On one level, the arrest of right-wing Senator Larry Craig bothers me a bit more than the hypocrisy of his alleged double life.
After all, aren't we veering dangerously close to futurecrime here, à la Minority Report? Craig didn't actually do anything beyond appearing to signal an intention to engage in some variation of the nasty. It isn't like he was caught en flagrante delicto. We've criminalized the intention to commit a crime, not the act itself. Not too surprising in the post-9/11 world.
On another level, the spate of "morals"-related incidences involving socially conservative Republican lawmakers (such as state Rep. Bob Allen over on the east coast) raises any number of ethical and political questions.
For starters, when is it right to "out" a public figure?
The aftermath of Craig's story brought out some interesting opinions on that, especially on the issue of using hypocrisy as justification for forcibly removing someone from the closet.
One comes from Roy Peter Clark, the writing expert over at the Poynter Institute, in a piece posted on its website. Clark wrote: "I say that the relationship between private morality and public behavior has been grossly overstated by the evangelical right, by the secular left and, for its own purposes, by the news media."
Clark acknowledges that Craig's actions must be scrutinized by the press because they resulted in him being arrested. But he wonders whether outing Craig would be justified if his private life had remained private — if he hadn't been discovered by authorities in a compromising situation.
"Let's say Senator X is a private homosexual. His feelings and urges contradict his moral beliefs, so he hates himself for being the way he is, especially on those occasions when he engages in anonymous sex with consenting adults during his travels," Clark wrote. "In public, he opposes gay marriage or certain anti-discrimination laws. Isn't a homosexual allowed to believe that homosexuality is wrong? That may be self-loathing or intolerance, but it's not hypocrisy."
For many other reporters and editors, including two gay journalists I spoke with, the intersection of hypocrisy and private lives is a bit more gray.
"The issue of outing is very multifaceted," said Eric Hegedus, a New York journalist and president of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. "It's not that black or white. Outing deals with private lives. [But] if you are dealing with a public official, and their actions fly in the face of what they are doing publicly, then journalists have a responsibility to investigate these things."
Ronni Radner, the editor of the gay weekly newspaper Watermark in Orlando and Tampa Bay, said her newspaper isn't in the business of outing anyone. "It's not really our policy to out anybody, but it gets to that gray area [when public figures vote one way and act another]," Radner said. "I haven't seen a need to do that at any point while I've been here."
And that brings us to a second point, about the politics of such stories. As Radner said, "When things like this happen, it has a negative impact on heterosexual Republicans and the gay community. It promotes stereotypes."
One of our jobs as journalists is to dispel stereotypes and invite understanding and tolerance. All gay people don't seek sexual union in public restrooms. All Republicans aren't intolerant homophobes. All Democrats aren't weak-in-the-knees America-haters. That job is important, because without shining a light on the truth, the stereotypes are stoked by all sides in political arguments, creating distortion and stigma.
That lingering stigma makes it very difficult for some public officials to come out or answer the question "Are you gay?" honestly. Instead, they live in fear of a blogger such as gay activist Mike Rogers, who outed Craig months before his arrest and the subsequent Idaho Statesman newspaper story. Rogers has vowed to continue outing hypocritical politicians and staffers on Capitol Hill on his website, BlogActive.com. What bothers me most about Rogers is that he used the vindication on his Craig story to plead repeatedly for his readers to send him money via PayPal so he can keep his work alive. That hardly sounds ethical, even by the looser standards for bloggers.
So where do I come down? I outed a gay journalist after his death, and didn't have any problem asking a mayoral candidate if he was gay when rumors surfaced. But I've also declined to ask about an official's sexuality when it seemed not to involve their public votes.
The ethics of outing are tricky and involve competing rights. But this much is clear: We should always stand up to, and speak out against, any straight or gay politician who votes for intolerance, creates intrusive laws that peek into our bedrooms or private activities or campaigns in ways that wedge our community apart. We need to do so with a lot more vigor here in Tampa Bay than we've been doing.
Our private acts and desires are none of government's goddamned business. When we treat, for instance, the library books of great gay authors as if they were infected with the ebola virus, we send a destructive message into our community and create more Larry Craigs and Bob Allens.
Because after all, sexual morality (whatever that is) doesn't necessarily equate to brilliant leadership.
"Judged by personal morality, there's a good chance that Richard Nixon may have been a more faithful husband and loving father than John Kennedy," Clark said in his opinion piece. "It did not make him a better president."
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This article appears in Sep 12-18, 2007.