Is this anti-LGBT Republican Marco Rubio at a gay club foam party? (Probably not)

PinkNews logo on pink background with rainbow corners.

A conspiracy theorist has claimed to have ‘proof’ that anti-LGBT Republican Marco Rubio attended a foam party in a gay club.

US Senator and Presidential hopeful Marco Rubio  was once considered a moderate in his party, but has tacked right hard in recent months on LGBT issues, claiming that God’s law “trumps” the Supreme Court on equal marriage.

Rubio recently outlined plans to demand a Supreme Court ‘do-over’ on same-sex marriage after rigging the court with new right-leaning justices, potentially voiding thousands of existing marriages.

He has also pledged to repeal Barack Obama’s landmark Executive Order outlawing homophobic and transphobic discrimination among federal contractors – the only federal law that currently protects workers from being sacked for being gay or trans.

That’s why it’s so tempting to fall for the claims circulating online, first made by controversial blogger Wayne Madsen.

Madsen claims that “Republican insiders” have told him about Presidential candidate Marco Rubio’s double life as a gay man.

He alleges that Rubio was “known to be a very extroverted homosexual” while at university, and claims to have two pictures of him from a gay club in 1995.

By which he means he has two blurry photos of a guy who could pretty much be anyone.
Is this anti-LGBT Republican Marco Rubio at a gay club foam party? (Probably not)

Madsen claims: “Although he is obscured by the man in front of him, Marco Rubio [arrow pointing to him] is believed to be in this 1995 photo of a gay South Beach foam party held at the Warsaw Ballroom.”

He adds that “Rubio claims he met his wife at one such foam party in 1995” – but Madsen claims “foam parties in South Beach were almost exclusively gay events”.

If you weren’t quite convinced by that first blurry photo, well, here’s another one that’s totally better.
Is this anti-LGBT Republican Marco Rubio at a gay club foam party? (Probably not)

Yeah, we’re not buying it.

The final nail in the coffin for Madsen’s claims? He’s previously made near-identical allegations about Barack Obama.

He claimed previously that Obama “used basketball pick-up games to pick up men”, and had “homosexual trysts with Representative Artur Davis, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Senate majority leader Bill Frist!”.