Thirteen

THE USE AND MISUSE OF PRIVACY IN THE OUTING DEBATE

Mark Chekola

Discussions about outing regularly appeal to the concept of privacy as if it is a clear, unitary concept. I will argue that it is far from that. Moreover, while outing may sometimes be wrong, the wrongness is better understood in some way other than a violation of privacy. For the purpose of my discussion, I am assuming the context of the pre- sent and a society like ours. There are certainly places and there certainly have been times when homosexuals have been so badly treated that no one would question whether “outing” is justified. In addition, I will assume that one of the questions for us is whether other and people have a duty to protect the closets of fellow gay and lesbian people and another is whether doing so might in some cases be harmful to oneself, an affront to one’s own dignity. In “‘Living Well is the Best Revenge’: Outing, Privacy and Psycho- analysis,” Christopher Lane accuses those who support outing of wanting to abolish the public/private distinction. He even claims that those who support it assume “that the death of privacy is our goal,” naively believing that this will have beneficial consequences in terms of eliminating the closet and end- ing .1 He argues that the goals will not be achieved, because the outers fail to take into account the role of fantasy in the public’s reaction to and the resulting harm that can come to people who are outed. In addition, the pro-outing position attempts to fix and desire when they are in reality fluid. At the outset, Lane defines outing as “revealing publicly that someone powerful, famous, possibly homophobic, and supposedly heterosexual is in fact gay or lesbian.2 While several of his examples focus on revealing the sexuality of well-known and powerful people, when he argues that it can put people at harm of violence he has in mind more ordinary, less powerful peo- ple. So it would appear that his definition would need to be revised to cover revealing the homosexuality of anyone. The fantasy of the public that is ignored here which psychoanalysis can help us to understand is that homosexuality is not prevalent. The fantasy is based on the “social hatred of and .” The demand that homo- sexuality be private has the function of avoiding challenging the fantasy. Pub- lic reaction to outing can go further than simple disbelief and denial of the 126 MARK CHEKOLA claims made: “it can vengefully accuse the outer of depriving its recourse to fantasy at all.” Comparing this to Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes” he says fantasy “can (and often must) override empirical evi- dence.” He even wonders whether “the public can accept homosexuality in any simple way without profound, even devastating internal or external reper- cussions.” In the light of this he quotes with approval the claim, in an article attacking not only outing but even visibility of homosexuals, that “hypocrisy is a great civilizing force.”3 His argument supporting the appeal to privacy has two somewhat different parts: (1) Society is demanding that homosexuality be private—it does not want to be made aware that it exists, or that it is as preva- lent as it is. (2) We must also more rationally regard it as private so that peo- ple can protect themselves from the irrational fear of the public at large. Lane gives as one of his key examples the scandal in Britain in the mid 1970s surrounding the claim that Jeremy Thorpe, leader of the Liberal Party, had a homosexual relationship. He uses this discussion to point out some dis- tinctions between Britain and the in how homosexuality is con- ceived and resulting differences in reactions to outing. Thorpe had been charged with conspiring to murder Norman Scott, a man with whom he had a relationship until the relationship became a political embarrassment. Though there had been an attempt on the life of Norman Scott, as the case developed Scott was made into the villain because he was clearly a homosexual and he enjoyed homosexual sex. Thorpe, who married and had children, was seen as someone who had homosexual tendencies, but nevertheless was saved, re- formed, as shown by his marriage and fathering children. In Britain, Lane claims, a homosexual act may mean homosexual tendencies or leanings and not homosexual identity. In the United States, however, the public equates homosexual tendencies or acts with homosexual identity. So rather than hesi- tating to see the tendency as equaling identity, in the U.S. there will be an attempt to simply deny the tendency or acts (and hence the homosexual iden- tity). Both are ways of protecting the public’s fantasy. I will later return to Lane’s defense of privacy as necessary, given soci- ety’s not-likely-to-change fantasy and hatred of homosexuality. At this point I want to focus on his presumption that privacy must be protected and that outers unrealistically and foolishly abolish the private/public distinction. Will the concept of privacy really provide us with the solution to this problem? Many of the discussions of outing, such as that by David Mayo and Martin Gunderson, appeal to privacy and claim outing obviously violates it.4 Informally, many people, when discussing the outing issue will say that it violates privacy and that revealing one’s is a private matter. Let us think about the concept of privacy in general, not just with regard to the outing issue. It is used to cover matters such as control of space such as one’s personal space not being available for observation (homes, stalls in bathrooms); control of information (medical, financial, or personnel records); limitations on what one can appropriately ask (for instance, if someone in the