Gays against gays: Who thought up to expose the homosexuality of politicians
In the 70s Harvey Milk - the first open gay in American politics, the winner of the election, publicly announced that the national hero of the United States, Oliver Sipple (he saved the life of President Gerald Ford) is homosexual. Harvey Milk had good intentions, he told about Sipple so that society could see that LGBT people are capable of heroic deeds. But for Sippl, Milk’s deed ended tragically: the family renounced him, he began to drink and died before the age of fifty.
In recent years, more and more public people in the West are comming out - announcing their homosexuality. This recognition, as a rule, goes beyond the simple desire not to lie to the public about his personal life and becomes a political statement. But a couple of decades ago, voluntary coming-out was more the exception, and “exposing” politicians and celebrities was commonplace, even LGBT activists were involved. Thus, they wanted to punish statesmen who supported homophobic laws.
We understand why there is no “good” outing, and exposing the sexual preferences of any person is a violation of his private space and a basis for mass homophobia.
Terror in the tabloids
In 1907, Adolf Brand, a leftist journalist and one of the first fighters for the rights of sexual minorities, spoke about the homosexuality of a number of prominent German politicians, including Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow, who allegedly had sex with his secretary. Brand made a massive outing, intending to decriminalize homosexuality in the country: "When someone decides to intervene in the most destructive way in the love relationships of others, at the same time his own intimate life ceases to be a private matter."
By the 50s, the leaders of the tabloids appropriated the practice of auting and began to expose all the rich and famous in pursuit of provocative headlines. The founder of mass outing in the press can be considered the magazine Confidential, which covered the details of the personal life of politicians and celebrities. “The magazine began a real terror,” admitted once the press secretary of the publication Leo Guild. "Every time on the eve of the new Confidential release, we (homosexuals) were terribly afraid and thought about which of us they would write this time," said actor George Nader, who admitted his homosexuality under pressure. At one time, Henry Wilson, the actor’s agent, Rock Hudson, even had to pay the gangsters to threaten the Confidential editor: while the magazine was preparing material on Wilson’s party, which was homosexual.
For Sippl Outing, he ended tragically: his family rejected him, he began to drink and died before reaching fifty
Sometimes it came to court, for example, after the outing of the famous pianist Valentino Liberace in the Daily Mirror newspaper. The executor filed a libel lawsuit and secured a payment of 53 thousand dollars. But after Liberace died of AIDS in 1987, the newspaper demanded compensation, citing the validity of his assumptions.
After the protests of the 60s in the US and the new wave of struggle for LGBT rights, rumors about the homosexuality of famous people transformed into political statements. Now the tabloids did not just blackmail and expose celebrities, but hired homosexual columnists who simultaneously fought for minority rights and brought big money with sensational materials.
Now it is almost impossible to imagine that TV presenter Ellen DeGeneres, known for fighting for gay rights, announced her orientation because of outing. Under the same circumstances, another lesbian presenter, Rosie O'Donnell, made a come-out. Michel Musto, a columnist with The Village Voice, was an openly gay public who set a goal to make the LGBT community more visible and acceptable for heterosexuals.
In 1989, the iconic queer magazine OutWeek appeared, for which outing became an important part of editorial policy. “We call“ outing ”a journalistic movement for equal treatment of homosexuals and heterosexuals in the media. We are not going to wait in silence for a utopian future, but we will act now,” said one of the editors of the magazine, Gabriel Rotello. The purpose of the publication was not only to expose hypocritical politicians, but also to show that "being gay or lesbian is not such a grotesque."
In OutWeek, there was a regular column, "Gossip Review," by journalist Michelangelo Signorile, in which he regularly spoke about the homosexuality of famous people. He began his record of revelations with the authoring of Malcolm Forbes, the famous financial magnate and owner of Forbes business magazine. After it, Signorile made public the homosexuality of actress Fanny Flagg, pro-government journalist Pete Williams, actor Chaz Bono (who later became an LGBT activist), and also actor Richard Chamberlain. In addition, the journalist called for the responsibility of influential homosexuals who remained apart from the problems of the community: discrimination and the AIDS epidemic. In his materials, he addressed, for example, David Geffen, co-founder of DreamWorks studio, and well-known secular journalist Liz Smith.
Until recently, blogger Perez Hilton was actively involved in celebrity outing. It was under his pressure that the actor Neal Patrick Harris (now a prominent LGBT activist) and singer Lance Bass made the coming-out. Perez called for Keming Space’s and Jodie Foster actors to come out. However, in 2010, the blogger publicly repented of his actions on the TV show "Ellen" after a wave of suicides of teenage homosexuals swept across the US.
The answer to neocons
In the late 80s and early 90s, America experienced a neoconservative turn, which led, among other things, to the growth of traditionalist initiatives. Sex education was abandoned in favor of telling stories about the benefits of abstinence before marriage, it became possible to perform abortions only for medical reasons, and conservative politicians actively opposed LGBT people, including trying to deny funding to schools where they described gay and lesbian classes in a positive way , reduced state subsidies to fight HIV, and in 1993 the Democrats had already carried out the famous law “Don't ask, don't tell” (“Don't ask, don’t tell”), forbidding servicemen to advertise their sexual orientation a threat of dismissal (the law, however, was a compromise with respect to the formerly complete ban on gay service in the army).
In response to government harassment, radical LGBT activists began to expose major gay politicians who supported discriminatory laws. The first in this series was an outgoing senator from Oregon, Mark Hatfield, in 1989, who supported a law banning HIV-positive people from emigrating to the United States. Homosexuals, led by activist Michael Petrelis, waylaid Hatfield in a small town near Portland and shouted loudly about his orientation in front of the assembled crowd.
Later, Petrelis and his associates repeated the action of public outing, but already on the steps of the Capitol in Washington. During a regular press conference, Petrelis named the names of eleven officials, including eight members of congress, who concealed their homosexuality. There were a lot of journalists around - many of them wrote about the action, but no one ever revealed the names.
In the "Petrelis list" was Steve Ganderson, Rep. Of the State of Wisconsin. A month after the rally, Capitol Petrelis accidentally met Gunderson in a gay bar in Virginia. The activist demanded that the politician come out and stand up for LGBT people, and received an ironic remark: “I’m open. I’m sitting in this bar, right?” Petrelis splashed the contents of his glass in Ganderson’s face and shouted that there was an official in the bar.
The activist was expelled from the bar, and the story did not receive much publicity. But after this incident, Gunderson revised his views on LGBT rights and began to actively oppose discriminatory laws. In 1994, his orientation was made public right in the debate in Congress. Thus, Gunderson became the first open homosexual Republican in politics.
Priests and regrets
At the beginning of the 90s, outing became a stumbling block for active fighters for LGBT rights, namely, the British radical organization OutRage !. Some activists believed that their direct duty was to expose hypocritical politicians and public figures, the rest considered it a gross interference in their personal lives. As a result, part of the activists (from the first group) separated from OutRage! and became known as "Gomiki, eradicating hidden sexuality" (Faggots Rooting Out Closeted Sexuality - FROCS).
Peter Tatchell became the public speaker of the new organization. Thanks to his connections with journalists, FROCS organized a press conference at which they announced their intention to publicize the homosexuality of 200 public people who “hypocritically oppose LGBT”. The public announcement of ten priests of the Anglican Church in 1994 became the loudest campaign of the organization. Activists interrupted the ordination ceremony of the new Bishop of Durham County, Michael Turnbull, announcing his homosexuality. In addition, they brought with them posters with the names of other homosexual clerics and encouraged them to come out. The main complaint of the activists was that Turnbull and his colleagues opposed the ordination of gays as priests in every possible way.
From time to time, however, come from OutRage! used even more aggressive methods of outing, including blackmail. A year after the rally in Durham, Peter Thatchell began talking to London's Bishop David Hope, in a personal correspondence urging him to come out. The story hit the press, which began to make assumptions about the orientation of the bishop. As a result, the priest had to hold a press conference at which he announced that the participants of the radical wing of OutRage! pressured him.
The same OutRage tactics! used in dealing with officials. In 1995, the group wrote to twenty members of parliament, warning that if they did not stop supporting the homophobic law, OutRage! talk about their orientation in public. Two months later, one of the politicians - James Kilfedder - died of a heart attack on the day when one of the newspapers planned to reveal his homosexuality. The media immediately linked his death to pressure from LGBT activists.
Later, Peter Thatchell called the shares of outing "ambiguous practice" and said that Outrage! they did a great job, but, unfortunately, they failed to explain to the public that the outing should be applied only to hypocritical politicians and public figures.
Republican Larry Craig
Email Plums and Teenagers in Congress
The emergence of e-mail and social networks have made outgoing more accessible. LGBT activist Michael Rogers can be considered a real champion in this area. In his blog BlogActive.com, he also exposed homosexual politicians who support discriminatory laws.
In 2004, Rogers published a recording of conversations in the "Mega Mates Line" - a telephone gay dating service - with the participation of Rep. Edward Schrock. Prior to that, the Republican actively supported the ban on gay marriage and service in the army of LGBT people. A week later, Schrock turned down his second term election campaign.
Two years later, Rogers, in his blog, spoke about the homosexuality of the Congressman from Idaho - Larry Craig. He pointed out that Craig is related to the congressional scandal that happened in 1983: at that time several politicians suspected cocaine use and sex with minors. Rogers described several cases of Craig’s homosexual relationship that happened not long ago. The congressman publicly denied all charges until eight months later he was arrested for "indecent behavior in a public place" in the company of a man. Craig denied everything to the last: "I am not gay. I have never been gay. I lost my temper and made the wrong decision." A year later, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney publicly dismissed politics from electoral affairs and called it a disappointment for the Americans. “He didn’t just throw me under an election rink, he drove through me several times,” Craig told me later in an interview.
"I am not gay. I have never been gay. I lost my temper and made the wrong decision"
But perhaps the loudest case Rogers had to do was the famous scandal with Republican Mark Foley. For several years, the congressman from the state of Florida conducted an active correspondence with underage schoolchildren who had practice at the congress within the framework of the long-term program Kongressional Pages. Foley, who had not previously publicized his homosexuality and was distinguished by homophobic rhetoric in Congress, regularly attacked young people with erotic emails and made appointments at home. Rogers talked about Republican homosexuality a month before the media published e-mail correspondence and teen testimonies. As a result of the investigation, Foley did not receive a criminal sentence, having lost reputation and problems with his further career, since all the trainees reached the age of sexual consent.
Interestingly, most of the outgoing scandals took place with the participation of members of the American Republican Party, known for its conservative position and opposition to LGBT people. However, over time, homosexuals supporting the Republicans created their own LGBT organization, GOProud, and in 2011 made an outing to Tony Fabrizio, head of the campaign headquarters of Texas Governor Rick Perry, who used homophobic posters in his campaign. “Tony Fabrizio is not a victim. He filled his pockets with gay Republican money for years, and now he began to demonize them in order to get more points in the political race,” said GOProud CEO Jimmy Lasalvia.
No excuses
In Russia, outing has never become a decisive tool of political struggle. The video compromise, where the male hero is filmed in the company of young men, hinting at the sexual nature of the meeting, was used only in business wars and theatrical fights, and never went beyond YouTube.
Two years ago, the message that there are homosexuals in the Russian elite was heard from the lips of the odious LGBT activist Nikolai Alekseev. After that, the newspaper Izvestia published a text with a forecast that the LGBT community was supposedly preparing to “expose” the homosexuality of major Russian officials and financiers. A little later, on several city boards in Moscow, mysterious posters appeared with the logo of the newspaper, the names of state functionaries and an explanation that those were "not gay." Posters did not hang on the streets of Moscow for 24 hours, they were quickly dismantled, and the action was recognized as a custom fake. However, the idea of auting for politicians who might have been involved in the adoption of discriminatory laws (in particular, on “propaganda of non-traditional relations”) was quite popular at one time, and the arguments of Russian liberals hardly differed from the explanations of their Western colleagues.
The idea of outing was quite popular for politicians who might have been involved in the adoption of discriminatory laws.
And still, no matter how much the outing tries to excuse the fact that this is a political statement, in fact it is always interference in the private life of another person. Moreover, outing from a political tool has increasingly begun to turn into a banal satisfaction of curiosity, peeping, or simply clumsy journalistic action. The loudest scandal of recent years can be called a publication in The Daily Beast during the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. The correspondent of the newspaper was actively sitting in the Grindr gaming application during the Olympics and shared his observations, that is, he told who the inhabitants of the Olympic Village are homosexual. The material caused a big scandal, and the publication had to apologize and delete the text. On the part of The Daily Beast, this was not only a violation of someone else’s private space, but also a very dangerous step: some of the athletes came from countries where homosexuality is still considered a crime.
Two years ago, TV presenter Ksenia Sobchak decided to publicly talk about her colleague's homosexuality, explaining that show business should behave honestly, however, she removed her post on social networks the next day. Friends and colleagues condemned Sobchak, stressing that her victim was not a hypocritical official, so outing could not be justified by any noble motives.
Outing is a homophobic weapon
Modern outing is dangerous and the fact that even more stigmatizes gays. And it's not just about personal revenge or the desire of tabloids to get a sensation, but about government and public initiatives.
For example, in 2016, Texas senator Connie Burton introduced a law under which school teachers would be obliged to inform parents of their students all the information about them, including suspicions of sexual orientation. "Это нарушение личного пространства и откровенная угроза ЛГБТ-подросткам. Школьные классы для многих детей являются безопасным местом, которого их хотят лишить", - посчитала Диэнн Куэллар, одна из местных ЛГБТ-активисток.
Похожую стратегию однажды избрали и в России. Елена Климова, глава организации "Дети-404", рассказала, как парень-гомосексуал решил обратиться в петербургский центр психологической поддержки FROG. Talking about his orientation, in response, he heard: "Our phone is not for n *** rastov." The psychologist hung up. The guy wrote a complaint to the head of the center Alexander Bronstein and heard about the same answer. After this, Bronstein published an open letter, in which he called homosexuality "sin", by attaching a link to the homosexual page "VKontakte". Soon the post was removed, and instead of it, on the official page of the center, there was a video with Vladimir Putin’s arguments about gay marriage in Europe.
Forced outing was adopted by Russian criminals. Last year, in St. Petersburg, a gang of young people wielded at least twenty people who got acquainted with homosexuals through applications, and when they met they beat them and extorted money at risk of telling their relatives and friends about their orientation. Criminals received for silence the amount in the region of 100 thousand rubles.
Outing is no longer needed
The current LGBT community for the most part condemns outing, considering it to be outdated and rather dangerous practice. Former activists who have used this way of fighting for equality openly regret their actions. And indeed, there are a lot of questions to auting. Which of the politicians deserves "exposure"? Who is to solve it? Is it possible to make an outing against people who did not harm the LGBT community? Is it possible to guarantee that a hypocritical politician will stand bulling? What to do when faced with a daily outing?
Last year, the victim of outing even took revenge on the offenders. Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel actually closed the online magazine Gawker: the publication was bankrupted by fines for lawsuits by fighter Hulk Hogan (Thiel financed his legal expenses), whose intimate video was published on the website. The founder of the site, Nick Denton, declared Thiel’s act “personal vendetta” - a few years ago, the site released information about his homosexuality - and an attack on freedom of speech.
In fairness, outing played a role in the fight for LGBT rights in the world. Harsh actions of activists led to the fact that more and more public people talked about their sexuality, and conservative politicians learned to take responsibility for their actions. The practice of outing was a deterrent during the consideration of homophobic laws. But today in the West, parliamentary procedures and public pressure are taking on this role. And the ethical impurity of outing is obvious even to opponents of homophobia.
Russia is persistently demonstrating homophobia at the state level: a politician who will support LGBT people will rather lose their place in the State Duma than earn the approval of their colleagues. Discriminatory laws result in street aggression towards gays, and even their extermination - as is the case in the most conservative Russian regions. In other words, in a homophobic environment, outing becomes many times more dangerous: it is no longer just a violation of personal boundaries or an instrument of pressure on a careless official (such as corruption exposures), but a possible security threat.
Photo: Library of Congress, Wikimedia Commons, Getty Images (2)
