Op-ed: The Gay Tth About Ronald Reagan

Contents:

• ADAPTED OM SECRET CITY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON BY JAM KIRCHICK. PUBLISHED BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY. COPYRIGHT © 2022 BY JAM KIRCHICK. ALL RIGHTS RERVED.
• OP-ED: THE GAY TTH ABOUT RONALD REAGAN
• RON JR. ON THE RERD: THE SON OF RONALD REAGAN BREAKS HIS SILENCE REGARDG THE WHISPER MPAIGN THAT HE IS GAY.
• WHEN REAGAN SAID GAY
• HOMOSEXUALY AND GAY RIGHTS

ADAPTED OM SECRET CITY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON BY JAM KIRCHICK. PUBLISHED BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY. COPYRIGHT © 2022 BY JAM KIRCHICK. ALL RIGHTS RERVED.

It was 3:15 on the morng of June 26, 1980, and Congrsman Bob Livgston was extraordarily dnk, hidg the ngrsnal gym beneath the Rayburn Hoe Office Buildg, petrified that a team of highly traed right-wg homosexual assasss workg on behalf of Ronald Reagan was about to kill him. For most of the 20th century, the worst thg one uld possibly be Amerin polics was gay. The mere suatn of homosexualy was sufficient to stroy a polil reer, and thgs uld get particularly vic between traparty adversari.

While public attus have bee far more open, the suatn that someone is gay — whether te or not — remas a potent weapon (as elements of the mpaign agast North Carola Republin Rep. This acunt of the alleged “homosexual rg” that ntrolled Ronald Reagan, and the efforts to expose on the eve of the 1980 Republin Natnal Conventn that nomated him for the princy, is piled om terviews wh several of the survivg participants and documents unvered the papers of former Washgton Post Executive Edor Ben Bradlee. “That stuff, ” or what Kemp adviser Ju Wanniski termed “the homosexual thg, ” had dogged the upstate New York ngrsman and former profsnal football player sce the fall of 1967, when the syndited newspaper lumnists Drew Pearson and Jack Anrson published a piece lkg Kemp to a “homosexual rg” operatg wh Reagan’s gubernatorial office.

” The “slanr” and “old lumny” that the virile ex-football pro and father of four might be gay, journalists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak wrote at the time, was a “vic nard, ” the sort of “poisono” “garbage” one found “submerged the polil sewers” and other “gutter munitns” that “not only do gross jtice to their victims but also mean and pollute mocratic ernment. Behd those closed doors, McCloskey suggted strongly that the possibily of Kemp as a nng mate was proof that the “homosexual rg” around Reagan, long dismissed as mor, might be somethg all too real.

OP-ED: THE GAY TTH ABOUT RONALD REAGAN

Bt began llg him antilly to report that “homosexual people were very close to Reagan’s mpaign learship, ” that they were “nng” Reagan’s mpaign, and that “the suatn is absolutely out of ntrol.

RON JR. ON THE RERD: THE SON OF RONALD REAGAN BREAKS HIS SILENCE REGARDG THE WHISPER MPAIGN THAT HE IS GAY.

” It was not until a boozy lunch wh a man claimg to have been a “long time Reagan associate, ” however, that Bt found what he believed to be the “smokg gun” provg that Reagan was ntrolled by homosexuals. ” After hearg om Bt, McCloskey agreed that a Kemp nomatn would revive the 1967 “Sndal Sacramento, ” possibly leadg to revelatns about the other homosexuals Reagan’s orb and thereby imperilg the GOP ticket.

As far as homosexualy self was ncerned, McCloskey was more progrsive than the vast majory of his lleagu. As a lawyer Palo Alto the 1960s, he had reprented men arrted for homosexual solicatn, and when New York Rep.

WHEN REAGAN SAID GAY

Bella Abzug troduced the first bill Congrs prohibg discrimatn agast gay people, he was s only Republin sponsor.

“I am heterosexual, I thk, ” the quirky ngrsman told The Advote, a gay magaze, 1977. An Eisenhower-era executive orr barrg gay people om holdg feral ernment jobs (on the grounds that they were supposedly more sceptible to blackmail) had led to a purge of thoands of workers, and while the civil service lifted s ban 1975, gays were still prohibed om holdg secury clearanc (a rtrictn that would not be lifted until 1995).

HOMOSEXUALY AND GAY RIGHTS

“There is nothg herently wrong wh [homosexualy], ” McCloskey was later to wre, wh a veat, “ any office which do not have natnal secury rponsibili.

” And sce the alleged homosexuals Reagan’s orb were all closeted, they were prumably vulnerable to ducement by foreign powers. Over dner at The Palm, some five weeks after the exchange McCloskey’s office, Livgston apparently uld not get the salac stori volvg Kemp and the homosexual Reagan ais out of his md. ” At one pot, however, Bouchey might have volunteered the possibily that Kemp and Reagan himself had both engaged gay sex.

Livgston’s md began to procs the jumble of thgs he had seen and heard over the past few weeks: the long-standg mors about Kemp; the supposed gay work encirclg Reagan; McCloskey’s ntact who claimed that he, too, had been h on by gay Reagan; Bouchey’s ti to var Lat Amerin juntas and paraari.