Semafor: “The Senate sodomy scandal brings to mind the saga of former Rep. Jon Hinson, Republican of Mississippi. Running for reelection in 1980, Hinson made a stunning confession: Four years earlier, working as an aide to Rep. Thad Cochran, he had been arrested for solicitation at the Iwo Jima Memorial, then a popular gay cruising spot. And if that wasn’t shocking enough, Hinson also admitted to having narrowly survived a fire at a gay pornographic cinema in southeast D.C. in which nine men were killed. Hinson denied that he was gay or bisexual and managed to win reelection. In the words of one supporter, ‘some folks would rather have a queer conservative than a macho liberal.'”
“Alas, the tolerance of Hinson’s constituents for a ‘queer conservative’ would be exhausted just a few months later, when Hinson was arrested for administering oral sex to a Library of Congress employee in a Longworth House Office building bathroom. That the other man was Black did not help Hinson in his conservative southern constituency, and following a huge public outcry, he resigned.”
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