Jon Hinson
During his re-election campaign in 1980, conservative Mississippi Representative Jon Hinson admitted that in 1976, while married and an aide to Representative Thad Cochran, he had been arrested for committing an obscene act, exposing himself to an undercover policeman at the Iwo Jima Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery. He also disclosed that he survived a 1977 fire that killed nine people at the Cinema Follies, gay D.C. movie theater. He was making the disclosure, he said, because he needed to clear his conscience. Hinson denied that he was homosexual and blamed his problems on alcoholism. He refused demands that he resign and won re-election. Three months later, he was arrested on charges of attempted oral sodomy for performing oral sex on a male employee of the Library of Congress in the restroom of a House office building. He resigned his seat on April 13, 1981. There's more below.
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Soon afterwards, he acknowledged that he was gay. His marriage ended and he became an activist for gay rights, fighting the ban on gays in the military. He died of respiratory failure resulting from AIDS at the age of 53 in 1995.
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