Sex scandals are always dangerous weapons, if you ask me. On the one hand, you’re perfectly justified in making a counterattack. On the other hand, the means of counterattack is not issue-based. It’s not ideological. It’s not even an argument. It’s a broadside. And it really targets only one individual. Worse, in this case, the means of attack is by utilizing the weapon of the enemy against him. If you’re OK with that, fine. I’m not sure if this is a good analogy, but if pacifists shoot soldiers to stop a war, are they pacifists any longer? If homosexuals sick homophobes on other homophobes, what are they accomplishing? Other than the scandalization of an individual, I’m not certain. I’m not saying that individual isn’t worthy of punishment, it’s just that the means of punishment is the “politics of personal destruction” which I think has had such a caustic influence on our political discourse up to now.
I am undecided myself as to whether or not its justifiable to hoist a hypocrite by his own petard. Certainly, it’s very satisfying. I don’t lament Schrock’s political downfall. Not at all. I’m just made very uneasy by sex scandals and they way they can be used by partisans to effect policy. Schrock wasn’t refuted; he was demolished. A bomb, though more obviously ethically suspect, would be no more rhetorically valid, if all that is being done is neutralizing a raging hate monger bent on the destruction of innocents. So call Schrock’s outing what it is, then: A bomb, of sorts. Rogers took him out, like any good soldier would. Will he be able to take out Schrock’s replacement so easily? Will he have any weapon at all, when debate is not his means for affecting change?
Hang on. Make sure that that’s your own conclusion, and be aware that I’m definitely not saying that. If my side comments came across as shouting "homophobe,"please realize that that’s not what I was intending. His column was an attempt to be objective and present both sides of the argument, but I don’t agree with his conclusions. Of course, I’m biased, because I don’t believe that there are two sides to the argument. But that’s a long way from “gay-basher.”
I’m not sure what I think of this business. On the one hand, someone who aggressively asserts one philosophy publically while maintaining another standard privately is revealing something about his integrity that his constituents might be entitled to know. On the other hand, few people live up to their own ideals, and everybody is entitled to a zone of personal privacy apart from his public job. It’s not at all uncommon for politicians, say, to oppose school vouchers and charter schools while they send their own kids to elite private academies. Congressmen have better medical insurance than almost anyone else, but they’re not voting for universal health care anytime soon. What they want to impose on everyone else as a matter of public policy isn’t they way they choose to live for themselves. I’m not even sure that it is completely hypocritical for the congressman to espouse the belief that the term marriage should be reserved for a specific kind of human relationship, while he chooses to engage in a completely different kind of relationship. (On that tape, the guy isn’t asking anybody to marry him.) And this guy clearly represented his district the way they wanted to be represented, which, after all, is what he’s supposed to do. And when you out somebody you’re not only turning his life upside down but his family’s lives, his children’s, his employees. So, I dunno…
But what I really wonder about is the widespread suspicion/accusation that anybody who isn’t married, or who is married but not in some kind of traditional storybook marriage, must be gay. Every woman in public life who displays mannish toughness is whispered about as a likely lesbian (Hillary Clinton, Condolezza Rice, Eleanor Roosevelt, etc.), as are pretty young actresses who don’t sleep with all their leading men. Men who have never married are almost universally assumed to be gay (unless they’ve had multiple relationships, which marks them as “womanizers”). Does it somehow make gay people feel better about themselves if they can embrace as many people as possible as one of their own?
So when somebody decides to “out” somebody else, what level of proof is enough? Are rumors enough? Vague whispering? A claim that “I saw Jones walking down the street with Smith, and I think maybe Smith is gay, so draw your own conclusions about Jones”? And how would someone go about defending himself again false accusations without sounding like a bigot? (“No, I’m not–not that there would be anything wrong with that…”)? How does a man prove that he doesn’t sleep with other men? Outing somebody who is living a lie might be defensible sometimes, but from there it’s a short step to hanging a label on someone who doesn’t deserve it and can’t really fight back. There just seems to be a little too much smug glee associated with this outing business.
I don’t know (and someone can correct me on this) of anyone who actually got outed by the Queer community (as opposed to whispered about in the Enquirer) on the basis of less than actually chasing same-sex booty, in the manner of the former Congressman. As for smug glee, my primary emotional reaction is more along the lines of, “That’s it. We should be able to make trades now, like in sports.”
I was thinking in general, not in relation to any specific construct.
Is it acceptable in general to use embarassing revelations about a politician’s personal life to drive them out of public life if they disagree on some issue you find to be important? If so, what issues and how much do they have to disagree?
Members of Congress cast a lot of votes on a lot of issues, and I am pretty sure I could find some vote that I disagreed with pretty strongly for anyone. If I had the goods on someone, would I be justified in using it to drive them out of office? Or is it restricted only to gay issues?
How is this just a “gay issue” after it’s been repeatedly pointed out that it’s a “hypocrisy issue?”
If a Congressman voted consistently against the right of people to own a gun, and it were revealed that he owned a gun in his personal life, it would be completely ethical to reveal this. Same difference.
If a candidate is strongly pro-life and denouncing “abortion on demand” and “welfare moms who have serial abortions” and the common extreme claims of the more demagogic pro-lifers (and I’m perfectly well aware that there are others who do not indulge in this sort of exaggeration, thanks), and it was found that he had paid for an abortion to cover up having gotten a woman not his wife pregnant – that’s hypocrisy.
The various representatives who are “defending the sanctity of marriage” while having quietly gotten divorces – that’s hypocrisy. (Yeah, it’s a quasi-gay issue – but that’s not what they’re saying; their slogan is how sacrosanct the divine institution of marriage is, by and large.)
Any person who takes a “do as I say, not as I do” attitude in public life, unless he is publicly confessing weakness and guilt and using his experience as a bad example to encourage others to avoid it, is guilty of hypocrisy.
I’m sure I could come up with other examples. The guy in my home town campaigning against slumlords who is one of the worst offenders would be one.
But I trust the point is clear, Shodan. What’s your view?
Excellent thought provoking points Poly that caused me to wonder why I didn’t feel the same way about Schrock. Perhaps because as I best understand it his only “crime” was to oppose the gay agenda and that I have not heard if he supported sodomy laws or spoke out in any way against the gay life style. Are you a hypocrite because you as a married heterosexual are in support of including same sex marriage under the same legal definition which is opposed the last time I heard by a majority of heterosexuals?
Lets suppose you disclosed by e-mail to me that you were actually gay, but to protect skulldigger you didn’t want me to reveal that fact . Now I could be thinking that by keeping that secret from other posters you are compromising your integrity every time you speak positively on a gay issue. Would it then be proper for me to disclose your gay orientation to the rest of the board?
Please. No one drove Schrock from office. He decided that being Gay was bad for his career and quit. We ALL know what Clinton did. We spent millions of dollars investigating what he did. Clinton WAS outed and unlike Schrock, there WAS an investigation to remove Clinton from office.
Schrock quit. He wasn’t driven out. The Dems didn’t call for an investigation. He quit.
Plenty of public figures have been caught with their pants down and many of them grabbed their wives, stood in front of the camera and boo-hooed.
No one stopped Schrock from doing the same thing, except Schrock.
His choice. He should have stood up, held his wife’s hand and said, “So I like a bit of cock, who doesn’t?”
First, Schrock has, as evidenced by previous posts here, been actively campaigning for anti-gay laws. “Opposing the gay agenda” is seen by most gay people and those who support them as depriving them of equal rights. And while I do not necessarily buy into every element of what HRC campaigns for, in general terms they have a precise point: if you or I are entitled to legal protection X, so should they be. And “legal protection X” could be something like “you are entitled to pay at group rates to insure those you regard as family.”
Now, I honestly do not follow the logic that suggests that my view of marriage is conditioned by what the majority of married heterosexual people think about marriage. (Not that I’m certain of what the actual majority think – it’s amazing how skewed actual “carefully structured to provide a complete cross section” polls can actually be.)
For me, marriage is three things, as I’ve said before: (1) The commitment by two people to live together as a married couple, regardless of what church or state may think of the idea. Under this definition jayjay and supervenusfreak are married, because they have chosen to be, regardless of what opinions regarding their marriage the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania or the United Methodist Church may have. (2) The legal institution whereby the state agrees that, having fulfilled some basic requirements. it will regard a couple as married under law. This is of course the one covering all discussions of whether or not to recognize gay marriage. (3) The covenant made by a married couple before God, for us sacramentalist types considered a sacrament, in which the two become one in a mystical union by exchanging vows before Him and having His blessing bestowed through the clergy upon them and their union.
Under the first definition, any two people who make such a choice are unquestionably married. Under the second, the first cut is that the state has the right to place such limits as it deems appropriate on whom it will deem married – but there’s a kicker; marriage is a fundamental right under the Constitution (cf Loving v Virginia) and any restriction on it must therefore come under strict scrutiny, IMO. Under the third, we have all heard “God said that marriage is one man and one woman” enough times that it scarcely needs repeating – but I personally do not see that as an absolute, but rather a standard, default mode. The majority of people are heterosexual in orientation and without the charism of celibacy, and therefore want to marry one person of the opposite sex – because that’s the way God made them. But if we take that as mandatory, we have to say, not only is there something wrong with Jayjay wanting to marry another man, but there’s something inherently wrong and sinful in the Pope not wanting to marry anyone.
I guess what I’m saying is that I see nothing hypocritical in wanting to allow others to have the same privilege as myself, on the terms appropriate to them, and the fact that there are people who do see something wrong with it is immaterial to my own ethical choice here.
As for the second paragraph, in what way would I be hypocritical there? My stance would be identical to the one I have now – I am a happily married man who supports equal rights, respectful treatment, and affirmation of the human dignity of a group often cast aside and ostracized. The fact that I would be a part of that group rather than a supporter of it would have minimal bearing on the ethical questions that I would raise. And remaining closeted for the sake of my wife would not be a bit of hypocrisy, but an act of love and courtesy toward her.
At least that’s how I’d see it. Anyone want to take a different perspective on it?
I wouldn’t call it hypocricy either. It’s misrepresentation, and notwithstanding the actual merits of your advocacy, it would restrict the ability of others to fully assess the legitimacy of your arguments. Its one thing to hear someone with no stake in the outcome to promote an issue, but a stakeholders position always carries baggage that needs to be taken into consideration.
Now one might respond “so what?” And I even feel more that way about Schrock. His anti-gay positions didn’t leave him with any advantage with respect to other gays. His crime isn’t hypocricy, but misrepresentation of who he is, and the only people who are upset about it are those who are opposed to his anti-gay positions. Can you imagine the uproar if he had presented a distinctly pro-gay agenda and then was outed? Most people would have felt misled. Now tell me what has changed with respect to the merits of his record now that we know that he is gay? Nothing right? I just don’t see how being in the closet, his misrepresentation of himself in this case, is relevant to others. And once again its the spouse who suffers as well in these sex scandels.
These righties’ hypocrisy reaches into the realm of schizophrenia.
“We want all homosexuals to be publicly accountable for their private sexual practices: we want it to be relevant to what jobs they’re allowed to have, where they’re allowed to live, how they raise and teach their children, and whether they’re allowed to defend their country. UNLESS they’re voting on our side; then we want to get all righteous about their right to privacy.”
Anyone who is for the exposure of any politically relevant hypocrisy EXCEPT homosexuality is a hypocrit.
Any gay person who hides his sexuality in order to achieve public office is on shaky ground. If they use such power to make it more and more necessary for others to hid their sexuality, he’s a hypocrit, and should expect to be called on it.
I’m against outing in general. But when it’s in self defense, it’s extremely ethical to expose hypocrisy.
As Polycarp pointed out, if a prohibitionist worked hard to prevent you from having a drink, but then drank like a fish in his bathroom, such hypocrisy MUST be exposed, and no one would fault the person who exposed it.
As Cervaise pointed out, the cultural atmosphere in which exposure as a homosexual can be used as a weapon is what were all fighting against. To use the truth against a major proponent of that culture is extremely ethical.
Until outing someone has as much political relevance as outing a blond politician for not being true to his dark roots, such tactics are necessary and right.
I’m willing to bet that the people who put Schrock into office because they liked his “keep the homos down” platform are quite a bit more pissed off about this than those who disagreed with his bigotry.
And do you really think there’d be any sort of an uproar if a pro-gay pol came out of the closet? That doesn’t make any sense to me. Who would care, aside from the usual suspects like Phelps and Falwell? I think the general reaction would be, “I guess that’s why he was so strongly pro-gay.”
Which, come to think of it, is not all that different from my own reaction to Mr. Schrock’s outing.
Then you aren’t really against outing in general, since any political issue can be phrased as if it were a matter of life and death.
And pro-lifers see support for abortion as depriving children of the right to life. And therefore, it would be ethical for some pro-life group to use embarassing allegations about a pro-choice politician’s family to try to drive him out of office.
Or allegations of sexual harassment against an allegedly feminist politician, and so forth.
I think saying “outing is a bad idea, but…” is abandoning the principle. Either it is OK for everyone, in which case it was OK to do it to Clinton (and Gingrich and the governor of NJ), or it is not OK for Clinton et al or Schrock either.
For the first, I am still unsure what scenario you envision that would be analogous to this ‘outing’ we’ve been discussing. Forcing a daughter/wife to keep a child she didn’t want? If that’s the case, yes, I’d want to see it out there.
As for the second- it would not offend me to see the allegations out there, assuming they were credible. Frankly, I’d want to see how the official handled it. And if he refused to deny it, or address it in any way, I’d want him out of office.
It just chaps my ass to see politicians (of any stripe) build a career on an issue, but when it comes to them, it’s a ‘personal matter.’ Whether that’s drug use, sexual orientation, illegal immigration, what have you, it’s sickening to see that level of hypocrisy.
And if Clinton had advanced an agenda to criminalize adultery, etc. we could talk about that. But he never really hid the fact that he was a hound, and we elected him knowing that. Hell, some of us would elect him again knowing that.
What, you mean your reaction is, “I guess that’s why he was so strongly anti-gay?” Doesn’t make much sense.