Conservative shock jock Glenn Beck is very angry about a lot of things. One in particular? Politicians who opposed marriage equality before they supported it — not because Beck himself actually cares about marriage equality, mind you — he just thinks these politicians are hypocrites. And the biggest hypocrite of them all is Hillary Clinton, of whom Beck said:

“I’m telling you, Hillary Clinton will be having sex with a woman on the White House desk if it becomes popular. “

To what do we owe this sort of graphic visual image? Beck wasn’t relying on his own tawdry imagination, but instead a decades-old rumor from political consultant Dick Morris. The disgraced Morris started as a friend of the Clintons and after a falling-out (including a prostitution scandal), he is now one of the Clintons’ biggest adversaries. Morris is responsible for pretty much flat-out saying that Hillary Clinton is a lesbian, which, as a former close friend, people assumed he would know.

I don’t care what sexual orientation Hillary Clinton is (though I would love an LGBT president in the future for sure). I find it pretty depressing that one rumor has gotten loads of replay over the years, resurfacing almost always in ultra-right-wing media but also occasionally in liberal LGBTQ ones. I did a little search, digging into only the last decade, and came up with quite a bit of history for the Hillary Clinton lesbian rumors…

June, 2004: 

Upon the publication of Bill Clinton’s memoir My Life, a columnist for the conservative newspaper Washington Times published an op-ed claiming Bill and Hillary “have had a pact for decades. Their sexy, sexy pact is this: “He gets to fool around with women and she gets to fool around with women (plus the occasional man) … yes, she’s bisexual.” For some reason Bill Clinton never touched upon that pact in 1056 pages.

June, 2005:

You know a book called The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, And How Far She’ll Go To Become President is going be filled with plenty of dirt/trash. And boy, did Edward Klein deliver.  He claimed Clinton “wasn’t maternal,” “had no wifely instincts,” and “many of her closest friends were lesbians.” But despite Hillary’s many supposedly lesbian-ish qualifications, she was “much more interested in lesbianism as a political statement than a sexual practice … Hillary talked about it a lot, read lesbian literature, and embraced it as a revolutionary concept.” Ultimately Klein concluded that Clinton isn’t gay or straight — she’s asexual.

July, 2007:

Today we know Huma Abedin as the scorned wife of dweeby dick pic enthusiast Rep. Anthony Weiner. But back in ’07, when she was mainly known as Clinton’s glamorous top aide, Village Voice gossip columnist (and openly gay) Michael Musto claimed “whisper campaigns” alleged a “Gayle King” situation was afoot. The conspiracy theory Musto espoused was that Clinton was trying to hide her lesbian lover “in plain sight” by hiring her on staff.

September, 2007: 

Clinton finally addressed the rumors directly, telling the gay-focused Advocate magazine, “It’s not true, but it is something that I have no control over. People will say what they want to say.” I imagine she brushed dirt off her shoulder Jay Z-style as she said this.

March, 2013:

In March of 2013,  Clinton released a PSA coming out in support of marriage equality. Not a minute later, American Family Association radio host Sandy Rios announced on her radio show that Clinton supported LGBT rights because she is gay. She claimed that in Beijing in 1994 under Hillary’s leadership, there had been “tents on lesbian lovemaking.” Rios ranted, “[Hillary] has always, as far as I know back to college, endorsed and embraced all things lesbian and gay, that is her history on this so that shouldn’t be too shocking. She has played the role of wife and cookie-making mother, I’m sorry but this is just the reality of things. We are being caught in this vortex of homosexual advocacy, it’s just amazing.” Let me repeat that: WE ARE CAUGHT IN A VORTEX OF HOMOSEXUAL ADVOCACY.

March, 2013: 

The National Enquirer, which has never gotten anything wrong ever, claimed a “family insider” verified that in her new memoir Hillary Clinton would “admit that she’s bisexual and has had lesbian relationships.” Not only that, but she would reveal that “a veterinarian who treated the family cat Socks at the White House stumbled upon her locked in a steamy embrace with a woman.” Yes, that sounds exactly like something that Hillary would write in her memoir.

September, 2013:

Generally quiet since 1992, Bill Clinton’s former mistress Gennifer Flowers reappeared out of nowhere to announce she was writing a sex advice column for some random website. And what better way to promote her new column that to dish new dirt on Hillary? In an interview with the UK’s Daily Mail, Flowers claimed that the president repeatedly told her that his wife was “bisexual,” but he didn’t care, and Hillary Clinton “had eaten more pussy than he had.” Okay, now I’m impressed!

September, 2013: 

The president of the American Family Association — AKA one of those groups whose sole purpose is to demonize gay folks as unfit parents/humans — took that pussy-eating rumor and ran with it. Bryan Fischer told his “Focal Point” radio show, “The bottom line is that if Hillary Clinton becomes president in 2016, she will not only be our first female president, she could be our first lesbian president.” (Not surprisingly, Fischer also announced after President Obama’s 2013 inaugural address, “Homosexuals do not have a constitutional right to engage in sodomy!” Wait, I thought that was in Article Two?)

And that, dear readers, brings us to today. I’m realizing that Glenn Beck’s comments were not only rude but entirely unoriginal. Rumors about Hillary Clinton’s possible 2016 presidential run continue unabated, so steel yourselves for lesbian/bisexual/asexual/Illuminati/space alien rumors to continue unabated, too. They’re sort of entertaining, at least?

[Right Ring Watch (1)]
[Media Matters For America]
[Village Voice (1)]
[Village Voice (2)]
[CNN]
[National Enquirer]
[Huffington Post]
[Right Wing Watch (2)]

Original by Jessica Wakeman