By Steven L. Brawley, Editor-in-Chief

October 27, 2014: In honor of LGBT History Month I am reposting this story from 2013.

President John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie had a complex relationship. A lot has been written about their lives. But few know there was a third person in their marriage, and he was gay.

The third wheel was Lem Billings, JFK's lifelong BFF, who was a homosexual. They roomed together in school and would be inseparable until Nov. 22, 1963. How close were they? Well, this is what Jackie had to say. "Lem Billings has been a house guest every weekend I've been married." There is no reason to believe a sexual relationship existed between the two, although Billings truly loved JFK.

So, how did the three get along? Having a gay man in your marriage might have caused some tension, but most historians agree that Jackie appreciated Billings.

In many ways, she had much more in common with Billings than she did with JFK. They both loved all the artsy stuff JFK did not fully appreciate.

When Jackie was unavailable to go to a dinner or on a foreign trip, JFK would take Billings along. He had his own room at the White House and came and went like a member of the family. Billings never recovered from JFK's death, turning to drugs and alcohol. He died in 1981. Jackie would attended his funeral. A final sign of respect to the man she shared with JFK.

Over the years I have somehow become a Jackie historian. When I was a kid, my grandmother had one of those mass-produced pictures of President and Mrs. Kennedy hanging in her living room in St. Louis. When I would visit, I would barrage her with questions about the Kennedy's.

Today I publish pinkpillbox.com, a web magazine that looks at Jackie's influence. Through the popularity of my site, I have been asked to speak at functions (including Jackie's 50th class reunion at George Washington University in DC), display my memorabilia at events, and provide media commentary. Being gay, I am interested in her relationship with the LGBT world.

Gay men were always part of her life. Women of her social standing, and of her generation, knew who were light in the loafers, both the married and the confirmed bachelor crowd, keeping their secrets and enjoying their company.

Jackie ran with an impressive list of gays:

• Writers: Joseph Alsop, Truman Capote, and Gore Vidal (her step brother)
• Artists: Rudolf Nureyev, William Walton, and Andy Warhol
• Interior Decorators: Billy Baldwin, John Fowler, Albert Hadley (and lots more who were "technically" married)
• Fashion Designers: Armani, Dior, Givenchy, Gucci, Halston (designed her 1961 inaugural pillbox hat), Valentino, Yves Saint Laurent, and others
• Stylists: Kenneth Battelle (did both Jackie and Marilyn Monroe's hair)

In the forward to Pamela Clarke Keogh's "Jackie Style," noted gay fashion designer Valentino says of her, "Quite simply, Jackie's power was to fascinate. Her manner crossed the populist with the regal…"

The gays would be helpful to her historic restoration of the White House (raising money and scouting out priceless antiques) and with her efforts to save important buildings such as Grand Central Station in New York City.

William Kuhn, best-selling author of "Reading Jackie: Her Autobiography in Books" offered insight into one of Jackie's many gay friendships.

"I think the most important of her openly gay contacts was Rudolph Nureyev. She stood up for him in a New York Times magazine profile where they were saying he was too old to keep on dancing," says Kuhn. "His boyfriend at the time is part of the profile and was clearly a friend of Jackie's too. She visited them on St. Bart's. There is also a book on homosexuality that she owned that was sold at the 1995 Sotheby's auction. She annotated it heavily in her own handwriting, and this was unusual for her."

Jackie would have been the ultimate "fag hag" -  her little black book and rolodex gave her access to the most important, influential, stylish, and wealthy people on the planet.

Can you imagine getting one of her calls? "Hello, Steven. I hate to bother you but I was just invited to this boorish party and I just can't bear to go alone, would you be a dear and come with me? It's just one of those in and out affairs, we can make a fast appearance, then I will make our polite goodbyes and I will whisk us away for laughs and a drink."

Would she have taken me to an alternative bar? She is known to have frequented gay establishments during some of her bar hopping adventures in New York and Provincetown. Today, Jackie O's gay bar in Mykonos Greece pays tribute to the former first lady.

And, it would be a gay man who would have the last word about Jackie. At her funeral, her long time companion Maurice Templesman quoted the poem Ithaka by Constantine Cavafy, the great gay poet of modern Greece.

"...Keep Ithaka always in your mind, arriving there is what you're destined for. But don't hurry the journey at all. Better if it lasts for years..."

Today my grandmother's picture of the Kennedy's hangs in my home. I remember her telling me how much she admired them.

I'd like to think Jackie would be happy to see the LGBT community moving out of the shadows in which Lem and her other gay friends had lived.