John Reid imbroglio tests gender, sexuality and privacy standards in Virginia politics

Amid a political firestorm, John Reid’s continued campaign for lieutenant governor — the first time an openly gay candidate of any party has run for statewide election in Virginia — represents a litmus test at the intersection of politics, sexuality, gender and privacy in the digital age.

After a Tumblr account with the same name as Reid’s shared sexually explicit images of men, Gov. Glenn Youngkin asked Reid to drop out of the race last Friday. Reid, who wasn’t in any of the online photos and has denied that the account is his, refused, saying he “won’t back down.” He also accused Youngkin’s PAC of extortion and some members of his party of attacking him because of his sexual identity.

“Let’s be honest: It’s because I’m openly gay and I have never bowed down to the establishment and I will not,” Reid said in a video response. 

So-called sex scandals involving heterosexual men are not new in U.S. politics. From dozens of members of Congress to presidents including Thomas Jeffferson, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, most of their political careers survived scrutiny from constituents and colleagues. 

The same isn’t generally true for women in the political arena, where cultural norms about gender and sexuality have often prompted heightened scrutiny and scorn for female candidates and lawmakers. 

Former California congresswoman Katie Hill resigned after her nude images were shared on a right-wing blog in what she called “a smear campaign built around cyber exploitation,” and her admission of an extramarital affair with a woman campaign staffer. 

Virginia’s own Susanna Gibson faced online harassment and a chorus of calls to drop out of her 2023 state House of Delegates race when her sexually explicit live-stream video with her ex-husband, which they released to a limited audience on a porn site, was recorded and shared widely without their consent. 

“We have that culture of ‘boys will be boys’” said Virginia Wesleyan University professor Leslie Caughell, whose work focuses on the intersection of gender and politics. “Gibson (and others) didn’t get that treatment because ‘women aren’t supposed to do this.’” 

In his recently posted videos since the news broke, Reid has repeatedly emphasized that he is being targeted for his sexuality. 

“He knows that the rules that apply to a heterosexual man don’t apply to him,” Caughell said. 

“I am sickened and outraged at the weeks of veiled accusations and attacks on my family,” Reid said in a video posted to his campaign’s Facebook page Sunday. “I’m not going to continue to answer a never ending parade of questions and false accusations from people who we now know are solely motivated to stage a coup against a gay man, whom they didn’t want to be their nominee, but didn’t have the guts to run against.”

In a form of protest over the controversy, Phil Kazmierczak, a member of Youngkin’s LGBTQ+ Advisory Board, resigned from his position over the weekend.

Kazmierczak said in his resignation letter that he was “deeply shocked” Youngkin “would involve himself in a diabolical attack of this nature.” 

Even as Reid’s campaign emerged, this year’s legislative session showed that many Virginia Republican elected officials do not appear to support same-sex marriage. Though such unions are federally protected by a near-decade-old U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Virginia’s state constitution still has a defunct ban on them. 

A Democrat-led effort to undo this is underway and earlier this year, most Republicans in the House and the state Senate either voted against the measure or abstained from voting. It will need to pass both chambers again next year, where, should Reid become lieutenant governor, he could be a potential tie-breaking vote. All seats in the House are up for election in November.

Democrats have argued that without removing the ban, Virginians’ marriages could be at risk if the Supreme Court reversed its stance on same-sex marriage — a possibility Justice Clarence Thomas has expressed interest in doing.

If Reid were to drop out, the Republican Party of Virginia’s state central committee members would need to select someone to run in his stead. June 17 is the deadline for candidates from both or third parties to qualify for the November ballots. 

Weaponizing sexuality in political contexts

Like Reid, defying critics to stay in the race is familiar ground for Gibson, who narrowly lost her 2023 House campaign in the competitive 57th District.

Though she said she agreed to her ex-husband’s request to live-stream sex acts on a porn website, they did not consent to it being recorded and shared beyond their initial, limited audience. After an anonymous “Republican operative” sent the content to The Washington Post in 2023 just before early voting started in Virginia, an echo of pundits noted potential uphill battle for her campaign. The Republican Party of Virginia later sent out mailers with screenshots from the live stream. 

She, like Reid, didn’t back down.

But behind the scenes, she endured the trauma of the situation along with subsequent online harassment. She said she’d received death threats and people loitered outside her home during the scandal. At one point a false call was placed to law enforcement, resulting in officers showing up at her house. The act, referred to as “swatting,” is often a tactic to target or harass public figures or activists. 

Following the election, she laid low before later emerging with a PAC dedicated to combatting the nonconsensual sharing of intimate digital images. A model policy the group wrote has been carried and advanced through both Republican and Democrat-leaning states. Gibson consulted with Del. Irene Shin, D-Fairfax, to adjust the statute of limitations on prosecuting “revenge porn” and other such crimes in Virginia. 

At the federal level, a bill to punish people who publish revenge porn — whether actual images of targeted individuals or artificially-generated ones — has recently cleared congress and is on its way to Trump’s desk. 

While the Tumblr account purported to be Reid’s shared other people’s content, it’s unclear if they had consented.

Virginia’s extortion laws make it a crime to threaten a person’s reputation, safety, property or immigration status to gain money, property or financial benefit. It’s a Class 5 felony in the state to use threats, accusations of criminal conduct or the misuse of immigration documents as leverage for personal or monetary gain. Potential legal battles could be on the horizon if Reid does pursue a suit against the governor’s PAC for alleged extortion. Reid’s lawyer has also sent a cease and desist letter to Moran. 

Political analysts have posited that as technology evolves and younger people enter politics, the risk of digital sexual content being used against candidates may increase. The sharing of intimate images to publicly shame or tarnish someone most often happens to women, multiple studies show, but it can happen to anyone. 

Gibson’s perspective on Reid’s predicament is nuanced, she said, because he used his platform as a radio host to call her a “legislative hooker” two years ago during the scandal she was at the center of. Still, she understands the myriad of feelings he may be coping with now as some in his own party have turned on him, and said it’s unacceptable for him to be targeted because he’s gay. 

“The attacks on Reid for his sexual expression are completely inappropriate and incredibly harmful and damaging, not only to him, but to his family and to the democratic process,” she said.

Gibson also took aim at Matt Moran, a Youngkin adviser who is involved with the governor’s PAC. 

“This is the second state election in a row that Matt Moran and Glenn Youngkin have attacked a candidate that they did not like on their sexuality,” she said. “It raises concerns for future elections and leadership of, honestly, both parties being willing to weaponize people’s sexuality and sexual expression in order to achieve some kind of partisan political outcome.” 

From her own experience, to “sexting” that becomes public, to the allegations against Reid which he’s so far denied, she worries these situations may discourage  people from running for office.

It’s something Caughell wonders about too — particularly concerning women and LGBTQ+ prospective politicians.

“It seems like standards for personal behavior don’t apply evenly to all candidates,” she said. “So you have to wonder if you’re a woman or you’re gay and you’re thinking about running, you might have concerns about what somebody could dig up about you to try to make it into an issue.”

As to Reid’s situation specifically, she said it shows where some of his party falls on supporting LGBTQ+ issues and people. Earlier this year, Reid’s ticket-mates Attorney General Jason Miyares and Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears joined Youngkin to boost support for lawmakers’ efforts to ban transgender student athletes from school sports. 

“I think (we’re) seeing some of the Republican Party’s discomfort with many of these transgender and gay issues. Having gay candidates as a voice for their party, at least to some segments, can pose a problem,” Caughell said. “You have to wonder, would Governor Youngkin have been so quick to ask him to step aside if he had been a heterosexual man?”

This article first appeared on Virginia Mercury and is republished here with permission. Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence.