Matt writes:
I've always found there to be something of a generation gap among liberals in this town on "outings" with younger people saying go for it, and our elders being more hesitant. Certainly, I'm all for disclosure....If liberals got to make up all the rules of the game, homosexuality wouldn't be an issue in American politics. But we don't get to make up the rules unilaterally, and the right has decreed that it is an issue -- a major issue -- and the left needs to play by the rules of the game as it exists.
Yikes. I've never noticed generation gap. I think outing is a generally unethical maneuver -- there's no reason folks can't keep perfectly legal portions of their life secret. And either refusing or being very selective as to when we do it isn't ignoring the rules of the game, it's refusing to let the right craft the rulebook.
When we play PI, we're playing the game as the right would like it to exist. If we accept and aid the elevation of homosexuality as a politically relevant dysfunction and then keep pushing that conversation into the forefront, we'll have exceeded the right's fondest hopes in recentering American politics onto sexual McCarthyism. And that's not a game we're going to win. We win when we make the rules and force the other side to play by them. We lose when allow and accept the opposite. As the game currently exists, the left keeps losing. Maybe it's time to stop accepting the game as it currently exists.