[BRIEF NOTE] The Ethics of Outing
May. 13th, 2005 10:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldIt seems that there's a bit of a stir in the Washington State city of Spokane, where that city's mayor, Jim West, has recently been outed. If he isn't gay, he is someone who has sex with men and chats up barely-legal teenagers on Gay.com, or--in this particular case--with newspaper reporters pretending to be barely-legal teenagers. The outing--which he described as brutal--was prompted in part by his long history of support for anti-gay policies.
Danny Westneat, writing for the Seattle Times, argues that while West's sexual orientation has been raised as an issue and may as well be discussed, the actual issue is West's history of misconduct (his alleged sexual abuse of minors, the use of his office to procure sexual partners). His hypocrisy, as someone plainly not heterosexual who has no problem bashing fellow non-heterosexuals, isn't an issue for Westneat. If anything, bringing West's sexual orientation to the forefront is dangerous: "[I]f the legacy of this scandal is that consistency between public and private is paramount, and to prove it we're willing to further invade people's bedrooms, then aren't we just as bad as the lawmakers who want government to regulate our private lives?"
Westneat's arguments deserve to be taken seriously, but I find myself leaning more towards Michael Signorile in his Out article "Outing's Triumphant Return". Being a Log Cabin Republican seems, from my position safely north of the 49th parallel, to be something worryingly similar to a Mischling or a Jew (closeted, of course) joining the Nazi Party. The fact that the Log Cabin Republicans even exist, and are recognized as a legitimate internal association of the United States' Republican Party, does demonstrate that the luck of having a non-heterosexual sexual orientation is hardly enough to disqualify one from membership in the American political community. What Signorile wrote in the mid-1990s is truer than ever a decade later: The discovery of someone's non-heterosexuality, in most circles, is not enough to ruin one's life. (If one has the misfortunate of being born into a conservative evangelical Christian community, that's different; but then, evangelical Christians form a minority of the American population, and they aren't a whole.) Consider the reactions of Republicans to Kerry's identification of Mary Cheney's sexual orientation: They weren't angry because Kerry revealed the Cheney family's deep dark secret so much as they claimed it was irrelevant information. It wasn't, since Mary Cheney had been used by the Republican Party back in 2000 to demonstrate that the party wasn't institutionally homophobic, but the fact that they used that particular argument is revelatory.
Spokane mayor Jim West's outing is the sort of outing that I support. His hypocrisy is astounding, revealing quite a lot about his character including a rather interesting sort of opportunism that reminds me of Roy Cohn's. The recent discovery that white nationalist Wendy Iwanow was in fact porn starlet Bianca Trump, known for a variety of films including Little White Girl, Big Black Man, also comes to mind. Opportunists who'd like to hurt the people they're like, whether out of misguided fear or self-hatred or something more twisted still, should be revealed.
If only, for West's own sake, he hadn't decided back in 1986 that AIDS victims deserved what they got and followed through from there in his public life as a politician. At least West will find it more difficult to find dates locally.
West has strongly opposed gay rights during his political career. He supported a bill that would have barred gays and lesbians from working for schools, day care centers, and some state agencies. That bill failed. He voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which passed, banning same-sex marriage. And for years he helped to block a bill that would prohibit discrimination against gays and lesbians in housing, employment, and insurance.
As Spokane mayor, West threatened to veto a measure extending benefits to domestic partners of city employees. But the city council approved the measure by a 5-2 vote, enough to override a mayoral veto.
Danny Westneat, writing for the Seattle Times, argues that while West's sexual orientation has been raised as an issue and may as well be discussed, the actual issue is West's history of misconduct (his alleged sexual abuse of minors, the use of his office to procure sexual partners). His hypocrisy, as someone plainly not heterosexual who has no problem bashing fellow non-heterosexuals, isn't an issue for Westneat. If anything, bringing West's sexual orientation to the forefront is dangerous: "[I]f the legacy of this scandal is that consistency between public and private is paramount, and to prove it we're willing to further invade people's bedrooms, then aren't we just as bad as the lawmakers who want government to regulate our private lives?"
Westneat's arguments deserve to be taken seriously, but I find myself leaning more towards Michael Signorile in his Out article "Outing's Triumphant Return". Being a Log Cabin Republican seems, from my position safely north of the 49th parallel, to be something worryingly similar to a Mischling or a Jew (closeted, of course) joining the Nazi Party. The fact that the Log Cabin Republicans even exist, and are recognized as a legitimate internal association of the United States' Republican Party, does demonstrate that the luck of having a non-heterosexual sexual orientation is hardly enough to disqualify one from membership in the American political community. What Signorile wrote in the mid-1990s is truer than ever a decade later: The discovery of someone's non-heterosexuality, in most circles, is not enough to ruin one's life. (If one has the misfortunate of being born into a conservative evangelical Christian community, that's different; but then, evangelical Christians form a minority of the American population, and they aren't a whole.) Consider the reactions of Republicans to Kerry's identification of Mary Cheney's sexual orientation: They weren't angry because Kerry revealed the Cheney family's deep dark secret so much as they claimed it was irrelevant information. It wasn't, since Mary Cheney had been used by the Republican Party back in 2000 to demonstrate that the party wasn't institutionally homophobic, but the fact that they used that particular argument is revelatory.
Spokane mayor Jim West's outing is the sort of outing that I support. His hypocrisy is astounding, revealing quite a lot about his character including a rather interesting sort of opportunism that reminds me of Roy Cohn's. The recent discovery that white nationalist Wendy Iwanow was in fact porn starlet Bianca Trump, known for a variety of films including Little White Girl, Big Black Man, also comes to mind. Opportunists who'd like to hurt the people they're like, whether out of misguided fear or self-hatred or something more twisted still, should be revealed.
If only, for West's own sake, he hadn't decided back in 1986 that AIDS victims deserved what they got and followed through from there in his public life as a politician. At least West will find it more difficult to find dates locally.
