organization away from, from talking too much about homosexuality.
But it was, it was in the, the sort of group of issues that was important to this organization and important to mobilizing social conservatives in this period. And So he, he's, he's a huge figure and the rise of a far right conservatism in the seventies and the 1980s.
And he contracts HIV, AIDS and, and dies I believe in 1990, so somewhere around the late eighties or 1990. And some of his friends out him once he's and the Washington Post does as well. There's reports about him being having been a homosexual when he does die and that he dies of HIV A's and his family gets especially his brother, Tony Dolan has a lot to say about that because they say, well, They never really officially recognized that that's what he died of, and they even go on to say that he may have been homosexual, but he had renounced that on his deathbed.
But anyway, he's [00:34:00] a he's a really fascinating figure. One that I think gives us another example of a closeted person who's hugely influential on the right. And who unlike a lot of the other people who I'm writing about who are trying to sort of push the Republican Party in a more moderate direction, he very much is about pulling the Republican Party in a much more far right direction through this period.
SHEFFIELD: Hmm. Yeah. And I mean, and what's your take on whether, how he, Reconcile that with his homosexuality.
YOUNG: Well, he was an interesting figure because he was someone who would spend all day in his office sending out these, direct mailers about, the, the threat of abortion on the nation and then go to a gay bar that night.
And and it was sort of known within Washington gay circles that. He was gay. And again, I think in the 70s and even into the 80s, a lot of people were living these sorts of lives where what they did during the day didn't necessarily connect to or, didn't have caused them the question of what they were doing at night or vice versa.
I'm not sure exactly how he reconciled it other than I think he lived a really bifurcated life and his and that was true and sort of how he conducted his life. And I think it might have been true and how he sort of thought about it in his mind. Like I said, he didn't want the organization to focus on.
Anti gay efforts. And there had only been like one mailer that his organization sent out that was ever, about the homosexual threat to the nation. And I, he said that he didn't even realize that that mailer had been developed. I don't think there's any way. That as the head of this organization, and it was a pretty small organization at the time in terms of its office, that he would have been unaware.
But I interpreted that more as sort of an obligatory nod he gave to the anti or excuse me, the anti gay politics of the era to sort of like cover [00:36:00] his bases and probably also to, ward off suspicion about who he was. But he certainly didn't want the organization or, or the conservative movement to to focus on anti gay politics.
And I think it's one of those really interesting things in this period where you have a lot of gay Republicans who are really involved in, or at least supportive of the anti abortion politics that are taking shape in this period, and also sort of privately saying to themselves, Well, the government or the, the conservative movement shouldn't be developing an anti gay politics because really we should have bodily autonomy and personal freedom and the way that they could, say that about abortion or, or, or have that view and not have it.
Change their thoughts about, the abortion issue, even as they thought about what it meant for their own lives. I think it speaks to the way a lot of these guys compartmentalize both themselves and their politics throughout this period.
How concerns about a possible "gay gene" motivated some activists against abortion rights
SHEFFIELD: I'm glad you mentioned the abortion question for a lot of these gay Republicans, especially in this time period. And, even now I hear it sometimes in the things that they say, like with the.
One of their favorite arguments to make is that if there is a gay gene and abortion is legal, then gay people will be aborted. That is an argument that I have heard a lot from them, and so that's why they agree. For some of them, that is why they think abortions should be illegal.
YOUNG: And actually, that was really prominent in the 1990s.
I don't write about this in the book because this is another thing that I just didn't have the room to include. And maybe I'll do a standalone piece about it at some point because it was a fascinating history to uncover. In the 1990s, there was all this sort of speculation that science was about to reveal the gay gene.
