National
Gay ex-congressman shuns politics in Florida
Robert Bauman, outed in 1980 sex scandal, lives quietly in Wilton Manors — and opposes same-sex marriage
Former U.S. Rep. Robert Bauman (photo courtesy of Bauman)
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Former U.S. Rep. Robert Bauman, a Republican who represented Maryland’s mostly rural Eastern Shore district from 1973 to 1981, was known at the time as a champion of conservative causes.
Today, more than 30 years after a gay sex scandal led to his ouster from office, he lives in the upscale gay enclave of Wilton Manors, a small city located just outside Fort Lauderdale.
In an interview with the Washington Blade on the eve of Florida’s Republican presidential primary, Bauman said he remains committed to conservative and libertarian principles but has shunned politics since 1982.
“I think both parties are miserable,” he said. “I don’t know what they stand for any more.”
Bauman added, “I think they mirror each other. I think they are both completely enthralled to Wall Street and the banks. I think they are controlled by the people that contribute money to them. And that goes for Obama and it goes for Gingrich.”
“The only thing you can say for Romney is that he’s rich enough that maybe he won’t be influenced by that,” said Bauman. “I hate to say it, but I think he’s probably the least influenced by them because of his religion.”
Bauman, an attorney, said he voted earlier this month for GOP presidential contender Ron Paul, the congressman from Texas, as a “protest vote.” He said Paul’s outspoken call for reforming the nation’s politics and economic policies represents a refreshing alternative to the other candidates, even though Bauman acknowledges some of Paul’s proposals are unrealistic.
When asked about former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, the fourth remaining contender in the GOP presidential race, Bauman shrugged and said he considered him “no better or no worse” than Romney or Gingrich.
Bauman noted that some people he knows who share his disappointment over the current state of U.S. politics no longer vote because they believe it “lends credence” to a lousy system.
“I don’t feel that way. I’ll keep fighting until I go,” he said.
In October 1980, then-U.S. Rep. Robert Bauman was widely believed to be the most conservative member of the House of Representatives.
Admirers and critics alike recognized him as an articulate and formidable opponent of the Democrats who controlled both Congress and the White House at the time.
But later that month, his status as a champion of conservative Republican causes and an admired husband and father of four children came crashing down. News surfaced that the FBI and D.C. police accused him of soliciting sex from a 16-year-old male prostitute who apparently used fake identification to land a job as a stripper in a D.C. gay bar called the Chesapeake House, the place where Bauman met him.
Just four weeks before Bauman was expected to win re-election to a fourth term in Congress by a lopsided margin, he pleaded “no contest” in federal court to a misdemeanor charge of solicitation for prostitution. Under a plea bargain arrangement for first-time offenders, authorities called for a sentence of just six months probation, with no jail time, after which the charge was dropped.
As an interesting aside, Bauman said he was represented in court by Baltimore attorney Tom O’Malley, the father of Maryland’s current governor, Martin O’Malley.
Following what Bauman has called a grueling four-week climax to his election campaign, in which longtime supporters turned against him, he lost his race for re-election to Democrat Roy Dyson.
At the urging of loyal supporters, Bauman threw his hat in the ring for a comeback in the 1982 election. But he was immediately challenged in the Republican primary by a former state senator who seized on the sex scandal that led to Bauman’s defeat two years earlier.
“It was almost totally a personal campaign based on what happened to me,” Bauman said. “And with three of my kids still living with me and my wife and I separating, I just said to myself, that’s enough, and I withdrew. And I almost won the primary six weeks after I withdrew. My name was still on the ballot.”
His opponent in the primary lost overwhelmingly to Dyson in the November election.
“So that was my last activity in politics,” Bauman said.
Over the next four years Bauman started a private law practice in Washington; worked briefly as a lobbyist for the newly created Gay Rights National Lobby, the forerunner to the Human Rights Campaign; and wrote a book called “The Gentleman from Maryland: The Conscience of a Gay Conservative.”
The book, published in 1986, has been praised by conservatives and liberals as an honest and painful account of Bauman’s struggle with his sexual orientation and alcoholism.
Shortly after his book was published Bauman moved to Florida to take a job as an attorney with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs office outside St. Petersburg. He said he left that job about a year later after deciding he was no longer interested in working within the federal bureaucracy.
He next went to work as a freelance writer and attorney for a libertarian-oriented publishing company called Agora Publications. In 1998 Bauman helped to found a subsidiary to the company called the Sovereign Society, which publishes email newsletters and books specializing in legal tax avoidance through the use of offshore investing.
“I write for them on a regular basis for their daily e-newsletter that goes out to more than 335,000 people,” he said. “And I write books. I’ve written five or six or more books on offshore financing and on places to invest off shore – asset protect –all of the things that Newt Gingrich has been railing against for the last few days,” he said.
Bauman takes strong exception to gay activists who accused him of pushing for anti-gay policies during his years in Congress. He said that with the exception of one vote — for a 1970s era amendment introduced by Rep. Larry McDonald (D-Ga.), which prohibited the U.S. Legal Services Administration from taking on gay rights cases — he never took a public position for or against gay rights.
“I was a closeted homosexual. Taking on gay rights issues was the last thing in the world I wanted to do,” he said.
Now, Bauman said he fully supports civil rights and full equality for gays and transgender people. But he said he isn’t ready to support legalization of same-sex marriage, a position he acknowledges will upset gay activists.
“I have never supported gay marriage,” he said. “To me, marriage is between a man and a woman. I don’t think you can replace centuries of religious tradition when it comes to marriage. It does not include two people of the same sex.”
He said he does support legal recognition of civil unions and domestic partnerships, saying same-sex couples joined in that form of legal relationship should be given all of the rights and benefits of marriage.
National
Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information
Crucial datasets included LGBTQ, HIV resources
Nine private medical and public health advocacy organizations, including two from D.C., filed a lawsuit on May 20 in federal court in Seattle challenging what it calls the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s illegal deletion of dozens or more of its webpages containing health related information, including HIV information.
The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, names as defendants Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS itself, and several agencies operating under HHS and its directors, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration.
“This action challenges the widespread deletion of public health resources from federal agencies,” the lawsuit states. “Dozens (if not more) of taxpayer-funded webpages, databases, and other crucial resources have vanished since January 20, 2025, leaving doctors, nurses, researchers, and the public scrambling for information,” it says.
“These actions have undermined the longstanding, congressionally mandated regime; irreparably harmed Plaintiffs and others who rely on these federal resources; and put the nation’s public health infrastructure in unnecessary jeopardy,” the lawsuit continues.
It adds, “The removal of public health resources was apparently prompted by two recent executive orders – one focused on ‘gender ideology’ and the other targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’) programs. Defendants implemented these executive orders in a haphazard manner that resulted in the deletion (inadvertent or otherwise) of health-related websites and databases, including information related to pregnancy risks, public health datasets, information about opioid-use disorder, and many other valuable resources.”
The lawsuit does not mention that it was President Donald Trump who issued the two executive orders in question.
A White House spokesperson couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit.
While not mentioning Trump by name, the lawsuit names as defendants in addition to HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., Matthew Buzzelli, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health; Martin Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; Thomas Engels, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration; and Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management.
The 44-page lawsuit complaint includes an addendum with a chart showing the titles or descriptions of 49 “affected resource” website pages that it says were deleted because of the executive orders. The chart shows that just four of the sites were restored after initially being deleted.
Of the 49 sites, 15 addressed LGBTQ-related health issues and six others addressed HIV issues, according to the chart.
“The unannounced and unprecedented deletion of these federal webpages and datasets came as a shock to the medical and scientific communities, which had come to rely on them to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, assist physicians and other clinicians in daily care, and inform the public about a wide range of healthcare issues,” the lawsuit states.
“Health professionals, nonprofit organizations, and state and local authorities used the websites and datasets daily in care for their patients, to provide resources to their communities, and promote public health,” it says.
Jose Zuniga, president and CEO of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC), one of the organizations that signed on as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement that the deleted information from the HHS websites “includes essential information about LGBTQ+ health, gender and reproductive rights, clinical trial data, Mpox and other vaccine guidance and HIV prevention resources.”
Zuniga added, “IAPAC champions evidence-based, data-informed HIV responses and we reject ideologically driven efforts that undermine public health and erase marginalized communities.”
Lisa Amore, a spokesperson for Whitman-Walker Health, D.C.’s largest LGBTQ supportive health services provider, also expressed concern about the potential impact of the HHS website deletions.
“As the region’s leader in HIV care and prevention, Whitman-Walker Health relies on scientific data to help us drive our resources and measure our successes,” Amore said in response to a request for comment from the Washington Blade.
“The District of Columbia has made great strides in the fight against HIV,” Amore said. “But the removal of public facing information from the HHS website makes our collective work much harder and will set HIV care and prevention backward,” she said.
The lawsuit calls on the court to issue a declaratory judgement that the “deletion of public health webpages and resources is unlawful and invalid” and to issue a preliminary or permanent injunction ordering government officials named as defendants in the lawsuit “to restore the public health webpages and resources that have been deleted and to maintain their web domains in accordance with their statutory duties.”
It also calls on the court to require defendant government officials to “file a status report with the Court within twenty-four hours of entry of a preliminary injunction, and at regular intervals, thereafter, confirming compliance with these orders.”
The health organizations that joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs include the Washington State Medical Association, Washington State Nurses Association, Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Academy Health, Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, Fast-Track Cities Institute, International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, National LGBT Cancer Network, and Vermont Medical Society.
The Fast-Track Cities Institute and International Association of Providers of AIDS Care are based in D.C.
U.S. Federal Courts
Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections
Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has struck down guidelines by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission designed to protect against workplace harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
The EEOC in April 2024 updated its guidelines to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which determined that discrimination against transgender people constituted sex-based discrimination as proscribed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
To ensure compliance with the law, the agency recommended that employers honor their employees’ preferred pronouns while granting them access to bathrooms and allowing them to wear dress code-compliant clothing that aligns with their gender identities.
While the the guidelines are not legally binding, Kacsmaryk ruled that their issuance created “mandatory standards” exceeding the EEOC’s statutory authority that were “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent.”
“Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind themselves to the biological differences between men and women,” he wrote in the opinion.
The case, which was brought by the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, presents the greatest setback for LGBTQ inclusive workplace protections since President Donald Trump’s issuance of an executive order on the first day of his second term directing U.S. federal agencies to recognize only two genders as determined by birth sex.
Last month, top Democrats from both chambers of Congress reintroduced the Equality Act, which would codify LGBTQ-inclusive protections against discrimination into federal law, covering employment as well as areas like housing and jury service.
The White House
Trump travels to Middle East countries with death penalty for homosexuality
President traveled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates
Homosexuality remains punishable by death in two of the three Middle East countries that President Donald Trump visited last week.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar are among the handful of countries in which anyone found guilty of engaging in consensual same-sex sexual relations could face the death penalty.
Trump was in Saudi Arabia from May 13-14. He traveled to Qatar on May 14.
“The law prohibited consensual same-sex sexual conduct between men but did not explicitly prohibit same-sex sexual relations between women,” notes the State Department’s 2023 human rights report, referring specifically to Qatar’s criminalization law. “The law was not systematically enforced. A man convicted of having consensual same-sex sexual relations could receive a sentence of seven years in prison. Under sharia, homosexuality was punishable by death; there were no reports of executions for this reason.”
Trump on May 15 arrived in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
The State Department’s 2023 human rights report notes the “penalty for individuals who engaged in ‘consensual sodomy with a man'” in the country “was a minimum prison sentence of six months if the individual’s partner or guardian filed a complaint.”
“There were no known reports of arrests or prosecutions for consensual same-sex sexual conduct. LGBTQI+ identity, real or perceived, could be deemed an act against ‘decency or public morality,’ but there were no reports during the year of persons prosecuted under these provisions,” reads the report.
The report notes Emirati law also criminalizes “men who dressed as women or entered a place designated for women while ‘disguised’ as a woman.” Anyone found guilty could face up to a year in prison and a fine of up to 10,000 dirhams ($2,722.60.)
Trump returned to the U.S. on May 16.
The White House notes Trump during the trip secured more than $2 trillion “in investment agreements with Middle Eastern nations ($200 billion with the United Arab Emirates, $600 billion with Saudi Arabia, and $1.2 trillion with Qatar) for a more safe and prosperous future.”
Former President Joe Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2022.
Saudi Arabia is scheduled to host the 2034 World Cup. The 2022 World Cup took place in Qatar.
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