Outting Gay Politicians The Power of BlogACTIVE A conversation with Michael Rogers, Washington's most controversail gay activist
by CHRISTOPHER LISOTTA
For the past few months, Washington, D.C., gossips and media hounds have been fascinated with Michael Rogers' Web site BlogACTIVE.com. The site was the first place that suggested virulently anti-gay Virginia Republican Congressman Ed Schrock was gay, and challenged him to answer tough questions concerning evidence that BlogACTIVE had proving the charge. Instead of answering, Schrock, who is married and has children, said he was retiring from the U.S. House of Representatives, ending his re-election campaign. The site then put up audio tapes of Schrock allegedly looking for sex on a men's phone chat line.
BlogACTIVE.com and Rogers didn't stop there. Since the summer, a host of Republican politicians and staffers have been outed, including the never-been-married California Congressman David Dreier, a powerful force in Washington politics. Rogers' site has been accused by some mainstream media and LGBT rights groups of going too far, while hundreds of supporters have written to praise him and encourage him to keep going. IN Los Angeles magazine talked to Rogers about outing, hypocrisy, Republicans, and the impact of his site on a polarized political world.
Why did you start this site?
Because I used to work at the Harvey Milk High School in New York City and worked with gay and lesbian youth who came in with the struggles of a society that discriminated against them. I know that the last thing young gay and lesbian kids in America need is a Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) on top of all the other negative forces [they have] working against them. It's really for future generations of gay and lesbian kids that I became frustrated with this FMA. The right wing has tried to tone it down, but they want nothing more than to codify in the Constitution the distinction of benefits based on genetics. That's what the amendment does, much like other civilized societies that have started to dole out benefits based on genetics, and this is the first step on a slippery slope. I felt it was really important to be as active as possible in cutting this off.
Why do you think outing is an effective tool in that measure?
I think there are two ways to look at it. I think it is important to talk about whether outing is the proper word here. Is David Dreier being outed? Certainly I would give you Schrock was a case of outing, but in a case of Dreier, this is a man who leads his life as a gay man. He leads his life in a multi-year relationship with his chief of staff, so I don't really know if anybody is being outed here. However, in terms of being good journalists and informing the public about these lives, one only need look at the historical context. In virtually every case that I can see, when someone is in the closet and is outed or brought out factually in the case of the news, they go from being an anti-gay politician to being a progay politician. If you look at [Republican Congressman from Arizona Jim] Kolbe, or if you look at Dreier, he recently voted against the FMA.
However, Schrock still for voted it, and Dreier came out against the FMA the day that President Bush announced he would support it.
Well Dreier has actually flip-flopped. Dreier said he was against it, his office said he hadn't taken a stance on it, so I'm not exactly sure where Dreier was standing on it. We had tried to get comments from his office many times, and they had said to me as early as the morning of the vote that they did not know how the congressman was going to vote. In terms of Schrock, he is a complicated man who is leaving Congress, and who knows why he voted the way he did? I think it may have just been too soon, that it's all settling in. I don't even know if Schrock himself realizes he may be gay- he's still in the process. When someone is a woman and they vote against choice, and someone is an African American and vote against affirmative action, they clearly have that right. This is not about the right of gay and lesbian Americans and how to vote in the Senate and the House. What it is about is that people have a right to know if the Schrocks of the world are voting against a group that they themselves are secretly a member of.
Then why not out closeted Democrats?
I outed a Democrat on my Web site-Vincent Gentile of the New York City Council, a closeted gay man who promised to vote for the state ENDA and then bailed on his community in the last minutes of that vote in an effort to secure the council seat that he now has. [Democratic Senator from Maryland] Barbara Mikulski is a lesbian, we all know that, and I had called her office numerous times for the senator's stance on the amendment, and I was told repeatedly that the senator thinks there are more important things than dividing Americans, and I said, "How is the senator going to vote?" I went on TV in Washington and Maryland and I identified her as a woman who is a lesbian who we hadn't heard yet, and how was she voting? I do know the next day that she came out and finally put out a statement that she was voting against the amendment.
What about the argument that outing is a distraction, since as a community we should be building straight allies?
If we focus on sexuality, then it's easier for people to say "Well, I don't have to vote for that because I'm not gay." We should be working to build straight allies. We need to recognize the contributions of our straight allies across the board. When you look at [Democratic Senator] Harry Reid of Nevada and what a great job he did managing the floor debate [against the FMA), I thought he did a wonderful job. This is a war-George W. Bush has declared war on the gay community, and we need to fight this war on all fronts. I worked at the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, which is all about reaching out to our allies, befriending people from all communities, so of course I agree. But is this an "if /then" proposition, where we have to decide where we dedicate all of our energies toward one tactic? I would of course submit not. For your readers in Los Angeles I would submit that ACT UP and AIDS Project Los Angeles are both integral organizations in the history of HIV and AIDS, and where would we be without either one of them?
I know you've outed some congressional staffers. Some have criticized you, since no staffer is going to agree with their boss 100 percent of the time.
I don't know of any left-leaning staffers who vehemently disagree with their boss on anything. If the only way to serve in Congress is that you had to amass a staff of those who support you, Congress would be overwhelmingly Democratic. I have met more Republican staffers who don't support what their bosses are doing than I can possibly recall. I don't ever meet a Democratic staffer who says, "I can't believe that Hillary Clinton is pro-choice." I meet a lot of Republican staffers who are constantly giving excuses for the people they work for. Most Republican staffers I meet today agree that the only reason they are with their Republican bosses is because they appreciate the green of the money [more] than the actual issues.
But lots of people are in that position. One of the other publications I write for doesn't have domestic partnership benefits. Does that make me a bad person?
However, being a gay person who works for a congressmember who doesn't offer domestic partnership benefits isn't my test. Staff members who are outed are those in the highest echelons of the offices, who are making policy and crafting the message. This is not about interns. This is not about anybody in their early 20s. This is about the press secretaries who are writing the homophobia. By virtue of the staff thing, what people are saying is the Republican National Committee, which has not one elected official in its ranks, should be off limits to this kind of scrutiny. I don't understand how someone could advocate that.
You say you know Barbara Mikulski is gay, you say it is clear David Dreier is gay. With Schrock you had those audio tapes which were very compelling, but it seems like with many of these people they just haven't talked about their sexuality. Aren't we making some assumptions here?
No, we're not. If you know Washington, it's a small town. It's only about a half million people who live in the city. There is this notion of "where's the smoking dick?" For me being gay is not about whom you have sex with. David Dreier is gay. Now if people want to take me at my word, that's fine, and if not, that's fine too. The bottom line is he is as gay as gay can be. I know people who have been in the Dreier home, I know people who have been with the congressman when he has referred to Brad in ways that they don't refer to their chief of staff. A U.S. congressman does not know when his chief of staff is landing halfway around the world in 10 minutes of arrival. It's just not how congress works. I'm not going to bed with David Dreier, and barring that, how could I say I was 100 percent sure? And then having sex doesn't prove you're gay. David Dreier knows he's gay. This is a call to conscience, and I put out the news. It's up to his conscience to read what I put out there and decide whether or not it's true.
What is your ultimate goal with this site?
Originally it was (just) through the election season, but there is far too much work to do. The short term goal is obvious-it's to bring attention to the hypocrisy of the people who are running up anti-gay platforms. But the longterm goal is to have the gay and lesbian card taken out of the deck. It's not a card they should be able to play, and they're playing it far too often to their base. The problem with the Log Cabin Republicans and the people who are gay and lesbian in the Republican Party, is they're trying to organize around moderation. That's not how organizing works-you have to organize around the extremes, and the extremes they have to go to bed with to keep their party in power are so sad and pathetic. I think there are gay men-and it's mostly gay men-who are not running anti-gay campaigns and are not saying anti-gay things, because they know they may be next around the corner to have themselves exposed if they choose to do that kind of stuff.