A North Dakota State Republican legislator with a record of voting against gay rights in the state was outed as a gay man when he admitted he was the user of the site with a pseudonym ‘Top man’ sending a picture of his private part to another user, NY Daily News reports.
Randy Boehning, 52, a conservative legislator from the Republican Party for the past twelve years had consistently voted against bills for the right of gays in the State, making the bill fail in the largely Republican State.
Back in March, he sent an unsolicited message with a picture of his private part to another user of the gay dating site. The 21 years old user with the name Dustin Smith has now released the identity of ‘Top Man’ to the local newspaper ‘Forum’ and was angry at the hypocrisy of Randy who is a gay and discriminates against other gays.
“How can you discriminate against the person you’re trying to pick up?” Smith told the local Bismark-area newspaper on Monday, 27th April.
Smith who initially did not know the identity of Randy but later came to know it through his picture was angry at Randy’s hypocrisy in voting against Senate Bill 2279, which would have added sexual orientation to the state’s anti-discrimination law.
For the third time since 2009, the bill was voted down by conservative North Dakota lawmakers, including Randy Boehning. Boehning, a staunch conservative, insistently refused to comment on the allegations for two weeks, but this week finally came forward to admit that he had been using the platform to chat with other men and that he is gay, according to The Forum, as reported in New York Daily News.
“The 1,000-pound gorilla has been lifted,” he told the Forum. “I have to confront it at some point.”
