Outrage

There is a respectable person speaking about himself being so respectable in the opening moments of Kirby Dick's "Outrage." This "respectable person" "doesn't do those things." The respectable person is Larry Craig. Those things are gay things.

Larry Craig, in case one has forgotten, is the former senator of the state of Idaho (a state where, like Iran, there are no gay people). He had famously said that Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal was a "naughty boy." Craig, despite having a solidly anti-gay voting record during his career in Congress and a preacher of all those family values things, was the man who was arrested in a Minneapolis airport for soliciting gay sex in a male restroom. Defending himself as having a "wide stance" to explain the way his foot stretched into the other stall to call for fun, he became partly a laughing stock, partly another sex scandal, but mostly the face of a disturbing hypocrisy among closeted politicians. The hypocrisy is obviously the call to discriminate against gay people and simultaneously lead a gay lifestyle.

Craig is the obvious target. Also discussed are Charlie Crist, Ed Schrock, David Dreier, Jim McCrery and Ed Koch. These are men who largely have refused to support issues regarding HIV/AIDS, hate crimes, gays in the military, gay adoption and gay marriage, among others. Crist is the example that is really troubling, particularly because of the Macbeth-style ambition of the man. Crist, of course, has been in the news lately--he is the sitting governor of Florida who is also running for the Senate. When it appeared that Marco Rubio, the Tea Party favorite, would defeat Crist in the Republican primary, Crist abandoned the Republicans (becoming more common among moderates these days) and created a three-man race. Crist had also apparently offered his endorsement to Rudy Giuliani for president, and then when it became likely that McCain would win Florida and the possibility arose for Crist to be a front-runner for the vice-president nomination, Crist changed his mind and endorsed McCain (and he didn't call Giuliani to let him know). Inconveniently, though, Crist was single, and of course a single man cannot make it to such a high position. The McCain campaign, according to the documentary, already with so many hindrances and distractions and shortcomings, could not afford to defend their man as a straight man (so they picked Palin, who was facing ethics violations and could barely make a coherent sentence). Conveniently but in vein, Crist married six weeks before the vice-president nominee was chosen.

Barney Frank points out in the film that in 1976, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter were about even on gay rights. Since then, Democrats have gotten better (passing the Matthew Shepard Act and poised to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell) and Republicans have gotten much, much worse (leading calls of hatred to ban same-sex marriage mostly on the grounds of firing up their base). Former representative Jim Kolbe, a Republican from Arizona, is interviewed and discusses telling John McCain that he is gay, to which McCain immediately stated something along the lines of, "Jim, it's okay. I know. You're a good legislator, and it makes no difference to me." McCain, of course, is the man who said several years ago that he would support repealing DADT if the military approached him offering their support of the repeal. Now that the Commander-in-Chief (the commander of the military), the Secretary of Defense (who incidentally served the role in both a Democratic and Republican administration), and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff all have supported a repeal, McCain has for whatever lack of logic changed his mind.

Ninety percent of these cases are Republican, and a section of the film discusses Dreier, who was denied a leadership position in the Republican caucus of the House of Representatives because he was too "moderate." The famous Barney Frank quote goes that, "Yes, in the sense that I marched in the 'moderate' pride parade last summer and went to a 'moderate' bar." Washington in the film is called gayer than San Francisco, but much more in the closet.

But these discussions are sparked by the film but do not really offer an evaluation of the film, so here it is: This is a very good documentary. Dick, just as he did with his brilliant "This Film Is Not Yet Rated," is asking common-sense questions and being met with absurd answers and realities. The film's flaw is that it seems to be unbalanced in its emotions, such as when it provided a catharsis of gay politicians explaining the freedom of coming out, then shifting again to the hypocritical nature of those remaining in the closet.

"Outrage" raises the analogy of anti-gay bully who happens to be gay--he behaves this way to exemplify the image that he is obviously not gay, for no gay man would hate himself and those like him. As Bill Maher said, "hating yourself is the greatest love of all."