Gay Army Black Hawk pilot Chris Gallant won’t let old fetish photos define his run for Congress

When the photographs resurfaced, Chris Gallant paced. The Army Black Hawk pilot, volunteer firefighter, and former air traffic controller from New York had built his congressional campaign around a lifetime of being useful. Now, images from his past threatened to become the only thing strangers knew about him.

“When this whole thing first dropped though, my heart sank,” he tells The Advocate.

He contacted people. He assembled a team. He talked through what to do. Then he concluded that, as he describes it, would turn an attempted humiliation into a declaration of self-possession.

“I am going to be who I am. I’m not ashamed of who I am,” he says.

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Gallant, 37, is the Democrat challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Nick LaLota in New York’s 1st Congressional District on Long Island. His campaign has become a test of whether an out gay candidate can bring his whole life into public service without allowing his sexuality to swallow everything else he has done.

Chris Gallant for Congress

As The Advocate reported in September, the New York Post published old photographs of Gallant modeling for fetish retailer Mr. S Leather. His attorney said the shoot involved his then-partner, that selected images had been authorized for product promotion, and that the retailer later honored his request to remove them. Gallant publicly refused to abandon the race.

That defiance has a quieter foundation. He spent years finding communities where people depended on him and accepted him.

As a child, he wanted to join the fire department. As a volunteer, he found a place where people with different trades helped one another, friendships lasted, and service created a second family.

“It’s a community,” he says.

The military offered another. He enlisted as a teenager, drawn toward service in the years after September 11. He trained as an Army air traffic controller, studied the field in college, and landed a job with the Federal Aviation Administration. After a break in military service, he returned because he missed it.

His path to the cockpit was less predetermined than his résumé suggests. Gallant was considering becoming an air traffic control warrant officer when a recruiter proposed flying Black Hawks. Eighteen months of school initially gave him pause. He went anyway and trained at Fort Rucker, Alabama, during the pandemic.

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He describes two deployments and work as a safety officer at New York’s Javits Center during the COVID-19 response. He says what stays with him is the opportunity to help and the people alongside him.

By his first deployment in 2012, after the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” he could serve openly. He remembers commanders who accepted him and soldiers who looked up to him. He credits his family’s acceptance and the queer community he found around New York City and Fire Island with helping him feel secure in himself.

“I came to work to do my job, and that was what the important part was,” he says.

For Gallant, that acceptance was part of the trust service required. “If you’re going to go to battle with one another, I mean, you expect that the guy next to you has your back, and that’s always been the case.”

Politics introduced a different calculation. Early in the campaign, he says, he was advised that Instagram photographs of him in a Speedo could make him appear unserious. Even a swimsuit became something to weigh against his qualifications.

“I would rather have somebody who’s realistic, someone who’s an actual person,” he says.

Chris Gallant for Congress

He worries about younger prospective candidates who might decide public life is impossible because intimate photographs exist. He says a generation that grew up with camera phones will have to confront that possibility. He wants his response to running to be less frightening for someone else.

For Gallant, the vulnerability extends beyond photographs. His fiancé is deployed, and he recalls worrying about whether they would still be able to marry when he returned after the Supreme Court was asked to revisit marriage equality last fall.

“Are we going to be able to get married when you come home?” he remembers asking.

In November 2025, the Supreme Court declined to hear former Kentucky clerk Kim Davis’ appeal to overturn marriage equality. Obergefell v. Hodges remains intact.

Gallant wants voters to see someone waiting for a partner, imagining a future, and trying to make ordinary life more secure.

On the campaign trail, he says affordability and corruption dominate the conversation. He wants to end the war with Iran, bring troops home, and redirect resources toward needs at home. His vision of congressional service emphasizes answering constituents, listening to their problems, and showing up in the district.

The electoral obstacles remain substantial. The Cook Political Report rates the race solid Republican. Gallant says he has no internal polling. However, his optimism rests on conversations, including with Republicans who he says have offered support.

Away from campaigning, he loves fishing and being on the water. In winter, he skis. A former hockey player, he says he learned in Breckenridge, Colorado, and was tackling double-black-diamond runs by his second day. He would like to try skiing in Chile during the Northern Hemisphere’s summer.

Those pleasures belong to the same life as the uniforms, the relationship, and the photographs.

After the photos drew attention, he says his team found a way to laugh. Then he went back to campaigning. About a week later, he was holding another town hall.

“I just want to be authentically myself,” he says.