The Ethics of Outing.

[brnbk]

Is it ever moral to out a gay man?

Some cases are easy to judge, say instances where a politician or preacher is having gay sex secretly while preaching or legislating against gay people and homosexuality. However a same person, choose to be closeted, say a politician who is gay or bi and is in a marriage (heterosexual) but his routine  involves mid-week trips to a gay bathhouse, is it ever OK to let the public know. 

By staying in the closet, isn't this person saying being gay or bi, is something to be hidden! Given the rising anti LGBTQ laws in various states isn't it time to stand up for gay rights at the social level and make legislative victories such as nation wide gay right, a  lived reality. 

Is it ever acceptable for a gay/bi person to pass as straight ?

Edited September 17, 2023 by brnbk

[PozTalkAuthor]

I generally am against outing; what people do, is not my business; when it deals with politics, I'm conflicted instead. 

How many people of all genders, races and ages, have a double life? Talking in a very strict manner about sex (especially homosexuality) and then, behind the door, they act the opposite? 

I heard about a man in Hungary, in the parliament, he was arrested with 25 men, and substances! 25, not one... 

In this case I'd be more in favour of outing: if now YOU can have a double life, including being in gay places with guaranteed privacy, it's thanks to the community you're fighting against. So you have no right to spit on us and then use us for your own fun. 

That's the matter. 

But, on the other side, I really don't know if it would be a good way to act; violence generates violence, always. I am not religious but think that I shouldn't do to others what I do not want to be done to me. 

And, if it deals with politics, opponents would say "look at this movement, they share private information because they've nothing else to tell the world". It's something to pay attention for!

[viking8x6]

I'm with @PozTalkAuthor in feeling conflicted on this one.

If the person in question is taking actions in their life that harm gay people (e.g. conservative politicians and religious figures), I do think it can be justified. To be harming a group of people of which you are a member and not sharing in that harm yourself is malfeasance of the worst sort.

But I am also mindful that judging and hurting other people is seldom, possibly never, constructive, and that no one should be entitled to do so.

Justice and mercy are altogether too often in conflict.

[BootmanLA]

The purist approach, of course, is that everyone gets to decide for himself or herself when and if to come out. So if the question is framed in terms of, say, a right to privacy, it's really hard to say that X has that right but Y does not. After all, one of our most telling arguments for recognizing same-sex marriage was that if a man had a right to have his marriage to a woman recognized, he should have the same right to have his marriage to a man recognized.

Ethics, though, isn't about rights; it's about doing what's right. So, for instance, a person may have a right to kill himself, but it may be ethically right to pull a person back from a ledge from which she's about to leap, especially if one suspects she's not completely capable of making an informed decision at the moment.

And sometimes the situation is like the classic trolley switch problem: if a trolley is hurtling down the tracks toward five people who can't get off the tracks, and you can throw a switch to shift the trolley to a different track, but it will kill one person who can't get off that track, do you throw the switch? On the one hand, not acting means more people die. On the other hand, acting means that one person dies but it's because of something YOU did. What to do?

I think outing a married person who goes to bathhouses or bookstores for sex (but who otherwise is not a public figure) is like flipping that switch when there aren't five people stuck on the track to start with. You aren't saving anyone, and you're inflicting harm not only on the person who's cheating on his wife, but on the wife and their families, too - for no gain other than adding to the sum of brutal honesty in the world.

Outing someone in a leadership position - a religious figure who preaches against gay sex, a politician who votes against gay rights - is more like the classic trolley problem - outing is throwing that switch to save the larger group - with the addition that the five people stuck on the track are there in the first place because of the actions of the person on the other track. He's put them in harm's way, and you're not only saving them from harm, but you're helping normalize the fact of being gay for other closeted people.

But again, that calculus only comes into play, in my view, when the person being outed has actively, not passively, worked to harm the LGBT community.

[brnbk]

1 hour ago, PozTalkAuthor said:

if now YOU can have a double life, including being in gay places......So you have no right to spit on us and then use us for your own fun. 

 

1 hour ago, viking8x6 said:

To be harming a group of people of which you are a member and not sharing in that harm yourself is malfeasance of the worst sort.

 

Which brings me to the original question. Is it fair to hold that a person refusing to come out as bi or gay, who is or was fairly sexually active while being married to the wife and a politician, and not having participated in anti-gay legislation, or at lest changing with the times when the tides change and being pro gay when it had become socially acceptable to do so,  is causing harm i.e. spitting on the LGBTQ community? 

 

 

 

[brnbk]

1 hour ago, BootmanLA said:

But again, that calculus only comes into play, in my view, when the person being outed has actively, not passively, worked to harm the LGBT community.

 

Can Not coming Out by this politician/public figure, even if he hasn't done anything overtly anti gay  in terms of legislation but supported DOMA when it was still politically important to attack gays — be itself considered as doing harm to the LGBT community and thus justify a possible outing — Señor Signorilde style of the 'Queer in America: Sex, The Media, and the Closets of Power (1993)' fame?

 

[analluv27]

The problem is that life doesn’t work on absolutes, there’s so much nuance. 
if Joe Blow is stepping out on the side to fuck or get fucked though they have a wife and children. Should his spot be blown up? Some would argue yes because their cheating, but what if in spite of popular thinking they they cannot just come out and be open? 
 The fear of losing family and some friends is a real possibility in some cases. Now one would argue if they don’t accept them, then they don’t need them out they were never their friends in the first place. But does should decide this? 
  Now if Joe is engaging in multiple unsafe behaviors it will effect him and those around him. But as a society we do not out people addiction problems unless they broke the law. Now if Joe Blow is a congressman or senator that wants to introduce legislation that is harmful to the LGBTQ+ community , he’s a hypocrite and exposed it may or may not stop said legislation but then we’re talking more self hate or the desperation of being accepted.

[BootmanLA]

2 hours ago, brnbk said:

Can Not coming Out by this politician/public figure, even if he hasn't done anything overtly anti gay  in terms of legislation but supported DOMA when it was still politically important to attack gays — be itself considered as doing harm to the LGBT community and thus justify a possible outing — Señor Signorilde style of the 'Queer in America: Sex, The Media, and the Closets of Power (1993)' fame?

My response to Signorile at the time - which remains the same today - is that there is a difference between harming and failing to aid. There is a streak of activism that wants to dictate for everyone else what level of engagement is not only appropriate, but demanded - and I reject that entirely.

Signorile's approach was basically "Fuck your life and your marriage and your kids and anything else you think is important; *I* think you need to be out in order to advance the goals I want on my timeline, and it's your job to shut up and fall in line."

To be fair to him: he wrote QIA at a time when the number of HIV/AIDS diagnoses was still rising almost exponentially, and concern for the very survival of gay men as a population was real. I'm not sure whether he'd argue the same today (he might well, or he might have moderated his stance somewhat). 

[partying.hard]

Like so many things in life, I do not believe there is an absolute answer here.
 

I’m a strong advocate for privacy. I don’t care what people do behind closed doors. It’s none of my business.

But as others have said, when there is someone who is fighting against our community, but is proven to be one of us, the right to privacy dissolves.

IMHO.

[hntnhole]

4 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

But again, that calculus only comes into play, in my view, when the person being outed has actively, not passively, worked to harm the LGBT community.

I concur.  While I voted "no", and generally wouldn't consider "outing" as acceptable, there can be situations wherein I would consider calling them out, as Bootman writes above.  

For instance:  If one of these insufferable "televangelists" railing against gay folks to raise even more money, all the while ignoring the message of the One he claims to follow is in the pigpen with the rest of us when the cameras aren't around, I just might try to find an identifying birthmark or some-such, and do it.  The guilty party chose long ago to point the finger at those who are honest enough with themselves to live their lives according to their very real needs, harming no one, while the shit-peddler chose to go after the dough and victimize his own kind in the same effort.  

As to the closeted pols, most of them aren't blaring condemnation for gay folks.  The ones doing that job are, of course, the hets, trying to pick low-hanging fruit off the Tree of Hate.

 

[ellentonboy]

NO, NO, NO, NO!  This is a  privacy issue.  Jesus May, and Joseph shut your mouths.  It is no one's business if a person comes out of the closet.  It is NOT your business to tell the world because you sucked his prick or he fucked you. SO WHAT?  Shut your rancid little mouths.....

This "holler then though"attitude needs to stop.   Your PERSONAL beliefs can DESTROY someone's  life.  Just shut your mouth and your ass and keep his business PRIVATE.

[Sfmike64]

36 minutes ago, ellentonboy said:

NO, NO, NO, NO!  This is a  privacy issue.  Jesus May, and Joseph shut your mouths.  It is no one's business if a person comes out of the closet.  It is NOT your business to tell the world because you sucked his prick or he fucked you. SO WHAT?  Shut your rancid little mouths.....

This "holler then though"attitude needs to stop.   Your PERSONAL beliefs can DESTROY someone's  life.  Just shut your mouth and your ass and keep his business PRIVATE.

Dude. For god's sake chill. Thoughtful people disagree with you, including me, but this is not the way to have this conversation. 

Any Republican politician who is gay deserves to be outed, in my opinion. They want to fuck us, but they don't want anyone to know. Fuck that damage. They're not some 18 year old kid in small town Alabama who has a rational fear of being out., they're adults (like CPAC's Matt Schlapp, who's been accused of sexually assaulting several young men). They made their bed, now they have to lie in it. I am a firm believer in "DO NOT fuck any Republican under any circumstances. They want us dead."

I (and perhaps you too) am old enough to remember when the first question about AIDS was asked in the Reagan White House briefing room. EVERY SINGLE PERSON in that room laughed. Press and staff. They all laughed because we were dying. I was 21 and will never forget it.

Edited September 18, 2023 by Sfmike64

[onlyraw]

The other complication to this question is: how do you know they are not out?

just because you see a guy wearing a wedding ring at the book store doesn’t mean he is not out to his partner 

for all you know maybe he is married to a guy who is a equal pig and waiting for his husband to come home with a sloppy hole that he can either eat out our fuck while his husband tells him about all the sleazy guys who fucked him

and he may be on PrEP (so he is not putting his partner in that danger)

And most of us took awhile to accept the fact that we were gay - and it is a different timeline for each of us - some know before puberty, some can’t deal with it until much much later in life (and it is not fair- or healthy to force someone out before they are ready)

or maybe they are single but have a job they would loose if they came out (or actors or professional athletes who could lose lots of money if they came out)

But with those public figures who are leading the charge of hatred and violence against our community- I don’t have trouble outing them

(if - god forbid) Ron Desantis, or Margery Taylor Green, or any of those nut jobs on the far right were found out to be gay…. I would have trouble with them being outed - (even if I would not exactly welcome them to the family) (although I hate to admit it - that Stephen Miller is kind of hot) (so if anyone has fooled around with him - let me know 😉)

 

 

[ErosWired]

This question is posed as a decision whether to interfere with an individual’s private sexual life, and under what circumstances it would be acceptable, but I don’t think that’s the actual value judgment faced in many of these scenarios. When a man in a position of leadership or influence speaks out or takes action against any group or practice which he then clandestinely participates in himself, he creates an imperative for right-minded persons to expose his hypocrisy, double-dealing and deceit. That the exposure may out his participation and cause him embarrassment because it reveals information about him that would otherwise enjoy an expectation of privacy is collateral damage, and a self-inflicted wound. He has no one to blame but himself.

Privacy is only absolute when one cannot be observed. In any other case, privacy becomes a matter of social contract between individuals who either agree not to observe one another, agree not to acknowledge what they observe, or agree to hold what they observe in confidence, at which point it becomes a matter of discretion. Once a man begins acting in the way described above, he has already become indiscrete toward himself by drawing attention to his opinions on sexuality, which will cause others to scrutinize his own sexual practice more closely.

[PozTalkAuthor]

Computers have absolute calculations. Zero-false, one-true but human life is complex! Can't talk in general, but many homophobics are repressed queers wanting self-punishments. Like the abuser's philosophy "if I can't have you, no one must be able to". So I'd gladly out some of those, but then? I become violent as they are. What satisfaction could I get from there? 

I have my biological father who's passed away at beginning of this year; we had very few contacts as he was homophobic-serophobic, and in last stage of his life, advanced brain cancer, he called me -and also his assistant despite she was a lady-, with another man's name. I played along to know if in his cognitive impairment he could say something about who that man was as I have suspected his hidden homosexuality for my whole life. 

But should have I spied on him, then out him? For what? Revenge is not in my lifestyle. 

And, about married men, my current partner was a married man -not any longer!- but from there to now, it took 12 years to admit to himself he wanted me. I knew it but forcing him could have caused to lose him also as a friend, at that time. He came out, when he's been ready.