Poetic Justice As Fairness: Ethics of Outing Edition

Apparently in Mr. Roger’s neighborhood are many people who set public policy. Mr. Rogers is focusing on one aspect on some of these people. That’s OK because we, the public for whom policy is being set, need to know as much as posible about the nature in which our representatives make their decisicions.
The right wing pulls this crap all the time, e.g. Al Gore’s lights at his mansion. Mr. Rogers’ focus on “teh Gay” is a bit narrow: he should widen his vision to include Bible thumpers who never go to church, Vegans at a steakhouse, etc..

Paraphrasing Frank Herbert:
“Here lies a fallen god
His fall was not a small one
He did but built a pedistal,
A narrow and a tall one.”

Doesn’t it depend on your theory of representative government? If you elect someone to vote your opinions, then that person’s private life doesn’t matter. If you elect someone because you think that person is a good person who will make good decisions on behalf of you, then the private life becomes important (not to say paramount).

A person’s private sexual life becomes relevant when he or she makes the private sexual lives of others a matter of public law. Members of Congress and their staffers who insist on enforcing a narrow conception of morality they don’t even believe (or at least behave according to) ought to expect for that very reason heightened interest in their own personal matters. I’d say this is the case even if they don’t make a matter of law, but a matter of campaign rhetoric (e.g., the homosexual agenda…).

I’m inclined to agree with dan simon on this. People’s private lives sometimes rightly become public fodder, but simply voting one way or another even on these issues does not justify outing, which is, indeed, usually wrong. (Committing perjury in a sexual harrassment case, or any other, when you are a senior elected official, that seems to me to make the behaviour about which you are lying fair game). Its also worth noting in this particular case that Craig did nothing that there should be a law against (sex in public places, sure, but coded requests, however articulate, for sex in public places, no.) Hypocrisy is indeed a vice, but it is not one of the worst, and in a world in which (still) being gay is something many people wrongly suffer for, I find their hysppocrisy a bit more forgivable than some other kinds; perjury is (rightly) a crime.

If someone’s political career is based on pretending to be what they are not, I see no problem in making that information public. When said pretense concerns personal behavior, I see no problem if the revelations reveal personal behavior.

If the public figure has already made the personal public, he or she has no room to complain about a violation of privacy.
.

I am somewhat conflicted about the tactics of Rogers. The process of accepting and disclosing one’s gayness is very stressful and scary–you have to worry about rejection from the people you care about the most, and begin to deal with the changes that come with being identified as a gay American. When someone else outs you, you loose control over this very difficult process, and it adds to the emotional turmoil.

What’s more, Rogers’ tactics create a new sort of McCarthyism targeting gays. It makes me somewhat uncomfortable to see again this kind of a witch hunt going on within the walls of our government.

Those concerns noted, I ultimately support the outing of anti-gay politicians. These politicians take their own shame and self-hatred over being gay out on open gays who just want to live their lives with dignity (as opposed to finding sexual fulfillment through secret trysts in public restrooms and parks). To me, using your democratically elected office as a closet is an abuse of power, and we need people like Rogers to expose that.

For the record, being gay and voting against gay rights is not hypocritical. Someone can be gay and not want gay people to have rights. As much as that may seem counter to self-interest, it is not logically contradictory or hypocritical.

But it is hypocritical to be gay, to vilify gays, and to expect to be the only one untouched by that vilification. So if he wanted to go after hypocrisy, he would out closeted gays who use anti-gay rhetoric, not those who vote to curtail gay rights. I don’t know to what degree those two groups share a common population.

I think mattf (comment 14) is on to something here. Conservative voters in the US might well vote against a person because of his/her personal life (gay, drug user, philanderer, payer for abortion, possibly even divorce). Therefore a politician who hopes to get votes from these voters must either have a clean personal life, or must hide the dirt.

Liberal voters in the US are much less likely to be swayed by facts of personal life. Very few would refuse to vote for a politician who voted the right way just because the politician was on a certain board of directors, or belonged to a certain exclusive club, or had used a racial epithet. Therefore the politician who hopes to get votes from these voters can simply ignore the “accusation” of personal faults.

I am open to persuasion here: give me a counterexample to what I am saying.

Argueing as much as I can from first principles: saying that someone has such or such tastes (he is gay, she likes macadamia nut ice cream, they like to take a nap around six) seems rather innocuous, or so it should be. So I don’t think Rogers’ tactics can be really morally wrong. Now, intimacy about their sexuality is valued by most people, so it is certainly rude to trumpet it in public forums and so I disapprove of his outing strategy. Hypocrites should certainly be confronted: if you publicly say having homosexual relations is a sin, it is fair game to mention you are a sinner. However, as Matt Kuzma pointed out, being gay and voting against gay rights is no more hypocrite that being rich and voting for higher taxes for rich people, so in the end I mildly disapprove of outing closeted gay in general, less so if this closeted gay publicly degraded other gay people in numerous occasion but not less so if he just voted agains such and such laws.

Paraphrasing Pierre Trudeau, “The people have no place in the bedrooms of the government.” I’ll accept the burden of a right to lead a secret sex life. People should be allowed to have sex without it being all over the press no matter how famous or obnoxious they are. And in the case of celebrities, it should not merely be allowed but required. I’ll support legislation that mandates a prison sentence for anyone reporting on who Paris Hilton or Britney Spears is sleeping with. I *don’t want to hear about it*.

So, in that tone, let me be a contrary leftist:

As far as I can tell, Craig voted in exactly the manner the bulk of his constituents would have wanted him to vote. If I recall my civics classes correctly, this is precisely what the people’s elected representatives are expected to do. His personal hypocrisy is his problem and his business, but his support for bigoted and homophobic causes is the problem of the people of Idaho. Do you seriously imagine that in the face of this outing the people of Idaho are going to vote for some less bigoted homophobe?

The only argument based on anything like first principles that I can see in favour of outings is to claim the politicians are, in some way, ineligible for the basic protection ordinary, everyday hypocritical bigots enjoy in law and in practice. If I were to make such an argument, it would be that the people’s elected leaders are not so much their representatives as persons of high character who can be trusted with political authority. This is utterly contrary to the principles of American civics like balance of powers and representative democracy. But you can make such a case.

But if you do, then politicians have no right to privacy at all. It would mean rule by bland non-entities that have never had lives. Is that what you would really want?

ok, here are some disjointed thoughts on the matter:

there’s nothing “private” about sexual orientation as such, it’s a basic fact of life, we simply assume heterosexuality as the default and talk about it all the time in one context or another; we’re not talking about sexuality as in specific sexual practices or preferences, which indeed are a private matter as long as they’re lawful

we all want gays to be fully accepted members of society, who are not forced to hide their sexual orientation or partners, right?

if we want gays to be fully accepted members of society, then gay couples have to be granted the same rights as heterosexual couples, everything else is simply discrimination and against equality under the law; it’s not just about “such and such laws”

out yourself or be prepared to be outed, else this nightmare of bigotry is never going to end; it might be difficult in individual cases, but the current state of affairs is simply inhumane

Novakant, there’s nothing private about sexual orientation? Whoa.

Nothing’s wrong with being bald, right? Most people don’t care, some find it sexy, others are wearing a toupee and don’t want anyone to know about it. Should we start pulling off their toupees in public for the sake of humanity?

abb1: I made a distinction in my post, which you seem to have overlooked

sam:

1.) gays don’t have the rights and responsibilities that come with marriage, I thought that was pretty common knowledge

2.) if you want gays to be fully equal members of society, then formally recognizing their desire to enter into a long-term partnership and legally granting them the rights and responsibilities that come with it makes perfect sense

Also, in Mississippi (one, two and possibly elsewhere (I think Florida), the right to adopt a child. Not to mention that gay/lesbian couples often face discrimination in these contexts.

Matt, you have one that I hadn’t thought about–right to adopt. Do you know–can unmarried heterosexual couples adopt as a couple in those states?

As I think of it, the “closet” is a courtesy that the gay community extends to members because of whatever private concerns may entail to the members’ lives. But it’s a courtesy that can, and should, be withdrawn when the community is attacked by those selfsame people.

re: scott martens: …then politicians have no right to privacy at all. It would mean rule by bland non-entities that have never had lives. Is that what you would really want?

Perhaps I’m missing something here: it seems to me that nobody in the public eye can reasonably expect privacy of any kind, not because of ‘first principles’ but because there’s a market for revelations about them. AFAICT we live in scott’s dystopia, except that the politicians remain a band of coke-snorting, racist, murdering mofos. I can’t quite tell how they get away with it, but they do – until they become the subject of some bit of public-censure theatre, the mechanisms for which I confess I have no insight into… except that they seem to involve Rupert Murdoch quite heavily. In this connection I have to note the uncanny timing with which Karl Rove’s adoptive father’s genital piercings became public knowledge, barely 48 hours after Karl’s resignation.

For gods sake, it doesn’t have anything to do with either privacy or sex. Is it a breach of privacy and a forbidden look into the sex life when I can look up almost any minor public figure on the internet and it says “xyz is married, has two children and lives in xyz” and thereby conclude, if I’m so inclined, that he/she’s a hetero having hetero sex? No.

It’s only when we’re talking about gay/lesbian people that people start going on about this whole privacy BS.

The concern for privacy seems to be restricted to males.
The teenager trying to get an abortion, the woman with a late stage inviable pregnancy trying to get an abortion, the ordinary heterosexual woman looking for reduced price birth control having to push her way through a crowd of hecklers on the way to Planned Parenthood, Republicans feel that their embarassment is what they deserve for having sex in the first place.
The news may not reach the national press, but it spreads through the local community. The laws the Republicans pass increase the difficulty and the shame associated with these issues.
So I think Craig deserves everything he gets.

Anyone who uses homophobia as a club with which to beat people with same-sex desires, in doing so, is furthering the cause of homophobia. The master’s tools will not dismantle the master’s house.

As representitives their official position should match, as nearly as possible, a consensus of their constituent’s interests and opinions.

No:

Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

My worthy colleague says, his will ought to be subservient to yours. If that be all, the thing is innocent. If government were a matter of will upon any side, yours, without question, ought to be superior. But government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment, and not of inclination; and what sort of reason is that, in which the determination precedes the discussion; in which one set of men deliberate, and another decide; and where those who form the conclusion are perhaps three hundred miles distant from those who hear the arguments?

To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience,–these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution.

Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament. If the local constituent should have an interest, or should form an hasty opinion, evidently opposite to the real good of the rest of the community, the member for that place ought to be as far, as any other, from any endeavour to give it effect. I beg pardon for saying so much on this subject. I have been unwillingly drawn into it; but I shall ever use a respectful frankness of communication with you. Your faithful friend, your devoted servant, I shall be to the end of my life: a flatterer you do not wish for.–Edmund Burke

#7, Harry B. Much too coy, Sir! As long as the subject is outing, out with it. It being: what Clinton did in regards to sex was bad. But hipocrisy with the force of the state and law is trivial and to be ignored. Bullshit. As for the “merely reflecting the views of my constituency” argument, this compoletely ignores how discourses are formed and perpetuated. The legislated homophobia that is the byword of modern Republican politics has very much shaped and reinforced those constituent attitudes. In fact, reading this comment several times just impresses me with how wrong and semi-coherent it is. Certainly it is the case that the behavior in which Craig engaged should not be illegal. The fact that it is illegal is in no small part due to the likes of mr. Craig. But no matter, Clinton did it. Get real.

Does it change this discussion at all if we change “gay” to “addict” and the outing from “cruises loos” to “goes to NA/AA meetings” and is “anti-gay rights” to is “against funding for education and treatment?”

It seems like the strongest comments on this thread have to do with the privacy/personal process being violated. It’s a pretty strong reason not to out people under any circumstance.

Still, the schadenfreude bonus is so big with a lot of these cases that it’s hard not to have something of a tender spot for a (seeming) asshole like Mike Rogers.

david, I wasn’t being coy, no informed person could have missed the reference. Clinton perjured himself. In a sexual harrassment case. That’s a crime. And it should be. Was he guilty of the crime for which he was being investigated? Should he even have been investigated for it? I don’t know. Personally, I view his worse moral crime as being that of enlisting the support of his friends, colleagues, and party on the basis of a very public lie (though I don’t think such behaviour, unlike perjury, should be illegal). If I had been in his party I would have found that behaviour unforgivable. If I had been someone who wanted Gore to win in 2000… oh, but I was…

slocum. I’m all for public acts of sex being illegal. What Craig did (apparently, according to all the reports) was make a bunch of signs to someone that, certainly until I heard the reports, would have been completely incomprehensible, if a little annoying, to me. I don’t think that making incomprehensible (if annoying) signs should be illegal, even in a bathroom. Maybe I’m wrong about what he did/didn’t do, of course.

“Clinton perjured himself.”

No, he didn’t, as a matter of fact.

“Maybe I’m wrong about what he did/didn’t do, of course.”

Well, either that, or someone staring in at you while you’re using the toilet is something you’d find only annoying.

From first principles:

Truth-telling is preferred to lying.

Harry – “Lying under oath” is not the same thing as perjury. The lie has to be material to the case.

It would be cowardly of me to have posted twice on this thread without answering the question, and justifying my answer from first principles.

I invoke the right of self defense. These people are engaged in a no-holds-barred attempt to deprive me of my basic human rights, and I am therefore justified in doing any legal, nonviolent thing within my power to defeat them politically.

This is not to minimize the seriousness of outing someone–as a gay man once involuntariliy outed in the workplace, I know that.

I’m all for public acts of sex being illegal. What Craig did (apparently, according to all the reports) was make a bunch of signs to someone that, certainly until I heard the reports, would have been completely incomprehensible, if a little annoying, to me. I don’t think that making incomprehensible (if annoying) signs should be illegal, even in a bathroom.

People are arrested all the time for trading cryptic comments with an undercover police officer that in-the-know people understand as an agreement to trade sex for money. Some people argue that such exchanges of code words shouldn’t be cause for arrest, but the alternatives are (1) simply to give up on enforcing anti-prostitution laws, (2) to proceed with the transaction in a way that implicates the undercover officers in a crime, or (3) to monitor potential or suspected offenders in a way that unacceptably violates their privacy. To the public, the status quo is preferable to all three alternatives.

The same holds true of restroom sex. The alternatives to arresting people once they’ve implied their intent via cryptic signals are (1) to require police officers to proceed to the actual sex act, (2) to begin monitoring restrooms in ways that most people would find unacceptable, or (3) to give up on enforcing laws against sex in public restrooms. Most people prefer the status quo, however unsatisfactory, to any of the three alternatives.

Well, of course not—whether he had a consensual relationship with Lewinsky had no relevance to whether he harrassed Jones years earlier in a different workplace.

…Except that, according to a law passed in 1993–and signed by Clinton himself–evidence of such consensual relationships in the workplace is admissible evidence in a sexual harassment lawsuit. That’s why Jones could subpoena testimony from Clinton about Lewinsky in the first place.

Now, I certainly believe that that law is a terrible law–indeed, I believe that it’s only one instance of the insanity that is modern sexual harassment law. But even today, so far as I know, shockingly few of Clinton’s defenders concede that the law under which he was coerced into rehashing his tawdry affair with an intern is itself a travesty. Instead, they rail against its having been “abused”. In fact, its use in the Jones lawsuit was exactly as its supporters had intended it to be used–but against a target with whom they happened to sympathize, for political reasons.

Men don’t simply fall to earth fully developed as gay right-wing legislators. These are men who, starting in early adulthood, have made a career of demonizing and persecuting others who are just like them. They know they are doing it and their only possible motivation is personal power. Larry Craig could have become a power company president or a big-time real estate developer and been rich, respected, and in the closet his whole life. But he chose to climb to a position of great power by lying abut gay men and persecuting them. This is not mere hypocrisy or everyday bad faith. It’s genuine, full bore, cynical evil. Outing these men is a matter of civic virtue.

Does it change this discussion at all if we change “gay” to “addict” and the outing from “cruises loos” to “goes to NA/AA meetings” and is “anti-gay rights” to is “against funding for education and treatment?”

I think anyone with some exposure to AA would agree that making a public/political issue out of someone going to meetings would be absolutely unacceptable for any reason, under any circumstances. Not sure how that maps onto Craig-type situations — bathroom pickups don’t SEEM to fall into the same category, at first glance — but the AA piece is about as close to a categorical imeprative as you can get.

Possibly Bad Jim’s discomfort in #62 stems from the lack of heroes in the narrative.
Not Craig, not Rogers certainly, not the semi-anonymous libertines who’ve testified they’ve had congress with the Senator. No one there to look to for guidance, leadership – just hypocrisy and a kind of wounded simpering, and a harsh glimpse of the real exchanges many of us make to feel alive.
Rogers is essentially siccing the dogs of puritanical intolerance on Craig, or attempting to, in a pseudo-Sacco-and-Vanzetti way. He’s alerting, or trying to alert, the sexually intolerant mass, via its information conduits, to the presence of a pariah in their midst – at the helm, running the country.
In that, Rogers is complicit in the same intolerance that makes Craig a hypocrite, he’s using that power, the ability to throw focus, to alert the powers that be, to point toward Craig and his furtive ilk and focus that disapproval on them – to snitch Craig off in order to gain position and security. He’s complicit in the intolerance and its gangsterish enforcement protocols.
Possibly this is the source of Bad Jim’s discomfort.
Yes it’s true that Craig seeking M-on-M fellated ejaculation in a public restroom after having voted the Christian party line on homosexual political and economic rights is a mark of his hypocrisy, but it is more profoundly true that both Craig and the power structure Rogers invokes to expose Craig’s hypocrisy are ill beyond immediate redemption.

“What do we think of Mike “The Most Feared Man On the Hill” Rogers, and the ethics of outing? Defend your answer from first principles, if you would be so kind.”

May I rephrase the question more generally?

“What do we think of the ethics of a political adversary who would embarrass opponents with evidence of their hypocrisy in private behavior?”

As a matter of first principles, it seems to me the answer is obvious and this is business as usual in the forum.

Regards,
Antti

couldn’t one make a similar case against the Democrats citing, for example, their reputed propensity for raising taxes?

Well, you could–if you think that what happened to, say, Leona Helmsley is in the same catagory as what happened to Matthew Shepherd . . .

It’s a strong move to blame them for what happened to Matthew Shepherd, but I suspect Brett Bellmore would call and raise without missing a beat.

Comparison to Bill Clinton:

harry b wrote: “(Committing perjury in a sexual harrassment case, or any other, when you are a senior elected official, that seems to me to make the behaviour about which you are lying fair game).”

Presumably in reference to Bill Clinton, suggesting, I assume, that the Monica Lewinsky media affair was okay. I would like to point out that the timing is a bit murky here: it is NOT the case that Clinton’s perjury kicked off the media bruhaha over Monica Lewinsky. Far from it, if you all recall.

If Bubba was not harry b’s intended target, then I apologize.

the issue of ‘fairness’

I think we should worry a little less about fairness just toward Craig. The issue, I think, is fairness towards gays, including, among others, Craig. The conversation must include the fairness of the anti-gay legislation that Craig fought for and consider any unfairness toward him in that context. Is it more unfair to more people to keep Craig in office than force him to resign?

Rogers is McCarthyist? Absurd.

McCarthyism is an absurd accusation to levy against a guy with a website. McCarthy was a member of Congress. He was not a pamphleteer. The central aspect of McCarthyism is not that McCarthy was saying that communists were communist (like saying Craig is gay, because he has done homosexual acts.) It’s that McCarthy was saying that various political enemies of his were communist and anti-american with no evidence (oh, yeah, evidence!) and using those accusations from a position of political power (the committee on unamerican activities) to put the weight of the american government behind those accusations, therefore making them (at least) semi-criminal. Rogers is not making being gay criminal, or even semi-criminal. He’s not involving the power of the American government in any way. He is not criminalizing gayness. That’s what Craig was doing.

conchis wrote: ” Are the people elected/appointed in the place of those resigning likely to be more sympathetic to gay issues? Is the implicit threat “play ball or we’ll out you” likely to be particularly effective? Neither strikes me as very likely. On the other hand, you’re doing something that in many ways seems to simply contribute to the further the vilification of homosexuals. Maybe it feels good to sock it to those nasty hypocrites, but is anything really being accomplished here other than clearing gays out of the republican party?”

Yes. I think it is raising awareness that the leadership of the Republican party are using a section of the American public, and it may raise the awareness of those being used, to the point that they stop supporting the Republican party altogether. It is alienating those who are mislead by Republican leadership from the Republicans who are misleading them. That will undermine Republican power generally, which will either advance the cause of gays directly (by reducing republican power) or indirectly (by separating financial republicans from ‘social conservative’ republicans.)

The arguments here about whether or not “signalling” should be illegal rather miss the point that you can watch and find out whether people are having sex illegally in a public place without having policemen actively participating.

I don’t think this is as easy as it sounds. The problem is that if it’s obvious that a policeman is present, then the men seeking restroom sex are simply going to go somewhere else for a while–and it’s impractical to post a policeman at every public restroom all the time. So you want policemen to be able to monitor restrooms sporadically, without being noticed.

Unfortunately, a policeman loitering in a restroom, or entering and leaving multiple times in a short time span, will be conspicuous to anyone loitering in the restroom looking for sex. If he does so and refuses all coded advances, then his purpose will be obvious–he’s a policeman monitoring the restroom for public sex. And again, the men seeking sex will simply go somewhere else, and come back again when the coast is clear.

You could instead send multiple different policemen in over a period of time, but that would require that quite a few policemen be assigned to that one restroom–and they’re likely to be conspicuous as a result. Hence the only practical option is the one that’s used: having the police appear to be potential sex partners themselves, and arrest those who solicit sex from them.

1. Sexual orientation is an innate state similar to handedness or skin color, largely predetermined, with some susceptability to modification and a spectrum of expression in individuals;

2. Persecution and shaming of persons for innate states or taking actions coherent with those states (so long as such actions cause no harm to others) is wrong;

3. Actors who undertake such persecution and reinforce such saming are wrong to do so;

4. Stopping such actors from committing wrong is right and moral;

5. Outing the persecutor and/or his/her assistants/enablers as (a) member(s) of the persecuted group may serve to stop or at least reduce the level of persecution, particularly if the persecutor is a lawmaker whose hands will be removed from the levers of power because a majority of his or her voting constituents, through ignorance, abhor the innate state;

6. Outing is legal; therefore:

Outing is rude, but entirely moral.

IANAP (I am not a philosopher) but this seems roughly correct.

.

Stopping such actors from committing wrong is right and moral.

Viva Che! Viva la Revolution!! Kill the oppressors.

“anything that’s for a good cause and not illegal is ethical” – would this be a fair summary?

Maybe that’s true, I don’t know. I suspect the rule is: if you are a political operator – forget the ethics.

Some politicians in the US have certainly croosed the line. I wish Uncle Kvetch would say some more about this issue, as I enjoy reading his comments.

Flattery will get you everywhere, z.

As this thread developed yesterday, I tried to entertain this notion of a “line” separating vociferously advocating a given position and merely voting for it. And I went looking on the web for examples of hateful anti-gay rhetoric from Craig, and came up empty-handed. (If anyone has evidence of such rhetoric I’d be interested to see it–but I assume that we would have heard about it in the last week.)

But in the end I can’t see how this matters. Craig voted for “don’t ask don’t tell” in his first term in the Senate. His voting record on gay issues is consistently, unmistakably awful. And if he didn’t go out of his ways to explicitly bash LGBT folk in so many words, it’s because he didn’t have to. The rhetoric of the right in this country is shot through with euphemisms designed to couch bigotry and discrimination in more palatable terms: “family values,” “the sanctity of marriage,” and so on. And Craig was, by all accounts, all too eager to brandish the “family values” label at every opportunity, knowing full well what it really meant.

So at the end of the day, I have to go with Bloix’s comment at 59: “But he chose to climb to a position of great power by lying abut gay men and persecuting them. This is not mere hypocrisy or everyday bad faith. It’s genuine, full bore, cynical evil.” I can’t argue with that.

The question is not whether Mr. Craig deserves it, of course he does. The question is whether what Mr. Rogers does is ethical.

Rogers’ message to closeted gay politicians is, essentially, “Toe the line, or we’ll come after you.”

This bears a strange resemblance to the message that gay people who grow up in places like Idaho or Wyoming get from their society, from their immediate families outward. (“Act like a man, dammit! You want people to think you’re a sissy?”)

Rogers’ methods are every bit as right and moral as executing murderers because killing is wrong.

…Mike Rogers has freed him from prison.

This reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Elaine pulls off George’s wig and throws it out the window – to liberate him. Incidentally, I think it’s the same episode where she is trying to convince a guy to ‘change teams’.

abb1,

So, “Exposing repressive bigots who strove to do actual harm to others in real life is exactly like yanking off a friend’s unattractive toupee on a sit-com.”

Would this be a fair summary? ;-)

Toodles for now.

I’m not comparing homosexuality to baldness. I’m making a specific point which is this: outing homosexuals in order to ‘liberate’ them (as it was suggested above, or so I understood) sounds like a terrible idea.

What’s with all the drama, anyway? I don’t like bullying; lighten up, please. Yes, there are people who despise the homosexuals, I know that. So what? It’s not as if you had terminal cancer.

Alright, sorry about the baldness thing. Every time one wants to say something other than “down with the oppressors!” in these kind of threads it’s like walking on a minefield. It shouldn’t be like that.

Re: Clinton’s and Scootie’s lies.

Howard omits the incontrovertible fact that in the two attendant trials, Clinton was not only acquitted (and, yes, being found not guilty is called acquittal in our legal system) and Libby was found guilty. In Clinton’s trial, the jury need only have gotten a two-thirds “supermajority” and couldn’t even muster a simple majority for conviction. In Libby’s trial the jury had to be unanimous and it was.

As Republicans have taught us so well over the past 15 years, public officials are not entitled to their privacy in their sexual activities, regardless of what nature they take. If you live by the sword, you can expect to die by the sword.

Hey, I couldn’t do what Rodgers does, for any number of reasons. And I can see where his dogged pursuit could start to look like unhealthy monomania. But when all is said and done, I’ll go with “It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.”

Within the beleaguered circle of Rodgers’ affinity group what he does is beneficial, maybe even therapeutic. Outside that huddled mass is a different story. There’s a catharsis at work that’s reinforcing some pathologies way beyond the ideal PC concerns of sexual live-and-let-live. The tacit assumptions are too many and various to list, but the one that seems most objectionable is where and how Rodgers fits into the power hierarchy he’s getting Craig thrown out of.
It’s not about healing the suppurating wound of current American sexual morality, it’s about making things comfortable for people like yourself. A fine goal as far as it goes, but not much different from what you’re objecting to in the long run.

Hi,

“Onkel Kvetch hat recht.”

Okay, now I believe either “Uncle Kvetch has it right”, or his “hat threw up”. I’m not sure which.

Regards,
Antti

From the sidelines, I’ll just note that this seems to be a US (and perhaps to some degree a UK) speciality.

The best comparable case I can think of in Scandinavia is the outing by a former Danish Surgeon General of two (!) Ministers of Health some ten years ago. His aim obviously was to discredit the Danish HIV-policies during the 1990s (“look, the minister is gay and this is why we had to put too much emphasis on HIV/AIDS”).

The plot backfired: The former SG was thoroughly whacked in all of the media.

A tabloid tried to publish stories about the very active love life of the then leader of the Conservative Party in the mid-1990s. That fell flat. The politician in question later became editor of the tabloid. Talk about poetic justice.

On a stranger note, a Danish historian outed a former Prime Minister – dead for 85 years when the book was published – and a former Foreign Minister – dead for 50 years – some years ago. The relevance for daily politics equalled zero. But I don’t think any of these politicians ever said anything related to sex in public during their active years.