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Transgender author and actress Jesse James Rose has alleged in a viral social media post that the late Republican Senator Lindsey Graham paid her for sex work before she transitioned.
The allegation was reported on Monday by The Advocate after Rose published a three-slide Instagram post describing what she said was an encounter with Graham during her college years. The claim has not been independently verified, and no corroborating evidence was presented in the report. The outlet said Rose and Graham’s Senate office had been contacted for comment.
Rose, who wrote the book Sorry I Keep Crying During Sex, directly accused the longtime South Carolina senator of hiring her while she was a student.
“Most of you know him as the homophobic Senator from South Carolina but to me he will always be the man who paid a twinky pre-transition college student a fat stack of cash to do unspeakable things to him in a hotel room while he wore red lingerie,” the writer posted.
“It is a canon trans event to have far right freaks bankrolling you & then turning around and voting against you.”
Graham died Saturday at the age of 71 following what his office initially described as a brief and sudden illness. Preliminary findings indicated that he suffered an aortic dissection related to the hardening of his arteries, although a final cause remained pending additional testing.
The senator served in Congress for more than three decades and represented South Carolina in the Senate from 2003 until his death. His political record included opposition to several major LGBTQ+ rights measures.
He voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, opposed the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and voted against proposed federal workplace protections covering sexual orientation and gender identity. He also supported state restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors.
“The bitter irony of this record is that Graham spent much of his political career denying rumors and speculation about his own sexual orientation — a task that became more difficult in the social media age,” according to the outlet.
Graham publicly denied speculation that he was gay in 2018. Rumours about his sexuality nevertheless continued to circulate online, although speculation about a person’s sexuality does not establish it as fact.
The Advocate noted that Rose was not the first person to make an unverified allegation involving Graham and sex workers.
“However, while Rose’s recent post following Graham’s death is one of the most direct instances of a queer person alleging that Graham had hired them for sex work, it isn’t the first,” The Advocate reported.
“In 2020, porn performer Sean Harding posted online, implying that an unnamed Republican senator had hired multiple gay sex workers, including him. People connected the story to Graham based on the nickname ‘Lady G,’ a codename sex workers in D.C. allegedly used to refer to the South Carolina legislator.
The nickname followed Graham for what would turn out to be the final years of his life.” Neither Rose’s allegation nor the earlier online claims have been independently substantiated. Graham consistently denied rumours concerning his sexuality during his lifetime.
