For years, rumors have circulated about the late GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and his sexual orientation. Now, a new documentary from the progressive group The Young Turks claims that Graham paid for relations with male sex workers, including one man who claims he was 17 years old at the time of his interaction Graham.
“My name is Kelvin. I had sex with Lindsey Graham when I was 17,” the man says in the documentary, called “The CLOSETocracy”.
Kelvin goes on to explain that he told Graham he was 18, even as the lawmaker questioned him about his age. Arizona’s age of consent is 18. According to Kelvin, incident took place in 2001 at a property in Arizona that looked “staged,” like a set for “very extreme” pornography.
“Kelvin described the encounter as involving sexual activity and alleged that Graham struggled to maintain an erection before eventually masturbating,” said a report on the documentary published in Newsweek. “He said Graham subsequently told him to get dressed and indicated that he had left $120 near a rafter.”
Another man named Cory featured in the film (produced by Swamp Watch Studios and Tystnaden Films) also alleges that Graham paid him for sex, as well as a man named Jesse. Newsweek said it could not independently verify the claims in the video and that it reached out to Graham’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone.
After her brother died unexpectedly from aortic dissection in July at age 71, his sister was appointed to serve in his seat. Graham served in the U.S. House from 1995 through 2003 and then in the Senate from 2003 until his death. He was the last surviving member of the “Three Amigos” bipartisan group of war hawk senators that included the late Republican John McCain of Arizona and Democrat Joe Liberman of Connecticut.
These claims about Graham are not the first to circulate about his sex life. According to fact-check website Snopes, it is unclear where the rumors began, but they showed up in newspaper articles in 2001, when Dick Harpootlian, former South Carolina Democratic Party chair, seemed to make a derogatory comment that alluded to Graham being gay.
Snopes noted that comedians would publicly reference the rumors and that they would crop up in social media posts. It noted that gay adult film actor Sean Harding seemed to allude to Graham being gay in a June 2020 X (then Twitter) post. A trans woman named Taylor Snider also made claims about Graham and “shared the timeline with Snopes, as well as the screenshots first published by Uncloseted Media.”
According to Snopes, “the timeline and screenshots neither prove nor disprove her story.”
In 2020, the rumor Graham hired male sex workers who supposedly nicknamed him “Lady G” was referenced in a Washington Post editorial, Snopes added.
Graham, who lost his parents as a young man and helped raise his younger sister, never married. However, POLITICO reported in 2015 that Graham had two girlfriends and considered proposing marriage to a woman who was a flight attendant.
“As a fact-checking outlet, Snopes is not in the business of outing anyone or making judgment calls on a person’s gender or sexual identity. Before his death in July 2026, Graham repeatedly dismissed claims he was gay,” the site noted. It also stressed that sexuality and gender can be fluid and are determined by the individual themselves.
Since Graham often voted against the interests of the much of the LGBTQ+ community (as explored here by GLAAD), comments about his sexuality often come up in relation to his conservative policies.
“For many of these commentators, whether or not Graham was gay is not necessarily the point – the point is how we talk about being gay,” Snopes said. “We mention this not to weigh in on the discourse, but to note another way the rumor may have spread in the American consciousness.”
