The glass closet

As Foleygate shows, Washington has a unique definition of what it means to be "openly gay." Should the media keep playing along?

By Alex Koppelman

Read more: Politics, News, Alex Koppelman

Oct. 20, 2006 | In 2003, the Washington Blade was preparing a story on the sexual orientation of Florida congressman Mark Foley. By then, Foley's homosexuality was an open secret -- he had been outed by journalist Kurt Wolfe on a New York radio show in 1996.

What was not widely known was that Kirk Fordham, Foley's then chief of staff, was also gay. The Blade knew it, however, and so editor Chris Crain asked Fordham how, and whether, he wanted his sexual orientation identified in the paper. Fordham's response was that he was "out in the community but not in the press," and so the Blade refrained, for a time, from printing anything about Fordham's life as an openly gay man.

This situation is one now faced on a regular basis by reporters and editors in Washington, forcing them to ask questions about how and when they should report on sexual orientation. In an era in which the closet is no longer what it once was, when supposedly closeted individuals may be out to nearly everyone in their life, is it the media's responsibility to help public figures hide the truth from voters? And in the wake of the Foley scandal, does the press need to reevaluate how it deals with the issue?

Complicating matters for many journalists is Washington's unique and complicated version of "out." Some of D.C.'s public figures intentionally cultivate vagueness when it comes to just how out of the closet they are. Fordham was far from the only political operative or official to consider himself out in some situations and not in others. Some "closeted" staffers live active lives inside Washington's gay community, patronizing local gay bars and cohabiting openly with same-sex partners. Some are out to their bosses, even bosses who are ultraconservative Republicans -- Robert Traynham, the director of communications for Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., was reportedly out to his boss before being outed in the press. Still, D.C.'s political class maintains a special distinction between living as openly gay in Washington's gay community and being identified as such in the press, where word might get back to the home congressional district.

"I don't have any discomfort with Kirk's approach," one gay former senior Hill staffer says of Fordham's formulation. "I think in many ways that characterized a lot of people. They were out in the community and not out in the press, and I don't know that there was necessarily a need to be out in the press."

The former staffer took a similar tack in his own life. He was out to almost everyone he knew. "I came out to my family when I was 26," he recalls. "Everybody in my family knew, almost all of my friends knew, my fraternity brothers from college knew. If you looked at a list of who knew about me and who didn't, you would probably have found a far more significant number of people who knew than didn't know."

Michelangelo Signorile, a gay activist who was one of the journalists to pioneer the outing of closeted public officials and is now a host with Sirius Satellite Radio, calls this new development the "glass closet." According to Signorile, it's a phenomenon common to the worlds of entertainment and politics.

"That's what Mark Foley lived in to many extents as well," Signorile explains. "He was out in public, he'd go to certain events, he'd be known to certain people, but he was still 'in the closet.'"

Signorile may have coined the phrase "the glass closet," but John Aravosis, the openly gay founder of Americablog, knows exactly what he means. Aravosis, who himself used to be a staffer for Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, has noted another surprising wrinkle in the Washington version of out. Within the world of gay Washington, many of Capitol Hill's gay Republicans are out about their sexual orientation -- but not about where they work.

"They're closeted about their jobs," Aravosis says. "Everybody knows they're gay; they just don't know they're working for the White House and George Allen."

"The glass closet is one way to talk about it," says Larry Gross, director of the School of Communication in USC's Annenberg School, and the author of "Contested Closets: The Politics and Ethics of Outing." "[But] another way to talk about it is the well-ventilated closet, which is more comfortable. You're not suffocating in it, because everyone's agreeing to look the other way. You don't have to worry about who's going to see you going into a bar in Dupont Circle, you don't have to find some friendly woman to take to the office Christmas party... because everyone knows."

Still, the former Hill staffer contends, there is a difference in the degree to which elected officials and their staffers can be out. "There's a comfort level with being a staffer that you have that you wouldn't have if you were seeking elected office," he says. "Doesn't mean that you're running around with a rainbow flag plastered all over your forehead or anything, but knowing that you don't have to face the voters, have your name on a ballot or answer in that way gives a certain degree of freedom that perhaps an elected official might not experience."

But back in a home district, says the staffer, where homosexuality may not be as accepted, everyone is a little more circumspect. "I tried not to put myself in a position where I would have done anything that would have caused a problem or an issue ... Staff members are kind of unusual. Lots of times, they wear the mantle of, and take on the persona of, the member they work for, and oftentimes actually represent them in the district, when speaking to constituents, or in the press."

In a situation like that, believes journalist Chris Crain, who left the Blade and now blogs at CitizenCrain.com, it isn't the responsibility of reporters and editors to determine who has officially come out and who hasn't. Journalists should report the facts as they know them. "I don't think people get to make that decision for themselves anymore, to be out in the community and not in the press ... I don't think it's the media's job to navigate a closet that complicated."

Next page: Applying the "Barney Frank rule"