You're famous and secretly gay. Do you have rights?

You're famous and secretly gay. Do you have rights?

by Matt | Published on December 26th, 2006, 7:52 pm | Life

In todays Life section of the News & Record, there's an article about a guy named Mario Lavandeira. He has a website on which he relentlessly pursues outing Hollywood closeted gays along apparently having fun with MS Paint.

His website http://perezhilton.com/ is a bit juvenile and doesn't exactly exactly give the air of credibility, but apparently he's had some success outing some famous gays.

Which brings me to my questions: If you're gay and in the closet, are you hindering gay rights? Do you deserve to be outed? Do you have the right to live a closeted life if that's what you want to do?

How about if you work in Hollyweird? If you're famous and gay, do you have a responsibility to further the gay cause? Do you have any right to be angry if you get outed?

Let's hear it 'Boro readers.

Personally I don't think because you have some level of fame, and your gay, you need to even address the issue. Normalization of homosexuality is what activists want, so making it a big deal is kinda counter intuitive I think.

However if your gay, and someone asks if your gay, I don't think you should hee and haw about it, or attempt to sidestep the issue like it's a bad thing. A simple, yes I'm gay, yeah so what?... suffices for me.

Mario Lavandeira. Huh? Who? Hardly no one knows the maybe, once upon a time, sorta kinda if you're lucky or he's your type cute before he stuck himself behind a computer and got fat, closet-case outer by anything other than "Perez Hilton." I'm surprised they even used his real name.

I don't give Perez any credibility at all. Never have, never will. I've always thought how incredibly stupid and ludicrous it is on how much time Americans spend obsessing over the lives of those in Hollywood. Don't we have more important things to worry about other than who is sleeping with whom, who is cheating with whom, who is getting a divorce, who got arrested on charges of drunken driving or drug use or who is pregnant?

Hollywood-ers aren't responsible to anyone other than their film producers and agents. They care about the cash and that is pretty much it... that is their job.

If Matt's questions were posed on another group of people (anti-gay, closeted gay politicians and public officials, for example) then I would care a lot more. Unlike Hollywood-ers, politicians have a responsibility to everyone and an obligation to be honest about themselves and their lives, especially when they do things which harm people just like them.

Perez needs to get a life. Maybe he should focus on getting folks his and my age out to the polls and working for something substantive.

Personally I don't see where it's anybody's business. What two responsible adults do behind closed doors is private and should remain so.

matthillnc wrote:If Matt's questions were posed on another group of people (anti-gay, closeted gay politicians and public officials, for example) then I would care a lot more.

Interesting point. Let's expand it. So if a public figure and influential leader is in the closet, is it fair game to out them for the benefit of gay rights?

Matt wrote: So if a public figure and influential leader is in the closet, is it fair game to out them for the benefit of gay rights?

Is it right to potentially ruin someone's reputation by making allegations that may or may not be true? If true, what relevance does a person's sexual orientation have on their job performance? If false, how does one repair the damage done?

Assuming there is no moral compass how can you say what he is doing is wrong? What would you base that off of? Isn't what is wrong up to the individual person?

Perhaps you can use a moral gyroscope instead :roll:

With the current homophobia, 'outing' someone can harm their wellbeing and ability to earn a living. This offends most people's sense of 'right' unless there is some overriding public good.

If it were a public figure campagning against homosexual rights while secretly rogering his deacon, that sounds like fair game.

A Person wrote:Perhaps you can use a moral gyroscope instead

With the current homophobia, 'outing' someone can harm their wellbeing and ability to earn a living. This offends most people's sense of 'right' unless there is some overriding public good.

If it were a public figure campagning against homosexual rights while secretly rogering his deacon, that sounds like fair game.

I suppose then what you are saying is that "wrong" is defined as what "offends" the majority of people? I'm confused here. Help me out.

BecauseHeLives wrote:Assuming there is no moral compass how can you say what he is doing is wrong? What would you base that off of? Isn't what is wrong up to the individual person?

Do you consider it right to reveal someone else's private business (in this case homosexuality) to the world knowing it could do them irrepairable harm?

RebelSnake wrote:
Matt wrote: So if a public figure and influential leader is in the closet, is it fair game to out them for the benefit of gay rights?

Is it right to potentially ruin someone's reputation by making allegations that may or may not be true? If true, what relevance does a person's sexual orientation have on their job performance? If false, how does one repair the damage done?

I do not believe in general "outing." I believe that people should be free to decide for themselves when it is or isn't the right time for them to "come out."

I also believe the situation is different, however, if the closeted person is, to the public, a very anti-gay politicain or public figure who is doing harm to people who are just like him or her. In this case, the politician's deception and hypocrisy is so high that it is screaming to be known.

RebelSnake... Outing a closeted, anti-gay, gay politician isn't harming their reputation or ruining their career... it is, on the other hand, bringing light to the truth: You've got this person, who is gay, doing outrageous anti-gay things and taking outrageous anti-gay stands using people just like him or herself for political purposes which seek to take away rights or limit them. It isn't the "outer" who has ruined the politician's career and reputation; it is the politician him or herself and his or her own actions which have done that.

BecauseHeLives wrote:I suppose then what you are saying is that "wrong" is defined as what "offends" the majority of people? I'm confused here. Help me out.

I said "offends most people's sense of 'right'" The key words are 'sense of right' not 'offends', many people are too easily offended.

But I will take the bait. Yes 'right' and 'wrong' are subjective societal standards which change over time.

Most people do not want to harm others unless there is some 'greater good' at stake.

Jefferson said it well:

Thomas Jefferson wrote:Man was destined for society. His morality therefore was to be formed to this object. He was endowed with a sense of right & wrong merely relative to this. This sense is as much a part of his nature as the sense of hearing, seeing, feeling; it is the true foundation of morality, & not the {to kalon}, truth, &c. as fanciful writers have imagined.

A Person wrote:Perhaps you can use a moral gyroscope instead :roll:

With the current homophobia, 'outing' someone can harm their wellbeing and ability to earn a living. This offends most people's sense of 'right' unless there is some overriding public good.

If it were a public figure campagning against homosexual rights while secretly rogering his deacon, that sounds like fair game.

Response:

No, you can't have it both ways, anyone who is gay posing to be straight, is lying to themselves and family, whats
the difference lying to voters, because you can't be gay and act straight with somehow demeaning gay and lesbian people. By acting straight when you gay your saying it's not good somehow to be gay.
Gay or straight, it's to bad there has to be a distinction. I'm all for gay guys, every gay couple takes 2 guys out of the male to female ratio, how could that possibly be bad for straight guys!
Ok lesbains even out the curve but where would we be without lesbian porn :) everyone loves a lesbian!!!

To be famous or to be a representative figure of any sort is to be an image, and their personal actions will further shape their image. As consumers, we know who someone is because of what they have done, can do, or will do; once we know who someone is, however, we will create an associated image between who they are, and what made them famous.

If a Hollywood actor comes out about his homosexuality, his image will immediately become the "gay actor". Because he is a representation of what he does, he will receive different media feedback and professional direction simply because we, as consumers, buy into his image and executive producers use him to represent what their selling. Same thing goes for politics to a much harsher extreme. People are not 'buying into' their images, but rather, seeking their own representation through the political representative. No gay politician anytime soon is going to come out about their sexuality because upholding their image carries too much responsibility.

This is not to say having a gay politician is a bad thing, it is just not an idealistic representation for something that should transcend the individual and represent that mass majority. All the examples in this thread are people that have a profession in which their image is their business, so if they come out of the closet, it is because their professional image won't suffer.

Barney Frank says "Out them!"

Gay politicians who keep their sexuality secret but lobby against gay rights should be outed, House Banking Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) said explicitly in an interview with GQ published Monday.

Liv wrote:Barney Frank says "Out them!"

Gay politicians who keep their sexuality secret but lobby against gay rights should be outed, House Banking Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) said explicitly in an interview with GQ published Monday.

Perhaps the idea that a person may not be proud that they are gay is foreign to you.

I'm familiar with it... it's called hypocrisy.

Liv wrote:I'm familiar with it... it's called hypocrisy.

Not hypocrisy at all. If someone has gay tendencies and realizes that isn't the way they want to be is not hypocrisy. It's the beginning of wisdom. You assume that every gay person feels and thinks the way you do and that just isn't the case.

When you're a public figure head, especially when one is in government.... and you make decisions which may have been influenced by protecting one's own hypocritical lifestyle.... then it's hypocrisy.

BecauseHeLives wrote: If someone has gay tendencies and realizes that isn't the way they want to be is not hypocrisy

That's not what's being discussed. We're not talking about repressed homosexuality, you assume that every person feels and thinks the way you do. We're talking about practicing homosexuals who keep quiet about it due to the prevalent widespread discrimination.

Liv wrote:When you're a public figure head, especially when one is in government.... and you make decisions which may have been influenced by protecting one's own hypocritical lifestyle.... then it's hypocrisy.

You don't know why certain decisions were made. You don't know. Maybe some gays really don't want to push the homo agenda because they don't agree with it. It might be like asking an alchoholic to push laws to allow drinking while driving. It's not hypocritical for an alchoholic to vote against laws that makie drinking easier.

Are you mad? What does alcoholics have to do with civil rights, equality, and fairness?

Liv wrote:Are you mad? What does alcoholics have to do with civil rights, equality, and fairness?

Alchoholism is a sickness. It also increases risk of disease, brings on depression. Anything that goes against the normal function of your body cannot be good for you. If I were an alchoholic I wouldn't want to encourage others to be one too or say that it was ok to be an alchoholic. Perhaps some gays are using the same logic. But you don't like that because it doesn't fit into your agenda.

BecauseHeLives wrote:
Liv wrote:Are you mad? What does alcoholics have to do with civil rights, equality, and fairness?

Alchoholism is a sickness. It also increases risk of disease, brings on depression. Anything that goes against the normal function of your body cannot be good for you. If I were an alchoholic I wouldn't want to encourage others to be one too or say that it was ok to be an alchoholic. Perhaps some gays are using the same logic. But you don't like that because it doesn't fit into your agenda.

See... it's statements like this that make me think BHL is just Sacha Baron Cohen simply using Greensboring to work on his next character.

In honor of this occasion, I spent the last half hour tracking down a mp3 and adding a button in BHL's honor....

The Stupid button

Code: Select all: [stupid][/stupid]

[stupid][/stupid]