Outing

Outing is the practice of deliberately making public another person's concealed or barely-concealed sexual identity or orientation, without that person's consent. The people outed are most often public figures such as politicians or celebrities.

Motives

While one may reveal secrets or private details about others lives for many reasons including personal malice or commercial gain, outing is motivated by political advocacy and journalistic reportage. Outing should not only reveal the hypocrisy of those in what Branch terms the "closets of power" but also further awareness of the presense of gay people and political issues, thus showing that being gay and lesbian is not "so utterly grotesque that it should never be discussed." (ibid, p.78)

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Richard Mohr notes that, "some people have compared outing to McCarthyism...And vindictive outing is like McCarthyism: such outing feeds gays to the wolves, who thereby are made stronger....But the sort of outing I have advocated does not invoke, mobilize, or ritualistically confirm anti-gay values; rather it cuts against them, works to undo them. The point of outing, as I have defended it, is not to wreak vengeance, not to punish, and not to deflect attention from one's own debased state. Its point is to avoid degrading oneself." Thus outing is "both permissible and an expected consequence of living morally." (ibid p.77)

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Further, outing is not the airing of private details. As Signorile asks, "How can being gay be private when being straight isn't? Sex is private. But by outing we do not discuss anyone's sex life. We only say they're gay." (p.80) "Average people have been outed for decades. People have always outed the mailman and the milkman and the spinster who lives down the block. If anything, the goal behind outing is to show just how many gay people there are among the most visible people in our society so that when someone outs the milkman or the spinster, everyone will say, "So what?" (p.82)

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Outing as a political tool

One of the pioneers of the idea of outing hypocritical closeted gay homophobes was Michelangelo Signorile, as he documents in his book Queer In America. In the early 1990s Signorile was excoriated, by many both within the gay community and in the straight press, but many of his tactics are now seen as legitimate political and journalistic techniques for uncovering and revealing hypocrisy among those in power who are undermining equality for GLB Americans.

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Some gay rights activists, however, defend outing as a tactic. The British activist Peter Tatchell says that "The lesbian and gay community has a right to defend itself against public figures who abuse their power and influence to support policies which inflict suffering on homosexuals." In 1994 Tatchell's activist group OutRage! named fourteen bishops of the Church of England as homosexual or bisexual, accusing them of hypocrisy for upholding the Church's policy of regarding homosexual acts as sinful while not observing this prohibition in their personal lives.

Related Topics:
British - Peter Tatchell - 1994 - OutRage! - Bishop - Church of England - Hypocrisy - Sinful

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"Outing is queer self-defence," Tatchell says. "Lesbians and gay men have a right, and a duty, to expose hypocrites and homophobes. By not outing gay Bishops who support policies which harm homosexuals, we would be protecting those Bishops and thereby allowing them to continue to inflict suffering on members of our community. Collusion with hypocrisy and homophobia is not ethically defensible for Christians, or for anyone else."

Related Topics:
Queer - Homophobe

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In a simiar vein, one might "out" a pro-life legislator who paid for his own daughter to have an abortion.

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