Outrage: Do Ask, Do Tell — A Documentary on Outing
Kirby Dick, director of the new film Outrage, was interviewed on Fresh Air this week by Terry Gross. She asked what level of hypocrisy merits ruining, somebody’s life and career?
Mr. DICK: I looked at their voting records… and if their voting records were substantially anti-gay, I think in the case of all the politicians I had focused on, they were anywhere between zero and 25 percent pro-gay, the rest was anti-gay. And that to me, over oftentimes a two-decade career, was certainly an indication that this was an example of hypocrisy. [...]
GROSS: Do you know if any of the closeted gay politicians who were outed changed their voting patterns after being outed?
Mr. DICK: Actually, yes. Certainly Mark Foley did. Mark Foley, there was sort of a small outing of him in the late ’90s, and shortly after that he’s had – since then he’s had a very positive, pro-gay voting record. The same is true with Congressman, former Congressman Jim Colby of Arizona. Once he came out, his voting record, his pro-gay voting record, was very strong.
So it’s a very common thing, because again, they no longer need to protect the closet.
She also interviews Dan Gurley. Gurley was field director of the Republican National Committee when he was outed in 2004. Now on the board of Equality NC, he says he was open about his sexuality with his professional colleagues, both on Capitol Hill and at the Republican National Committee. You have to wonder, then, how could that not be relevant to all those voting for Republican candidates explicitly for their anti-gay positions?
So does Gurley believe that out proud gay people are better for society than closet cases?
Yeah, I – I certainly don’t disagree with that. I think that, you know, the more people who are out and open about who they are, the better off we ultimately all are going to be. And I think that applies not just in – in the realm of politics and public policy, but I think it appeals to or, you know, its – its same regardless of whether you’re talking about, you know, Hollywood in the entertainment industry or whether you’re talking about, you know, the factory or the office that you work in. I think the more people there are that are out the better off ultimately we – we’ll be.
How does Gurley rationalize overseeing an admittedly and explicitly anti-gay campaign? By minimizing it:
The particular piece of mail that seemed to – that really caused a lot of people in the gay community to get angry – was a piece of mail targeting voter registration, trying to get people to register a Republican. And it only went out in two states. It went out in Arkansas and West Virginia. I first became aware of this one particular piece of mail when it actually showed up on my desk as a proof for me to check to make sure that it had the proper legal disclaimer on it and that there were no typos in it.
I had absolutely nothing to do with targeting of that mail, with the design, the production, the content, anything to do with it until that point. And when I first saw the piece of mail I knew that it crossed a line…And it went out anyway. Now, you know, at that point, you know, I’m not sure what I could have done. I mean I was in no position to stop the piece of mail, you know… But at that point, you know, what do you do, you know? [Say, maybe, quit?!?!?] I raised the objections that I thought were appropriate at that time, and, you know, they weren’t heeded.
For more on the film: A blurb in NYMagazine; a lengthy piece in the Hartford Courant. Kevin Naff comments after the premier (and Michelangelo Signorile says McGreevey did not storm out). Ande Towle comments after seeing it in pre-release; more from Towleroad on the film here and here.
For my friends in comments, Gurley says the Republicans’ anti-gay stance will not work to Republican advantage:
I personally have qualms about the role of the religious right in Republican Party politics. I think that in many ways, the religious right has certainly captured elements of the Republican Party. They’ve driven away a lot of the moderates and the, you know, the libertarian-thinking Republicans that are out there, and I think that’s a huge problem that the Republican Party is going to have to deal with in the future.
What say we pick up that comment thread again here?
22 Responses to “Outrage: Do Ask, Do Tell — A Documentary on Outing”
The thread you linked to was about the somewhat hypocritical standards and actions of a private school (enforcing anti-gay policies, ignoring anti-porn, anti-alcohol and other school policies).
This is quite different, as it touches on policymakers being hypocritical in the performance of their profession, and betraying the voters who believe in the positions they are secretly in violation of. “Anti-gay” closeted gay legislators show either self loathing by crusading against others who follow their own proclivities, or more likely diversionary tactics by trying to keep anyone from thinking they could possibly be gay, as they are crusading vocally against homosexuality.
It must be chilling to them that someone is destroying their diversionary tactics by looking specifically at the most vocally anti-gay to find evidence that they are gay. Touche, diversionary tactic brings exactly the scrutiny you wanted it to avoid.
I have an enormous problem with the idea of forcibly “outing” anyone, and I've written about it more than once.
Everything about it hits me as wrongwrong.
I was gonna say. This thread almost sounds like blackmail to me from the pro-gay marriage activists.
Here's the message in a [veiled] nutshell: “If you have had any homosexual encounters as a politician, even if exploratory, we're banking on your fear of being “outed” should one of those tricks squeal. So either vote our way or you're getting outed..”
So the “bi-curious” phenemonon has a couple of advantages: to recruit on teen radios stations, inviting sexually curious youth to become fixated or at least open to gay sexual experiences or, in the case of their current agenda, to blackmail politicians to vote their way.
Enter, the slippery slope…
You know what, on second thought…the idea of a movie about forcibly outing people's experimentations with their private sexual lives [emphasis on private], this might be the best thing the anti-deviant marriage lobby could have in their arsenal to date..
The aggressive-recruitment-monster finally comes out of the closet..lol…
lol..
And while we're on the subject of how gays like to forcibly affect people's choices about their sexuality, lets have a lesson in GLBT linguistics shall we?
Lesson 1: “Chicken” [gay slang]
“Chicken” can be used, usually by gay men referring to other gay men, to mean a young gay man or young appearing gay man – stereotypically describing an adolescent youth, usually one with an innocent nature.[1]
Author Bruce Rodgers defines the term as “1. any boy under the age of consent, heterosexual, fair of face, and unfamiliar with homosexuality (“So many chickens were flapping around that I thought we were touring Colonel Sanders' plantation”) 2. juvenile, youthful, young-looking.[2] Others have defined it as a young man who engages in sex for money or favors.[3]
Recently, some conservative Americans began defining the term itself as gay pedophile related.[4] In the subculture of the gay community which uses handkerchiefs or bandannas as a code, people who identify as “Chicken” wear a Kewpie doll in their left back pocket. Those who are interested in young men – referred to as chickenhawks – are denoted in the hanky code as wearing one on the right.[5]
The term has existed in the gay vernacular for many decades, and is still used today. David Henry Sterry, a former prostitute turned actor and director, titled his 2002 memoir, Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent.[6] Author Philip Herbst traces its origin to the 19th century, where it was used to describe the youngest sailors on a ship, who were often used for sexual purposes.”
***
SPECIAL NOTICE: This was originally quoted from this weblink, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_(gay_slang
but since I posted it on another gay-marraige debate thread was removed from wikipedia….seems there's something the deviant crowd doesn't want advertised: recruitment, via coercion, or in this case, blackmail, via other people's natural curiosity and exploration of their sexuality.
Yeah, the gay movement is all about freedom and choice.
Their argument about forcible-outings is like the cigarette companies finding people who have experimented with smoking, are fighting the addiction by quitting, starting up, quitting again etc. and saying that they must be forced to support pro-tobacco legislation.
You see, it's like I said, we really need to understand the psycho-biological components to sexuality like the back of our hands before we go ahead and rubber-stamp the deviant agenda. Or before the arms are twisted behind our backs and a gun shoved to the head to support it.
The more I think about this blunder the deviant crowd has just made, the starker the reality is played out…
Think of the dark forces of human nature, addiction, obsession, deviance as the currents of a vast ocean. By that definition we could say that any one of us is “bi-curious” [what an unfortunate lingo the gay crowd has latched onto..lol..]. Think of the description of marriage as “between one man and one woman” as the helm of the good ship “Humanity”. Proposing a dismantling of that steering column but tearing apart that description will set our ship at the will of the dark currents themselves.
This is the slippery-slope argument and now the gays themselves have outed the mechanism via which it will move forward with force once the final dismantling is done..
We call this back on the farm “shooting oneself in the foot”..lol…LOL! Or, 'cat's out of the bag'…heh heh
It's like it's Monica Lewinsky in reverse. I wonder if any of those gay tricks were sent out on a mission? Nah…?
Wow Sil. You may just have to ask for your own “guest voice” column on this issue, being on how much you have to say about it. If I were you, I would hunker down and prepare for the apocalypse, because when gay marriage becomes legal everywhere, we're all going to die faster than if the swine flu virus was forcibly introduced into every city in the country.
At any rate, I agree with Polimom, forcibly outing anybody is just flat out wrong. People should come to terms with their sexuality without a public flogging.
And of course, public “flogging” is illegal in most states…for now..lol..
OK I can interject some humor too, but blackmail is a serious issue..
It's amazing the hypocrisy of some people. It's ok for them to use orientation against people who they think are wrong, but…………….
Yep. It's funny how this film is going to effect the exact opposite impact they'd hoped.
The reason it will is because they have made a serious misjudgement in the middle-grounders who don't believe that blackmail, oppression or dark political maneuvers should exist from either fringe-polarity of our two parties..
Silhouette, your qualifications to write about how middle-grounders feel are not in evidence.
Dr_J
Your qualifications to say I'm not qualified are not in evidence.
I'll be interested to see the movie, though I'm bored by the debate about outing. I'm clear where I stand, best articulated by Chris Crane in this post, and more fully, er, fleshed out in this aggregation of his posts on the topic.
I would add that when the South Park fellas did their Trapped in the Closet episode the question was raised, Will Tom Sue? (He didn't.) Findlaw's wonderfully definitive exploration of the topic wondered should it even be considered defamation to call someone gay? An excerpt:
Once societal acceptance of same sex relations is complete and understood as a totally normal, neutral, variation, Outing will no longer be an issue. Looked at that way, the whole idea that Outing is “wrongwrong” carries a pejorative bias against same sex love.
Okay, Joe — let's back up a bit here. What's your definition of “complete”? Or even “societal acceptance”? Are you measuring that by recognition of marital / civil rights? Or by something more comprehensive?
Truth be told, “complete” includes marital/cvil rights, but is probably something more comprehensive. So here I should fill in some more (personal) blanks…
Next weekend, at a tiny traditional (but non-conformist) Baptist church here in rural Georgia and on the occasion of my 10-year anniversary with my life-partner, we will have a “renewing our commitment” ceremony. A conversation at the wedding of a friend in California last September is where the idea began. A couple at our table wanted us to get married right then — it was legal in California at that time, you'll remember. They said they'd give us their San Francisco house for a honeymoon.
I answered that even if we married then we could not have what my friend was experiencing at that moment: his whole family, his friends, his religious community (it was a Jewish wedding) and the state coming together to endorse and support their commitment. The guy answered back that that was nonsense. I should go for it.
With a 10 year anniversary coming up, the idea of a party was a natural. From there it kept growing; it took on a momentum of its own. And now I see that here we will have family (though, sadly, I have broken with my own birth family), friends, the community both religious (Baptist) and secular, and the culture here, in this small southern town, coming together to endorse our commitment. The culture here has shaped what we are doing.
My posts and comments are influenced by these personal events. And through those experiences here in rural Georgia — still the heart of red America — I am coming to believe that it's the state and the law and the courts and even the media that refuse to acknowledge and accept same sex partnerships. It looks to me like the American culture COMPLETELY accepts them.
Joe, I'm truly happy that you have the support of your community. I think it's awesome! But I think you're generalizing a bit too far.
I'll give you an anecdote in return: Dear Husband and I are currently looking for vacation property in the Ouachita Mountain region of Arkansas. I'm a lover of the mountains, and that's the nearest place to us (7+ hours away).
We found a place a couple of weeks ago, on the outskirts of a town we haven't spent a lot of time in. About all we really know (knew) is that it's incredibly small (~400 people), very poor, and they have a Presbyterian church in addition to an astounding number of Baptist churches.
A couple of days ago, I came across a site that's published the names / locations (all 83,000+ of them) of everyone who signed a petition last year to ban couples who are not legally married from being able to adopt children. The target was gay couples, and they got the bill on that ballot. And it passed.
And the little town with the house we like? That has a population of merely 400 souls including kids? There were well over 100 signatures from there on that petition. Factoring for kids, that's probably pushing 100%.
Will that change eventually? Perhaps — but I'd be stunned if they'd rally around a gay couple in their community today.
Now, ask yourself — would forcibly outing someone from within this community further civil rights for the group they're marginalizing? Or would it merely destroy lives and foster anger?
I'm confused about how my comment got to the top of the string. But, to respond…
I'm not looking to “forcibly out” anyone. The standard that Chris Craine suggests is that public people — of any kind: pols, celebs, whatever — are asked the very same questions whether they are gay or straight. We typically do entire profiles of straight people including girlfriends, wives, kids, affairs etc. When we don't ask that of single people who are known or suspected to be gay, when we facilitate their staying in the closet, that's a double standard.
As to the specific of your example, we have here lots of gay people who have made peace in their community by quietly allowing people not to know. If that's what they have to do, I respect that. If they were out campaigning for anti-gay ordinances, that might open up their own lives to questioning. Private people are very different from celebs and pols who put themselves into the spotlight.
Yes, I understand where Chris Crane's coming from. And from my perspective, I think it's pretty danged nuts that anybody is interested in someone else's personal “salacious details” (as he put it).
In fact, he used Jodie Foster in his piece — a person who, I think, is essentially private about her life. Now I suppose one could say that she's that way because of her relationship, but I think it's just as likely that she'd rather not have her personal life on display, regardless. There are, in fact, people like that. And I don't think it's true that the media doesn't report on the personal details of gay / lesbian celebrities. Lindsay Lohan comes to mind as a recent example.
But back to the original post:
If they were out campaigning for anti-gay ordinances, that might open up their own lives to questioning.
So you're saying that Outing (a la the documentary above, and prior efforts of others) are only limited to people who are actively working against gay rights? It hasn't been / isn't happening to others? Because that's not been my impression at all.
Blackmail is blackmail.
Don't whitewash it.
I don't follow outing. I don't link to outers. I'm not interested, really, either. I advocate all gay people being open about their lives. I think hiding implies shame and shame drives people to do shameful things.
In the instance of Dan Gurley, for example, if you listen to the interview he sat by and worked for a party that was demonizing people like him. The people who vote for that party would certainly be interested to know that, as he says, all his colleagues in the GOP knew and it didn't matter. They are voting for a party that they believe cares about it.
Finally, he says that he was destined to work in the White House but once he was outed he was told to find employment in the private sector. That seems to me what the GOP voters would have wanted from the get go. And so instead of working in the White House he's on the board of a gay advocacy organization. That's what I would have wanted from the get go!
There is a time and place for shame. Without shame we would be a lawless society indeed. Why not encourage people to rob from banks because surely they've cheated on their taxes a time or two or maybe didn't report getting too much change back at the market once or twice.
dear Joe. . .so cool to read of the upcoming weekend and the honoring of an enduring love and committment . . .rural Georgia?. . .Baptist church?. . .secular/religious traditionalist. . .all together a cluster of lotuses in a historical murky pond. . .all the more beautiful. . . thanks for pushing my outdated frame of the good old Southland. . .many blessings. . .