pudge's Journal: Outing People

Some liberals like to out gay Republicans. They say that they are justified because their targets are hypocrites. You see, being closeted itself is hypocritial, but more to the point, being a Republican and gay is hypocritical. To them, anyway.

What they, unsurprisingly, do not seem to understand is that in outing anyone they are themselves being hypocritial, since they are the ones who like to talk about how sexual preference is a personal issue. I happen to agree with that, which is why I find laws outlawing homosexual sex to be anathema, and why I also find outing other people against their will to be deplorable.

Recently, Bill Maher -- a bastion of smug and intellectually dishonest hypocrisy -- outed someone on Larry King's live show. CNN responsibly removed that reference from subsequent airings, without comment, but presumably because a. it was a disgusting thing for Maher to do and CNN didn't want to be a party to it by re-airing it, and b. CNN could be sued over it for defamation.

Seriously though, I can't stand Bill Maher. Most of the things he says are simply incorrect, and he is impossible to argue with because he takes the default position that you are an idiot if you disagree with him, and even if he does let you respond, he'll only use it as an opportunity for mockery. He's even worse than Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter, and that's saying something.

Now Playing: Hector Berlioz - Symphonie fantastique - March to the Scaffold

Classics?

[robi2106]

Enjoying the late romantic era symphonies?

jason

It depends.

[sulli]

If the person being "outed" is not a flaming hypocrite who advocates discrimination against gays while himself enjoying a little gay love on the side, then yes, it is a bad idea.

If, however, the person is an anti-gay activist [wikipedia.org] (which includes evangelicals who preach against same sex relationships), he gets exactly what he deserves.

Re:

[pudge]

I disagree, but can understand your position. I certainly didn't stick up for Haggard when that came out. But that is entirely beside the point when it comes to Mehlman, if he really is gay, which is merely rumored (which makes the "outing" even more detestable, because it's more like a witchhunt than anything else).

Back to Haggard: the problem as I see it is that we have elevated "hypocrisy" to be the worst crime you can commit in this country, except for maybe terrorism and child molestation. That's one c

Mehlman?

[sulli]

He should not be outed, if that's him. He hasn't been the lind of hypocrite that the likes of Haggard have been. Neither, to his great credit, has been Dick Cheney (not that I think he is gay, but his daughter famously is and he has been very supportive).

Hypocrisy matters of you are trying to legislate morals. If you don't want to control other people's personal lives, nobody needs to control yours. But if you DO, you deserve the utmost scrutiny.

If you made a mistake, you should have used the

[sulli]

Preview button!

Hypocrisy matters IF you are trying to legislate morals.

Re:

[pudge]

He should not be outed, if that's him.

Right. That's whose name Maher mentioned live on CNN. Of course, what makes this even worse is that there is no actual evidence that Mehlman is gay, so this amounts not just to outing someone who does not deserve to be outed, but to defamation.

Neither, to his great credit, has been Dick Cheney (not that I think he is gay, but his daughter famously is and he has been very supportive).

Right.

I chatted with some Log Cabin Republicans at a Washington State Republican conve

Hypocrisy

[John Harrison]

There is an interesting discussion of hypocrisy in The Diamond Age, that makes the same points you do. Basically it is persecuting someone for having standards that are high enough that they can't live up to them. But I do think that once some people who are very outspoken (such as Rush Limbaugh) are exposed they should show some shame.

Re:

[pudge]

I listened to that recently in unabridged audiobook, earlier this year. I don't recall the discussion specifically (and it being 18.5 hours long I won't go back and try to find it :-), but maybe that is where I picked up some of what I wrote.

Re:

[GMontag]

Ahem.

When I started working in the DC area in 1994 the same type of rumor was going around about George Stephanopoulos, even the limousine Liberal-Leftist lobbyist chick I was dating at the time repeated these rumors, with the tag that he would "come out" when the homosexual issues came to the table. I actually did hear it so much that I believed it myself for a long time. This was my final lesson on rumors and I don't care or I ask what the relevance is (like Arafat having AIDS).

Even worse, other people

This story struck me too

[multimed]

The audacity to proudly do this and expose the "hypocrisy" while completely missing the point that it's just as hypocritical to do this when espousing that people's private lives should be private is just obnoxious.

But I don't know that the people who condone this are so dumb that they don't see it, they just don't care. They can justify the hypocrisy and possibly ruining someone's life because he's a jerk and deserves it. It's that ends justifying the means and flexible sense of morals that I find most