Tennessee Thirst Trap

Rainstorm on a sunny day

Autumn, 2024

The Emperors, Exposed is a series that explores the private proclivities of people with public power. All statements within are attested to elsewhere, or alleged. 

“God gave us one life, so make it iconic.”
– Franklyn Mclure

“You can turn a rainy day into rainbows and sunshine.”
– Randy McNally

This spring, a story circulated about the Republican Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee leaving potentially more than encouraging comments on some racy Instagram posts of a young male constituent. Most of the coverage came to the conclusion that Randy McNally’s apparent sexual interest in @Franklynsuperstar was at odds with his legislative history. The public roundly vilified and mocked the politician as a hypocrite. They’re not wrong. Entirely.

Hearing Mr. McNally in his own words on Newschannel 5 Nashville’s interview on the topic left me a little more sympathetic to him. It does seem believable that the Lt. Governor doesn’t know enough about social media or innuendo to be fully and properly embarrassed for himself. I was reminded of Franklyn Mclure’s comments to Tennessee Holler (who broke the story and interviewed the young man) about McNally’s DMs to his @franklynsuperstar account: 

“I just thought he was older and out of touch. I’ve always taken it as a compliment...We were friends back before I was more openly myself. Before I was posting things more mature… If he’s hitting on me it’s real out of touch hitting on me.” 

The Lt. Governor certainly appears older and out of touch on camera in a way that doesn’t look practiced. He said something in the interview I would never expect to hear from a typical anti-queer Republican: 

“Initially, I was not very kind to that community. As I learned some things and met some people I learned that they are still individuals and that they still have value.”

Honestly I was shocked to hear any politician in our age of division reference the golden rule for any reason. The Lt. Governor’s communications director, Adam Kleinheider, in some general comments to the media, described McNally as “a prolific social media commenter,” who “takes great pains to view every post he can and frequently posts encouraging things to many of his followers.” In the context the story is framed in this could easily be viewed as meaningless PR. However, NewsChannel5 Nashville affirms “there's no doubt that McNally is extremely active on social media, often offering positive comments about people's families, latest achievements, as well as birthdays and anniversaries.”

Maybe his age is a double edged sword. It gives him a localized view of politics, but makes him less competent with current platforms. From what you do see of the Lt. Governor explaining himself with his own face, it is also believable that he doesn’t think hard or read deeply on every post he makes. I don’t think that this necessarily means the he didn’t harbor any sexual interest for @Franklynsuperstar.

In the Newschannel5 Nashville interview Phil Williams asked McNally if he was aware that the young content creator was open about making transactional exchanges for sexual favors. A still shot of the IG account on Newschannel5’s video reads: 

“I am not a WHORE I am a HOE! There is a difference! One is a SLUT and the other is a PROSTITUTE! I’m the one that gets free weed for giving head.” 

The Lt. Governor responds: 

Rand McNally: I don’t know that, a lot of times on people’s posts, you see the name, and you see what’s written, and you just press the button that says like.
Phil Williams: So, you didn’t read that post? 
McNally: I don’t recall reading the part about the uh, weed, I know that.
Williams: What about the prostitute?
McNally: I might’ve…I might’ve read that.
Williams: In that case was it appropriate to ‘like’ the comment? 
McNally: Probably not. Probably not.

It’s the weirdest, most indirect way for a newsman to discuss sex with a politician I have ever seen. It was like watching a primary school guidance counselor asking a child to point to where the social media post says the inappropriate thing. Maybe Williams’ mass-market position forces him to dilute his substance, but McNally was being uncharacteristically frank for an elected official. I cannot imagine why Williams, instead of asking whether it was “appropriate” for the Lt. Governor to like a comment he when was aware it described his constituent’s prostitution habits, didn’t ask what McNally intended when he clicked that heart knowingly. It seems like such a missed opportunity.

If you scroll down Franklynsuperstar’s IG page until you get past the thirst traps things change. Before he was commoditizing his image he was just a gay teen striving to find a future through a pandemic in what was left of the Mountain South after the ‘08 recession. He struggled to find work. He struggled to find connection. He struggled to eat. Could it be that the Lt. Governor, seeing these stories from someone in his constituency, felt sympathy for the boy’s trials before the young man sexualized his page? I know I did. If he does harbor sexual interest for the young man in question, then the only evidence of it exists after he is not only of legal age, and also willingly and publicly sexualizing himself. They both claim not to have met in person before. Franklysuperstar himself said he does not think the Lt. Governor should be shamed for liking his posts. So maybe we shouldn’t do that.

The NewsChannel5 interview shows a still of a 2019 article by Joel Ebert for the Tennessean. Within this article, McNally establishes a civil libertarian critique against his colleagues on the right in regard to some of the “bathroom” and “indecent exposure” laws that mostly received criticism from the left after the Republicans passed them in neighboring North Carolina in the late twenty teens. Phil Williams asks McNally in the same interview “if there was a path in the Senate for the various bills of concern to the LGBTQ community,” McNally’s replies that 

“We're just going to be sensitive to the effect that some of those might have on business and events that could occur in Tennessee…We also want to be sensitive to the rights of individuals.”

How many politicians can you say have a stated position against using the law for only gratifying their own narrow constituency? It’s amazing I couldn’t find a single story of any representative of the queer community reaching around the aisle to shake hands with McNally.

Maybe this is because he purportedly does not have what you would call a “pro-LGBTQ” legislative record. In their interview with Frankly Mclur, Tennessee Holler claims that Lt. Gov. McNally has “pass[ed] twenty-six anti-LGBTQ bills.” I could not find any of them. He is certainly part of a party that passed a number of bills seen as anti-queer, but his position as Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee only allows his involvement as a tie breaker for the State Senate. It would be hard for him pass any bills himself. A 2019 article in the Tennesseean shows McNally is, at times, a rare counterweight to the local GOP’s anti-queer legislative work. Is he guilty by association?

It’s off brand for me to not be cynical, but it would be dishonest for me to say there is not a reasonable, good-faith case to be made for the Lt. Governor being well-intentioned but kind of bumbling and old. There’s also a good case to be made that he is genuinely sexually interested in the young man, but I empathize. I don’t think that there is a very good case to be made that McNally is a raging, career, anti-queer legislator. He hasn’t seemed enthusiastic to actively persecute them. Are we talking about Harvey Milk here? No, but he isn’t Jerry Falwell, either.

If I had to remain cynical I would guess he is being smeared by his own party. Maybe they are tired of his civil libertarian nonsense getting in the way of their identity politics. Someone on the local Red Team found the IG comments (probably wasn’t hard) and decided put the information in the eyes of independent, local-firebrand progressive media. Maybe. I can neither confirm nor disconfirm. It did lead to calls for McNally to resign and a confidence vote, but he survived. I bet he will toe the line tighter now.

Let’s just consider that the narrative has some amount of hot air. I would hate for us to be cynical about the wrong hypocrisy.

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Author’s note: I use the term “queer” in place of “LGBTQIA+”. I do not identify as straight nor do I intend antagonism toward my own constituency. I just hate the acronym out of redundancy. Every one of those letters represents a group whose sexuality in some way does not fit into historical social norms. We are all queers. Get used to it. 

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