| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Fred Stone" |
| Date: |
07 Sep 2007 01:19:58 PM |
| Object: |
"Who Among Us Would Cast The First Stone?" This Guy. |
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2007/09/05/AR2007090502519.html
From high atop his Adams Morgan apartment building, Michael Rogers
decides who is living a lie and who may be turning toward righteousness.
Then, with a few words sprayed onto the uneven ground between gossip and
journalism, he turns a life upside down. Or he offers absolution,
remaining silent if he believes the person in question has a good heart.
A year ago, Rogers, having decided that Sen. Larry Craig was a
hypocrite, reported on his blog that the Idaho Republican, who publicly
opposed gay marriage, secretly had sex with men. Craig has denied the
allegations.
As The Post's Jose Antonio Vargas reported in his profile of Rogers this
week, the blogger views his posts about Craig and congressmen Ed Schrock
and Mark Foley -- conservative Republicans who resigned even as they
denied Rogers's claims that they had had same-sex encounters -- as
neither titillations nor violations of privacy.
Rather, Rogers, a 43-year-old gay man who worked as a fundraiser for gay
and environmental lobbies before turning to full-time Internet activism,
considers himself an investigative reporter, "someone who has been able
to sway a lot of people from my living room." He sees his work as
quintessentially moral, a modern truth-telling that bares political
hypocrisy.
But who elected him moral arbiter? Do his readers at blogactive.com even
know how he makes his choices about whom to out?
Rogers sees his outings -- a word he says he doesn't like, although he
uses it more than a dozen times over a single lunch -- as part of his
engagement with the world, no different from his neighborhood activism.
He's a gregarious guy, the kind who gets involved. He was head of his
building's residents association. At the falafel joint down the street,
everybody knows him. Listing a member of Congress as a hypocritical,
secret homosexual is, by Rogers's measure, a public service akin to his
successful agitation to get McDonald's to remove a giant vending machine
from a corner on 18th Street NW or his campaign to persuade the D.C.
parks department to right a tilting flagpole in the park across from his
apartment.
Some outing is immoral, Rogers says, such as the so-called D.C. madam's
wholesale release of phone numbers of purported customers, many of whom
had no role in public life. "Your wife sees that, and what have you done
to deserve that?" Rogers says. "I'm not taking pictures of everyone who
goes to have sex in Union Station. There has to be hypocrisy."
As proof of his morality, Rogers offers Paul Koering, a conservative
Republican state senator in Minnesota. When someone sent Rogers video of
Koering at a gay bar, the blogger called him up, ready to out the
hypocrite.
Koering convinced Rogers that he was, as the blogger puts it, "on a
journey to a different place." Rogers agreed not to name the senator on
his blog. Koering later announced he is gay, said he appreciated
Rogers's restraint and won reelection.
"Koering is anti-everything I stand for," Rogers says, "but I realized
he was trying to work out the conflict between his personal and
political lives. I realized that when this guy comes out of the closet,
he does me more good in office than out."
Rogers is frank enough to admit that talking to him can win a target a
reprieve. "If people call me back, the chances I won't write about them
go through the roof," he says.
But for all his earnest honesty, Rogers has a blind spot. His work
requires him to play God. He boasts that "there will be more Larry
Craigs -- this year." And he declares, "When I say someone is gay, they
are gay, because if I'm wrong, the only person in the world who won't
believe me is the guy himself."
--
Fred Stone
aa# 1369
“The hypocrisy argument is a tactic used by thought fascists who believe
an immutable personal characteristic must dictate – without exception –
the ideological and political state of a person’s mind.”
.
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| User: "ike milligan" |
|
| Title: Re: "Who Among Us Would Cast The First Stone?" This Guy. |
07 Sep 2007 04:41:41 PM |
|
|
"Fred Stone" <fstone69@earthling.com> wrote in message
news:Xns99A4921EB6F61freddybear@216.151.153.66...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2007/09/05/AR2007090502519.html
From high atop his Adams Morgan apartment building, Michael Rogers
decides who is living a lie and who may be turning toward righteousness.
Then, with a few words sprayed onto the uneven ground between gossip and
journalism, he turns a life upside down. Or he offers absolution,
remaining silent if he believes the person in question has a good heart.
A year ago, Rogers, having decided that Sen. Larry Craig was a
hypocrite, reported on his blog that the Idaho Republican, who publicly
opposed gay marriage, secretly had sex with men. Craig has denied the
allegations.
Who gives a ***** who gets outed or not, except other queers. I don't need to
have them outed to know that the Republicans are mostly gay. They are
narcissistic and anti-family. Who else could delude themselves with "free
market" ideology, and the like, when no free markets exist. The ideology is
all that nmatters to them, rather than the real problems of the downtrodden.
.
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