An excerpt from ‘Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington’ recounts the fierce loyalty — and fiercer denialism — of political strategist Terry Dolan and speechwriter Tony Dolan.
obituary, and Tony Dolan’s outraged response — including an allusion toJohn Terrence “Terry” Dolan’s political philosophy could be inferred from his ideal federal budget: “99 percent for defense — keep America strong — and one percent on delivering the mail. That’s it. Leave us alone.” His tactical philosophy in dealing with liberal opponents was that of a Marine drill sergeant. “Make them angry.” “Stir up hostilities.” “The shriller you are,” he liked to say, the better.
Tony Dolan would serve as Reagan’s top wordsmith for all eight years of his presidency, and go onto work for a procession of powerful Republicans including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and President Donald Trump. Terry’s loyalties, however, lay not with the GOP, but the conservative movement. “I used to be a Republican,” he confessed tothree months before Reagan’s election. “I used to be a political hack, but then in 1972, it was like a sexual awakening.
In 1982, Dolan was outed as a secret homosexual in a book criticizing the Christian right. Dolan denied the charge, and maintained his place within the conservative firmament.
Dolan had been hospitalized the previous summer, according to his colleagues at NCPAC, for a combination of anemia and diabetes. But the signs that his malady was of a different nature were difficult to ignore. At one of his last public appearances, a celebration of NCPAC’s tenth anniversary held aboard a Potomac River cruise, the 36-year-old activist looked conspicuously lethargic and gaunt, his face heavily covered in makeup to disguise the lesions that had sprung up across it.
NCPAC President L. Brent Bozell messaged Pat Buchanan a personal invitation to Terry Dolan’s memorial service.Dolan’s secret gay life was an even more uncomfortable subject for the man delivering his eulogy. Homosexuality was a touchy issue in the White House speechwriting office Tony Dolan led, something best not mentioned, even obliquely.
A character from a 42-year-old novel was not the only allusion Tony Dolan made to homosexuality by referring to his brother as “our Sebastian.” In saying that Terry’s “suffering” had guided those around him “to deeper things and holy moments,” Tony was also invoking the Catholic saint Sebastian, a member of the 3rd-century Roman emperor Diocletian’s Praetorian Guard. Like Terry, that Sebastian had a secret — Christian faith — and its discovery led to his execution by arrows.
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