Who are/were some gay public figures who were outed against their wishes?
One that I can think of offhand: British politician Nick Brown, outed in 1998 via a trashy newspaper kiss-&-tell, while holding a senior position in government.
LBJ advisor Walter Jenkins in 1964.
Recently the mayor of Spokane, Washington, was outed by the Spokesman-Review. Of course, it wasn’t completely because he was gay. He was trolling for sex with young men on the city computer and offered at least one an internship. Jim West is his name.
In terms of Congressmen, Steve Gunderson, Jim Kolbe, Barney Frank, Gerry Studds, Bob Bauman.
Barney Frank against his will? He’s always seemed pretty open about it.
Not public figures, but a couple of friends of mine were outed in a novel.
Nowadays he is . . . but he was outed back in the late '80s over a weird sex scandal where a gay prostitution ring was being run out of his house (not by him, but IIRC the guy who was running it was using Frank’s homosexuality as a blackmail threat).
Billy Jean King and Jim Florio. Both refused to be blackmailed over a homosexual affair.
Joan Baez also admitted to a lesbian relationship 10 years after it ended.
And the Google ad is for Mike Piazza. Hee.
Malcolm Forbes was outed posthumously, so it’s a bit unclear as to what his will was on the matter.
Pete Williams was outed when he was a high muckey-muck in the Defense Department under then-Secretary Dick Cheney. Williams is now a correspondent for NBC.
Liberace was outed by a British tabloid decades before it was called outing. Amazingly, Liberace sued for libel and won. IIRC after Liberace’s death the tabloid asked for the judgment back.
Rock Hudson was threatened with outing by Confidential back in the 50s. To save his career, the story goes, the studio fed the magazine a story on Rory Calhoun’s criminal record. While toward the end of his life Hudson’s sexuality was pretty much an open secret I’m unaware of anything indicating that Hudson wanted the greater public to know about his sexuality or his AIDS diagnosis.
There’ve been a lot of outing targets, from Jodie Foster to Ed Koch. There were a couple of wide-scale threats to out large numbers of people in Hollywood in response to a number of fairly anti-gay movies in the early 90s (there was much speculation that “the gays” were going to storm Oscar night if Silence of the Lambs started winning awards) and Barney Frank threatened to out lots of Republicans if they didn’t stop a whispering campaign against some Democrat.
Add to the list Edward Schrock, who was outed in 2004 and subsequently declined to seek re-election.
There’s some question as to whether Frank was outed. He says no. Frank came out in 1987, which was three years before the reprimand associated with Steve Gobie (the prostitute who was running tricks out of Frank’s apartment without Frank’s knowledge). Frank’s reprimand had nothing (officially) to do with Gobie’s profession; it came because Frank used the influence of his office to fix parking tickets for Gobie.
It was before the reprimand about the parking tickets, but it was when Frank found out about the prostitution ring. So while he did out himself, I still wonder how much of his outing was voluntary and how much of it was damage control for fear that the story would get out.
As for Liberace - who the hell did he think he was kidding???
As for those “anti-gay movies in the early 90s,” what were they? 
Is Jim Nabors’ homosexuality an open secret, á la Rock Hudson; has he come out on his own, or was he outed against his will?
Do those count as outings, since neither of them worked…as far as I know, neither Foster or Koch identify as gay. For Koch, at least, that was more of just a Cuomo smear campaign. I don’t really know about Foster.
The actress Kristy McNichol (best known for either her child actress movies or for Empty Nest) was outed by a bitter ex who went on the talk show circuit. I’ll always remember her appearance on Geraldo- they always bleeped part of the name of the actress she was involved with, so sometimes she’s refer to “when I was with Kris[BLEEP]” or “The Mac{BLEEP] family wouldn’t accept me” or “People would say who’s that with Kr[BLEEP]ichol”, so you’d have to have no idea who Kristy was not to have figured who she was talking about. (Kristy’s other love was Ina Liberace, the niece of Wladziu Valentino Liberace.)
Fannie Flagg was outed when her ex-girlfriend, Rita Mae Brown, wrote her autobiography. In it she discusses her love for Fannie as [paraphrasing] “one of the kindest, most brilliant, genuinely wonderful people on Earth” and how one reason they broke up was because Fannie didn’t want to come out, which of course begged the question “IF YOU LOVE HER SO MUCH AND SHE’S SO WONDERFUL THEN WHY ARE YOU OUTING HER WHEN YOU KNOW SHE DOESN’T WANT TO BE!”
Tony Perkins was outed posthumously by an unauthorized biography and most recently by Tab Hunter’s autobiography (they were a couple). He was portrayed as virginal in Victoria Principal’s autobiography (she claimed to have taken his virginity when he was 40), but in fact he was sexually experienced already with guys, just not dolls.
Louie Anderson, the rotund comedian who also hosted Family Feud, was outed when he stopped paying a blackmailer he’d had a one-night-stand with.
Kevin Spacey, who denies being gay, has had photographs of himself in “most straight guys wouldn’t do that” poses (usually taken with a zoom lens) posted in tabloids. Nothing really incriminating, but I remember was one of him giving a backrub on a private beach to a handsome young guy.
Chad Allen (the autistic kid from St. Elsewhere who grew up to be the sheriff on Dr. Quinn) was outed when pictures of him French kissing another guy in a hot tub hit the tabloids. The other guy sold the pictures, incidentally. Now he’s a way over-the-rainbow gay activist and actor.
Danny Pintauro (Who’s the Boss) came out because he was about to be outed by the National Enquirer.
Then of course there’s Oscar Wilde, who was outed by his own hubris when he sued the Marquis of Queensbury for defamation for calling him a somdomite [sic] and “spreading slander”.
Annie-Xmas, I believe you’re thinking of Jim McGreevey.
Re: Jim Nabors: if it’s an open secret, I haven’t been privy to it. Snopes refutation of the rumor that he and Rock Hudson were married makes no mention of him being gay.
If AIDS counts as outing (not that only gay guys get AIDS, obviously, but those who did get it from gay sex), then the list would include:
Roy Cohn (open secret, but you didn’t dare say it aloud if you didn’t want to feel his considerable wrath)
Liberace
Rock Hudson
Robert Reed (who actually died of cancer, but was HIV+ and it hit the press for no good reason)
Timothy Patrick Murphy (soap and Dallas actor, hearthrob of late 70s and 80s)
Steve Tracy (played Nellie’s husband Percival on Little House on the Prairie)
Tony Perkins
Speaking of cause-of-death-related outing, silent star Ramon Navarro’s private life became very public when he was brutally murdered by two hillbilly rentboys he’d picked up. (The hustlers literally tortured him to death in their attempt to rob him, made long distance calls from his phone while doing it, etc., and both were free within a few years of their conviction [and both committed violent crimes again upon their release]).
Believe it or not, he was voted “Most Eligible Bachelor in America” several times during the 1950s. (When he lost his virginity to a man is a matter of speculation, but it’s generally believed he was middle aged before he became sexually active on a regular basis.)
Well, the aforementioned Silence of the Lambs was seen by many in the gay community as being anti-gay. Whether it was or not is a matter of interpretation, but apparently the backlash did make Jonathan Demme uncomfortable enough that he made Philadelphia as something of a peace offering. Basic Instinct was another huge film from around the same time that included several very negative portrayals of lesbians and led to widespread protests. It wasn’t just that there were a number of big-screen negative portrayals; it was also that these tended to be the only portrayals of gay people in mainstream cinema. Many people in the community felt like with the number of gays at all levels of the entertainment industry it was unforgiveable that gays were so under-represented on-screen. Around that time was when we started seeing the emergence of the “New Queer Cinema” with directors like Gregg Araki and Gus Van Sant getting quite a bit of attention.
I remember the days leading up to that Oscar telecast and the news stories about the planned protests (personal favorite was from IIRC the National Enquirer; the article was actually quite good but the headline, “Gays Plot to Destroy Oscars” was a bit over the top) and the rumors that were flying. Gays were going to “infiltrate” the ceremony as cater-waiters and seat-fillers and the like, and when the first major award went to SOTL they were going to rush the stage or something. The stories were for the most part quite respectful of the gay POV and rightly connected the concern over the issue to previous Oscar protests over the treatment of other minority groups on the big screen. None of it actually materialized inside the auditorium but I remember the wave of tension when Best Actress was announced. Jodie Foster won for SOTL, no one except Jodie rushed the stage and she gave one of the most confusing acceptance speeches ever. “The circle”? “The chosen ones”? What the hell, Jodie?