It doesn't matter if he was gay and still held conservative beliefs about homosexuality. Even though he voted against LQBTQ+ measures up and down the line, he never actually lived or enjoyed any aspects of what is seen as the gay lifestyle. By all accounts he never had a male relationship or lived his reality. He suppressed it, whether out of guilt, self-imposed morality or something else.
There was a single rumor once from a male escort who claimed to have visted a 'certain Republican senator' who was larfgely believed to have been Graham, but it was never confirmed that that's who it was. (There have been many - remember Larry Craig from ID?) If he was really whooping it up with the boys on the side, we'd have seen more credible evidence of this. A high-profile, long-serving US senator wouldn't have been able to serve this long without it getting blown wide open at some point.
If Graham was gay, he was in total, self-loathing denial. He's still an asshole for denying rights to the gay community. But I can't say he was a hypocrite on the matter since he never availed himself of the trappings of "the gay" himself.
There are plenty of straight people who openly live a celibate life without intimacy owing to some over-the-top fatwa against "lust" or whatever. If Graham was gay, he may have been living a "gay-free" life out of moral choice. We have to give him a pass on that just like we accept clergy who live under the same moral restrictions.
Again, if he was being gay on the side, in a closeted fashion all while denying others those same provileges through his votes, I'd be more ciritcal. But there's so much more to criticise him for outside of perceived gay hypocrisy that I think we sould be focusing on that in rememberance rather than unsubstantiated suppositions about his sexuality.
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