At the same time, I have trouble imagining a personal split so extreme - publicly espousing, on a professional level, one kind of behaviour, while practising another. Is this the attraction of sin? Or a kind of masochism? Or simply interior confusion, well hidden? I can't get my head around it.
Here is my take on why so many gay Republicans who get involuntarily "outed" tend to be, in their public statements and voting records, virulently anti-gay:
They have always had to hide and always had to be secretive. Why they were initially drawn to the Republicans, who knows; maybe economic issues, maybe their family had always been Republican, maybe when they realized their same-sex attractions they turned to religious extremism in a futile attempt to make them go away. At any rate, they end up as deeply closeted people, since they have to hide a huge part of their identity from their closest friends and colleagues.
And they see gay people who don't have to do this, who are able to live freely and openly, and it *hurts*. They're *jealous*. But rather than try to leave the closet, and work against the need for it, they try to force everyone back in -- to make all gay people suffer as much as they have. This is how I've interpreted it, and what I interpret Peg's reference to the "twisting" effect of the closet to mean. Of course, many people do otherwise -- but they aren't the ones involved in outing scandals, since you can't out someone who is out by their own choice.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-03 04:02 pm (UTC)Here is my take on why so many gay Republicans who get involuntarily "outed" tend to be, in their public statements and voting records, virulently anti-gay:
They have always had to hide and always had to be secretive. Why they were initially drawn to the Republicans, who knows; maybe economic issues, maybe their family had always been Republican, maybe when they realized their same-sex attractions they turned to religious extremism in a futile attempt to make them go away. At any rate, they end up as deeply closeted people, since they have to hide a huge part of their identity from their closest friends and colleagues.
And they see gay people who don't have to do this, who are able to live freely and openly, and it *hurts*. They're *jealous*. But rather than try to leave the closet, and work against the need for it, they try to force everyone back in -- to make all gay people suffer as much as they have. This is how I've interpreted it, and what I interpret Peg's reference to the "twisting" effect of the closet to mean. Of course, many people do otherwise -- but they aren't the ones involved in outing scandals, since you can't out someone who is out by their own choice.