I was thinking "Maybe he was more moderate or even liberal, but just knew there's no getting elected without an (R) in small town Alabama politics, and so ran as a Republican anyway." The inverse happens in our town - we're so blue, we occasionally get conservatives running as Democrats just to have a shot.
But then he ran for re-election in 2020 and used publicity of him and Trump together to get re-elected, which is farther than any actual moderate would go. So he's either a massive hypocrite to the LGBT community or a massive hypocrite to the Conservative community, but either way, wasn't super bright if he was posting all this publicly to Reddit as an elected figure. Shame he felt the need to shoot himself. Could have just moved to a blue state.