Some criticize campaign to 'out' gays who work in Congress

WASHINGTON -- Mike Rogers waged a controversial ''outing" campaign in the month leading up to last week's Senate vote on the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. He handed out fliers at the gay pride parade in June, asking people to send in names of gay people who work for senators and representatives who supported the Federal Marriage Amendment. He created a Web log last week listing some of those names. He sent out more than 10,000 e-mails encouraging and perpetrating outings.

He made phone calls, day and night, to the offices and homes of these staff members. His message: How dare you?

How could someone help articulate the opposition to homosexual unions when he himself is homosexual? Rogers cannot understand this.

Rogers's campaign has caused a stir throughout the capital, rallying some gay-rights advocates and horrifying others, for demanding that people who are gay and Republican to defend themselves. Rogers says he plans to continue his campaign despite Wednesday's vote -- the amendment was defeated, 50 to 48, but probably will be taken up by the House this fall. And he'll tack on a ''fidelity pledge" to expose lawmakers who promote ''family values" but have extramarital affairs.

Rogers, 40, who has been openly gay since 1986, views the marriage amendment as a ''very personal" hit. Everything he says on the topic ends with an exclamation point.

''This is the big cheese!" says the fund-raising consultant. ''Gays and lesbians are under attack! It's amazing to me that people don't get that! So what are we going to do? Protect these gay staffers who have influence on policy matters while their bosses spew hate and bigotry?"

No, says John Aravosis, national cochairman of the activist website DearMary.com, which last week ran an ad in the Washington Blade, the gay weekly newspaper, that read: ''For Years Our Silence Has Protected You. Today That Protection Ends." The Blade has published back-to-back front-page stories on the outing campaign, naming senior staff members and two elected officials -- one congressman, one senator -- whose names have been circulating on the Web and in gay publications.

In a July 2 editorial, the Blade's executive editor, Chris Crain, wrote: ''It is 2004, not 1954, and sexual orientation in and of itself is no longer a 'private fact' beyond the pale of inquiry." In a phone interview, Crain explained his controversial position: ''The more these staffers are personally responsible for policies that challenge the basic civil rights of gay people, the more it's our responsibility, as a gay newspaper, to ask them how they justify those positions considering that they're gay."

Rogers, Aravosis, and Crain inherited strategic outing as a tactic from the 1980s and 1990s, when several congressmen acknowledged their homosexuality under pressure from others. Republican Steve Gunderson, a former Wisconsin lawmaker, came out in 1994 after threats from both gay-rights activists and House conservatives. In response to a political ad in the Blade and the rumor of a story in the gay magazine the Advocate, Representative Jim Kolbe, Republican of Arizona, came out in 1996 after voting in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman.

''The whole outing campaign makes me a little uncomfortable, but I still think it's the right thing to do," says Aravosis, 40, a political consultant. ''When you talk about amending the Constitution to make me a second-class citizen based on my personal relationship, then you've crossed a line of decency."

Gay organizations on the Hill -- the newly formed Gay, Lesbian & Allies US Senate Staff Caucus and the 10-year-old Lesbian and Gay Congressional Staff Association -- oppose Rogers's tactics, as do the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay conservatives' group that has offered counsel to the targets of Rogers's outings, and the Human Rights Campaign, the country's largest gay-rights group.

Lynden Armstrong started working for Senator Pete Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, in 1995, and came out two years later. He manages the senator's five offices and says his being gay hasn't been an issue at work. Armstrong considers Rogers's campaign a ''personal attack" on gay staffers ''who haven't gotten to the point, emotionally and psychologically, that they feel that they can come out at work."

''That is a personal decision," Armstrong, 32, says in his office. ''They're outing people who aren't in the place in their life where they're ready for that to happen. Besides, is outing a staff member going to really affect a senator's or a representative's vote?"

He declines to say whether he supports the marriage amendment. His boss voted for it. ''I have to keep in mind that the senator has nothing personal against me or the gay community. He is having to do what he is elected to do -- represent his constituents. And New Mexicans, if you look at the polls, are overwhelmingly supportive of the amendment."

Victor Castillo, a Democrat who works for Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard, Democrat of California, is on the executive committee of the Lesbian and Gay Congressional Staff Association. He opposes both the marriage amendment and Rogers's campaign. ''It's misdirected," Castillo says. ''If anything . . . [it] pushes people further into the closet."

Rogers has threatened to out the press secretary of a Republican House member who supports the amendment. The man has been open about his homosexuality for years to family, friends, and co-workers. He says that if calling homosexual unions marriage ''is going to upset the fabric of civil society, to me, it ain't that important."