After voting against LGBT rights legislation, a conservative North Dakota lawmaker has come out of the closet, admitting that he sent sexually explicit messages to a younger man on a gay dating site.

Rep. Randy Boehning, 52, was outed on Monday, more than a month after he sent an unsolicited picture of his penis along with other messages to Dustin Smith, 21, of Bismarck through the gay dating site Grindr on March 12.

Boehning then voted on April 2 against Senate Bill 2279, which would have provided legal protections for the LGBT community by including sexual orientation to the state's anti-discrimination law. This marked the second time that Boehning voted against LGBT rights in the 12 years that he has worked in North Dakota's state assembly.

After recognizing Boehning in an article that blasted the state legislators who blocked the bill, Smith leaked the messages that he received from him to a local media outlet called The Forum in order to expose his hypocrisy.

"I just felt like this story had to get out," Smith told The Washington Post. "A [representative] had voted against a bill for the LGBT community and here he was talking to me on Grindr."

"How can you discriminate against the person you're trying to pick up?" Smith told The Forum on Monday.

Boehning initially denied that he was a member on the gay dating site when the allegations first surfaced two weeks ago. However, he finally admitted that was gay and had been using the platform under the name "Top Man!" to connect with other men, according to The Forum.

"That's what gay guys do on gay sites, don't they?" said the Fargo representative. "That's how things happen on Grindr. It's a gay chat site. It's not the first thing you do on that site. That's what we do, exchange pics on the site."

"The 1,000-pound gorilla has been lifted," he told The Forum. "I have to confront it at some point."

When asked why he voted against his own self-interest, Boehning said that he had a problem with the language in the bill, which protected people "perceived" to be gay and that his constituents in south Fargo did not support it.

"This has been a challenge for me. You don't tell everyone you're going to vote one way and then switch your vote another way -- you don't have any credibility that way," he said.