Comment by hnaccount_rng

I'm reasonably certain the causality is the other way around: Once he was about to loose power his gayness was used to attack him. If he hadn't been gay he would have been attacked for some other reason. It's the change in behaviour that's relevant not the absolute facts.

It's reasonably simple: Be sufficiently powerful and your sins will be overlooked (for a recent example: See Donald Trump's "sentence" in New York). And in non-rule-of-law societies your sins-while-powerful will be used against you (this is why democracies historically always had immunity arrangements)