I'm mostly in agreement with this, but for fairly cynical reasons.
I hold that the goal of outing queer politicians with strongly anti-queer voting records is to change the person. Personal change is most likely at moments of trouble and turbulence and flailing in a person's life, when they feel that their existing support structure is gone. This means that outing should be as loud as possible, to expose false friends and hateful folk - and it means that the new support structure, the queer community, the community of decent people, should be there, presenting itself as an alternative, as soon as possible.
One thing that I think that you only touched on lightly is that we're talking about national-level US politicians here. National-level US politicians are, overwhelmingly, wealthy white dudes. They have support structures. They have resources and defenses and therapists and safe spaces and press conferences to trumpet their point of view. I think that it will never be as traumatic for them to be outed as it would be for someone who wasn't wealthy. I am all about hurting the feelings of the wealthy. So yes, there's distinctly a part of my brain that says - let's preferentially reach out, show the support of the community to, embrace, the people for whom coming out is actually dangerous. Leave the pampered, soft, wealthy people to find us on their own time. They know where to find us: just where they'd find Jesus, ministering to the poor, to the sick, to the prisoners.
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27/8/09 16:07 (UTC)I hold that the goal of outing queer politicians with strongly anti-queer voting records is to change the person. Personal change is most likely at moments of trouble and turbulence and flailing in a person's life, when they feel that their existing support structure is gone. This means that outing should be as loud as possible, to expose false friends and hateful folk - and it means that the new support structure, the queer community, the community of decent people, should be there, presenting itself as an alternative, as soon as possible.
One thing that I think that you only touched on lightly is that we're talking about national-level US politicians here. National-level US politicians are, overwhelmingly, wealthy white dudes. They have support structures. They have resources and defenses and therapists and safe spaces and press conferences to trumpet their point of view. I think that it will never be as traumatic for them to be outed as it would be for someone who wasn't wealthy. I am all about hurting the feelings of the wealthy. So yes, there's distinctly a part of my brain that says - let's preferentially reach out, show the support of the community to, embrace, the people for whom coming out is actually dangerous. Leave the pampered, soft, wealthy people to find us on their own time. They know where to find us: just where they'd find Jesus, ministering to the poor, to the sick, to the prisoners.