Homophobe Rand Paul says gay CDC official's 'lifestyle' made him unfit to be in government

Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official who resigned last week over the anti-science policies of Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is unfit to be in government because of his “lifestyle,” U.S. Sen. Rand Paul said Tuesday.

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Daskalakis is gay and has sometimes posed in leather gear for photos, also showing off his tattoos.

He “describes the risky behavior that he and his lifestyle involve,” Paul, a far-right Republican from Kentucky, told The Hill.

“A guy that is so far … out of the mainstream, I think most people in America would discount his opinion because of the things he said in the past. He does not represent the mainstream of anything in America,” Paul added.

Daskalakis was director of the CDC’s Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases until he delivered his resignation letter last Wednesday. The next day, he was “very respectfully” escorted out of the CDC building in Atlanta, he told The Advocate, along with two others who resigned, Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry and Director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases Daniel Jernigan.

“I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health,” Daskalakis wrote in his scathing resignation missive. "I find that the views [RFK Jr.] and his staff have shared challenge my ability to continue in my current role at the agency and in the service of the health of the American people. Enough is enough."

He condemned the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Kennedy and of which the CDC is a part, for sidelining career scientists, withholding data, and dictating immunization schedules that he said “threaten the lives of the youngest Americans and pregnant people.” The Food and Drug Administration has limited the eligibility for COVID-19 vaccines almost exclusively to seniors and those with serious underlying health conditions like asthma or obesity.

Related: Health officials and experts praise CDC’s Demetre Daskalakis for standing up in blistering resignation

HHS has also scaled back HIV prevention efforts, smoking cessation programs, and tracking of food safety concerns, while Kennedy has questioned vaccine efficacy and spread conspiracy theories. “The CDC you knew is over,” Daskalakis told The Advocate. “Unless someone takes radical action, there is nothing there that can be salvaged.”

But for homophobes like Paul, the primary issue is Daskalakis’s so-called lifestyle. For the record, any kind of sexual contact can spread infections — or be prevented from spreading infections through use of prevention drugs (pre-exposure prophylaxis) or use of condoms.

Paul isn’t the only right-winger who’s criticizing Daskalakis. Republican U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter of Georgia called him a “BDSM Satan worshipper” in an appearance on CNN Sunday.

Some critics have pointed to Daskalakis’s pentagram tattoo as a sign of satanism. "I am certainly not a satanist," he told The Advocate in 2022. He told Politico the same year, “I wish I were that interesting.” He noted that he also has a tattoo of Jesus Christ, reflecting his upbringing in the Greek Orthodox Church.

Daskalakis joined the CDC in 2020, initially as director of the Division of AIDS Prevention, after being deputy commissioner for the Division of Disease Control at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. He also led the federal government’s response to the mpox outbreak in 2022.

There are other gay men in the federal government, even under Trump, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. No word on whether Paul considers him unfit to serve.