First Mark Foley, then Ted Haggard.
I don't really have any sympathy for them as Republicans, but I do have a great deal of sympathy for them as men enlosed and psychologically damaged by the closet. The Haggard case my be worse, since his wife and kids are now indubitably hurt.
Everybody's life runs by a different clock: when it's good time for one person to come out, its not necessarily right to another. Those of us who do come out do face a more or less limited form of public discrimination: on the other hand there is the basic freedom of being oneself. This "everyone is on their own clock" is the basic arguement against "outing."
The problem is when the hypocrisy becomes transparently foul. When people have accepted themselves as homosexual but continue to publically attack gay people, visit public gay places, and then expect the rest of us to conspire in their closet.
A Harpers Article on Ted Haggard and Colorado Springs 11/2/2006 [h/t Andrew Sullivan]
2 comments:
You know, I really don't understand it either. It makes me even more angry when I see "gay conservatives." To me that's no different then saying "black klansmen."
I use to work at a nightclub with a Jacksonville with a man who considered himself a gay conservative (even though he did lean libertarian). He voted for Bush both times and listened to both Neal Boortz and Sean Hannity (he was not a big fan of Limbaugh).
So I don't see how a gay conservative is like being a black klansman.
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