Self-loathing closet cases who bilk taxpayers to lavish international trips on their boy toys must be outed

The former Congressman who is under indictment for various financial shenanigans is in the news again: Former Rep. Aaron Schock Furious After Feds Ask If He’s Gay And If That’s Really His “Girlfriend”. And Shock’s lawyers are asking to have his 24-count indictment for financial wrongdoing tossed out because of asking about the gay questions: Aaron Schock lawyers seek dismissal over ‘prosecutorial misconduct’. There are many big problems with this, only one of them being this: among the financial improprieties the former Congressman (and almost certainly self-loathing closet case) is charged with is using taxpayer money to pay for accomodation, first class international air travel tickets, and more for the unmarried hot young man who lived with him as a roommate for years and with whom Shock would pose in photographs as if he was a spouse.

As Joe Jervis over at JoeMyGod.com observed, “investigators are trying to determine, among other things, if his traveling companions were legitimate staffers or, you know, his boyfriend(s).”

On one of those taxpayer funded trips Congressman Shock had this guy who was listed as a staff photographer (but he never took pictures) put in a hotel room with a door adjoining his, get upgrades and other things using programs that are usually meant for spouses, and so on. Those are among the many, many, many reasons that everyone with a lick of sense has been saying for years that the Congressman who pushed lots of anti-gay legislation when he was in office and made speeches saying the employers should be able to fire people who they even suspect might possibly be gay (and that landlords should have the right to evict tenants simply because the landlord suspects they might be gay, et cetera) is probably a closeted gay man. So the exact relationship between Shock and this string of good-looking unmarried “roommates” that Shock kept in his multiple extremely expensive homes is quite relevant to some of the financial shenanigans under investigation.

It’s not just the former Congressman’s fashion choices. It’s not just the fact that at one point his personal Twitter account and Instagram account was following hundreds of gay models and male athletes who were always known for posting pictures of themselves scattily clad (and then unfollowing those hundreds of accounts en mass when a major news site finally mentioned the gay rumors). It’s not just the years of being unmarried and wealthy but always having unmarried male “roommates.” It’s not about the adjoining hotel rooms with the unmarried male roommate while traveling. It’s not about the way when he was walking around a gay neighborhood during Pride week with reporters where he was supposed to be talking about some urban issues but he kept getting distracted on camera with his eyes following the hot shirtless men who walked by. It’s not about using an airline perk that is supposed to be reserved for spouses to get the unmarried male roommate/supposedly staff photographer moved up to First Class to sit with him. It’s not about his decorating choices. All of that smoke adds adds up to a something, yes.

And no, I and hundreds of other queer people aren’t being homophobic when we point all those things out. We’re not stereotyping him as a gay man, we’re stereotyping him as a self-loathing closet case. That is different.

But the two issues are: he was a public official who voted for and campaigned on anti-gay causes. He tried to make it legal for people to fire folks merely for being suspected of being gay. That means the moral and ethical imperative is to look into all this suspiciously gay behavior. So the Log Cabin Republicans are absolutely wrong (again) when they insist that outing is always wrong.

But yes, with all the financial crimes that he’s been indicted for, including spending taxpayer money to take a so-called staff photographer who acted like a boyfriend the entire trip and never took pictures, those questions are completely legitimate. If the guy went along because he was the Congressman’s boyfriend and didn’t perform any legitimate staff duties, then that was a misappropriation of funds. Lock him up!