We'll Out Who We Want to Out

Signorile has a good column on the media's laughable "standards" about private lives.

Anyone who has followed my ramblings for even a short period of time knows that I am not in the slightest opposed to journalists reporting on public figures’ sexual orientation–whatever it may be–when relevant to a larger story. I have also excoriated much of the media for running from an uncomfortable issue, hiding behind the banner of the "respect for privacy" though, in fact, when it comes to heterosexual public figures, they threw privacy out the window eons ago. And the argument can certainly be made that David Gest has opened himself up to this kind of inquiry, putting all the wacky intimate matters between him and Minnelli onto the front pages.

But why does Fox only out the freaks? If we’re going to be fair and balanced about it, how about outing all of those family-friendly celebrities –including the conservative ones on the country music circuit–who get into sham marriages and join radical Christian sects or the Church of Scientology in a desperate effort to conceal their homosexuality, and who have pasts that would make David Gest’s pale?

Or how about those Republican members of Congress who are gay and try to pawn themselves off as straight while they pander to the religious right, one of which was outed in the Florida papers a few months ago?