NYT - Donald Trump's Big Gay Government.

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It was the last Wednesday in July, and many of Washington’s top players were hanging out at the Ned, a private club around the corner from the White House.

The Secretary of the Navy, John Phelan, was waiting for an elevator in the lobby when he bumped into Dr. Mehmet Oz, the surgeon-turned-daytime TV star now in charge of Medicare and Medicaid. Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce, was bouncing around the Library bar upstairs. Scott Bessent, the secretary of the Treasury, was wandering around up there too.

Sitting in a brown leather armchair in the center of this social whirl was a high-ranking official at the Department of Energy named Charles Moran. His abstruse-sounding title is associate administrator for external affairs for the National Nuclear Security Administration. What this means is that he works in the part of the Energy Department that develops, tests and keeps safe America’s nuclear weapons stockpile.

But that’s not why administration officials kept approaching his armchair to schmooze, or why some of the cabinet secretaries at the Ned that night seemed to be so chummy with him.

Mr. Moran, 44, is the pasha of a new power tribe in the capital: the gay men of the Trump administration.

These are the A-Gays. They’re (mostly) out, they’re proud (to work for President Trump) and they have big jobs inside (or alongside) this administration. They wield influence all over town, from the Pentagon to the State Department to the White House to the Kennedy Center.

“We’re like Visa,” Mr. Moran said. “Everywhere you want to be.”

He sipped a dirty vodka martini and surveyed the room. Two Republican men waved at him from across the club. “Both gay,” he explained. This was also true of the middle-aged Trump appointee who ambled over a moment later to catch up. But apparently not so of the young-looking White House aide who approached a few minutes after that. “Straight as an arrow,” Mr. Moran said as the aide walked away.

He laughed and added, “I hang out with my straights just as easily as I hang out with my gays.”

The most powerful out gay man in the Trump administration is Mr. Bessent. There are a handful of others in the Treasury Department. Other A-Gays include Tony Fabrizio, the president’s longtime pollster; Trent Morse, an outgoing deputy assistant to the president; Richard Grenell, who was put in charge of the Kennedy Center; and Jacob Helberg, an under secretary of state. These are just some. There are lots of other lesser-known men who make up the tribe.

They’re overwhelmingly white and tend to have a certain kind of look. Close cropped haircuts. Windowpane suits. Golf shorts. They’re not the type to be telling anyone their pronouns or using the word “queer.” And they aren’t the least bit offended that the leader of their party continues to stoke a moral panic about transgender people.

They’re gay. But they’re still Republicans.

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