“Outing” causes a bigger explosion than “coming out.”

September 6, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

The practice of “outing” is controversial, because it seems to break the inherent code of silence that gay and lesbian people have used for their very survival in a hostile society. When “Grey’s Anatomy” actor T. R. Knight came out as gay, it was partly to beat the rush before someone else outed him. Knight’s story was featured in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times.

In recent years a kind of “ethic” has emerged—especially when talking about known public figures—about the use of outing. In the current scandal involving Senator Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho), for example, his arrest for solicitation of sex in a Minneapolis airport bathroom was only the latest episode of an apparently closeted, double life. Craig has been accused of previous sexual incidents with males.

What made him a target for outing, on sites such as Mike Rogers’ www.BlogActive.com, is that Craig has consistently been a legislative foe of the civil and legal rights the LGBT community are seeking.

 Mike Rogers

Rogers is the subject of a new Washington Post profile, “The Most Feared Man on the Hill?”

 Wayne Besen

Author and commentator Wayne Besen devoted yesterday’s column to Rogers and his list of member of Congress who are ripe for outing. He is rigorous in his research, and was the first to publish the dirty secrets about Ed Schrock (former Virginia congressman), who later decided not to run for re-election; Mark Foley (former Florida congressman); and of course Larry Craig who will obviously not be running for re-election either. (Or, not? Wednesday’s Washington Post reports Craig is reconsidering his own announced resignation!) Rogers’ blog, by the way, reported nearly a year ago meeting with several men who had sexual relations with Larry Craig.

Two things about Rogers apparently generate these political fears.

For one, his sense of integrity leads to an ethic about the practice of outing. From Besen’s daily column:

“When those private lives are in direct conflict with the public policy that these officials espouse, I think it’s fair game that their private lives be brought into this,” Rogers told The Washington Post. “And I have a blog to do that with. Here’s the question: What community is expected to protect its own enemies? Don’t beat up the gay community, and then expect us to protect your secrets and your double life. It’s just not right.”

And the second thing is that Rogers has a list of 33 others like Schrock, Foley and Craig on Capitol Hill: mostly men, mostly Republican (30 of them), and he is carefully researching them. Why is such scandal, or potential scandal, important to me? Not hypocrisy alone – that lasso would draw us all in. I am much more concerned about the gross misuse of the Christian faith as a tool for the manipulation and hurt of other human beings.

People get manipulated and hurt every day. It’s a cruel world out there. But when the Christian faith — a spirituality of love, compassion, and mercy — is willfully used by people in power to manipulate and hurt, I become upset. And I become especially inflamed when those being hurt are gay or lesbian, bisexual or transgender. All of us have suffered enough manipulation, shame, hurt, loss of self-esteem, loss of our civil rights. But when a spirituality which can redeem us from the shame and hurt is itself turned into a tool of control and abuse, that is the last straw with me. I cannot control public policy, legislation, court cases or public opinion. But I will try everything, with the simple gifts God has given me, to offer grace, love and truth to our community and defend the true Christian faith from such demonic misuse. Many of the people on the “religious right” or in places of power in Washington, try to identify the Christian faith with strict/conventional/heterosexual moralism to the degree that any variation from their view is condemned.

And here we have members of Congress condemning themselves by their own standards. (Senator Craig, in his public statements, continues to insist he is not gay and never has been–by which statements he means to imply that being gay is shameful and he is above such shame!)

When will the manipulation, hurt, shaming and condemnation stop, in the name of Jesus?

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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