“What’s interesting is how gay D.C. is,” says Kirby Dick, the director of “Outrage,” the controversial new documentary that concerns closeted gay politicians, the lives they lead and what he calls their hypocrisies.
Indeed, in the film, Kirk Fordham, the former chief of staff to scandal-plagued ex-Rep. Mark Foley, says if you removed all the gay politicians and staffers from Washington, government would grind to a halt.
But Dick says his film — just screened last weekend at the Tribeca Film Festival — isn’t concerned with outing politicians, only with the “hypocrisy” of those who remain in the closet while taking anti-gay stances on issues.
That’s why Foley’s name is barely mentioned in the film, while Sen. Larry Craig, the other GOP member of Congress to endure a major gay sex scandal in the past few years, gets plenty of screen time. (The recording of his conversation with the police officer who busted him in the Minneapolis airport men’s room opens the film.)
Foley lived a “semi-open life” and after some initial anti-gay votes, “his voting record was much more positive,” Dick explained to Yeas & Nays in an interview Tuesday.
In fact, he doesn’t see his role as outing anyone.
“All of these people in one fashion have been reported on before,” he said, adding that he saw his role as “bringing it outside the gay press.”
They include pols who have come out on their own (Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., ex-Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz.), those who have been outed and left public life (ex-Rep. Ed Schrock, R-Va.) and those who have not come out, although their sexuality has been reported on (Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif., ex-Rep. Jim McCrery, R-La.).
Dick said he got plenty of information on other politicians as well, but nothing that rises “to the level of reporting it.”
In some cases, he said, a scandal, such as that of Foley or Craig, “obscures the true story. … There’s a trade-off [about staying in the closet] for political gain. There’s an element of tragedy there. It’s almost Shakespearean. … It’s sad. I feel a great deal of empathy.”
Some of the Washingtonians in the movie don’t seem to share his empathy, like openly gay D.C. Councilman David Catania. For closeted pols who vote anti-gay, he says, “There is no punishment harsh enough, as far as I’m concerned.”
Filmmaker Kirby Dick (courtesy photo)
