"I did not choose to be homosexual. I would change my sexual orientation if that were within my power." So wrote Robert Bauman, the powerful, ultraconservative congressman from Maryland. Americans were stunned in 1980 when headlines revealed Bauman had been caught having a sexual rendezvous with a young male prostitute. In his book, "The Gentleman From Maryland: The Conscience of a Gay Conservative," Bauman revealed the conditions that shaped his own tortured double life as a congressman and closet homosexual. At the tender age of 5, Bauman had been sexually seduced by a neighbor boy about 12. Reflecting on that...
