[rfp1234]

I thought Jeh Johnson was the first gay Cabinet member. Or maybe he stayed in the closet.

[Verginius Rufus]

Who knows who was the first homosexual Cabinet member. In the old days people did their best to keep something like that secret. James Buchanan is suspected of having been a homosexual (only circumstantial evidence, I think, nothing definitive), but that was before the term "gay" was used. (They usually cite the movie Bringing Up Baby for the earliest known case of "gay" being used to mean "homosexual" although presumably it had been used for some time by homosexuals among themselves with that meaning.) Buchanan was Secretary of State for the Polk administration.