Republican ND Lawmaker Looking for Reelection After Weathering Grindr Pic Scandal

In 2015, North Dakota State Rep. Randy Boehning, a Republican, voted against legislation that would have extended anti-discrimination protections to LGBTQ people. He also sent a 21-year-old Grindr user an explicit photo - an image of what the media referred to as his "private parts" - under the handle "Top Man!" When the young man called attention to this apparent hypocrisy, Boehner came out of the closet with a claim to being bisexual.

Fast forward to today, and another election cycle: "Top Man!" Boehning, still in office, is looking for a fifth term, reported local newspaper the West Fargo Pioneer.

Boehning announced his re-election bid in a statement released on March 19. The West Fargo Pioneer said that Boehning didn't want to discuss the "dick pic" incident that prompted his coming out, nor the anti-LGBTQ vote that preceded it.

"He declined to comment about it on Monday, saying he did his commenting in 2015," the West Fargo Pioneer reported.

Among his 2015 comments, Boehning characterized his life in the closet as a "1,000-pound gorilla" and said, upon coming out, that the weight of it had been "lifted." In other comments, he told The Forum that his conduct on the dating app was nothing more nor less than typical.

"That's what gay guys do on gay sites, don't they?" the lawmaker pointed out. "That's how things happen on Grindr. It's a gay chat site. It's not the first thing you do on that site. That's what we do, exchange pics on the site."

Boehning also claimed that the actions of 21-year-old Dustin Smith, who lived in Bismarck at the time and who alerted the press to Boehning's Grindr presence as "Top Man!" and the graphic photo that Boehning sent him, amounted to retaliation for his vote against extending anti-discrimination protections to LGBTQ North Dakotans.

Smith, for his part, told the Washington Post that he "just felt this story had to get out" because the then-closeted official "had voted against a bill for the LGBT community and here he was talking to me on Grindr."

The Washington Post reported that in addition to voting against anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ v=citizens, "Top Man!" had also favored allowing guns in schools and churches and had favored stringent voter ID policies.

But if closeted Republican lawmakers like Boehning can simply jump out of the closet at an opportune moment and then carry on with their anti-gay votes and their Grindr pics, should the same courtesy be extended to openly gay officials who are arguably less likely to vote one way and live another?

That's a question yet to be answered in Groves, Texas, where a 19-year-old city councilman named Cross Coburn was subjected to a campaign to expose his dating app activities. Local newspaper The Port Arthur News reported last week that an anonymous person provided both that publication and city hall with printouts of text and photos taken from a dating app that showed Cross' conversation with another user, as well as an explicit photo Cross had sent that user.

A similar package of privacy-violating material drawn from Cross' dating app interactions was provided, also under cover of anonymity, to a local news channel.

The mayor of Groves, Brad Bailey, conceded that Cross had done nothing illegal, but also said he thought Cross' private conduct on the app to be "unbecoming." (No word, however, on what the mayor thought of the anonymous person who sought to smear Cross with the filched material.) "We have met and discussed it with our police department and HR department," Bailey added. "It will be an issue."

Bailey also made mention to the press that Grove voters could recall Cross with a special election.