Lem Billings: JFK's gay boyfriend

JFK's love life was more complicated than the womanizing stories of Camelot.

JFK has been back in the headlines a lot lately, given the (hopefully) soon-to-be released files about his assassination. For many years, JFK has been portrayed as a womanizer who cheated on Jackie with many different women. But was that really true? Or was a lot of it a smokescreen to cover up JFK’s relationship with Lem Billings?

The Daily Mail had an interesting article about Billings and JFK today:

Of all the secrets nurtured by John F. Kennedy, his life-long love affair with another man was arguably the most risky.

Kirk LeMoyne Billings, who went by Lem, was 16 years old when he first met Jack Kennedy, then 15.

It was the fall of 1933. Both were enrolled at Choate, an elite all-boys boarding school in Connecticut.

For Lem, it was practically love at first sight. Jack Kennedy was everything he was not: roguish, charismatic, confident, effortlessly popular — not just with other students, but girls and women.

In the beginning, at least, Jack didn't realize that Lem harbored romantic feeli…