Blogger-activist Mike Rogers who appeared in Outrage, a documentary about closeted gay politicians who vote against gay rights in public, has written in his blog that South Carolina lieutenant governor Andre Bauer is gay.
Rogers wrote in the same post that he has previously outed Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) before their ‘activities’ came to light.
Bauer, who is unmarried, reportedly told The State newspaper in June that he was not gay.
"One word, two letters. 'No.' Let’s go ahead and dispel that now," he said in the interview. "Is Andre Bauer gay? That is now the story. We're a long way from where we were a week ago. We have diverted what the real topic should be here: Is the governor capable for carrying on the duties for which he was elected?"
Rogers wrote on his blog on Aug 31 that he has been told by reliable sources that Bauer has reportedly flirted with several gay men, and one source claims to have had sex with him on two separate occasions.
He had also spoken to two former employees of Bauer who served on his staff between 2004 and 2007 that Bauer had spent hours alone with men - who had no official business with the lieutenant governor - in hotel rooms on a total of three occasions.”
The 40-year-old Republican Party member has been in the spotlight having pressured Gov. Mark Sanford to resign after the latter was caught in his own sandal after he was forced to admit to having an affair with a woman Argentina. In a letter calling for Sanford’s resignation, Bauer said the “serious misconduct… with lingering questions and continuing distractions make it virtually impossible for our state to solve the serious problems we are facing without a change of leadership.”
Bauer is said to possess a lengthy antigay voting record and supported an amendment to ban gay marriage in the state.
While Outrage doesn't exactly out anyone as the politicians under fire in the film already have been written about in gay and mainstream media, the topic of forcefully outing public figures has been fiercely debated in the media.
Outrage, which was released this year and directed by Kirby Dick (This Film is Not Yet Rated, 2006 and Oscar-nominated Twist of Faith, a 2004 documentary about a man who confronts the trauma of past sexual abuse as a boy by a Catholic priest), describes itself as delivering a “searing indictment of the hypocrisy of closeted politicians who actively campaign against the LGBT community they covertly belong to,” “the harm they've inflicted on millions of Americans, and examines the media's complicity in keeping their secrets.”
"There is a right to privacy but not a right to hypocrisy," openly gay House Representative Barney Frank ( D-Mass.) says in the film.
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Reader's Comments
"a closeted person who uses their power, position, or notoriety to hurt LGBT people can be outed"
That's all I need.
Can't agree with that statement more. So sad it's the closeted freakshows with issues with themselves that are dragging our community down.
Can't agree with that statement more. So sad it's the closeted freakshows with issues with themselves that are dragging our community down.
Of course, the SC Governor is a total crazy heterosexual nut with that Argentina stuff and the woman, the lying ect.
Now the LT Gov seems to be doing a similar thing. Lying to keep power.
I am American and proud of that, but this behavior is shameful.
There are many reasons any person may choose to be closeted ( assuming he is gay ) including family issues, career issues or simply a basic choice to live life privately, as I do.
I choose to be out to some people, but not to all and I have no problem with a gay man or woman that is openly or privately gay and votes against the gay activisit agenda. All gay people do not support the misguided concept of gay marriage and other issues which are being co-opted by a self serving group of radical activisits.
I say boooooo to Mike Rogers. I hope someone makes an equal attempt to malign him and destroy his life!
The question you ask is not about deliberate “outing” in any sense of a person in public office behaving without integrity. Clearly your person, who could simply be famous, is “out” publicly and is not hiding it in a closet. In the UK, there wouldn’t be anything wrong with reporting “x was there with his partner y”, it wouldn’t be thought to be indiscreet, it would just be reporting what happened, in the same way as reporting a straight public figure attended with his wife. You would have to be of a mindset, as a reporter, that there was something wrong with x being gay to even think about not mentioning it, or about not mentioning the word "gay" if it was appropriate to the context of the article. Deliberately leaving it out would be an act of censorship. What’s your opinion regarding the Singapore scenario?
As for a person who is simply famous, but the reporter knows is totally in the closet, it would probably have taken investigative journalism and an invasion of privacy to establish the facts. I don’t think it was right of the tabloid press in the UK years ago to threaten to “out” Elton John (initially he claimed to be straight, then bisexual), this was just salacious gossip for the tabloid concerned when attitudes towards gays in the UK were generally less enlightened than they are today. The paper was trying to exploit peoples’ anti-gay prejudices for profit. However Elton transformed it into something positive, giving a full and frank interview, turning the attitude of the paper concerned right around. It did his career no harm at all; it’s benefited countless other gay people, he has publicly entered a civil partnership, and has raised an enormous amount of money for HIV charities through his foundation. I doubt he has any regrets about coming out, in retrospect, even though it was under duress. But my view is that the paper did act badly in the first place.
If a guy wants to stay in the closet I am happy to leave him there, unless he wants to make life tough for those of us that dont.
The bloke should've grown a spine and outed himself before all this went down. Most people dont give a fkcu these days, and it seems gutless to live your life in the shadows.
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