Gerry Eastman Studds (; May 12, 1937 – October 14, 2006) was an American Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts who served from 1973 until 1997. He was the first openly gay member of Congress. In 1983 he was censured by the House of Representatives after he admitted to a "consensual" relationship with a 17-year-old page. Early life and career Gerry Studds, born in Mineola, New York, was a descendant of Elbridge Gerry, who was the 9th governor of Massachusetts. The son of Elbridge Gerry Eastman Studds (an architect who helped design the FDR Drive in New York City) and his wife, the former Beatrice Murphy, he had a brother, Colin Studds, and a sister, Gaynor Studds (Stewart). Studds attended elementary and middle school at Derby Academy. He attended Yale University, receiving a bachelors degree in history in 1959 and a master's degree in 1961. While at Yale, he was a member of St. Anthony Hall. Following graduation, Studds was a foreign service officer in the State Department and then an assistant in the Kennedy White House, where he worked to establish a domestic Peace Corps. Later, he became a teacher at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. In 1968, he played a key role in U.S. Senator Eugene McCarthy's campaign in the New Hampshire presidential primary. Career in the United States Congress Studds made his first run for Congress in 1970, but lost to the incumbent Republican representative, Hastings Keith, in a close election. In 1972, with Keith not running for re-election, Studds won the 12th congressional district seat. He moved to the 10th district seat after redistricting in 1983. Studds was a central figure in the 1983 Congressional page sex scandal, when he and Representative Dan Crane were each separately censured by the House of Representatives for an inappropriate relationship with a congressional page — in Studds' case, a 1973 sexual relationship with a 17-year-old male. During the course of the House Ethics Committee's investigation, Studds publicly acknowledged his homosexuality, a disclosure that, according to a Washington Post article, "apparently was not news to many of his constituents." Studds stated in an address to the House, "It is not a simple task for any of us to meet adequately the obligations of either public or private life, let alone both, but these challenges are made substantially more complex when one is, as I am, both an elected public official