This is the legacy of Gerry Studds, the long-serving Massachusetts Democrat who was, for those who followed his lead, every bit the historical figure as the first gay athlete, movie star and politician, but is best known as the congressman censured by his own colleagues in 1983 for a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old male congressional page.
"I think that people in politics and especially people like me who are in politics and lived through that will remember him as being a real hero, because he was willing to be first," said Richard Socarides, a longtime Democratic operative who served as an adviser to President Bill Clinton for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues. "Even though he was forced into it a little bit by circumstances, I think that people think of him as a hero and someone we look up to and someone who was a trailblazer."
Looking back at Studds' story three decades later, Socarides and others marvel at the circumstances that surrounded it. Certainly, the congressman was chiefly responsible for the drama -- he admitted missteps, though insisted that his relationship with the page was consensual. But the turbulence that accompanied his coming out seems more like a relic of the past. Part of the reason Michael Sam's highly controlled outing portends a smooth breaking of NFL barriers, they argue, is because Studds forged the way.
"The single biggest reason why we have seen this erosion of homophobia very rapidly is because people have come out," said former Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), a onetime colleague of Studds who announced that he was gay years later. "The reality has eroded the prejudice."
Studds was not an unknown backbencher when it was revealed that he was gay. He had a long political lineage, played a prominent role on Eugene McCarthy's 1968 presidential campaign and was first elected to Congress in 1972.
His trajectory was disrupted in the summer of 1982, when two former congressional pages went to House leaders and charged that lawmakers had engaged in sexual relationships with members of the youth-volunteer program several years earlier. A yearlong investigation by the House Ethics Committee revealed that Studds and Rep. Dan Crane (R-Ill.) had been involved.
Crane had been caught with a 17-year-old female page. In Studds’ case, the report said he had invited a male page to his Georgetown home, plied him with vodka and told him he was too drunk to drive him back. The report also said that Studds took the page on a two-week trip to Portugal (which the congressman did not pay for with taxpayer funds). Notably, the report quoted the page saying that their relationship was consensual. With the age of consent in D.C. being 16, it was also legal.