Greetings dearest readers! I hope you found last week�s column to be interesting and inspiring. Before we begin, I would like to thank all of the beautiful people who were able to attend my HalloQween Party last Wednesday night. For those of you who were unable to attend, you need not worry; I will have future celebrations of Queer proportions. This week's article is an ethical follow up piece (from 30 October 2007, �Shhh! Don�t Tell Anyone I�m Queer�) and will discuss the practice of OUTing. Here we go.
OUTing is the practice of dragging someone unwillingly OUT of the Closet. Historically, OUTing has been done to ferret OUT all of us homosexuals, bisexuals, and asexuals so that we could be �cured� or extracted from society whether by expulsion of a sort or through death. In fact, during the Cold War and the horrifying McCarthy era, homosexuals were seen as a worse problem than Communists within the State Department (though media and political coverage used the terms homosexual and Communist nearly synonymously).
More recently however, Queer Nation radical activists have taken to OUTing two categories of Lavender persons. The first is the least common. Sometimes when the Lavender culture finds a Queer in the rough that person is OUTed as a way of liberating them and educating those around them on a grassroots level. The second is the more publicized version. Often when a high profile person is suspected (or known but the individual is non-acknowledging) of being LGBT, that person will be OUTed by activists with the hope of (1) bringing attention to the Rainbow Movement, and (2) dispelling homophobic myths and stereotypes.
Now, for those of you who know me this will come as no surprise: I often consider myself a radical and would normally align myself with the Queer Nation. However, in the practice of OUTing I must protest. I do so for two reasons. The first is practical and the second is moral.
Practically speaking, OUTing is not a very useful tool. Normally none but the lowbrow tabloids will publish rumors of homosexuality/bisexuality/asexuality about a person (famous or otherwise). This automatically reduces credibility. Beyond this though is that the vast majority of the public will deny to the end someone�s non-heterosexuality unless the accused admits. For this reason, OUTing has not proved very useful even when strong evidence exists to confirm the individual�s nontraditional sexuality.
Further, OUTing someone may indeed drive them much deeper into the Closet. This is especially true of those who do not have an LGBT support group of friends. One possible OUTcome (especially for the famous) is that the individual will overreact to the OUTing by supporting very homophobic policies and actions.
Beyond the practical reasons against OUTing, I believe we also have a moral obligation to respect the individual�s privacy. The greater good cannot be used as sufficient excuse to violate such fundamentally important privacy notions. When one Comes OUT, if ever, it is the individual�s choice. Do not forget, my dearest readers, that most all of us at some point could not even admit to ourselves our own sexuality. When something is so private that we keep it guarded even from ourselves, then there is surely no warrant for others to make it their business.
But let us also not forget that our sexuality, publicly known, is a choice with consequences. For those who Come OUT, the choice is freedom with second class citizenship and the potential for social, emotional, and physical violence or to stay in the Closet and repress the self. Now for those of my readers who are like me and chose to Come OUT, the choice is retrospectively simple. But if you were like me before I Came OUT, you know that the decision is full of unanswerable questions and fear. For this reason too the individual�s privacy reins supreme over the greater good of the LGBT movement.
I would like to comment on one final point. To this juncture in the article I have spoken of privacy as the only way I have ever known philosophers, politicians, and laypersons explicitly refer to it. However, in researching material for this article I discovered that privacy is not a solely individual phenomenon. Rather, privacy (at least in some cases) is extended to groups. Let me explain.
OUTing has taken up the exposure of not only the living, but also deceased high profile individuals. Persons such as J. Edgar Hoover, Eleanor Roosevelt, and King Henry III have been spoken of ad nauseum to be homosexual (or in the case of Hoover, transvestite). However, other persons have been discussed as being homosexual as well. Let us consider the great lengths that one�s survivors will take to mask the individual�s sexuality. Papers (which have credibility) will not write about the rumors. Families will make no mention of lovers (imagined or especially real) at memorial services. Friends will often push the issue under the rug. All of this proves on thing: because one�s reputation depends not only on the self but on associations, and privacy is concerned with judgment from others, we can safely extend the phenomenon of privacy beyond the individual to those closely identified with that individual.
I do not mean to discourage anyone from Coming OUT (in fact, I will gladly offer my services to anyone going through the process) and I am not exactly arguing that if someone OUTs someone else that they have done some great evil (especially if the OUTing was unavoidable�say as part of legal testimony�or an accident�you didn�t know they were still Closeted). Rather, my argument is precisely that no one, save the individual, may choose to acknowledge sexual identity and then only that person may extend that knowledge so far as that person deems appropriate. Anything beyond this is inappropriate.
Well dear readers that is all for this week. Until next time, here�s me wishing you a Fabulous and Gay old time.
The following items were useful in preparing material for this week�s column. Warren Johansson and David Johnson�s are texts available from the Fabulous Pierce Library in La Grande, Oregon. Jeff Johnson is professor of Philosophy at Eastern Oregon University and has written extensively on the subject of privacy. The other materials may be found via periodical database or Amazon.com.
- DeCew, Judith. "The Scope of Privacy in Law and Ethics." In: Smith, Patricia [Editor]. "The Nature and Process of Law: An Introduction to Legal Philosophy." Oxford University Press: New York, NY (1993).
- Johansson, Warren and William A. Percy. "Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence." Harrington Park Press: Binghamton, NY (1994).
- Johnson, David K. �The Lavender Scare: the Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government.� University of Chicago Press: Chicago, IL (2006).
- Johnson, Jeff. �Immunity from the Focused Attention of Others: A Conceptual and Normative Model of Personal and Legal Privacy.� [Unpublished.] Retrieved from: http://works.bepress.com/jeffery_johnson/1 (2007).
- Parent, William. �Privacy, Morality and the Law.� Philosophy and Public Affairs 12: 269-88 (1983).
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