CarnalNation

“Roy Cohn is not a homosexual.  Roy Cohn is a heterosexual who fucks around with guys!"  So proclaims Al Pacino as the notoriously ruthless McCarthyite in a clip from Mike Nichols' film version of Tony Kushner's Angels in America.  While the lines are meant to play for camp laughs, the words astonishingly morph into something absolutely revelatory in Kirby Dick's latest documentary about the outing of gay Republicans, Outrage.  Kushner penned the lines in an effort to understand Cohn's way of thinking, to humbly step inside the head of someone whose life experience was so foreign from his own.  Which is something the self-righteous, outing bloggers and journalists profiled in Dick's documentary never even attempt to do.  For what Cohn is really saying is just an extreme version of what the Republicans who "fuck around with guys" are really thinking.  Which is, "I am not your definition of homosexual.  I have a right to decide my own identity, and I will not be pigeonholed to fit your narrow-minded, simplistic point-of-view."

For the most fascinating thing about these white gay men who out perceived white gay men is how much these radical left and conservative right camps have in common—much more than the outers share with the diverse LGBT community at large.  When these "truth-seeking" journalists question the validity of someone's marriage, making catty comments such as "I don't know why the wives stay with them!" and calling disgraced senator Larry Craig's relationship with his spouse "bizarre," it echoes a time not long ago when gay partnerships were considered "bizarre."  Why on earth would a woman stay with a man who "fucks around with guys" on the side?  For the same reason two men would want to live together.  It's called love.

And isn't that what the gay rights movement was supposed to be about in the first place?  Wasn't the talking point at one time, "It's not about who we have sex with, but about who we love"?  Yet for the outing bloggers and journalists in Dick's documentary the rule only applies if you're not a conservative Republican.  For if it's whom you love that truly defines a person—and not who you have sex with—then a man like Larry Craig is undoubtedly straight.  And because he's straight, there is no hypocrisy in his voting against the interest of gays—i.e., of a community he never was and never will be a part of.

Remember, Larry Craig is not former governor James McGreevey, who, by the way, should be held up as the hypocrite he truly is rather than as some sort of elder statesman of the LGBT community.  (After all, this is the same man who waved the "I am a gay American" flag as a matter of convenience to distract from the inconvenient truth that putting one's lover on the payroll in a position for which he has no qualifications is unethical no matter your sexuality.)  Craig never profited from inflaming homophobic feelings any more than your average non-queer politician (and Craig is one of those non-queer politicians since he's only "queer" because the queer community has decided to claim and profit from the publicity surrounding him!)  Fooling around with guys on the side is different from being in love with a man and summering on Fire Island.  Of course, no one should profit from a community he's a part of and then vote against it.  Craig, however, is part of the hetero community, not the queer one.

"Come out, Larry!  Be gay!" an activist shouts at Craig during a press conference.  (Or as a friend succinctly summarized, "You're closeted!  You're Republican!  We hate you!  Come join us!")  But come out to what?  And why?  So Craig can leave the woman he's built a life with to move to Massachusetts and marry a one-night-stand?  Instead of making disingenuous claims that outing furthers gay rights (blogger Michael Rogers says that their voting records swing pro-gay when these politicians are outed – yet offers up not a single instance of definitive proof) the outers would do more of a public service by looking in the mirror and asking themselves one single question.  "Why is it so important that these complicated men fit my binary definition of gay?"  If these outers truly wish to battle hypocrisy, I can think of no better place they can begin than by outing themselves.