Gerry Studds is a retired American politician. He served as a Democratic Congressman for Massachusetts until 1996. He was one of the first openly homosexual politicians in United States national politics.
He is perhaps best remembered for his role in the Congressional Page sex scandal in 1983, when he and Representative Dan Crane were censured by the House of Representatives for separate sexual relationships each had had with congressional pages who were each 17, and thus minors, at the time of the relationship. Studds refused to apologize for the relationship and in fact called a press conference with the former page, in which both stated that they were consenting adults at the time of the relationship in 1973, and that it was therefore not the business of others to censure them for what they considered their private relationship. Studds continued to be re-elected to Congress until his retirement in 1997.
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