The Plot to Out Ronald Reagan

The Plot to Out Ronald Reagan

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A group of Republicans tried to stymie what they alleged was a nefarious homosexual network within the campaign of their own party’s standard-bearer. More than 40 years later, the story can finally be told. With his new book, James Kirchick offers a window into an era when “the fear of homosexuality, or even the mere accusation of it, destroyed careers, ended lives, and induced otherwise decent people to betray colleagues and friends.” In this exclusive excerpt, he reveals the extent to which whisperings of a conspiracy from California to Washington, when met with political opportunism and overblown anxiety over the potential presence of gay people in positions of power, nearly altered the course of history.

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It was 3:15 on the morning of June 26, 1980, and Congressman Bob Livingston was extraordinarily drunk, hiding in the congressional gym beneath the Rayburn House Office Building, petrified that a team of highly trained right-wing homosexual assassins working on behalf of Ronald Reagan was about to kill him. To the extent that the Louisiana Republican is remembered today, it’s for the brief but sensational role he played in America’s most infamous political sex scandal. On the same day in December 1998 that Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about his affair with a White House intern, Livingston, then the House speaker-designate, shocked the nation with his own admission of adultery. Preempting a journalistic exposé that had dredged up evidence of his past relationships with women not his wife, he not only refused the speakership but announced his resignation from Congress altogether. What people don’t know is that nearly two decades before this bit part in the Clinton impeachment drama riveted the nation, Livingston was at the center of another scandal involving politicians and illicit sex, one that, in his own words, had the potential to be “world-shaking.” Most explosive about this whole terrible intrigue, and what tied it all together, was the nature of the sexual activity involved.

It's an interesting story of how Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign for President might have been short-circuited at the last minute by allegations of homosexuality in his campaign, and how it did prevent Jack Kemp from getting the vice-presidential nomination. The attempt to bring Reagan down was instigated by California Rep. Pete McCloskey, and was serious enough for Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee to send Bob Woodward and other top reporters on the trail of the story.

It's also an interesting insight into an era in which allegations of homosexuality were the kiss of death politically, and when there were still liberal and moderate wings of the GOP, and a guest appearance by Barry Goldwater.

It didn't succeed, but it could have changed history if it had.

via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/5Bx0Gt7