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COMMENTS ON QUINN’S “EMBRACING GAYNESS WITH INTEGRITY”

Raja Halwani

Carol V. A. Quinn’s thesis is that a person cannot be closeted and have inte- grity, although he or she can be closeted and not be dishonorable. I am a little wary of stating her thesis this way because she often comes across as wanting to apply the term “integrity” not to people who are not closeted, but to those who are both out and who fight heterosexual privilege. Indeed, Quinn even applies “integrity” not to those who are out and who fight , but to those who do so at considerable risk. The first sentence states:

A person embraces gayness with integrity when she or he comes out and confronts heterosexual privilege, fights against homophobia and dis- crimination, when doing so not only causes considerable discomfort, but involves certain risk. (This volume, p. 247)

She says that even though gays are not obligated to come out and fight homo- phobia given the risks involved, “we need a term to distinguish those who do decide to confront this kind of ” (ibid.). Quinn also says, “a person has integrity when she or he willingly confronts heterosexual privi- lege, especially at the risk of considerable harm” (ibid., p. 250). These sug- gest that “integrity” is to be reserved for a special class of out gay people, namely, those who fight homophobia at considerable risk. I will not take Quinn’s thesis to be the one just stated because it is, in one sense, obviously true, while, in another sense, obviously false. If the the- sis does not exclude gay people who are also out but who do not actively fight homophobia, then the thesis is true, since those who risk their lives and their well-being to fight homophobia when they themselves are gay, and when they do so out of a commitment to principles of justice and of what it is to be a person deserving of respect, are paradigm examples of people with integrity. But if the thesis is that only such people have integrity, then it is obviously false. For we want to ask about all those other people who are out, who do not face great risks in being out, and who do fight homophobia: Do they have integrity? Given the prevalent homophobia, it does take integrity to be out, even if this does not bring grave risk and if the out person does not fight homophobia left and right. For the above reasons, I construe Quinn’s thesis negatively, that people who are closeted do not have integrity. This is a more interesting thesis, and a 254 RAJA HALWANI lot more difficult to grapple with, since the question immediately confronts us as to whether a closeted person can have integrity and under what conditions. There is evidence that Quinn has this thesis in mind when she disagrees with Margaret Urban Walker that people who undertake strategies of evasion have integrity (ibid., p. 250). This implies that any closeted person, even one clo- seted for survival reasons, has no integrity. Putting aside the above question, I agree with Quinn’s position in gener- al. What troubles me is the way she presents it. Her paper contains passages that she could have deleted for the sake of spending more space on the con- cept of integrity. Quinn’s paper suffers from this lack. For example, Quinn wastes space on the issue of the link between integrity and having a unified self. But she need not concern herself with this issue, because her paper is about integrity and , two important topics situated within a vener- able moral discourse; this is enough of a justification not to have to bring in metaphysical topics. Quinn also wastes space on the claim that privileged (heterosexual or homosexual) people should fight discrimination. Yet this is an issue that would not affect the claim of closeted homosexuals having no integrity. If there is a subtle link between the two, Quinn does not point it out. Quinn, in desiring to claim that gay people have no obligation to come out, refers to Richard Mohr as arguing that coming out is obligatory. She never cites Mohr directly, and cites Ronald Broach, someone who recently criticized Mohr’s views on . In addition, Mohr never argued that gay people have an obligation to come out. Instead, Mohr’s argument is that gay people have an obligation to out closeted others, an argument motivated by considerations of dignity, not by the gay community’s attaining political gains. Perhaps I am being nit-picky; I mention these points because their pres- ence in Quinn’s paper comes at the expense of a needed discussion of the concept of integrity and of exactly why and how closeted gay people have no integrity. This takes us to the heart of the matter. The thesis, to repeat, is that while closeted people need not be dishonor- able, they have no integrity: “While those who engage in such strategies [of evasion and survival under conditions of oppression] do not act in a depraved, dishonorable way, they do not act in integrity” (ibid., p. 251). I wonder about this conjunction: In what way are closeted gay people not dishonorable yet lack integrity? This question is especially troubling given the intuitive connections between the concepts of integrity and honor. A person committing suicide rather than being taken prisoner acts honorably, yet she also acts with integrity. If honor and integrity are closely linked, how are we to understand Quinn’s thesis? She never tells us. She also uses the two adjectives “de- praved” and “dishonorable” one after the other in the above quotation. But the two are worlds apart. While I might easily grant that someone who passes as heterosexual for survival reasons does not act in a depraved way even though he has no integrity, I might not so easily grant a similar claim about honor and integrity.