Parting Glances: 'Tricky Dick' Tapes Gay

I was working at a discount records shop in downtown Detroit in 1959, the year two ill-fated contenders – Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Vice President Richard Milhous Nixon – campaigned for the 1960 presidency.
I stood about 50 feet from the flag-decked podium in Campus Martius when J.F.K. spoke that summer. I was impressed by his youthful good looks and commanding speech delivery.
For a moment, I thought he specifically pointed in my direction – Why me, God? I joked to myself – and I pledged him my vote.
Later that campaign season, I took a coffee break and walked to a coffee shop just down the hall from my discount job. Gathered at the Washington Boulevard entrance was a noisy crowd. I stood in line, and moments later Nixon began shaking hands. He reached out to take my hand. I stepped back, reluctant to accept his offer…
But I was aware that he looked directly at me and our eyes locked intensely for milliseconds too many. To this day, I wonder if it was a "gaydar moment." (Believe it or not: I was quite cruisable at 23. Nixon, however, wasn't my type. Politically or otherwise). Perhaps my fleeting impression is not far-fetched…
Nixon, elected in 1968 as 37th president, was good friends with gay Cuban wheeler-dealer, handsome Bebe Rebozo, and closeted queer J. Edgar Hoover, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A 2011 Nixon biography by Don Fulsom, veteran Washington reporter, suggests gay intimacies with Bebe Rebozo.
It's recently come to light that President Nixon held – by Republican, conservative standards – flexible attitudes about homosexuals. A recently published collection of Nixon's confidential discussions with advisors – "The Nixon Tapes" – contains passing, offhand remarks on gays.
Comments were made in 1972, three years after the Stonewall Riots. (Tape conversations began in 1971 and end in '73, when word of the taping became public knowledge).
"Let me say something before we get off the gay thing. I don't want my views misunderstood. I am the most tolerant person on that of anybody in this shop. They have a problem. They're born that way. You know that. That's all. I think they are. Anyway, my point is, though, when I say they're born that way, the tendency is there.
"And, if you look over the history of societies, you will find of course that some of the highly intelligent people – Oscar Wilde, Aristotle – were all homosexuals. Nero, of course, was in a public way, in with a boy in Rome." Nixon's caveat: "Once a society moves in that direction, the vitality goes out of that society."
Both Nixon and J.F.K. were ill-fated. Kennedy was assassinated – murdered by a multifaceted conspiracy – three years after defeating Nixon in 1960. Nixon's hit-and-miss presidency ended in 1974 for his part in equivocating about the Watergate Break In. Elected in 1969, 'Tricky Dick,' as he was infamously nicknamed, resigned, rather than face an impeachment trial. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.
"So much for worldly fame and glory." Democrat. Republican. Or, tricky who, whenever or whatever comes T-fagging next.