aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Pop the question. Report the answer

Earlier I quoted Chris Crane’s very reasonable question about whether or not Larry Craig is truly guilty of a lewd act. I’m reminded that Crane has also written about reporters’ deliberately avoiding reporting on the sexual orientation of public figures by neglecting to ask the very same questions they’d ask a straight person:

Homosexuality has gone from the love that dare not speak its name, to the sex that dare not be asked about. It’s telling that a reporter who wouldn’t hesitate to ask a straight celebrity about who he’s dating would consider asking the same question to a closeted celebrity as prying into his sex life.

In reality, asking a female celeb if she has a girlfriend is no more and no less intruding into her bedroom than asking if she has a boyfriend. And simply asking “the question” and reporting the answer is not the equivalent of “outing,” as many in the mainstream press seem to believe.

Outing involves reporting that someone is gay despite their refusal to answer the question or their insistence that they are straight. It’s understandably controversial, and involves weighing the supposed hypocrisy of the closeted public figure against how private the evidence is of the person’s homosexuality.

The double standard popped to mind when reading David Kurtz’s In Denial post at TPM:

After a blog purported to out Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) last October, the leading newspaper in Craig’s home state did an exhaustive investigation of the rumors that Craig was a closeted gay man. “During its investigation, the Statesman interviewed 300 people, visited the ranch where Craig grew up, and made two trips to Washington, D.C.,” the paper reports today. The investigation culminated with a May interview of Craig, with his wife present, during which Craig denied the allegations.

Kynn Bartlett writes to Romenesko:

Last year, a Poynter article examined how the Idaho media dealt with Mike Rogers’ apparently completely accurate claim that Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) likes to have sex with men in public bathrooms.

Newspaper editors swore they’d get to the bottom of it [...]

But did either [the Idaho Statesman or Post Register] actually get around to writing the “Is Larry Craig Gay?” story?

Today The Idaho Statesman ran the story:

Until Monday, the Statesman had declined to run a story about Craig’s sex life, because the paper didn’t have enough corroborating evidence and because of the senator’s steadfast denial.

In the hourlong May 14 interview, Craig was accompanied by his wife, Suzanne. He specifically and generally denied ever engaging in any homosexual conduct.

During that interview, the Statesman played Craig an audiotape of the man claiming that he and Craig had sex in the Union Station restroom. Like the Minnesota airport restroom, the Union Station restroom is known as a place where men can find anonymous sex.

Craig denied the man’s account and said, “I am not gay and I have never been in a restroom in Union Station having sex with anybody.

“There’s a very clear bottom line here,” Craig said. “I don’t do that kind of thing. I am not gay, and I never have been.” [...]

The Statesman followed dozens of leads about alleged sexual partners. Two prevalent rumors swirl around two men who are dead. The Statesman has found no written record of sexual intimacy between those men and Craig. Relatives of those men are dead, unaware of proof to substantiate the rumors, or unreachable.

Two other alleged partners unequivocally denied having been intimate with Craig. Other accounts are simply unfounded. Some were inconclusive.

There are, however, the two men who told the Statesman Craig made passes at them. Craig denied those accounts in his May 14 interview.