Online commenters are criticizing Dr. Annie Andrews, a Democratic candidate for South Carolina’s U.S. Senate seat, for releasing a video ad that uses sexual innuendo to repeatedly insinuate that her political opponent, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), is gay. Graham is unmarried but has never publicly come out as gay. His sexuality has long been the subject of rumors and innuendo.

The ad begins with text that says, “Lindsay Graham has a secret.” Then, Andrews says, “We’ve all heard the rumors about Lindsay Graham, the whispers that circulate around Washington, D.C., and South Carolina, that he has a secret, a part of him that he wants to keep hidden. And then, after all these years, he just comes out and says it.”

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At this point, the words “He just comes out” appear in yellow, capitalized letters on screen. The ad then shows video footage of Graham saying, “The Iranian regime is on its knees,” and then displays “on its knees” in yellow all-cap letters. The ad does the same thing with footage of Graham saying, “We’re gonna blow the hell out of these people,” with the words “gonna blow” displayed on-screen in yellow and all-caps.

Andrews then says to the camera, “Lindsay Graham is deeply and passionately in love…” The sound of a record scratch then interrupts the ad’s music as Andrews finishes the sentence: “… with war.”

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Video footage then shows Graham saying, “We’re marching through the world; Iran is going down,” as the ad displays the words, “going down,” once again, in yellow all-cap letters.

The remainder of the ad criticizes Graham for ignoring his home state’s crumbling roads and bridges, its closing hospitals, underfunded schools, and the high costs of living, while Graham asks its residents to send their children to fight the current war in Iran.

“And I don’t know if you’re a history buff, but Lindsay has always been this way,” Andrews adds before displaying old news interview footage of Graham urging U.S. military involvement in the Middle East to stop now-deceased Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda terrorists.

Andrews then says that, if elected to the U.S. Senate, she’ll show up and fight for issues that directly affect South Carolinians rather than sending “our kids to fight endless, forever wars overseas.”

Numerous commenters on the Bluesky social media platform criticized the ad for its homophobic “dog whistles,” noting that Graham has an adequately terrible political record to criticize without using attacks on his sexual orientation, and expressing disappointment in candidates who seem willing to attack others for their perceived homosexuality.

“Well, this [ad] has certainly shown us that a bunch of people on the left absolutely will make such gay ‘jokes’ about people they don’t like — and twist themselves into embarrassing knots (and deleted skeets) to defend such behavior,” wrote Chris Geidner, the gay publisher and author of the legal analysis outlet Law Dork.

“Trust me: I’ve been having this fight since the good old days on Twitter, when it was popular comedians making these ‘jokes,'” he added. “I called it out then, I’m certainly going to call it out when a Democratic candidate does so now.”

In an interview with LGBTQ Nation last July, Andrews called Graham a “problematic” Congress member and said that, despite his first acting as a “respectable” politician who sought bipartisan solutions to problems in his home state, his 22 years in Congress have made him he has “abandon any moral standing to “keep his corporate donors and his billionaire donors happy and to do the bidding of Donald Trump.”

“He doesn’t stand for anything. I mean, he’s such a sellout,” she said. “And if Trump says we’re going to practice LGBTQ-erasure, then he says, ‘Yes, sir, what can I do to help?’ And it’s just another example of his willingness to do whatever he needs to do to stay in Trump’s good graces, no matter who it harms or no matter if it contradicts with who he is as a person.”

In the interview, she also expressed her support for gender-affirming care for trans youth.

Last August, one of the president’s closest allies in right-wing social media, Laura Loomer, said that Graham is gay and that it’s well-known among Donald Trump’s staff.

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