Is Folsom Street Fair Next? Anti-Pride MAGA Candidate's Husband Attended Pride Event in Speedo

Political candidates fear something out of their past won't stay in the closet. Such is the case of anti-LGBTQ+ Tennessee mayoral candidate Gabrielle Hanson who earlier this year vehemently opposed a Pride event in Franklin, TN, where she is presently running for mayor. In her argument against the event, Hanson waved a photo of a drag queen she described as eating a 'live, bleeding heart' and proclaimed 'this could have happened in our park,'" reports the Daily Mail.

She lost the fight, but her anti-Pride stance is now being questioned after it was revealed her husband Tom attended Chicago Pride in just a Speedo. (Whether he attended the recent Folsom Street Fair has yet to be determined.)

And that his wife was fine with it.

A 2008 photo was released on Wednesday that showed Tom Hanson wearing an American flag-styled Speedo, leather sandals, sunglasses, and a necklace with a small gold cross.

"At the time, the couple lived in Chicago, and Tom was running as a Republican candidate for Illinois' 5th congressional district, a heavily liberal area that includes parts of Chicago's northwest side and suburbs," writes the Daily Mail.

Tom decided that he wanted to campaign at the Pride event and contacted organizers to see if he could be included, wrote the Windy City Times in 2008. They were reluctant at first, but after others dropped out, he was allowed in.

But how was he going to stand out in the crowd? That's how the Speedo comes in.

"So then I thought how was I going to make an impact in the parade? I'm a Republican, nobody's going to want to listen to me. So it just came to me. I said maybe I'll wear an American flag Speedo and my wife said, 'If you do that, I'll hold you to it.' Honestly two-or-three weeks before the parade, every night, about two or three o'clock in the morning, I would wake up and think 'Am I out of my mind?'"

Subsequently the couple moved to Tennessee where Gabrielle became an at-large alderman for the town, vehemently opposed a motion to grant a permit for the Franklin Pride Festival.

"At a city council meeting, Hanson waved a photo of a drag queen she described as eating a 'live, bleeding heart' and proclaimed 'this could have happened in our park,'" reports the Daily Mail.

"The motion to grant the permit passed, and Franklin Pride Festival took place without incident, with Hardee's parent company CKE Restaurants as the primary sponsor."

Gabrielle's mayoral campaign made headlines recently when "she admitted in a confessional Instagram post that she had accidently helped run a prostitution ring in the 1990s, an admission seemingly at odds with her family-values platform."

At the time, she was a 30-year old student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and took a job answering phones for what she thought was a modeling service, but when the cops showed up at the company's office, she learned the company's actual nature.

"Little did I know they had also been operating a lucrative casting couch. I was shocked, I was devastated."

On Tuesday, the Franklin Board of Mayor and Aldermen met to consider an official censure for Hanson, but decided against doing so. Hanson is running against incumbent Mayor Ken Moore, who is also a Republican. The election is scheduled for October 24.