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New Book Seeks To Revive Old Rumors About Perry's Sexuality

Photo by KUT

The first openly gay state representative in Texas has published a collection of rumors surrounding Rick Perry’s sexual orientation. It’s the kind of “he said, he said, he said” hearsay that the mainstream media has largely discounted. Former State Rep. Glen Maxey’s e-book, “Head Figure Head: The Search for the Hidden Life of Rick Perry” is currently the best selling book in Amazon.com’s Gay & Lesbian Nonfiction category.

Spoiler alert: Maxey describes his own book as “the story of my failed attempts to expose Rick Perry’s homosexual encounters.”

Nevertheless, tawdry and unsubstantiated sex rumors make for great tabloid reporting, and that’s where Gawker.com picks up the story with some excerpts of Maxey’s book, including this one, where one of Maxey’s friends e-mailed him to say he found a male prostitute who told friends he worked for Perry.

The whole story is that i have a ex friend who hired this kid years ago fro sex and they became friends. I was out at Rain [a gay club in Austin] with my friend and we ran into this hustler kid. He very matter of factly stated thathe had just been hired to spend the weekend at the Driskill with Perry and an assistant of Perrys. He was non chalant about it and said that it happened 3 or 4x a year and he gave some sexual details about Perry and the other guy. This was in the 2000s maybe 03.

Perry’s presidential campaign was ready to fight such rumors if they resurfaced this year, Politico reported in June.

The rumors first began circulating in the mid-2000s, and several blogs picked it up, and gay activists even staged a so-called “support rally” for Perry, which did attract media attention, according to the Austin Chronicle.  

In 2004, Perry held a news conference to deny rumors that his wife Anita caught Perry having sex with then-Texas Secretary of State Geoff Connor. Perry described the whispers as "an obvious, orchestrated effort" launched by his political enemies and he described the blog reporting as “a cancer on the political process that is deadly,” the Austin American-Statesman reported.

Among the blogs that reported the rumor was the liberal Burnt Orange Report, which gained a lot of attention (and web traffic) for it. In 2004, Burnt Orange blogger Andrew Dobbs concluded, “I doubt that Perry is gay and I suspect the worst of his political opponents.”

Nathan Bernier is the transportation reporter at KUT. He covers the big projects that are reshaping how we get around Austin, like the I-35 overhaul, the airport's rapid growth and the multibillion dollar transit expansion Project Connect. He also focuses on the daily changes that affect how we walk, bike and drive around the city. Got a tip? Email him at nbernier@kut.org. Follow him on Twitter @KUTnathan.
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