|
 |
ADRIAN BRUNE
Friday, June 18, 2004
The proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage has revived
a debate over the ethics of outing those closeted gay men and lesbians in a
position to affect public policy.
On the day after Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) reportedly told
Christian leaders that the Senate will vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment
in July, well-known D.C. activist John Aravosis issued a call for the names
of gay congressional members, staffers and their associates to publicly out
them.
“If you’re gay and you support making sexual orientation a political weapon,
then your sexual orientation is fair game, and you will be outed to the rafters,” Aravosis
said.
It’s a campaign predicted months ago by Steve Gunderson, the former Republican
Congressman who came out a decade ago after facing outing threats, and one
that other former members of the Austin 12 — the group of gay Republicans who
met with President Bush during the 2000 campaign — tried to prevent.
But the current political climate and the renewed anger of gay rights advocates
has once again forced open the Pandora’s box, according to Gunderson.
“I think it will get uglier than anything we saw on AIDS,” Gunderson told
Newsweek magazine in March. “This country will be more polarized than we’ve
been in decades.” He did not return repeated phone calls from the Blade.
Aravosis’s battle cry comes two weeks after another vocal activist, Mike Rogers,
started phoning closeted gay aides at the offices of congressional members
who backed the FMA. He began by urging them to come out in an effort to persuade
their members to change their stance on the contentious amendment.
If they pledged to take a more personal role on gay rights, Rogers said, the
conversation ended. If they didn’t, he placed calls to the chief of staff in
that member’s office or to another senior aide.
“I asked them how their congressman could justify supporting the FMA knowing
that his long-term aide was gay,” said Rogers, a former staff member of the
National Gay & Lesbian Task Force. “Those in public positions who support homophobia
or work for someone who supports homophobia can no longer secretly enjoy the
protections the gay community has afforded them.”
Rogers said he has so far contacted six offices that he says employ gay aides
on both the Senate and the House sides of Capitol Hill. As he gathers more
information, he said, he will phone more.
The office of Rep. Charles Stenholm (D-Texas) took one of Roger’s first calls
and reacted the most forcefully by filing a harassment report with the Capitol
police, according to Rogers.
Proclaiming himself as a liberator of closeted gay staffers, Rogers says he
outed one of Stenholm’s former staffers, a lesbian who worked very closely
with the Texas politician. Both the aide, who left Washington several months
ago, and Stenholm’s office declined to comment on Rogers’ act, but Rogers said
police involvement only ensured that Stenholm discovered what he has called
the ex-aide’s hypocrisy.
Stenholm, the co-chair of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition of conservative
Democrats, has firmly backed the Federal Marriage Amendment.
“This isn’t a partisan issue, and it is not a witch hunt,” Rogers said. “Being
outed is an empowerment tool. I’m telling the truth to save their lives.”
Rogers’ personal crusade has motivated fellow converts, including Aravosis,
and they have also started their own efforts to expose gay aides. A widely
circulated flier at last week’s Capital Pride festival encouraged attendees
to e-mail an anonymous Hotmail account with the names of closeted senators,
representatives and staff members.
“Do not protect homophobes and the people who keep them in power,” the leaflet
read.
On the Hill, sentiment is split over outing.
Gay Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said he endorses the practice in limited
circumstances.
“I am not inclined to do it, but I think if the congressman is rabidly anti-gay,
it’s appropriate,” Frank said. “You don’t have a right to be a hypocrite; you
don’t have a right to exempt yourself from the negative things you do to other
people.”
Frank has said he came out voluntarily in May 1987, two years before facing
a scandal involving a gay escort with whom Frank was associated while still
closeted.
Some Hill aides, especially those who are gay, have taken a stronger stance
against outing their ranks. Many oppose outing in all circumstances, labeling
it as “ridiculous” and “ineffective.”
“Most likely you’re hurting the cause by alienating a gay staffer or potentially
removing that staffer from the office,” said Lynden Armstrong, an aide to Sen.
Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and a founder of a professional association of gay Senate
staffers, the Senate GLASS Caucus. “It angers me whenever I hear of gay people
doing that to other gay people. It’s accomplishing nothing while demonstrating
insensitivity to a very personal process.”
Armstrong said the GLASS Caucus had not taken any position against the outing
campaign. Instead, he offered support to outed staffers or those who wished
to openly declare their orientation.
Ten years ago, Gunderson faced the threat of being outed from both sides of
the political spectrum; first from gay activists unhappy with his opposition
to gay rights, and then from archconservative Bob Dornan, a Republican congressman
then representing an Orange County district in California, who criticized Gunderson’s “revolving
closet” in a famous 1994 speech on the floor of the House.
A group of gay activists purchased this full-page
advertisement in the July 26, 1996, issue of the Washington Blade, calling
on closeted gay members of Congress who voted for the Defense of Marriage
Act to ‘atone’ by apologizing and coming out. The Advocate contacted
Congressman Jim Kolbe about the ad, which did not name him or other members
specifically, leading the Arizona Republican to come out voluntarily.
A new wave of outings has focused initially on gay staffers of members
who support the Federal Marriage Amendment. |
Two years later, Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) faced a similar threat when he received
word that Advocate magazine was working on a story outing him after he voted
in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act, which bans federal recognition of
same-sex marriages. The Advocate was reporting on an advertisement in the Washington
Blade placed by a number of gay D.C. activists, taking to task closeted gay
members of Congress — without naming them — for voting in favor of DOMA.
Assuming that the Blade ad and the Advocate were poised to out him, Kolbe
promptly held a press conference revealing his sexual orientation.
“That I am a gay person has never affected the way that I legislate,” Kolbe
said at the time. “Even members of Congress should be allowed to have personal
lives.”
Advocate Editorial Director Judy Weider has said since then that the magazine
had at the time only been considering whether to out Kolbe. Unbeknownst to
Kolbe, news staffers were in fact ordered against doing so by the gay magazine’s
publisher, who worried that straight advertisers would object.
But following those very public decisions, both Gunderson and Kolbe became
more supportive of gay and lesbian rights issues than they had been while closeted.
Gunderson, who maintained a close friendship and working relationship during
that period with GOP firebrand Newt Gingrich, even went on to sit on the board
of the Human Rights Campaign.
Still, the outing threats outraged some gays and a serious debate ensued about
the morality of outing, which more or less quieted the practice for the remainder
of the decade.
When Kolbe came out eight years ago, Gunderson said then that he didn’t believe
in outing, but that everybody should be out because it continued to break down
stereotypes.
Gay advocacy organizations, including the Log Cabin Republicans and the Human
Rights Campaign have also made it clear that outing campaigns will not have
their support. LCR officials have described outing as a Washington attempt
to break a story or score partisan political points.
The circumstances may have changed, but these groups have made it clear that
Aravosis, Rogers and others who engage in outing face alienation by their own
allies in the battle for gay rights.
“Coming out should be their choice to make, not ours,” HRC President Cheryl
Jacques said.
Proponents of outing, however, remain undeterred. They continue to assert
that outing is the most effective and quickest way to win coverts to the cause,
however forceful it may be.
“The closet is our worst enemy. Look how Barney, Gunderson and Kolbe came
into the cause,” Rogers said. “They were dragged out, but now they’re some
of our most vocal advocates.”
Frank, to the contrary, has said he came out because he was “motivated by
two factors: my deep personal unhappiness with my life as a closeted public
person, and my view that it would be helpful in our fight against homophobia
if I joined approximately 432 of my House colleagues in being honest about
my sexual orientation.”
Adrian Brune can be reached at abrune@washblade.com.
|
