At a South Carolina Tea Party rally, one speaker wanted to know if South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham is gay.

The rally held last week in Greenville included an unidentified speaker saying: “Barney Frank is more honest and brave than you. At least we know about Barney Frank, and nobody is going to hold it over his head. And we got to just … Look, I'm a tolerant person. I don't care about your private life, Lindsey. But as a U.S. senator, I need to try and figure out why you're trying to sell out your own countrymen. And I need to make sure you being gay isn't it.”

At least some Tea Party members, however, do care that Frank is gay.

Last month, several members hurled anti-gay slurs at the Massachusetts representative as they protested the government's health care reform bill in the Capitol.

One protester reportedly yelled “Barney, you fagot” as the 70-year-old lawmaker rounded a corner to leave a government building. A surrounding crowd erupted in laughter.

Frank also confirmed reports that other protesters shouted “homo communist” at him and another told him to “go homo to Massachusetts.”

Gay rumors have dogged the unmarried Graham for years. Last year, openly lesbian politician Linda Ketner outed Graham in an interview published on the progressive political blog Fire Dog Lake.

“We have more gay people serving in South Carolina than probably in any place in the United States. They're just not out of the closet,” she said, then gave the examples of U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, South Carolina State Senator Glenn McConnell and Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer. Ketner, who came close to unseating incumbent S.C. Representative Henry Brown last November, later apologized for her remarks. Bauer denied he's gay – calling the rumor “silly” – after blogger Mike Rogers outed him.

Graham, a Republican who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, has steadfastly dodged questions about his sexuality, most recently when asked by Mike Stark, who blogs at The Crooked Dope.

Last year, a baffled Graham answered “Right … Right … OK” when Stark asked him about the rumors as the senator made his way to a meeting on Capitol Hill.

Writing at Salon, War Room blogger Gabriel Winant suggested that in fact the Tea Party speaker is opposed to Graham being gay: “What's interesting here is the thought obviously running through the speaker's head: that something about the personal features of a politician like Barney Frank or Lindsey Graham explains their otherwise disagreeable behavior. The argument isn't that Frank and, supposedly, Graham, are horrible liberal traitors, and gay to boot. It's that they are, or might be, horrible liberal traitors because they're gay.”

Whether gay or straight, Graham has consistently voted against gay rights legislation.