Outing Gay Republican Congressmen

>>>at an embassy with champagne glasses full of cocaine<

Ed, that's an incredibly serious charge that would be of interest to federal law enforcement authorities. Was it hyperbole?

I'm inclined to think these guys need to be outed without much reservation. It's not only that they are causing harm through their policies, they are also defrauding their constituents and their families. The only thing that concerns me somewhat are the cases where the wives know what their husbands are doing and are willing to live with it quietly for the sake of their children. It concerns me to have this choice removed from them, but I think the other issues outweigh this concern.

A long campaign of discovering and exposing hypocrisy in Washington could have a positive long term impact on politics and government, and not just on this issue.

carpundit-
No, that was not hyperbole. According to my friend, that actually happened at his house (he was renting an old embassy at the time), and I certainly have no reason to doubt him. He got very much caught up in the decadent lifestyle in D.C. and finally moved back to Michigan. He has provided me with quite a frightening insider's view of official Washington.

We have had more than a bit of discussion about Mike Rogers's outing program over at the NYTimes gay rights forum. Some people are categorically opposed to it, some others are in favor of it, as long as the outing is limited to senators and congressmen who demonstrably vote anti-gay, and staffers who work for them.

As to

>On the one hand, I loathe these men. They are the worst kind of hypocritical trash, voting against gay rights at every turn while being gay themselves. So I have a hard time dredging up any sympathy for them at all. On the other hand, I also understand the self-loathing that they feel. I've had gay friends who described the same feelings and how they struggled with them for years before finally coming to terms with it. So I have some sympathy for that aspect of it.

well, whatever. The fact is that there might not be a strategic benefit from the outing--in that those who are outed would likely be replaced by people who would follow the same policies. That is, outing might not, in and of itself, be useful in gaining equal rights for gay people. On the other hand, as far as I'm concerned, there is nothing wrong with reaping a little revenge. Recent reports of a study done in Switzerland suggest that there may be an evolutionary basis for the desire for revenge when one has been wronged, see, for example, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/08/0827_040827_punishment.html In other words, payback can be a bitch to the victim, but it can also be so sweet to the perpetrator.

You might poo-poo the desire for revenge, but, quite frankly, given the fact that homo sapiens is a social species, revenge, like its evolutionary counterpart altruism, are necessary in a social species.

Your gay friends may not have been in a position to influence government policies--and I included in that religious bloviators such as the minions of the various churches. If they weren't in such a position, then perhaps outing them is wrong. On the other hand, if your gay friends were in a position to influence government policies, and if they were working for the "wrong" side, I see no reason whatsoever not to out them. Payback is a bitch.

raj writes:
Your gay friends may not have been in a position to influence government policies--and I included in that religious bloviators such as the minions of the various churches. If they weren't in such a position, then perhaps outing them is wrong. On the other hand, if your gay friends were in a position to influence government policies, and if they were working for the "wrong" side, I see no reason whatsoever not to out them.
My friend struggles with this every day. He is currently running a state congressional campaign for a moderate Republican and one of the big issues in the campaign is gay marriage. His boss really couldn't care less about the issue and has no problem with gay marriage, but he'd be dead in the water politically in his district if he said that publicly. His opponent in the primaries was a religious rightist all the way and fanatically opposed to gay marriage. The moderate won the election, but only by at least offering some half-hearted rhetoric against gay marriage.
In the general election, that won't be an issue because his Democratic opponent (who has no real chance of winning) is for gay marriage. So what do you do in that circumstance? Certainly it is better to support the moderate rather than the extremist, especially in a district where whoever the Republican candidate is, they're guaranteed to win. On the other hand, my friend has to issue at least half-hearted statements on behalf of the campaign that take a position he opposes. So I do feel some sympathy for people in his position. There isn't an easy choice to be made.
But for the politicians who are openly anti-gay in public but secretly gay in private, I tend to agree. I have my misgivings about it, but like Perry Willis, I tend to think that outing people for their hypocrisies and lies, regardless of whether it is of a sexual nature, is ultimately a good thing for our political system.

Ed Brayton at September 16, 2004 11:19 AM

So what do you do in that circumstance?

Well, since I'm not involved in the race, I don't do anything. On the other hand, regarding the substance of your question, one might seriously wonder. You say that he is working for the Republican "moderate," who couldn't care less about the "same-sex marriage issue," instead of an extremist who is presumably virulently opposed to same-sex marriage. Regardless of how your friend's candidate feels about the issue, one might seriously wonder how he would vote when confronted with the various anti-same-sex marriage proposals. Would his vote be any different than his extremist opponent's? Would his rhetoric--particularly if he might feel it necessary to establish his bona fides with the religious right? If not, then I don't see a whole lot of difference between the two.

On the other hand, does your friend's candidate have a track record that might suggest that he would vote against anti-gay measures?

I don't know where your friend is, or what his candidate's track record is, so it would be difficult to suggest what your friend should do. But, then again, I'm not doing the outing. One might seriously wonder, though, why he apparently wants to stay in the closet. He isn't like an Arthur Finkelstein, is he? Finkelstein, who had ran campaigns for virulently homophobic candidates like Jesse Helms, was outed a few years ago in Boston Magazine.

BTW, I tend to believe that the issue isn't just one of "On the other hand, my friend has to issue at least half-hearted statements on behalf of the campaign that take a position he opposes." I'm sure that most people who work on campaigns do not necessarily agree with all of the positions of the politicians they work for. Someone might not, for example, agree with all of the environmental, racial, religious, or other policies of the candidates that they work for. That's fine. And in so doing they have to run the risk of being ostracized. As the outings regarding gay people who work for homo-hating politicians hopefully will result in. Hopefully, they will be ostracized by gay people. And hopefully they will be ostracized by the people they are working for. To put it succinctly, and as I described previously: payback is a bitch. But, so what? If your friend doesn't care about "the payback," why should he care about being outed. On the other hand, if he does care about "the payback," perhaps he might want to consider that what he is doing--helping an anti-gay candidate--is wrong.

raj-
It's highly unlikely that the candidate my friend works for will ever have to cast a vote on gay marriage. Michigan has already voted to ban gay marriage, but that's pretty much a symbolic vote that doesn't change anything. And my friend himself is not in the closet. He doesn't hide the fact that he's gay, though it's not something that the public would know about (or should know about). So it wouldn't do any good for anyone to out him anyway, other than to damage his boss perhaps, and what good does that do anyone? His boss is a lot more moderate and reasonable than the person he's replacing (they were term limited out) and the person he beat in the primaries. So as a practical matter, who would benefit from it? My comments concerned his own internal ethical dilemmas, not whether someone would or should out him. That's not likely to happen regardless. I was just saying that in some circumstances, I can understand the difficult position a gay employee is put in. If they're working for Jesse Helms, there should be no dilemma, you just can't work for a guy like that. But that's not the case with my friend.

>And my friend himself is not in the closet. He doesn't hide the fact that he's gay, though it's not something that the public would know about (or should know about). So it wouldn't do any good for anyone to out him anyway, other than to damage his boss perhaps, and what good does that do anyone?

If your friend claims to be "out," one might seriously wonder what issue would he have being "outed"? I should mention that I have no problem damaging his boss, since it seems fairly clear that, as far as gay issues are concerned, there would not be a lot of difference between his "moderate" boss and the homo-hater. But, if he's "out," how can he be outed?

On the other hand, query who your friend would be outed to. One of the things that we witnessed in some of Mike Rogers's outings of some of the staffers working for anti-gay congressmen was a reaction from gay people themselves. In other words, the outing was not so much for the fact that they were gay--most of the outed staffers were known to be gay. The outing was to the gay community, for the fact that the staffers were working for anti-gay congressmen. And some of them were villified for that--by gays. Not for the fact that they were gay, but for the fact that they were gay people who were working for candidates who were anti-gay. So, if your friend were to be outed, it might be an outing to the gay community (such as it is) for the fact that he is working for what many believe is an anti-gay candidate, not to the larger (read "mostly straight") community. That is why I don't have a particular objection to outing under these circumstances.

BTW, I have significant problems with your suggestion that the public "should" not know that he's gay, but that's another topic.

On another matter, I should mention that having to type in all the HTML tags to get line breaks and paragraphing in these comment threads is really a substantial pain. I learned to do it when I used to post on FreeRepublic.com, but that was a long time ago.

If your friend claims to be "out," one might seriously wonder what issue would he have being "outed"? I should mention that I have no problem damaging his boss, since it seems fairly clear that, as far as gay issues are concerned, there would not be a lot of difference between his "moderate" boss and the homo-hater. But, if he's "out," how can he be outed?
I think you are entirely missing the point. I was not discussing him being outed. I was discussing the kinds of personal dilemmas he encounters as a result of the job he does.
On the other hand, query who your friend would be outed to. One of the things that we witnessed in some of Mike Rogers's outings of some of the staffers working for anti-gay congressmen was a reaction from gay people themselves. In other words, the outing was not so much for the fact that they were gay--most of the outed staffers were known to be gay. The outing was to the gay community, for the fact that the staffers were working for anti-gay congressmen. And some of them were villified for that--by gays. Not for the fact that they were gay, but for the fact that they were gay people who were working for candidates who were anti-gay. So, if your friend were to be outed, it might be an outing to the gay community (such as it is) for the fact that he is working for what many believe is an anti-gay candidate, not to the larger (read "mostly straight") community. That is why I don't have a particular objection to outing under these circumstances.
He frankly wouldn't care about the reaction of the "gay community", an abstract group to which he does not belong and doesn't care to. And since he doesn't work for an anti-gay congressman, it's not really an issue. I think you're looking at this from entirely too simplistic a perspective. From his point of view, by supporting moderates within the Republican party to beat out their more fanatical fellow Republicans, he is helping to affect change from within the party.
You can make the argument that his boss would kowtow to his constituents' anti-gay biases when voting on legislation so he would not be functionally any different than a religious rightist being in there, but that's just too simplistic. First, you don't know that that is true. There's at least a chance that he would have the courage to vote the right way, while there is none with his more fanatical alternative. Second, there are other tangentally related issues that he may well be more moderate on as well. Third, by getting more moderates elected to office from the party, the hand of the moderates is strengthened and the hand of the extremists is weakened, both in the short term and the long term. And fourth, his boss' influence could have a moderating effect on policy out of public view, in the committee rooms when helping shape legislation in ways that the public never sees, in negotiating alternative strategies with his colleagues. Certainly having more moderates in the Republican state house, it makes it less likely that extremist legislation will make it to the floor, and that's something that the public rarely sees. So it's quite plausible that he could help fight the anti-gay agenda from the inside without jeopardizing his standing with his largely anti-gay constituency. Those are all positive things and that's why he does what he does. That doesn't mean that everything is cut and dry for him in his job. There are ethical dilemmas to confront on an almost daily basis. But those dilemmas are not nearly so easy to solve as you seem to imply by just declaring that there's no distinction between a moderate and an extremist in office.
BTW, I have significant problems with your suggestion that the public "should" not know that he's gay, but that's another topic.
He does not hide the fact that he's gay, but it's not public knowledge either. Why should it be? No one who meets him in the course of the conduct of his job has any reason to even think about his sexual preference, and they wouldn't know he was gay any more than they would know that he's Catholic or that he's allergic to shellfish. I certainly hope that someday we reach the point where it's simply not an issue whether someone is gay or not, where there are no "outings" because the discovery that someone is gay will be treated as casually as the revelation that they don't like apple pie.

I am a Canadian who experiences liberty and freedom and total equality as a gay man in a thirty year relationship with two children with a man I was able to legally marry in 2003.

I also believe that the GLBT struggle for human rights is global, not provincial. Our opponents are the same cast of characters in both our countries.

Canada, unlike the Netherlands and Belgium, did not bend to US pressure, and despite DOMA, allowed gays worldwide to marry in our nation.

Yes, Falwell, Robertson and Dobson operate in Canada, but with very different results. Two reasons for this: we did not surrender the moral high ground: our liberal Churches, including the United Church of Canada, the largest body, supported same-sex marriage; and we made sure that our straight family and friends were also engaged in our struggle.

Yes, the new Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin is a neo-liberal pragmatist in the Clinton/Kerry mold. He strayed from the Chretien promise before the recent elections. He witnessed the coup d'etat of the divided right, as the Progressive Conservatives were morphed into the Alliance righwingnuts to launch the "New Conservative Party of Canada." Many US oligarchal interests were part of this move...and Mulroney was a prime mover.

Well, the Rightwingnuts almost won the election. At the last minute, Gays and Lesbians and Family and Friends pulled out a minority Liberal government. Martin has learned his lesson.

There is no need to "out" New Conservative MP's who are gay or staffers in the closet. Canadians do not bed their fascists. Openly gay Liberal, NDP, or Bloc MP's and their friends are in the majority. Progressive Tories are now either Liberal or Independent...there is no residual economic or social issue more important than your own freedom. There is no excuse to sleep with the fascists who wish your nihilism.