Anti-Pride Republican Gabrielle Hanson supported husband marching in Pride in nothing but Speedos

Anti-LGBTQ+ mayoral candidate Gabrielle Hanson is being questioned after it was discovered that she once supported her husband marching in a Pride event wearing nothing but a pair of Speedos.

Gabrielle Hanson, a Republican who is running for mayor of Franklin, Tennessee, roots her campaign on “restoring traditional values” and “protecting children from harmful influences.”

The MAGA-supporter launched the campaign earlier this year with a failed attempt to stop Franklin’s Pride festival from going ahead, in the name of protecting children.

However, Hanson’s intentions are now being questioned after Nashville investigative news station NewsChannel5 obtained a photo of her husband Tom Hanson showing a lot of skin at a Pride event.

The photo from 2008 sees Tom Hanson taking part in Chicago Pride wearing an American flag pair of Speedos.

On the same day, Hanson, who had been running for Congress in Illinois’ Fifth Congressional District at the time, said in an interview that he had his wife Gabrielle’s full support to partake in the Pride event.

“I thought how was I going to make an impact in the parade?” he told The Windy City Times.

“I’m a Republican, nobody’s going to want to listen to me. So it just came to me. I said maybe I’ll wear an American flag Speedo and my wife said, ‘If you do that, I’ll hold you to it.’”

Elsewhere in the interview, Hanson spoke about his campaign which ran on equal rights, gay rights, women’s choice, and immigrants becoming citizens, setting him apart from the rest of the Republican party.

As part of their investigation, NewsChannel5 reached out to Tom Hanson during a meeting of the Franklin Board of Mayor and Alderman.

During the meeting, a number of attendees praised Hanson’s wife Gabrielle for her efforts to shut down Franklin’s Pride event earlier this year, which they claimed was harmful to children.

NewsChannel5 reporter Phil Williams then asked Hanson: “Was this harmful to children when you were at the Pride Parade?”

Hanson simply replied: “We’re talking about Franklin, we’re not talking about Chicago right now.”

Persisting, the reporter then asked: “Do Chicago children not deserve to be protected in your mind? What’s the difference?”

After this, Hanson walked away to avoid any further questioning.

Promoting prostitution charges

This discovery swiftly follows Gabrielle Hanson’s recent admission that she was once charged with “promoting prostitution” back in the 1990s when she went by the name Laraine Gabrielle Bush.

Although Hanson released a video to explain her side of the shocking story, NewsChannel5 later reported that she had left out some crucial details.

It was discovered that, contrary to Hanson’s claims, she would not have been charged if she didn’t know what was going on at the modeling agency’s casting couch set-up. 

As well as one charge of money laundering in April 1993, Hanson also faced charges of promoting prostitution and engaging in organised criminal activity in March 1995.