I was at the Kitty Kelley book party last week--don't ask--and an unpleasant character sidled up to me, with clammy hands and Gollum eyes, and asked, "So I hear you've got the goods on...?" It was one Michael Rogers, the new Robespierre of the gay rights movement, moving in on his latest attempt to "out" some traitor or other to the gay cause. I demurred. The only goods I have are on myself, and I have become a little difficult to "out" over the years, mainly because every conceivable part of my private and public life has already been exposed and attacked by the very gay activists who now want to enlist my collusion against others. Sorry, Michael. No deal.

So writes Andrew Sullivan in The New Republic. Or at least their on-line edition. He's the most prolific gay wonk out there (especially if you count his blog) but I'm not sure if anything he writes actually gets printed on paper anymore.

His essay on the recent rash of outings of public officials is an exercise in doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. He considers Congressman Ed Schrock:

And on the face of it, the obvious hypocrisy of a few does seem to merit accountability. If Congressman Ed Schrock is seeking gay sex on phone lines in Virginia, it's probably hypocritical for him to be calling for stringent enforcement of the military's ban on openly gay servicemembers, or for banning marriage rights to his fellow homosexuals. But the key word there is: probably. There is an obvious disjunction between Schrock's public statements and his private alleged actions. But is it hypocrisy?

That's not the obvious question. The obvious question—to me, at least—is something like this: a "disjunction between [your] public statements and [your] private life" is the definition of hypocrisy. But this is America; doesn't he have the right to a little hypocrisy in his private life?

He does, of course. The right to privacy, while not one our Founders thought of, has become increasingly important in the information age. Certainly I was for the right of politicians to do what they like, consensually and behind closed doors, during the Clinton administration. So was Andrew Sullivan and about sixty percent of the American people, if polls are to be believed. I stand by that, and so does Sullivan. But then he goes deeper—gets too analytical, as Colorado Boy would say.

Anyone who knows the psychological torment of gay men in their fifties or sixties must surely understand that things are often a little more complicated than that. Gay men who have lived their lives in shame and deception may not have come to terms in any profound way with the inner conflicts that are propelling their outward actions. They may be in such acute denial that they are barely aware of their deceptions. They may have split their psyches in so many different ways that their super-ego is scarcely aware of what their id is up to. Or they may somehow believe they are not gay; or they are doing the minimum necessary to keep their lives in one dysfunctional piece; or they may be fully aware they are gay inside while cynically advancing their political self-interest at the expense of other gay people.

Does that make a difference? Whatever the psychological forces at work, Schrock still says one thing and does another. He's still a hypocrite. Frankly, I don't think Sullivan goes far enough in his psychoanalysis. He's as locked into the "axis of sex," the idea that everyone is either fundamentally gay or fundamentally straight, as most of us.

But that's a mistake. People are neither fundamentally good nor fundamentally bad; our nature is more complicated than that. Our sexuality is similarly complex. I certainly don't understand human desire, and anyone who thinks they do is suffering from, at the very least, a lack of empathy. But while our motives may explain our actions, they do not change them. No matter the reason, Schrock is still plainly hypocritical.

Sullivan thinks otherwise, and realizes "I am regarded as terminally naïve, an enabler of treachery." The second is completely untrue. The first a gross exaggeration. His naïveity is mild, if chronic. It's also quite common; everyone believes in gay people, even though we're only slightly more real than Santa. Only Gore Vidal is publicly assailing this misconceptions. (Vidal dislikes Sullivan.)

But no matter how flawed his base assumptions, Sullivan's conclusions are both right, and eloquent:

Malice can only beget malice ... outing Schrock's cruelty doesn't end the cycle; it perpetuates it. Is Ed Schrock now an advocate of gay rights? Is his successor in his Virginia district likely to be any better? All we know now is that a) some gay men are so screwed up that they happily persecute other gays and b) other gay men are happy to persecute them as well. Has this advanced the argument for equal marriage rights? Has it made the story of gay people more understandable and accessible to the straight people we need to persuade? Hardly.

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