Studds, Gerry E. (Gerry Eastman), 1937-2006

Gerry Eastman Studds (May 12, 1937 – October 14, 2006) was an American foreign service officer, legislative assistant, teacher, and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 12th (1973-1983) and 10th (1983-1997) congressional districts. who served from 1973 until 1997. He was the first openly gay member of Congress.

Born in Mineola, New York and raised in Cohasset, Massachusetts, he attended the public schools in Cohasset and Derby Academy in Hingham, Massachusetts before earning B.A. and M.A.T. degrees from Yale University. Following graduation, Studds was a foreign service officer in the State Department and then an assistant in the Kennedy White House, where he worked to establish a domestic Peace Corps. Later, he became a teacher at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. In 1968, he played a key role in U.S. Senator Eugene McCarthy's campaign in the New Hampshire presidential primary. Studds made his first run for Congress in 1970, but lost to the incumbent Republican representative, Hastings Keith, in a close election. In 1972, with Keith not running for re-election, Studds won the 12th congressional district seat. He moved to the 10th district seat after redistricting in 1983.

Studds was a central figure in the 1983 Congressional page sex scandal, when he and Representative Dan Crane were each separately censured by the House of Representatives for an inappropriate relationship with a congressional page — in Studds' case, a 1973 sexual relationship with a 17-year-old male. During the course of the House Ethics Committee's investigation, Studds publicly acknowledged his homosexuality, a disclosure that, according to a Washington Post article, "apparently was not news to many of his constituents." On July 20, 1983, the House voted to censure Studds, by a vote of 420-3. Studds was re-elected to the House six more times after the 1983 censure. He fought for many issues, including environmental and maritime issues, same-sex marriage, AIDS funding, and civil rights, particularly for gays and lesbians. Studds was an outspoken opponent of the Strategic Defense Initiative missile defense system, which he considered wasteful and ineffective, and he criticized the United States government's secretive support for the Contra fighters in Nicaragua.

After retiring from Congress in 1997, Studds worked as a lobbyist for the fishing industry. Studds previously worked for two years as executive director of the New Bedford Oceanarium, a facility still under development. Studds died on October 14, 2006, in Boston, at age 69, several days after suffering a pulmonary embolism.