Recently, a Washington DC news anchor, Doug McKelway, while hosting a local interest news program called Let’s Talk Live, interviewed Mike Rogers about outing hypocritical politicians. The movie is Outrage1 and Mike Rogers can be found at BlogActive.com. The interview made McKelway rather hot and bothered because he told Rogers that he would like to punch him in the face (more or less).
What exactly is the outrage here? Many, of which Mike Rogers is one, have dedicated themselves to unearthing the hypocrisy of politicians at any level who engage in homosexual behavior yet routinely vote against gay rights issues. Is outing the sexual behavior of a hypocritical public official the right thing to do?
I think that each of us has a right to our private lives. Sex is just one facet of things that should be private. If we don’t need to know the intimate conversations you have about politics or money, why do we need to know the intimate conversations regarding your sexual activity? Of course, if the activities in which you engage are illegal, then those activities become a matter of public record. The intimacy is over because the right to privacy ends.
However, any action that you take as a public official that is counter to the actions you take in your private life is a real problem. If you are Eliot Spitzer (former New York Governor, New York Attorney General, Manhattan District Attorney) and you prosecute prostitutes all the while secretly engaging the services of prostitutes in multiple jurisdictions, you are not only hypocritical but you are violating the law. You cannot be trusted. Eliot was outed, sexually speaking, but Eliot is not gay.
During the interview, McKelway asks Rogers about the outings of certain public officials like Larry Craig, who was infamously arrested in the bathroom of a Minneapolis airport while attempting to obtain sex from the person in the adjacent stall. Larry Craig, apparently, has also voted against gay rights issues on multiple occasions. Rogers also mentions Florida Governor Charlie Christ, who recently announced he will run in the US Senate race in 2010. While Larry Craig’s issues are rather obvious, Charlie Christ’s issues are not. Although rumors have spread for years about both gentlemen, Christ has yet to have anyone provide proof publicly of his non-heterosexual behavior. (I don’t follow the news stories on Christ, so I am more than willing to be corrected on the facts.)
If a public official, particularly one that holds an elected position, is engaging in personal behavior that is contradictory to his/her publicly stated positions or to his/her public actions (such as a voting record), then I think that the personal behavior should be known. If Larry Craig were to dress up in women’s clothing and hang out in gay bars in order to bag a guy at a DC hotel, I really don’t care. However, if Larry Craig takes a consistent public stance against people who otherwise engage in the same behavior he does, and he echoes that stance with a voting record to match, I think Larry Craig should be outed. I don’t mean to beat up on Larry Craig, poor guy, but he’s the most recent posterchild for hypocritical sexual activity.
The question becomes this: Why is sex off limits to outing? We often out people for financial misdeeds, such as Sam Donaldson for being against farm subsidies yet consistently accepting federal subsidies for his goat ranch (or whatever) in New Mexico. That is just one example of a hypocrisy uncovered, and that was a hypocrisy committed by a private individual functioning in a public capacity (news reporting), who also reports on the hypocrises of other public figures.
Did the message about our sexual lives being private become overdone? I don’t care what anyone does in their private lives, but if I am going to vote for you, or if you are appointed by someone else to act on my behalf, then your personal behavior better withstand the public scrutinty of a position you hold publicly. If you consistently think gays shouldn’t marry or adopt children or even be allowed to work anywhere, and you are consistently engaging in homosexual behavior, watch out! I am the public and I think I have the right to know.
Doug McKelway needs to get off the horse he’s riding because it’s way too high.
