IGF CultureWatch

First published on October 6, 2004, in the Chicago Free Press.

As of early October when this is written there seems little reason to alter my early July prediction that President George W. Bush will win reelection. If Senator John Kerry wins, I will not be unhappy - or no unhappier than if Bush wins - but I will be surprised.

Still, there is no harm in thinking about what a Kerry victory might mean for gays and lesbians. This is not to say there are not other issues than gay ones, even issues that may be more decisive for many gay voters. But other writers have discussed those elsewhere.

There seems little doubt that a Kerry victory, unlike a Bush victory, would tend to facilitate legal and social equality for gays and lesbians. Tend to facilitate; not provide. Both the Kerry campaign and its auxiliaries at the Human Rights Campaign have exaggerated the positive impact of a Kerry victory, unduly raising expectations, but it is true nonetheless, if to a lesser degree.

Kerry announced his opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment, though he avoided the Senate vote on it. (He might say: "I was against it before I didn't vote against it.") So a Kerry victory would remove one strong source of arm-twisting advocacy when it is proposed in the next Congress. With a Kerry administration, because of any president's ability to buy and trade favors, that is an issue we would have help fighting and the amendment would likely lose by more than last time.

Kerry's support for state constitutional amendments barring gay marriage, as in Massachusetts, is troubling. Presumably he takes that position to balance his opposition to the federal constitutional ban. (He might say: "I favor denying rights at the state level, not the federal level.") But Kerry need not have taken that position.

Even if he did not feel he could safely oppose state amendments, he could have finessed the issue by saying, "I think we should leave that issue up to voters. I trust the voters, don't you?" Gays may believe that the right to marry should not be left up to voters, but Kerry's saying so would have been better than supporting state amendments.

Still, leaving the issue up to states allows gays a chance for eventual victories in a few states and the possibility of state-based gay marriage "demonstration projects." In any case, it will be easier in the future to repeal state constitutional bans than it would be to repeal a U.S. constitutional amendment.

But marriage is not the only gay issue. Despite his opposition to gay marriage, Kerry says he supports civil unions such as exist in Vermont and may be approved in Massachusetts. That suggests that a Kerry administration would support domestic partner benefits for federal employees and might provide mild encouragement to states to pass civil union laws.

Although Kerry has made troubling comments about "unit cohesion," he seems to support repeal of the military's ban on gay personnel. His administration could press Congress to repeal the ban, urge the military to redefine sodomy as forced sex rather than specific acts, signal courts that overturning the ban would not be resisted and publicly defend ending the ban as a wartime necessity.

The administration would support enhanced hate crimes laws and gay-inclusive non-discrimination laws. Even if those laws do not pass, public statements supporting them by a President Kerry and administration officials could promote more favorable public attitudes toward gays. There would be more support for candid and less-moralistic AIDS education. The prudish moralist Attorney General John Ashcroft would be excreted.

Many gay issues from gay marriage to the military's gay ban are already or will be taken up by the federal courts and we would doubtless get a friendlier hearing from federal and Supreme Court judges appointed by Kerry than ones appointed by Bush. Although Kerry appointees would not inevitably be pro-gay nor Bush's inevitably anti-gay, Kerry is less likely than Bush to appoint another Scalia or Rehnquist.

The problems with all rosy scenarios of gay progress under Kerry are twofold. One is, despite Kerry's relatively friendly attitude, his seeming lack of zeal on gay issues. The other, more important, is that both the House and Senate are likely to remain in Republican hands. Even if Democrats regained the Senate, the House is virtually certain to remain Republican, blocking most gay-friendly legislation.

But the chief effect of a Kerry victory would be less a matter of passing legislation than of changing the tone of public discourse about gays and lesbians. A Kerry administration would foster a friendlier political/social climate for us to continue our advocacy efforts. That is no small gain. We can achieve progress in public understanding more easily if our own government is not fighting us.

The other thing a Kerry victory would do is force the Republican party to reassess its Karl Rovian strategy of viewing Christian evangelicals as its electoral base and bending all efforts to increase their voter turnout by promoting religion and moralism and treating gays as a toxic element in the body politic.

First used during the AIDS crisis in the late 1980s, outing has been mostly moribund for more than a decade. Now a couple of activists in Washington, D.C., abetted by a few media outlets, have revived it. While outing is justifiable under very narrow circumstances, these recent outings have not met the proper ethical and journalistic standards for doing so.

In recent months, activists Michael Rogers and John Aravosis have claimed that more than 20 members of Congress and congressional staffers are secretly gay. Their claims have been reported in a few gay and alternative newspapers, and have been repeated by Internet bloggers. The goal is to expose the hypocrisy of closeted anti-gay politicians and of closeted staff members who work for anti-gay politicians. This will presumably make closeted gays think twice before supporting anti-gay causes, especially the Federal Marriage Amendment.

Aravosis, himself a former aide to anti-gay Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), has compared the outing campaign to nuclear war. "Mutual assured destruction worked once," he argues, referring to the superpower confrontation during the Cold War. "Maybe it will again."

In the style of a person convinced the world needs him, Aravosis uses an overwrought metaphor. But it is also unintentionally apt. Destruction is the key, for outing has the potential to destroy lives and families. It has the whiff of cannibalism about it. Uplifting the cause of individual rights, it sacrifices real individuals. Defending a movement that has exalted privacy, it destroys personal privacy. Combating homophobia, it relies on homophobia for its power. On its best days, outing is a nasty business.

Nevertheless, outing is justifiable as an ethical and journalistic matter when two criteria are met.

First, the outed person's homosexuality must be directly relevant to some matter of public policy.

Hypocrisy by an officeholder meets this test, as when a closeted politician opposes gay equality for homophobic reasons. An example would be a legislator who declares marriage must be "defended" from gay couples while he has extramarital homosexual affairs.

It is not enough, however, that a closeted politician opposes a gay-rights proposal if the basis for the opposition is non-homophobic. For example, an officeholder might oppose an employment non-discrimination law on the ground that such laws are counterproductive or too costly for employers. She may be wrong; hypocritical she is not.

The relevance requirement would be met by someone like Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania), who has made clear the homophobic basis for his opposition to gay equality. For the most part, the members of Congress outed by Rogers and Aravosis meet this first standard.

But others, including the congressional staff members outed in some gay newspapers, do not meet the relevance requirement. Rarely would a staffer's sexual orientation be directly relevant to a public policy debate. Unlike officeholders, staffers do not vote on public policy. They frequently have no influence on what position their boss takes on gay issues. Many work on matters, like environmental policy, that have nothing to do with gay issues.

The main purpose in outing such people is retributive; it is punishment for aiding the enemy, however indirectly. That is an impulse I share, but it is not a matter of public concern.

Even as a device for helping the gay cause, outing congressional staffers is dubious since they can be useful sources of information about anti-gay legislative strategy only if they remain closeted. It's true that outing might deter a few people from working for anti-gay officeholders. But that's almost useless since there's no shortage of eager applicants to take such jobs.

Second, there must be credible evidence made available to the public that establishes the person is probably homosexual.

We must demand that this burden of proof be met because the cost of error can be very high. Outed individuals may lose their jobs, get cut off from their parents and friends, and lose their families - even if they're not really gay. We must also demand credible proof because, frankly, hearsay about celebrity homosexuality is as common as sand on a beach. Is there a movie star, ball player, or politician who hasn't been rumored to dilly-dally?

Few of the recent outings claimed by Rogers and Aravosis, and reported by some gay newspapers, meet this second requirement. If there is an adequate basis for believing that these outed politicians or staffers are gay, the public has often not been given that information.

In one case, a congressman was outed on the basis of an audiotape provided by an anonymous source who claimed the recorded voice was that of the congressman soliciting gay sex. There was no way to verify the information and no way to judge its credibility. That the congressman subsequently dropped his re-election bid lent some credence to the story, but only after the fact.

In another case, the Washington Blade reported in its July 23, 2004, issue that a named person working for the Republican Party had been "outed by local activists." That was it. While the article detailed the person's ties to anti-gay officeholders, it provided no basis for believing the person is gay other than the unsubstantiated claims of Aravosis and Rogers themselves. That isn't journalism; it's gossip.

The desire to punish the wartime traitor, to make an example of him, is understandable. But we must first be convinced that there really has been treason and that punishment will accomplish more than simply inflicting pain.