>> Why is this any better than smearing someone for patronizing a gay
>> bathhouse?
>
> Ummmm, because if said someone was advising politicians to close gay
> bath houses as a morality issue it would be called hypocrisy. Which is
> what this cowardly sack of crap got caught doing.
I didn't know that closing swingers' clubs was on the national agenda. (Neither are bathhouses, at the moment--there has been some movement on this issue, both over the years and very recently.)
Michael Pugliese wrote:
> Far right Congressman, Robert Bauman (R-MD.), a founder of Young
> American for Freedom in the 60's, had a anti-gay, anti-feminist voting
> record in the House of Representatives. In the 80's, in the same
> period that Gary Studds and Barney Frank were outed, so was Bauman.
> Terry Dolan of the National Conservative PAC was gay. Call these
> rightists on their hypocrisy.
Yes, I remember some of this. But outing had several characteristics which this incident lacks.
First, the people doing the outing were not exposing something they considered shameful. Instead, they were gay rights activists outing right-wingers who were also gay. This made the right-wingers' behavior a question of hypocrisy rather than shame.
Second, gay rights were clearly the most important civil rights struggle of the time. Where swingers' clubs fit into civil rights policy is an interesting question, and one which I believe we can count on our comrades in the Libertarian Party to solve for us.
Finally, outing flourished during a period when the visibility of gay men--what lesbians were outed? Think hard--was a matter of literal life and death. Silence=Death could be rephrased as Invisibility=Death. Outing served to raise the profile of gays and lesbians at a critical moment.
All the best,
John A