South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham,
a Republican, has denied rumors he's gay after comedian Chelsea
Handler tweeted a joke about his sexual orientation.
Handler on Thursday joked in a tweet
that Graham was celebrating National Coming Out Day.
“If you're wondering why Republicans
took a sick day today, it's probably because it's
#NationalComingOutDay. Looking at you @LindseyGrahamSC,” Handler
tweeted.
TMZ.com on Friday caught up with Graham
at Reagan National Airport, where he was asked about Handler's tweet.
“It's a free country,” Graham
said. “She can say what she wants to say. I don't care. She
knows zero about me. To the extend that it matters: I'm not gay.
These comments, I don't think they reflect well on her.”
Handler made a similar joke in January.
“Holy, fuck fuck,” she tweeted. “I
just [watched] the video of trumps bipartisan 'meeting' yesterday.
Hey, @LindseyGrahamSC what kind of dick sucking video do they have on
you for you 2 be acting like this? Wouldn't coming out be more
honorable?”
Graham has fought off such rumors for
years. In 2010, the unmarried 63-year-old Graham told The New
York Times: “Like maybe I'm having a clandestine affair with
Ricky Martin. I know it's really gonna upset a lot of gay men –
I'm sure hundreds of 'em are gonna be jumping off the Golden Gate
bridge – but I ain't available. I ain't gay. Sorry.”
Graham has compiled an impressive
anti-LGBT voting record while in Congress. He scored 24 points in
the Human
Rights Campaign's (HRC) latest Congressional Scorecard, which
measures a lawmaker's support for LGBT rights, up from zero in the
113th Congress.
Handler has come under fire for poking
fun at Graham's sexual orientation, with some people on social media
questioning why an ally of the LGBT community would portray being gay
as something negative and others saying that the joke is just tired.