--- title: How the First Congressman to Come Out as Gay Won Re-Election description: Rep. Gerry Studds came out 40 years ago with a speech on the House floor. Rep. Barney Frank said it affected his own coming out. canonical: https://time.com/6282755/first-gay-congressman-gerry-studds/ author: Olivia B. Waxman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-06-01T11:00:12.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:51:11.443Z article:section: History og:title: The First Congressman to Come Out as Gay Won Re-Election og:description: 40 years ago, Gerry Studds became the first member of Congress to come out as gay. He then repeatedly won re-election og:url: https://time.com/6282755/first-gay-congressman-gerry-studds/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9fead8d119f847d4/698a3d5a457a5202ead67a47/gerry-studds.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Studds Adresses State House In Boston In 1985 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The First Congressman to Come Out as Gay Won Re-Election twitter:description: 40 years ago, Gerry Studds became the first member of Congress to come out as gay. He then repeatedly won re-election twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9fead8d119f847d4/698a3d5a457a5202ead67a47/gerry-studds.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How Congressman Gerry Studds Made History by Coming Out as Gay > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-sub-2026q3/newsletters?i=94d0727f-5394-40b5-a44c-184943a56431&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) * TIME Subscriptions: [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-sub-2026q3/subscribe?i=94d0727f-5394-40b5-a44c-184943a56431&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The History You Didn't Learn: The (Gay) Harlem Renaissance [Watch (HLS stream): The History You Didn't Learn: The (Gay) Harlem Renaissance](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/AU0yqsEi.m3u8) (4:59)  _Published 2021-10-08. Most people remember learning even a little bit about the Harlem Renaissance in school. Langston Hughes, blues, jazz-- an explosion of artistic talent. But what we don’t learn about is that Harlem was also a thriving gay community._  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Jun 1, 2023 11:00 AM UTC  Congressman Gerry Studds addresses a crowd at the State House in Boston on March 30, 1985. Congressman Gerry Studds addresses a crowd at the State House in Boston on March 30, 1985. Ted Dully/The Boston Globe—Getty Images  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Jun 1, 2023 11:00 AM UTC As Pride Month begins this June, the LGBTQ community can count among its achievements that the U.S. Congress has more openly gay members than ever before. Thirteen members of the 118th Congress identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual, including Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat who became the first openly gay U.S. Senator in 2013, and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona independent who is the first openly bisexual individual to serve in a chamber of Congress. Forty years ago, Democrat Gerry Studds helped pave the way for this historic representation by becoming the first member of Congress to come out as gay while in office. He went on to win re-election in his Massachusetts district for more than a decade after. Yet the unprecedented nature of his coming out was somewhat overshadowed by some unseemly details surrounding it. Studds, who was first elected to the House in 1972, represented Massachusetts’ conservative Cape Cod and island regions. He was first motivated to run for office because he was an ardent opponent of the Vietnam War. But his tenure was marred with scandal. Shortly after arriving in Washington D.C., Studds initiated a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old page that included a two-week trip to Portugal. While the relationship was considered inappropriate, the page later described it as consensual, explaining to [congressional investigators ](https://www.upi.com/Archives/1983/07/14/Pages-describe-sex-with-congressmen/8698427003200/)that Studds “did nothing to me which I would consider destructive or painful.” The news came out in the early 1980s during an investigation of another colleague’s indiscretions with a page. --- ### More from TIME --- For years, the playbook for a member of Congress navigating rumors that they had had a relationship with someone of the same sex was to either deny it or describe it as a mistake. Studds did not choose either of those options. On July 14, 1983, he gave a speech on the House floor making his sexual orientation clear: --- > “” --- It was a risky move. Back then, “no Congressman had survived a public revelation of their homosexuality,” according to [James Kirchick](https://time.com/6182205/gay-history-secret-city-washinton-kirchick/), author of _Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington._ The U.S. House of Representatives censured Studds for his relationship with a congressional page, stripping him of committee chairmanships—in Studds’ case, his position as head of a House subcommittee overseeing the Coast Guard. In the aftermath of his announcement, it was an open question whether Studds could survive politically, particularly in a conservative district that Ronald Reagan had won with 55% support. “There was just a lot of fear in the country, a lot of prejudice surrounding the AIDS crisis,” says Kirchick, who noted that the Cold War also played a role in fueling homophobia. “There was this fear that gay people could not be trusted with national security secrets because they can be blackmailed—even though there was not a single example of a gay person being blackmailed into giving secrets to a foreign power.” But neither his outing himself nor the censure from his colleagues tanked Studds’ political career. He not only won re-election from his conservative district in 1984, but continued to do so for 13 years, until his retirement in 1997. Jane Carlee, one of his constituents from Nantucket, Mass. explained why she was standing by him in a Letter to the Editor published in the Aug. 14, 1983, issue of TIME magazine: “As one of Congressman Gerry Studds’ constituents, I can explain why we are ‘surprisingly supportive’ of him. No Representative has done so much to protect our environment or shown so much respect for our wishes.” The controversy over Studds struck a chord with a fellow gay colleague in the Massachusetts delegation, Barney Frank. They represented adjoining districts, and Frank explained to TIME in a recent phone conversation that the two men would talk about “what it was like being a closeted member of Congress.” Frank says he had wanted to come out publicly around the same time Studds did, but Studds’ page scandal prompted him to put it off for four years. “I postponed my coming out. I wanted to wait ’til he got re-elected and that \[scandal\] was no longer an issue.” Frank came out publicly in 1987. “We were both frankly pleasantly surprised that we did as well as we did afterwards,” says Frank. Their continued electoral successes after coming out were, to Frank, “the first indications that America was not as homophobic as people thought they were supposed to be.” Studds died in 2006 at the age of 69 from a blood clot in his lung. If Studds were alive today, Frank imagines that he would be heavily involved in climate change policy, given he was known for his key role in protecting the Cape Cod seashore. And he believes being openly gay is an asset for politicians, citing 2020 presidential candidate and Secretary of Transportation [Pete Buttigieg](https://time.com/longform/pete-buttigieg-2020/). As he jokes, “By the time I retired in 2012, being gay was much more socially acceptable than being a congressman.” ## Transcript Some of the ways that we understand American gay  history is through the the Stonewall Uprising as   a before and after, right? But I think before  Stonewall there was this incredible moment of   gay liberation, queer liberation,  Black liberation in the 20s in Harlem. Most people remember learning about the Harlem  Renaissance in school: Langston Hughes, blues,   jazz-- an explosion of artistic talent. But what  we don't learn about is that Harlem was also a   thriving gay community. So the way that Harlem  became a haven for LGBT life is the way that it became a haven for Black people from all over  the world, really. It became this crossroads, right? And a big part of this is the Great Migration  which obviously meant that a lot of Black   people came came North especially to cities that  are now considered Black cities like Chicago   and in Harlem in New York City. It was known at  the time as the Black mecca, right? And so it was   in some ways the largest black city in the  world. And it did of course include a lot of   energy and excitement, cabaret, blues, jazz,  so it really was in some ways a crossroads of   all of these different artistic and musical and  cultural energies. A lot of white patrons would   go to Harlem to quote-unquote "slum" because  the mores were much more relaxed, and especially   during the prohibition era, a lot of these were  in some ways uh you know speakeasies. Vices flourished in Harlem because African Americans  did not have the political power to be able to   demand that government keep these things out  of their neighborhood, and the corruption of the   police and the judges all of that enabled gay  activity as well as all kinds of other activity   to thrive in Harlem. A lot of the reasons that a lot of black folks came to Harlem was because they weren't allowed to be in other parts of the  city, and so again it's a paradoxical form   of freedom that's that's based out of you know  legal economic and political disenfranchisement   to this day when people study the Harlem  Renaissance they often don't consider the LGBTQ aspects of it and part of that is because many  of the gay writers did not actually identify as gay. And Langston Hughes is a wonderful figure in the  in this era because he's considered somewhat queer   but he was never fully out politically  whereas Richard Bruce Nugent is the poster boy   for someone who was unashamedly out and there certainly are many jazz figures who were gay Gladys Bentley was notorious for  wearing men's clothing in public. I think she   would be what we would call a butch lesbian. And  she wore a white tuxedo and she played with gender   There was also of course the drag ball scene  in Harlem which not everyone talks about that's   that goes all the way back to the 20s in Harlem,  and so it was quite a free time and ironically   that freedom of sexual expression as well  as gender fluidity really petered out. The great depression is is said to have caused the  the downfall of the of the Harlem Renaissance   as well as the increasing conservatism in  American culture after the second world war   That conservatism is one of the reasons the Harlem  Renaissance isn't remembered as a time of gay liberation. So there was a retrospective closeting  so to speak of these figures. The consequences of   not teaching the period of the Harlem renaissance  as being inherently queer is that queerness   remains white in the cultural imaginary because  we don't have this story of Black queerness. I think a lot of people talk about the stonewall  rebellion in 1969 and a lot of us are trying to   re-understand it as being centered on trans women  and trans women of color, and in a sense it's a   similar story where a lot of the black and brown  um queer people were the ones who were at the   forefront of this movement. And so it's important  to uncover this history to again recover these   ancestors who really led the charge and try  to un-forget all the liberation that they created. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6282755/first-gay-congressman-gerry-studds/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6282755/first-gay-congressman-gerry-studds/"},"headline":"How Congressman Gerry Studds Made History by Coming Out as Gay","datePublished":"2023-06-01T11:00:12.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:51:11.443Z","description":"Rep. Gerry Studds came out 40 years ago with a speech on the House floor. Rep. 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