After leading the Tennessee state senate as it passed laws this year banning gender-affirming care for minors and all-ages drag performances, Lieutenant Governor Randy McNally (R) faced charges of hypocrisy earlier this week when he was caught leaving admiring comments on nude Instagram photos of a gay Knoxville man.
But McNally’s interest in barely clothed pictures of members of the LGBTQ community doesn’t stop with that Knoxville man, Franklyn McClur. The lieutenant governor has “liked” shirtless and swimsuit pictures of gay men and transgender women for years, according to the Instagram activity of McNally’s official verified account reviewed by The Daily Beast.
For example, McNally has liked a number of Instagram pictures of a Texas man in a tight-fitting swimsuit. The man told The Daily Beast in Instagram messages that he didn’t know McNally personally, but that the politician had been interacting with his social media accounts for years.
“He has been liking my photos on Facebook since 2020,” the man told The Daily Beast in an Instagram direct message. “I’m not sure where he first saw me online.”
A spokesman for McNally referred The Daily Beast to a statement issued on Wednesday, in which the lieutenant governor’s office said he enjoys “interacting with constituents and Tennesseans of all religions” on social media and said he has “no intention of stopping.”
Yet McNally’s Instagram favorites extend far beyond members of his own state’s LGBTQ community, touching on both influencer-level users and far smaller ones. He also favorited several revealing pictures of a transgender woman with tens of thousands of followers in Florida, and a shirtless gay man with only a couple hundred followers in California.
Still, McNally appears to have left most of his comments on McClur’s page. Commenting on a close-up picture of the 20-year-old McClur’s butt, McNally wrote that the much younger man could “turn a rainy day into rainbows and sunshine!”
In an interview Thursday with Nashville’s NewsChannel5, a red-faced McNally tried to explain his headline-grabbing social media activity. McNally claimed he commented on McClur’s pictures because of a personal revelation that LGBTQ people are “still individuals and they still have value.”
“I try to encourage people with posts, and try to help them if I can,” McNally said.
“Were you trying to help this man in some sort of way?” a reporter asked him.
“Uh, just basically try to encourage him?” McNally responded.
Then McNally faced a question about why he had favorited a post in which McClur self-identified as a “HOE,” rather than a “prostitute,” who provides sexual favors for marijuana.
“I don’t recall reading the part about the weed,” McNally said.
“What about the ‘prostitute?’” the reporter asked.
“I might have read that,” McNally said.
