Outing (the verb)

It started with the Church of Scientology.

If that isn't a bad lead in for anything, then what is? Anything that started with that church is probably going to end poorly.

What I am talking about is Outing.

There are various different types of Outing. In its basic form, Outing is the act of exposing someone's personal secret to the light of public scrutiny. It's what blackmailers generally threaten to do. Today it has become its own form of journalism. Tiger Woods could be considered its latest victim, but that might be stretching the point.

I think we all know what is generally meant by Outing.

To get back to the Church of Scientology, where the term and tactic actually originated, it was at first devised as a method of institutional self defense. For various reasons the Church of Scientology has rather routinely been the target of investigations throughout its long and nebulous history. Outing, as it was originally construed, was evolved by church special ops after threats of suit and other moves proved inadequate at dissuading the frequency of attacks or discouraging further attackers.

They really needed to find something that took a bite out of people.

Normally any institution, no matter what its stripe, from the Mob to Hollywood, has found it a bad idea to get into fights with people who either write laws or buy ink by the barrel. You will not win in a fight with the press or city hall. Most common nouns know this and go into placate or hide mode when confronted with a long term clash with either. The Church of Scientology is no common anything. Imagining that you can win is the first step towards winning--and the church is nothing if not imaginative.

So they came up with Outing. In its original form, it is weaponized counter blackmail. You are attempting to dig up my secrets, so I will dig up yours first. They used this to stunning effect against the IRS. When the IRS came after them, the Church began investigations of the investigating agents. They struck gold, showed up with files on each agent and the IRS rather quickly backed off and never bothered them again. Having found such a fun and effective tactic, they began deploying it against reporters. Suddenly the bad ink started drying up.

Then they got cocky. They turned the tactic inward as a method of controlling their more show-horse members. They threatened to out as queer John Travolta so many times that they wound up outing him as queer. It is from this point on that Outing gained its common usage.

The tactic actually backfired on the Church. Blowing up show-horse members proved so bad for business that church leadership was toppled. (No tag day for the dispossessed here: coup losing in church leadership amounts to being assigned a six figure no show job and forever keeping your mouth shut. Getmo it ain't.) Unfortunately for journalism, the gay version of the outing genre had gone mainstream.

Of course Outing does have a Pulp Magazine history dating to well before the church's efforts. Its print start was with Confidential Magazine, who imported the idea from Walter Winchell. (The magazine had a relationship with Winchell.) During its run Confidential Outed Liberace, Rock Hudson and Johnny Mathis, to name a few. This first Outing trend eventually ended due to piles of litigation, but not before mutating in a very nasty way.

During this new Scientology spawned wave of Outing, the gay press itself has weighed in largely in favor of the practice. It has become its own sub-genre in gay titles as well. Today it is quite fashionable to speculate on the orientation of this or that person as well as to flat out OUT folks. Special glee is reserved for the relatives of conservatives or powerful people.

Although it might be argued that exposure of gays in the limelight may somehow lead to mainstream acceptance of the lifestyle, Pulp History says just the opposite is true. The aftermath of the flurry of 1950s era interest in anything gay was a very quick backlash which spread through all genres of the pulp magazine market. It was especially prevalent in the Love, True Crime and Men's Adventure magazines. (Examples shown.) Homophobia became a staple of the Real Nazi Sex UFO Man-Eater Cults Magazines, which we have covered on the website.*

(Click Modern Thrills on the homepage.)

Thanks in part to the gay press's seal of approval, Outing folks for outing's sake has become a genre of its own. Scandal Pulps such as People, US and the Star run dragnet "Who is Gay" features when there is no new news. (The Enquirer is currently running one, hence my inspiration for this entry.) It is my contention that as opposed to helping nurture any form of understanding, the trotting out of this genre is just fear mongering with a populist face--retail level homophobia.

The link between the rise of dragnet gay Outing as a genre as a precursor to another wave of homophobia peddling is not irrefutable. It happened in the last pulp magazine era, that's all. It is one time concurrent with the decline of interest in the Outing of celebrities. We don't see a similar backlash during the Romantic Era (in literature, not pulps), which is where novels with gay themes first emerged. It could also be argued that interest in gay themes started in the early scandal rags such as Police Gazette and that it essentially went nowhere from there and incited no backlash on its own. Some themes, such as white slavery, are simply long term residents of the scandal rag genre and have no impact upon other mediums.

Times have changed since the first Outing genre of the 1950s. Magazines as a medium have subsided in importance. The current trend of dragnet gay Outing could be just another example of reusing proven sensational topics, as we have seen with Newsweek. It could be that People, Us Weekly and the Enquirer are occupying their own scab universe, reflective of nothing. In any case, if there is a backlash brewing, we would have to look to a medium other than magazines for the first signs.

Given where this trend started, I am none too optimistic.

Coda

This is always my knee-jerk reaction: The idea of of investigating the famous simply because they are famous is wrong on a base level.

Whatever you may think of Tiger Woods, he hasn't killed anyone with a chainsaw... yet.

Of course the allegations of doping have to be looked into--if they are not simply additive fiction. Having multiple mistresses is not illegal, just bad form.

Then my knee jerks back. Tiger wasn't being randomly investigated just because he is famous. He was carrying on in public with a particularly blabbermouth mistress. As a result, he was the victim of an assault which involved the police. Bad things happen to people who lead double lives. Bad things happen to people who live lives of lies. Duh.

What has been revealed is how very few friends Tiger Woods has in the sports community. A lot of what has been said does not so much come off as kicking a guy when he's down as it does kicking someone back.

*A book on these Pulps called It's a Mans World makes special mention of the homophobia that seemed to be a part of the Adventure magazine genre. Although it certainly was common for a time, the theme was just a passing phase and not at all limited just to these magazines. The Love and True Crime books actually held onto it for a longer time. By 1960 or so it was entirely gone from the pulp presentation. A much more common theme in the Adventure sweats was the (I am assuming fictional) exploration of the impact of nymphomaniacs on the resolution of WWII.