Gay Community Still
Divided Over 'Outing'
By AP from the
NYTimes on the Web, October 4, 2005
NEW YORK -- Though decried by
many gay-rights leaders, ''outing'' -- the practice of exposing secretly gay
public figures -- is expanding into new terrain as Internet bloggers target
congressional staffers, political strategists, even black clergy whose sermons
and speeches contain anti-gay rhetoric.
Few issues are as divisive within the gay community. Numerous gay
organizations, such as the Human Rights Campaign and the Log Cabin Republicans,
staunchly oppose outing, yet many other activists support it when the targets
are public figures -- or their aides -- who work against gay rights or condemn
homosexuality.
''It's not the gay thing that's the problem -- it's the hypocrisy,'' said
Michael Rogers, creator of a Web log that has been at the fore of several recent
outing campaigns. ''I'm going to be calling out the politicians who vote
against us and work against the interests of the very community they come
from.''
Christopher Barron, political director of the Log Cabin Republicans, said he
understands the anger that activists such as Rogers feel but believes they are
wasting their energy.
''Outing is not an effective tool,'' Barron said. ''I don't know a single
vote on gay-rights issues that was changed because of outing. ... Folks should
be focusing on the hard work that needs to be done and not get bogged down in
personal attacks.''
Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said outing can backfire
by distracting attention from more substantive political issues or by prompting
conservative politicians to harden their anti-gay views after aides and
associates are outed.
Two black gay-rights activists are now taking aim at prominent black pastors who
-- in the activists' view -- have gone too far in assailing homosexuality from
their pulpits. In a campaign begun on their Web sites last week, activists
Jasmyne Cannick and Keith Boykin are soliciting information about the pastors'
private lives -- including whether some might be gay.
So far, the pair has collected only uncorroborated ''tips,'' not any solid
information that any of the pastors is gay, but Cannick defended the campaign.
''We know there are people who preach one thing and do another,'' he said.
''There's nothing wrong with investigating.''
Many other recent outing targets have been Republican politicians and
operatives. Among the cases:
-- A GOP congressman from Virginia, Edward Schrock, dropped out of his
re-election race last year shortly after allegations were published on Michael
Rogers' Web log that he solicited sex with another man on a gay phone dating
service. Schrock, a married ex-Navy captain, was an outspoken foe of gays
in the military and supported a constitutional ban on same-sex marriages.
He did not comment specifically on the allegations.
-- In 2003, U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, a Florida Republican, called a news conference
to denounce a report in an alternative newspaper that he is gay. Foley
declined to answer questions about the subject, saying his sexual orientation
was irrelevant to his political duties. He contended the story was
circulated to derail his U.S. Senate campaign, which he abandoned four months
later.
-- The GOP mayor of Spokane, Wash., James West, faces a recall election prompted
by newspaper articles accusing him of offering City Hall jobs, sports tickets
and cash to young men he met in an online gay chat room. West, who as a
state legislator often opposed gay-rights bills, acknowledged poor judgment but
denies doing anything illegal.
Not all outing campaigns gain traction. A cadre of activist bloggers and
alternative-media journalists have been contending for more than a year that
another Republican congressman is gay and yet has often voted against gay-rights
legislation. Thus far, the mainstream media -- both national outlets and
those in the congressman's home region -- have declined to report on the
campaign, although the effort is common knowledge among political reporters and
on Capitol Hill.
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who in 1987 became the first member of Congress to
voluntarily make his homosexuality public, said he does not know if the targeted
congressman is gay or not. However, Frank contended that the perception
that the congressman might be gay had damaged his standing with some fellow
Republicans in the House -- and Frank said this issue of bias should be aired
publicly.
''I think he's wrong to be silent about this,'' Frank said of the congressman.
''You should not cover up this act of prejudice.''
Frank is now one of three openly gay members of Congress, and there are about
300 openly gay elected officials nationwide, according to the Gay and Lesbian
Victory Fund. The president of the fund, which recruits out-of-the-closet
gay and lesbian candidates to run for office, has mixed feelings about outing.
''If we ever outed anyone, we'd lose our credibility with the people we work
with,'' said Chuck Wolfe. ''On the other hand, who can condemn people for
using whatever weapons they have to fight for equality and point out hypocrisy?
It seems exactly why we have a democracy.''
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