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.