Why We Need To Stop Calling Madison Cawthorn’s Scandals ‘Gay’: UPDATE

GayNrd Editors May 11, 2022

Last week we wrote about how the anti-Madison Cawthorn rhetoric shouldn’t be framed around gay issues and Buzzfeed took notice.

Buzzfeed:

“There’s plenty of shit to attack Madison Cawthorn about…without having to stoop to these homophobic stereotypes or tropes,” Clay Aiken said.
Clay Aiken is pissed off.
The former American Idol star and Democrat, who is hoping to prevail in next week’s North Carolina primaries to represent Durham and become the first openly LGBTQ member of Congress from the South, is no fan of Rep. Madison Cawthorn. Neither are many Republicans in the state, including Sen. Thom Tillis.
But Aiken has been chafed by what he says is a disgusting anti-gay undercurrent to the recent onslaught of sexualized material released against the 26-year-old Republican.
“I am loath to defend him in any way but I will say that that last video with him on the bed pissed me off,” Aiken told BuzzFeed News, referring to a leaked video that showed Cawthorn in a bed, his naked buttocks visible, simulating sex with a male friend.
“The idea that anybody would gay-shame someone in order to try to embarrass him in that district and then call themselves a Democrat, I think is ridiculous,” Aiken said. “And if Democrats are the ones who are attacking him and using his sexual orientation — or worse, jokes about what might be a perceived sexual orientation — I don’t really want them in my party, to be honest.”
Long before his election, Cawthorn has been the subject of scandal. He lied about his plans to attend the US Naval Academy having been “derailed” by the car accident that partially paralyzed him, when in reality his application had already been rejected by the time of the crash. His former classmates at a Christian university in Virginia also told BuzzFeed News he had been aggressive, misogynistic, or predatory toward them while at school, sometimes entrapping and harassing them as he drove recklessly in his car.
During his campaign, Cawthorn briefly hid a picture from his Instagram that showed him vacationing at Adolf Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest villa in Germany. Cawthorn, who once registered an LLC with a name featuring a Latin acronym that is popular with white nationalists, also came under fire when his campaign website criticized someone for working “for non-white males, like Cory Booker, who aims to ruin white males running for office.”
In addition to the controversy around his cocaine/orgy comments, in recent months, he has been charged with driving without a license, cited twice for speeding, stopped by TSA agents for trying to bring a gun on an airplane for a second time, and been the subject of calls (by Tillis) for an investigation into possible insider trading. His reelection is also facing a longshot challenge from opponents who argue he violated the Constitution through his ties to the Jan. 6 insurrection (Cawthorn was one of two sitting federal lawmakers to speak to the crowd before they stormed the Capitol).
Kendra Johnson, executive director of the LGBTQ rights group Equality North Carolina, said these are the issues that she and her fellow Cawthorn opponents must focus on, not things that she said were rooted in anti-gay and anti-trains prejudice.
“The reality is there’s enough about his record and his conduct beyond him wearing lingerie or beyond him being in a same-sex relationship that is deeply problematic and that is what we should be focused on,” Johnson said. “Dirty politics should not be the name of the game.”
Wheeler said his PAC had played a key role in highlighting or pushing many of Cawthorn’s other scandals to the public, and the recent salacious material was in line with their objectives. “We’re willing to put out information as long as it’s factual, even if it’s embarrassing or nasty or otherwise,” Wheeler said. “I haven’t met a Democratic Party member out here in leadership that shares that view.”
But Wheeler maintained there was no anti-gay sentiment behind the recent attacks, although he conceded it was fair for people to interpret them that way. His PAC, he insisted, had only sought to portray Cawthorn as a hypocrite who is willing to attack the lifestyles of his enemies.
Some in the local LGBTQ community agree with him. Tina White, executive director of the Blue Ridge Pride Center, does not see any disguised anti-gay sentiment. “I think it’s just calling out the hypocrisy of a political leadership who claim that they represent a certain form of moral purity and decency,” White said. “In fact, they’re rich bullies who meet none of their own moral standards that they claim to represent and they thrive on terrorizing our children with a lot of the bills they’re trying to pass right now.”
Still, Wheeler’s group has faced backlash. FireMadison.com went offline late last week after the website’s host received a complaint about the nude Cawthorn video being posted. A person who said they were a Democrat living in North Carolina told Gawker they reported the page for posting what they believed amounted to “revenge pornography.” They also said they reported the American Muckrakers PAC to ActBlue, the nonprofit tech company that facilitates fundraising for left-wing groups and candidates. ActBlue confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the PAC’s account was no longer active on its website.
“I think Madison Cawthorn is a shameful person and a bad politician,” the person who complained told Gawker. “But I don’t think a homophobia-driven campaign to kick him out of office is consistent with our values.”
Wheeler confirmed that the website’s host had threatened to shut them down if they did not remove the video, but he said it was due to nudity. “I think it was the bare hairy ass of Madison Cawthorn that offended them because the revenge porn statute does not apply in this case whatsoever,” Wheeler said.
Aiken says Wheeler and other Democrats need to make a choice. They can follow Michelle Obama’s oft-repeated mantra of sticking to the high road and stand up for the LGBTQ community or they can be hypocrites whose snickering will confuse gay boys and men in western North Carolina and across the country about whether the party will truly protect them.
“There’s plenty of shit to attack Madison Cawthorn about, to be upset at Madison Cawthorn over, without having to stoop to these homophobic stereotypes or tropes,” Aiken said.
The ultimate judgment on the videos rests with voters, Wheeler said, but Cawthorn’s sexuality is not at issue.
“Hell, I’d vote for the guy if he admitted—” Wheeler said, catching himself. “No, wait, let’s back off on that.”

Our Previous Story:

The sex tape of Madsion Cawthorn humping, barking and making odd sounds with his “cousin” is not gay.

RELATED: Madison Cawthorn Confirms Sex Tape Is Real, Says It Was a Joke

And I wish everyone would stop alluding to any of his “non-gender” conforming behavior as such. Whether clad in women’s lingerie or getting groped by a male campaign coordinator, Cawthorn is many things, a Nazi for one, but none of this is “gay.”

RELATED: Madison Cawthorn’s Close Friend Caught Grabbing His Crotch on Cam

Among the ethics complaint filed against Cawthorn are claims he’s provided thousands of dollars in gifts, housing & travel to his aide Stephen Smith, who lives with him.

Venmo payments include suggestive messages. Believed Cawthorn having an inappropriate relationship with his staffer.

Cawthorn’s official response is tone deaf and disturbing enough as it is. Cawthorn tweeted:

Years ago, in this video, I was being crass with a friend, trying to be funny. We were acting foolish, and joking.

Cawthorn’s response made reference to previous comments he made in an Instagram post last month where he said that the “establishment” would be launching a coordinated “drip campaign” against him.

“They’re going to drop an attack article every one or two days just to try and kill us with a death by 1,000 cuts, and that is really their main strategy,” Cawthorn, 26, said in the April Instagram post.

But as Slate points out:

If you’ve already peeked at the mounting (ha!) “evidence,” you might wonder if it isn’t Cawthorn trying to make himself seem gay: In the past few weeks, we’ve been treated to leaks of a lingerie photo shoot; a groin grope in a moving vehicle and suggestive Venmo exchanges with a male “close aide”; and on Wednesday, a grainy phone video of the onetime up-and-comer naked, in bed, vigorously humping a friend’s head while producing strange hoops and hollers. This man, who has confirmed his presence in all of these scenes, certainly enjoys, let us say gently, activities more traditionally associated with the practice of homosexuality.

Whoever is leaking these bits of intel—which Cawthorn, in an unfortunate turn of phrase, has called a “drip drip campaign” of blackmail—must be calculating that either classic homophobia on the part of his constituents, or perhaps just general disapproval of these sorts of antics from an avowedly Christian Republican, will cost the freshman congressman his reelection primary on May 17. Fire Madison Cawthorn, an opposition group working for his ouster that has been the conduit of much of this material and that has filed a formal ethics complaint against him, certainly hopes so. (That is, if the unbecoming outbursts, misappropriation allegations, and run-ins with traffic cops and the TSA aren’t enough.) But for his part, Cawthorn seems largely unbothered. He shrugged off the lingerie snaps as “goofy vacation photos” and of Wednesday’s humping video, he tweeted: “A new hit against me just dropped. Years ago, in this video, I was being crass with a friend, trying to be funny. We were acting foolish, and joking. That’s it. I’m NOT backing down.”

On Friday night’s episode of Real Time Bill Maher said:

This week there’s a new video of him out naked, straddling another man’s face and thrusting his pelvis into it. The Pornhub title was Republican f**kface f**ks faceTwo weeks ago he was caught in … there’s a picture of him … in women’s lingerie. He said he was trying to be funny, it’s a joke. Then last week we had the video where he was in the car and he’s saying ‘I wanna feel the passion,’ and another guy is grabbing his d**k. Joke. He said it’s just a joke. Now we have him skullf**king a guy on tape and, again, ‘I’m joking,’ There’s infinite ways you can create a joke, his is always ‘what if I was gay?’