Is there any moral logic to “outing”?

Regarding the “outing” issue that came up yesterday in the House of Representatives, I sent the below e-mail to one correspondent of mine and shared it with others to get their thoughts (since I was writing to a homosexual rights advocate, I mainly used his preferred term, gay, instead of the term I normally use, homosexual):

As a champion of gay rights who knows a lot more about the gay movement than I do, can you explain this to me? It seems that some gay outfit has outed David Dreier, R, Cal, chairman of House Rule Committee, as gay, to get back at him for opposing the gay agenda on some issue. It seems that this is a regular practice, to out closeted homosexuals who oppose some aspect of gay rights, because the activists regard that as hypocritical behavior. .

I’m trying to figure out the logic of this from the gays’ point of view.

Let me put it this way. If a person is openly gay and opposes, say, a gay rights bill or gay marriage, is he guilty of some hyprocrisy for which he deserves to be attacked and hurt personally?

If the gay advocates’ answer to that is no, as I expect it will be (since they’re seeking to harm closeted gays, not open gays), then the next question is, if a person is gay and not open about it, and opposes a gay rights bill or gay marriage, then what hypocrisy is he guilty of that makes him deserving of being hurt?

And the next question is, if a person is a closeted homosexual and supports the gay rights agenda, is he guilty of hypocrisy and deserve to be harmed? I imagine the gay activists would say no to that.

Which leads up to these two questions:

If it’s not hypocritical to be openly gay and anti gay rights, why would it be hypocritical to be secretly gay and anti gay rights?

And if it’s not hypocritical to be secretly gay and pro gay rights, why would it be hypocritical to be secretly gay and anti gay rights?

All of which leads up to a final question, is there any logic to this outing business, other than hurting people whom one wants to hurt?

Ken Hechtman, a Canadian leftist, writes back:

You’re over-thinking it.

“Out everybody, all closet cases are the enemy,” is a minority position even among gay activists.

“Out nobody, a man’s private life is just that and must always be respected, no matter his public actions,” is also a minority position.

The majority position is something like this:

Congressman X is secretly gay in his personal life but can be counted on to vote for the gay political agenda. It’s in our interest to keep him where he is, doing what he’s doing and not damage him or make him angry by trying to damage him. After all, we can only out him once—we’ll save it for when he crosses us.

Senator Y is openly gay but votes against the gay agenda. We can’t hurt him by outing him because he’s already out. Therefore, we’ll have to hurt him in some other way.

Congressman Z is secretly gay and votes against the gay agenda. Outing him is a no-brainer because it not only hurts him with gays and liberals, it hurts him with conservatives as well.

The way I heard it, a couple of federal cabinet ministers fit the first description. They’re in the closet but voted for gay marriage and the activists keep their secret safe.

Ken Hechtman has pretty much answered my question. There is no color of moral reasoning justifying the outing tactic. It is pure power politics and vengeance.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 29, 2005 07:23 PM | Send