Gay sex and
political scandals

1964 Walter Jenkins, President Lyndon B. Johnson's chief of staff, is arrested on a "morals" charge: oral sex with another man in a YMCA bathroom two blocks from his White House office. He resigns a week later when the story becomes public.

1978 New York Democratic congressman Fred Richmond apologizes for "bad judgments" after his arrest for soliciting sex from a 16-year-old boy. Charges are dropped after he seeks counseling; he is later reelected three more times.

1980 Maryland GOPer Robert Bauman, "pro-family" and antigay, loses reelection to the U.S. House a month after admitting that alcoholism and "homosexual tendencies" led him to solicit a 16-year-old boy for sex.

1981 Mississippi Republican Jon Hinson resigns from Congress after pleading no contest to charges of attempted "oral sodomy" in a House bathroom.

1983 Facing punishment from Congress for a 1973 relationship with a 17-year-old male page, Rep. Gerry Studds of Massachusetts comes out. Though censured, the Democrat is reelected six more times before retiring in 1996.

1989 The Bush administration is caught amid controversy after a federal investigation reveals GOP lobbyist Craig Spence took male prostitutes on a late-night tour of the White House. In November, Spence commits suicide in a Boston hotel.

1990 The U.S. House reprimands but does not censure out gay Democratic representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts after it surfaces that a hustler he had hired in the mid 1980s had run a prostitution service from Frank's home.

2003 Brent Parker of Utah's house of representatives resigns while facing charges that he offered to hire an undercover male officer, who was posing as a hustler.

2004 New Jersey governor James McGreevey, a Democrat, resigns and comes out, acknowledging a gay affair. His lover, said to be Golan Cipel, allegedly sought to extort millions from him, though the governor procured numerous private- and public-sector jobs for Cipel.

2004 Facing allegations that he used a gay phone personals service, conservative Republican congressman Ed Schrock of Virginia announces he will not run for a third term.

2005 Jeff Gannon (ne James D. Guckert) gives up his White House press pass and resigns from his post as a writer for a partisan blog site owned by a GOP activist, after liberal bloggers reveal his past as an escort.

2005 Spokane, Wash., mayor Jim West is recalled by voters from office after being accused of enticing young men on Gay.com with offers of internships and other favors.

2006 Dallas candidate Tom Malin admits to having been an escort until 2001. On March 7, he loses his bid for the Democrat nomination for a seat in the Texas legislature.