Reply #43: Here's another way to frame the question....

[QC]

Should the gay community be expected to protect its enemies?

I have my doubts as to whether Shepard Smith rises to the level of outing, but let's consider a different case, that of Pete Williams, who was Dick Cheney's media mouthpiece when he was Secy. of Defense.

Williams made little secret of being gay. He hung out in D.C. gay bars, vacationed with his lover and Andrew Sullivan and Sullivan's lover at Fire Island, etc. But every day Williams was all over TV defending the Pentagon's policy of firing all gay troops.

Did Williams deserve the protection of the very community that he was being paid to attack? I don't think so. And the lives ruined by the policy Williams was making big bucks to defend were worth a lot more than Williams's expectation that everyone keep his little secret. (And there's a big difference between secrecy and privacy, one that always gets lost in these "Outing is so awful!" discussions.)

History affords some other examples, worse ones than Williams. Was the gay community obligated to protect J. Edgar Hoover and Roy Cohn, two self-loathing homosexuals who made careers of persecuting their own people? I don't think so, and I couldn't care less about the "right to privacy" of someone who opposes my very right to exist.

Is Smith in the same league as Hoover or Cohn or even Williams. I don't think so. But it is pure foolishness to argue that outing is never, ever justified under any circumstances.