Political cures that may be worse than the disease Vol.8: Public Outings

I came across this article by Dan Savage of Savage Love advice column fame. It's about this kid who worked as a webmaster for an anti-gay presidential candidate, he heads an anti-gay group on his college campus, and as you probably guessed, turns out to be gay.

The hoopla over this story is the kid is now the youngest person to be outed in the arena of American politics. He's 18, and many people are up in arms about him being too young to have been made a target for political hardball.

I agree with Savage in his opinions on the matter. It follows the same belief I've always held that anyone too far to any political extreme is hiding a deep, dark, terrible secret. Sooner or later, it's gonna come out.

Take Strom Thurmond. This guy spewed hatred against Afircan-Americans for decades, preached for morality, yet it was discovered, conveniently after his death, that he had sired a child out of wedlock with a black woman. Or Ted Haggard, who was once one of the loudest anti-gay voices coming from the religious right, then discovered to have been hiring the services of a male prostitute. Also, Matt Drudge...this douchebag has been outed twice and he still runs ads from anti-gay hate groups on his website.

There are countless other examples of this kind of hypocracy going back decades, and in every case, their main defense seems to be that "it's a private matter." In response to Matt Drudge, yeah, so was Bill and Monica, but that didn't stop you from getting famous off of it.

The rule in washington used to be that "it wasn't the crime, it's the cover-up that gets you." Now, that rule has been ammended to "it's not the crime, it's not so much the cover-up, but the fact that the crime contradicts every fucking thing you've been preaching to us all this time!"

It's not like a celebrity outing. T.R. Knight from Gray's Anatomy was outed when Isiah Washington indirectly called him a faggot during a argument with Patrick Dempsey. I think Knight handled the situation very gracefully, saying that he was in fact gay, but that wasn't the most interesting thing about himself. George Michael was forced out of the closet after he was arrested for soliciting gay sex from an undercover officer. People immediately flashed back on every song he's ever written and realized it wasn't much of a shock.

But we're talking about politics here. Ideally, you shouldn't get up on a soap box against something that you're actively indulging in privately. If this kid had only been the webmaster of this candidate's website, his sexuality shouldn't be an issue. Every political candidate I've had to do graphic work has been completely counter to my political views. Does that make me a hypocrite? Absolutely not. But this kid was involved in anti-gay protests, organized a on-campus group that was against gay rights, etc.

Sure, he's 18. He's young and a bit mixed up. He's trying to paint over his affinity for pink with republican red. His Myspace profile (there's a link with the article), listed 300 as one of his favorite movies. 300. A film that has been embraced by republicans and gays alike...One for the preposterous alegory to our War on Terror, and the other for having lots of oily, scantily-clad beefcake.

But is he too young to have been treated this way? No! If you've old enough to vote, old enough to be tried as an adult if convicted of a crime, or old enough to join the military, then you're old enough to confront the fact that you've been a total hypocrite.

What my extreme solution for this kind of a problem? Simple: Anyone involved in any area of politics, from punditry to grass-roots organizations to the candidates themselves must sign a contract with the American people declaring that anything they speak about on television, on radio, in newspaper columns, in magazine articles or on their blogs, past and present, is now part of the public record and can be used against them. Any contradictions will be thrown right back in their faces. Basically, it's an acknowledgement that yes, people do record and remember this shit so you better watch your ass.

I say we beta test this program first. No real penalties at first other than potential public embarrasment. If its not working, we up the ante and start issuing fines. $100 for first-time offense, $1,000 fine for second, $10,000 for third, etc. The fines will be collected in a fund to help our nation's infrastructure. When the fines start rolling in, imagine this:

Rush Limbaugh never being able to condemn another person for crimes they may have committed.

Bill O'Reilly's producers cutting off his microphone every once and a while.

The White House Press Corps will be forced to shut down.

The 24-hour news channels will eventually have to resort to reporting actual news.

Fewer press conferences.

Presidential debates will have an elimination round.

Congressional votes will either become really simple or really complex, depending on who's sponsoring the bill in question.

Churches, particularly Catholic churches, will tread lightly when it comes to influencing public policy.