TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/012990/0129620.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.0 KB | 115 lines

                                                                                ETHICS, Page 67

Forcing Gays Out of the Closet


Homosexual leaders seek to expose foes of the movement

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III --  Reported by Andrea Sachs/New York
and James Willwerth/Los Angeles


    Gays have long gossiped about which public figures of past
and present might be secret homosexuals. Publications from the
scholarly to the semi-scabrous have speculated about the likes
of Alexander the Great, Shakespeare, Willa Cather and James
Dean, with hundreds of others cited along the way. This name
dropping is defended as a way of giving the gay community role
models and a sense of continuity. When the rumors involve living
people, however, discussion about who is "in the closet" has
generally been held to a discreet murmur -- partly in deference
to libel laws but mostly in defense of privacy. That consensus
is fast breaking down with the spread of a phenomenon known as
"outing," the intentional exposure of secret gays by other gays.

    Frustrated at the slow pace of gay civil rights legislation
and what they consider governmental indifference to the AIDS
epidemic, growing numbers of gay activists now claim a moral
right to "rip people out of the closet" -- either to force them
to help the movement or to nullify them as opponents. The main
targets are elected officials and religious leaders who may
enjoy a gay life in private but who endorse antigay measures to
safeguard their careers. Radical gays go further, pointing the
finger at entertainment and media figures and even ordinary
citizens.

    Among conspicuous victims within the past year have been an
East Coast big-city mayor, a Midwestern Governor and a West
Coast U.S. Senator, none of them incontrovertibly known to be
gay. In each case, the official was identified as a homosexual
via leaflets or noisy demonstrations. The rationale for exposing
the politicians' alleged secret lives was that they were guilty
of malicious hypocrisy on matters of life and death. One outing
victim had endorsed legislation allowing hospitals to test
patients for AIDS without their consent. Another backed a ban
on funding to school programs that describe homosexuality as
normal. A third supposedly failed to provide adequate public
AIDS services. Yet in an odd twist that underscores the uneasy
position of gays in society, the demonstrators were attacking
enemies by embracing each as one of their own.

    Similar action against leaders of the Roman Catholic Church
hierarchy has been threatened, although not yet taken, by
prominent members of a gay Catholic group. Whereas the political
leaders have been under attack for specific personal acts, the
clergy is a potential target because of the church's general,
institutional opposition to gay sex.

    While the idea of outing a fellow gay used to be considered
repellent under any circumstances, the tactic has become
increasingly acceptable to mainstream homosexual leaders. It is
practiced by some gay publications, and its propriety has even
been debated in the corridors of Congress. Last June, when
Republicans falsely implied that House Speaker Tom Foley was
gay, Representative Barney Frank threatened to expose
Republican officeholders who really are homosexual. Few in
Washington doubted that there were such officials, or that
Frank, an acknowledged gay, would be able to name them.
Republicans were already keenly aware of the ironic fates of two
of their most prominent antigay voices, Maryland Congressman
Robert Bauman and conservative fund-raiser Terry Dolan. Bauman's
political career ended in 1980, when he was charged with
soliciting a teenage boy for a paid sex act; Dolan died in 1986
of AIDS complications. Republicans backed off, so Frank did not
carry out his threat, and he was at pains to underscore the
limited circumstances in which he would apply it: "I referred
only to those gay people who shamefully use the fact or
accusation of homosexuality as a weapon against others."

    Still, many gays and sympathetic straights remain troubled
by the idea of outing, even if used only against the movement's
avowed enemies. Says Sarah Craig, an associate editor of
Chicago's gay-oriented Windy City Times: "Really, you're only
using the same bludgeon used to injure you to injure someone
else." As a practical matter, moreover, if outing a closeted gay
ends his or her career, there is rarely any reason to believe
that the target's successor will be more sympathetic to the gay
cause. Nonetheless, some prominent gays favor forcing every
closeted person to come out, holding that being gay is nothing
to be ashamed of and that there is strength in numbers.
Novelist Armistead Maupin, a leading gadfly of San Francisco's
gay community, was one of the first to confirm Rock Hudson's
homosexual life after Hudson announced he had AIDS, and in
interviews Maupin has named many other entertainers, some of
them married, whom he knows or believes to be gay. Says Maupin
of those he would drag out of the closet: "Their embarrassment
and self-loathing makes me lose respect for them. It also
indicates to me they find my life repugnant."

    The debate points up a fundamental division that has
burdened the gay-rights cause for decades. Notes Thomas
Stoddard, executive director of the Lambda Legal Defense and
Education Fund and an adjunct professor of law at New York
University: "The gay movement is actually based upon two
principles that collide. One is privacy, and the other is
disclosure, the process of coming out." Those focused on
privacy are responding to society as it exists, with its
emotional and sometimes physical perils for overt homosexuals.
Those favoring disclosure are more concerned with society as
they hope it may become, with tolerance for all. The political
"causists" are prepared to sacrifice their present lives for
future good. The problem with outing is that it claims an
unjustifiable right to sacrifice the lives of others as well,
whether they agree or not.