Gay Pride

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By Patricia Goldsmith (about the author) Page 1 of 3 page(s)

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Gay Pride
Patricia Goldsmith

It seems the Mark Foley scandal was only the beginning of a long-overdue national discussion about the wisdom and ethics of outing closeted political figures. In Florida, gay journalists are the ones who advocate asking Republican candidate for governor,
Charlie Crist, about rumors that he's gay. The mainstream media continues to claim that it's a non-issue, ignoring Reform Party candidate Max Linn's statement that he will "swear on a stack of Bibles" that Crist is gay.

But even the mainstream media can't ignore news that Ted Haggard, pastor of an influential anti-gay evangelical megachurch, was outed by a gay male prostitute. Given the startling homophobia of many in those fundamentalist pulpits, it's a wonder more ministers haven't been outed, until you remember that those most likely to know about a political figure's homosexuality-prostitutes, children, and LGBT people in general-have been understandably afraid of the right-wing attack machine.
My position on outing is rooted in the idea of gay pride.

Gay pride is more than a march on the last Sunday in June. It's more than being gay, too. While all civil rights movements tell truth to power, truth-telling and self-identification are the distinguishing characteristics of the gay movement. Without coming out, there is no gay movement, period.

Ideally, every LGBT person would realize that living a lie is not only psychologically and spiritually damaging, but that the more of us who come out the safer we all are from physical and social violence

But it's not an ideal world. [1] If we were in any doubt about it, seeing Jim "I Am a Gay American" McGreevey on the cover of the Advocate's coming out issue would clue us in. McGreevey, you'll remember, didn't come out, exactly. He announced he was gay when he was blackmailed by an employee with whom he was having an affair. Not exactly an inspiring profile in courage.

In his review of McGreevey's life story, The Gay Governor Has No Clothes, Andy Humm argues that McGreevey exaggerates the homophobia he faced growing up in New Jersey in the seventies-the heyday of the gay liberation movement-in order to rationalize his self-interested decision to hide in the closet, just as he rationalizes his later failure to act on behalf of gay people while in office.

Many pro-gay progressives are, in my view, overly sympathetic to such rationalizations. They tend to subscribe to the school of thought that says outing is always wrong, even with elected officials. The reasoning is that outing contributes to homophobia, because it implies that there is something wrong with being gay.

As far as I can tell, the main cause of homophobia is and always has been the closet. That's why the GOP loves it so much. They've even constructed one with a special swinging door for Mary Cheney, sort of like a dog flap, so she can go in and out at will.

The closet keeps us faceless, voiceless, and powerless-a blank screen onto which the rightwing noise machine can project whatever they want. It is the venerable institution of the closet, not heterosexual marriage, that neocons are so eager to protect. By attacking marriage equality, the right hopes to roll back 30 years of progress on gay rights won with blood, sweat, and tears.

Fortunately, nothing can roll back the changes that have come as a result of the most powerful act of coming out: telling our parents and siblings. Over the past three decades, millions of people took a big risk and told their families who they are. That takes guts. That's where hearts and minds change. Coming out at work has been successful, as well; tolerant corporations have become major forces for equality. In both cases, timing is crucial. It has to be up to the good judgment of the individual.

But when it comes to political figures, we all have very good reasons to object to the closet. History shows that the closet breeds monsters.

A closeted homosexual masterminded the most infamous political witch-hunt of the twentieth century, McCarthyism. Persistent rumors of homosexual activity swirled around Senator Joseph McCarthy throughout his lifetime;. Given that McCarthy relied absolutely on hearsay, innuendo, and blackmail, I'd say that's proof enough. But there's also guilt by association: there are also rumors that two other major figures in McCarthy's anti-commie crusade, Roy Cohn and J. Edgar Hoover, were closeted homosexuals.

McCarthy gave targeted victims an impossible choice: betray the people closest to you or get blackballed and become an unemployable pariah.

Cohn, a Jew, was recommended to McCarthy by their mutual friend Hoover on the basis of his excellent work on the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg spy trial, which resulted in the Rosenbergs' execution. Cohn denied he was gay right up to the day he died of AIDS.

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Patricia Goldsmith is a member of Long Island Media Watch, a grassroots free media and democracy watchdog group. She can be reached at plgoldsmith@optonline.net.

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