Outing is the act of disclosing an LGBTQ person's sexual orientation or gender identity without their consent. It is often done for malicious reasons either to instrumentalize homophobia, biphobia or transphobia in order to discredit someone or to combat homophobia, heterosexism or cissexism by revealing that a prominent or respected individual is homosexual or transgender. Historical examples of outing include the Krupp affair, the Eulenburg affair, the Röhm scandal, George Michael's April 1998 arrest, Ricky Martin's 2000 interview with Barbara Walters, and the Larry Craig scandal.
Generally, outing someone in a personal context is thought to be unethical and tends to be frowned upon. When it comes to public figures, the ethics of outing are highly contested as it can often have a negative effect on the target's personal life or career. Some LGBTQ activists argue that gay individuals who oppose LGBTQ rights do not enjoy a right to privacy because of their perceived hypocrisy. In an attempt to pre-empt being outed, an LGBTQ public figure may decide to come out publicly first, although controlling the conditions under which one's LGBTQ identity is revealed is only one of the numerous motives for coming out.
Terminology It is hard to pinpoint the first use of outing in the modern sense. In a 1982 issue of Harper's, Taylor Branch predicted that "outage" would become a political tactic in which the closeted would find themselves trapped in a crossfire. The article "Forcing Gays Out of the Closet" by William A. Henry III in Time (January 29, 1990) introduced the term "outing" to the general public.Johansson & Percy, p. 4
History
The Eulenburg affair of 1907–1909 was the first public outing scandal of the twentieth century. Left-wing journalists opposed to Kaiser Wilhelm II's policies outed a number of prominent members of his cabinet and inner circle — and by implication the Kaiser — beginning with Maximilian Harden's indictment of the aristocratic diplomat Prince Eulenburg. Harden's accusations incited other journalists to follow suit, including Adolf Brand, founder of Der Eigene. Many activists of the first homosexual movement denounced outing as "the way over corpses". In 1928, Kurt Hiller argued that it would be permissible to out a member of a cabinet preparing an anti-homosexual law, arguing: "Our solidarity with the homosexuals of all classes and political viewpoints extends very far; but it does not include traitors to their own cause."
Left-wing journalists outed Adolf Hitler's closest ally Ernst Röhm in 1931 and 1932. In response, Brand wrote, "when someone — as teacher, priest, representative, or statesman — would like to set in the most damaging way the intimate love contacts of others under degrading control — in that moment his own love-life also ceases to be a private matter and forfeits every claim to remain protected hence-forward from public scrutiny and suspicious oversight."Brand, Adolph. Political Criminals: A Word About the Röhm Case (1931) Reprinted in Homosexuality and Male Bonding in Pre-Nazi Germany, edited by Harry Oosterhuis, 235–240. New York, Haworth, 1991. Left-wing journalist Kurt Tucholsky disagreed, writing in Die Weltbühne, "We fight the scandalous §175, everywhere we can, therefore we must not join the choir of those among us who want to banish a man from society because he is homosexual."
United States In the 1950s during the Lavender Scare, tabloid publications like Confidential emerged, specializing in the revelation of scandalous information about entertainment and political celebrities. Among the political figures targeted by the magazine were former Under Secretary of State Sumner WellesBenjamin Welles, Sumner Welles: FDR's Global Strategist: A Biography (NY: St. Martin's Press, 1997),370-1 and Arthur H. Vandenberg Jr., who had briefly served as President Eisenhower's Appointments Secretary.
Outing may be found to be libel by a court of law. For example, quite paradoxically, in 1957, American pianist Liberace successfully sued the Daily Mirror for merely insinuating that he was gay. The newspaper responded that columnist William Connor words (written under his byline 'Cassandra') did not imply that Liberace was gay. Their defence contended that there was no libel as no accusation had been made, rather than arguing that the accusation was true. Following Liberace's death from an AIDS-related illness in 1987, the paper asked for the award to be refunded. In a 2011 interview, actress and close friend Betty White stated that Liberace was gay, and that she often served as a beard to counter rumors of the musician's homosexuality.
After the Stonewall riots of 1969, gay-liberationists came out in the 1970s, crying out: "Out of the closets, Into the streets!"
Oliver Sipple, who helped save the life of United States President Gerald Ford during an assassination attempt, was outed by gay activists, most prominently Harvey Milk. The negative impact the outing had on Sipple's life later provoked opposition.
Some political conservatives opposed to increased public acceptance of homosexuality engaged in outing in this period as well, with the goal of embarrassing or discrediting their ideological foes. Conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza, for example, published the letters of gay fellow students at Dartmouth College in the campus newspaper he edited (The Dartmouth Review) in 1981; a few years later, succeeding Review editor Laura Ingraham had a meeting of a campus gay organization secretly tape-recorded, then published a transcript along with attendees' names as part of an editorial denouncing the group as "cheerleaders for latent campus sodomites".
In the 1980s, the AIDS pandemic led to the outing of several major entertainers, including Rock Hudson.
One of the first outings by an activist in the United States occurred in February 1989. Michael Petrelis, along with a few others, alleged that Mark Hatfield, a Republican Senator from Oregon, was gay. They did this because he supported homophobic legislation such as the Helms Amendment. At a fundraiser in a small town outside of Portland, the group stood up and outed him in front of the crowd. Petrelis later tried to make news by standing on the U.S. Capitol steps and reading the names of "twelve men and women in politics and music who ... are secretly gay". Though the press showed up, no major news organization published the story.Gross, p. 85 Potential libel suits deterred publishers.
Michelangelo Signorile, an editor of OutWeek, outed the recently deceased Malcolm Forbes in March 1990. His column "Gossip Watch" became a hot spot for outing the rich and famous. Both praised and lambasted for his behavior, he garnered responses to his actions as wide-ranging as "one of the greater contemporary gay heroes," to "revolting, infantile, cheap name-calling".Johansson & Percy, p. 183
Other people who have been outed include Fannie Flagg, Pete Williams, Chaz Bono, Richard Chamberlain, and Sherman Hemsley.
In 2004, gay rights activist Michael Rogers outed Edward Schrock, a Republican Congressman from Virginia. Rogers posted a story on his website alleging that Schrock used an interactive phone sex service to meet other men for sex. Schrock did not deny this, and announced on August 30, 2004, that he would not seek re-election. Rogers said that he outed Schrock to punish him for his hypocrisy in voting for the Marriage Protection Act and signing on as a co-sponsor of the Federal Marriage Amendment.
New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey announced that he was a "gay American" in August 2004. McGreevey had become aware that he was about to be named in a sexual harassment suit by Golan Cipel, his former security advisor, with whom it was alleged McGreevey had a sexual relationship. McGreevey resigned, but unlike Schrock, McGreevey decided not to step out of public life. John McCain's Presidential Campaign removed images of Alabama Attorney General Troy King from its website after he was outed in 2008.
Some activists argue that outing is appropriate and legitimate in some cases — for example, if the individual is actively working against LGBTQ rights. United States Congressman Barney Frank argued during the 2006 Mark Foley scandal, "I think there's a right to privacy. But the right to privacy should not be a right to hypocrisy. And people who want to demonize other people shouldn't then be able to go home and close the door and do it themselves."
Outrage film
In 2009, Kirby Dick's documentary Outrage argued that several American political figures have led closeted gay lives while supporting and endorsing legislation that is harmful to the gay community. The film was based on the work of Michael Rogers and BlogActive.com. The film focused particular attention on Idaho Senator Larry Craig, an outspoken opponent of gay rights who in 2007 pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct for soliciting sex from an undercover police officer in a public bathroom. Outrage featured interviews with several people who claim that Governor of Florida Charlie Crist has led a private gay life while publicly opposing gay marriage and gay adoption.
Other politicians discussed in the film include former Virginia Representative Ed Schrock, California Representative David Dreier, former New York City mayor Ed Koch, and former Louisiana Representative Jim McCrery.
The film argues that the mass media is reluctant to discuss issues involving gay politicians despite the many comparable news stories about heterosexual politicians and scandals. Outrage describes this behavior as a form of institutionalized homophobia that has resulted in a tacit policy of self-censorship when reporting on these issues.
Japan In April 2015, a student attending Hitotsubashi University Law School came out as gay and confessed his love to a friend of his. The friend, declining the student's advances, would out him two months later to a group chat of ten people, citing anxiety and insomnia diagnoses that had allegedly resulted from the confession. The consequences of this led to the student developing a panic disorder; on August 24, the student experienced a panic attack during a mock trial and inadvertently fell to his death shortly after medical attention arrived. A civil lawsuit by the student's family against his friend was settled out of court in 2018 on undisclosed terms, while claims they made against the university were dismissed due to their lack of direct responsibility and the unforeseen nature of the student's death.
Motives
Gabriel Rotello, once editor of OutWeek, explained outing as "equalizing", stating: "what we have called 'outing' is a primarily journalistic movement to treat homosexuality as equal to heterosexuality in the media".
Signorile described OutWeek's aim as an awareness raiser of the presence of gay people and political issues. The goal would be that being gay and lesbian is not "so utterly grotesque that it should never be discussed". (Signorile, p. 78) Signorile posits that outing is not the airing of private details.Signorile, p. 80
Richard Mohr noted, "Some people have compared outing to McCarthyism..such outing feeds gays to the wolves, who thereby are made stronger....But the sort of outing I have advocated does not invoke, mobilize, or ritualistically confirm anti-gay values; rather it cuts against them." Thus Mohr argues that outing is "both permissible and an expected consequence of living morally".Mohr, Richard. Gay Ideas: Outing and Other Controversies, Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.
In the context of Ali Fazeli Monfared's murder, Tara Far, a human rights investigator in Iran and Kuwait, has described outing as "dangerous" within societies where the LGBTQ community is not protected by law, or families that do not accept the individual. Shadi Amin described the military exemption card as a danger to Monfared in her petition to the Iranian government to remove the sexuality information.