Rumors of Rick Perry’s past homosexual activity have resurfaced in a new book by Texas Democrat Glen Maxey, the first openly gay member of the Texas State Legislature. Maxey presents evidence and first hand accounts of Perry’s extra-marital sexual activity with men.
On Sunday, Out Smart, Houston’s gay, lesbian, bi and trans magazine, ran an interview with Maxey, author of the new book: Head Figure Head: The Search for the Hidden Life of Rick Perry. The book offers several first hand accounts of alleged sexual encounters with Perry - one from a male prostitute, and another from a man responding to a Craig’s List ad. In addition, the book investigates a multitude of rumors and allegations circulating in Texas for decades concerning Perry’s alleged homosexual activity.
Over the course of my efforts to discover Rick Perry’s secret homosexual past, I learned a lot about not only many of his alleged former partners, but also the difficulty in exposing them to the wider public—particularly in a state where so many individuals’ jobs and livelihoods depend on not incurring the wrath of Texas’s longest-serving governor and his massive network of cronies, appointees, and henchmen.
Maxey, former Texas legislator and longtime Democratic activist, claims he has known about Perry’s covert homosexual activity for 20 years. However, Maxey only felt the need to reveal Perry’s homosexual predilections after Perry began to “cozy up to bigots and right-wing, foaming-at-the-mouth, religious-right homophobes” while making his 2012 presidential bid.
By accusing Perry of appealing to “bigots and right-wing, foaming-at-the-mouth, religious-right homophobes,” Maxey may have been referring to a controversial television ad released by the Perry campaign last month. In the much maligned television ad Perry claims that:
There’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military...
To be clear, Perry is wrong. There is nothing wrong with gays serving openly in the military. There is nothing wrong with anyone being openly gay. There is nothing undesirable or otherwise odious with anyone engaging in homosexual behavior.
However, there is something wrong when a public figure like a politician advocates in public for anti-gay policies while privately engaging in homosexual activity. The moral hypocrisy and duplicity of such a position warrants public attention and merits serious scrutiny.
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