Texas gay
candidate Tom Malin was undone by the revelation of his past
as an escort. Why do so many young gay men turn to
hustling? And why does sex work remain the
unforgivable sin?
Few people knew
about Tom Malin’s past as an escort until the morning
of February 17. Then there it was, on the front page
of The Dallas Morning News, above the fold:
"Candidate worked as prostitute."
The revelation
derailed Malin’s thriving campaign for district 108
of the Texas house of representatives. A well-spoken,
good-looking 37-year-old, Malin had been running as an
openly gay candidate in the Democratic primary against
fellow gay man and local gadfly Jack Borden. Malin had
the right stuff. He was a Dallas native, a community
activist (having served on the Dallas Citizens Police
Review Board), and a successful businessman. As a
sales director for Mary Kay cosmetics, he’d even
earned one of the firm’s highest honors: a
company lease on a pink Cadillac. He lived in a
prominent high-rise and showed up on the society pages in
photos with his partner of three years, an out
philanthropist and investor in his mid 40s.
Although he was a
first-time candidate, Malin had secured endorsements
from the Dallas Stonewall Democrats, Dallas Tejano Democrats
(a Latino political group), and the Morning News. He
talked about school financing, crime, the economy, tax
and ethics reform.
But after the
story broke that he had been an escort on and off until
2001—mostly while a struggling actor in New York and
Los Angeles—Malin’s campaign never
recovered. On March 7 he lost the primary to Borden, 55%
to 45%. Barely 1,000 of the district’s registered
Democrats even bothered to go to the polls.
“Sex
sells, and we love scandals in Dallas, and so this became a
sensational story,” Malin says. “The campaign
became about rumors and innuendo and not about the
issues at hand.” (It was reported that Borden,
a retired salesman whom Malin terms a perennial
“squeaky wheel” in local politics, was
evicted from three different Dallas apartments for
nonpayment of rent. He’s not expected to represent a
serious challenge to two-term Republican incumbent and
George W. Bush pal Dan Branch.)
Most upsetting to
Malin is that he believes the tale of his escorting
reached the press by way of gay Democrats in whom he had
confided. “[The story] became about two things:
[One,] can someone redeem themselves and go on to be a
productive member of society? Two, why would the gays eat
their own?”
Despite the loss
at the ballot box, Malin says, “we’ve won,
because we’ve seen one man’s journey,
one man standing up and being responsible and being
honest and looking at the upheaval and the fear that [it]
stirs up in the community. That’s a huge story.
Why are people afraid of someone being responsible,
someone being honest?”
Why indeed? Even
among many gays and lesbians—and certainly in
mainstream culture—sex for pay remains the
irredeemable sin. The president can be a recovering
alcoholic with a DUI arrest; the vice president can
accidentally shoot a man—all is forgiven. But if a
person takes money for sex, the taint may be
inescapable. Forget about running for office. Forget
about a high-profile business career. Forget about acting,
modeling, or MTV. It’s over. Even many gays will
prefer that you take a hike.
That leaves a
huge number of gay men with limited options in life.
Because among men who have sex for money—whether in
front of video cameras or behind closed
doors—most are probably gay men like Tom Malin.
Gay men who were young and needed money and validation,
finding both in a career as a hustler or in porn
(which Malin did not do). Young men who collide with
older, affluent men like atoms in a superheated gay culture
that seems to peddle sex with every club invite, bar rag,
and DVD release.
A culture that
shrugs, “What’s the big deal?”
“I did
what other struggling actors were doing,” Malin says.
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