Open the closets on Capitol Hill | Salon.com
“Silence about gay politicians is a relic of an era when gayness meant secrecy and shame. It’s a disservice to gay people, to voters, and to the politicians themselves.
By Louis Bayard
Photo by
Kelly Owen/Zuma Press

Mark Foley at a Palm Beach County, Fla., fundraiser.
Oct. 7, 2006 | In 1960, when Gore Vidal ran for Congress, his Republican opponent tried to spread word that Vidal was a homosexual. This was not, strictly speaking, news. Vidal had written one of the first explicitly gay novels in American …