By day Terry Dolan coordinated the fusion of free-market radicalism and evangelical fundamentalism known as the New Right. By night he cruised DC's steamrooms and gay bars. In 1982, his face appeared on the cover of Christopher Street with an article about his radical, norm-breaking politics and his hookup with a federal employee.

DANIEL LEFFERTS(author of the novel Ways & Means) joins David and Blake to talk about the contradictions of right-wing gays past and present. We discuss the pleasures both of being an insider and of hating insiders, and why the right-wing homosexual stirs the gay imagination to fascination, disgust, and sympathy.

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Chapters

00:00 - Our first threesome

06:27 - The important question: Was Terry Dolan hot?

09:55 - The “Rich and Powerful Queens” of the Reagan right

12:03 - Gay hustlers, strippers, and spies

16:25 - What type of gay was Terry Dolan?

21:35 - Why it gets harder to be gay in the GOP

27:04 - Who was screwing who in the New Right?

32:25 - Dolan as a pioneer of norm-breaking

40:54 - Why do we want to confront closeted gays?

48:04 - Right-wing gays and the pleasures of power

50:22 - Dolan’s hookup with a federal employee

54:32 - Daniel’s descent into the world of gay MAGA

57:42 - The petty-bourgeois class position of OnlyFans boys

1:03:08 - The good boys who love Red Scare

1:09:20 - Gay attractions to transgression and order

1:13:50 - The weird homoeroticism of MAGA

SOURCES

Perry Deane Young, “God’s Bullies,” Christopher Street, August 1982.

Rick Perlstein, Reaganland: America’s Right Turn, 1976-1980 (2021).

Neil J. Young, Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (2024).

James Kirchick, “The Secret Life of a Gay Political Strategist in Reagan’s Washington,” Rolling Stone, July 28, 2022.

Shawn McCreesh, “Donald Trump’s Big Gay Government,” New York Times, August 26, 2025.

Shawn McCreesh, “In South Dakota, Neighbors Feel Sorry for Kristi Noem’s Husband,” New York Times, March 31, 2026.

Daniel Lefferts, “My Afternoon With the ‘Normal Gay Guys’ Who Voted for Trump,” GQ, February 10, 2025.

Jack Crosbie, “Hasan Piker: A Progressive Mind in a MAGA Body,” New York Times, April 27, 2025.