OutRight

by Dale Carpenter

IN DEFENSE OF FOLEY’S CLOSET

Dogged by gay rumors, the congressman exploits a double standard, but he can be defended

Mark Foley, a pro-gay Republican congressman from Florida, has a gay problem. He is running for the U.S. Senate next year and leads the race for the GOP nomination in a state that trends Republican. But his campaign has been dogged by persistent and widespread rumors that the attractive, unmarried 48-year-old is gay. Foley has decided to deal with the issue by declaring he won’t discuss it. His strategy entails deception, wrongly invokes “privacy,” and exploits a double standard. Nevertheless, it is defensible.

Let’s start with the inherent deception. In a 20-minute teleconference with Florida political reporters, Foley would neither confirm nor deny he is gay.

There are two things to note about this non-denial denial. First, if Foley is gay, it is an attempt to perpetuate the polite public fiction that he’s not. The world presumes everyone is heterosexual. The closeted gay person, by knowing this presumption exists and remaining silent, consciously confirms the lie. That silent confirmation is itself a deception.

Second, the deception is unconvincing. A heterosexual, asked whether he is straight, would have no hesitation declaring it. A gay man, trying to avoid a bald-faced lie while perpetuating it, would be coy. Foley was being coy.

Next consider the dubious claim of privacy. Foley submits that a question regarding a politician’s sexual orientation is an invasion of his privacy and so needn’t be answered. “That is the kind of question that I do think is highly inappropriate,” he said. “There are certain things we shouldn’t discuss in public.”

Well, now. We don’t need to know whether Foley and his partner (if any) hang from the chandelier by moonlight. The particulars of his sex life are his business.

But since when is a politician’s sexual orientation private? Nobody thinks George W. Bush could plausibly neither confirm nor deny that he’s hitched to a person named Laura. Politicians constantly and everywhere declare their sexual orientation by parading their spouses before us like meat at a USDA inspection.

We think nothing of that. You just can’t define as “private” something that almost the whole of the culture you live in defines as not private.

You can’t keep doing that unless, of course, you live under one standard of public decorum for straight people and another for gays. Foley denounced those who were spreading rumors about him. “Whatever their motives,” he said, “I can only say I find these tactics revolting and unforgivable.”

Ouch. Revolting and unforgivable. That’s the kind of language you reserve for rumors that you eat little children. Does Foley think a rumor that one is gay is such a terrible thing? Does that mean he thinks that being gay itself is a terrible thing? I don’t think so. His voting record on gay issues alone belies the charge that he suffers such internalized self-hatred.

Instead, Foley is capitalizing politically on a pervasive double standard in the public discussion of homosexuality. A politician would never respond to the “tactic” of gossiping that he is heterosexual by denouncing it as revolting and unforgivable. Such a bizarre claim would meet with public bewilderment. But declaring off-limits any discussion of one’s homosexuality registers powerfully with a public still queasy about the subject. It is a way of shaming, and thus silencing, the gossip mongers.

Despite all that, I am still sympathetic to Foley’s dilemma and think his awkward attempt to downplay his presumed homosexuality is defensible. The temptation is to say that all gay people everywhere should immediately come out, but the world is not so black-and-white.

All of Foley’s options involve great risk. If he is gay and acknowledges it, he would almost certainly lose the Florida Republican primary, which is dominated by Christian conservatives already unhappy with Foley’s pro-gay legislative record.

That would be an enormous opportunity lost. It would assure that a less gay-friendly, or even hostile, candidate would win the primary and likely go on to win the Senate seat. Instead of the gay-friendly but closeted Foley speaking out and voting for us in the Republican caucus, we would likely have an unfriendly straight guy speaking out and voting against us.

If Foley is gay and denies it, however, reporters would follow him around like Gary Hart hoping to disprove him. When discovered, he would be unmasked not just as gay, but as a gay deceiver.

Between the Scylla of outright lying and the Charybdis of complete candor, Foley is navigating an uneasy middle course to the Senate. The now audible whispers about his sexual orientation may still be enough to defeat him. His bet is that most Florida voters can live with the open secret that he is gay as long as it isn’t forthrightly acknowledged.

Once he is elected and has earned the trust of the voters, perhaps then he can come out. That has been the path of many openly gay officeholders, like Barney Frank.

It’s all an accommodation to homophobia that many of us, in many places in this country, have fortunately left behind. But the fact that it might actually work is a sign of progress in the South, where once a politician would have had to deny his homosexuality loudly and unequivocally in order to win.

I don’t much like it, and I bet Foley doesn’t either. I doubt it will succeed. But if it gets us a shot at a Senator Foley, we can live with it.

Writing from the conservative end of the political spectrum, Dale Carpenter began his column for OutSmart in 1994, when he lived in Houston. Now residing in Minneapolis, Carpenter is a University of Minnesota Law School professor. He can be reached at OutRight@aol.com.

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