The White Peril 白禍

Ace Pryhill has a beautifully-written post up about gay advocacy:

I fully understand the psychological conflict that coming to grips with my sexuality has had on me; it's strong and it's real. I could have very easily gone down some wrong paths because of it. Almost any gay person will tell you they didn't choose to be gay, but the element of choice always remains when it comes to actions. You can choose not to cheat, you can choose not to do meth, you can choose to avoid tempting situations, you can choose to talk about a problem before it tears you apart, you can choose to get professional help before you make a decision you'll later regret. Instead of letting other people fix our problems, let's do what we can to fix ourselves...the rest will follow.

You can also choose not to hang out with the kinds of people who encourage you to be dissolute. (That includes straight friends who think it's gays' job to add color to their boring, settled lives with stories of sexual adventure and political shenanigans.) Coming out is often an explosive finish to years of carefully-concealed torture; but it simply isn't possible to make up for that by relying on other people to make adult choices easier for us from then on. Nor is it wise to go overboard on the now-I'm-going-to-live-just-for-me bit, which is a poor long-term strategy for productiveness and happiness.

If my eyes are shining and my lower lip is trembling, you must believe that it IS NOT out of a desire to guffaw at the Moebius strip of ironies in this story, via Gay News:

A bar owner in the predominantly gay Castro neighborhood violated numerous city civil rights codes by discriminating against black patrons, the San Francisco Human Rights Commission announced Tuesday.

The case has been closely watched by the city's gay community, many of whom said they were incredulous that an establishment in what's considered one of the country's most progressive and socially liberal neighborhoods would actively keep black customers out of the popular nightspot Badlands.

In particular, the commission said club owner Les Natali referred to blacks as "non-Badlands customers" who should be discouraged from patronizing the club.

"The Castro should be a place of homecoming for gays worldwide and this was a betrayal of everything this community stands for," said Don Romesburg, organizer for the community group And Castro For All, which filed the complaint. "That's why it's so important that we hold them accountable."

The part I think is interesting is this: the investigation took 10 months, right? Don't tell me that in that amount of time, word didn't spread to every fag in the Bay Area about what was going on. And in that case, why didn't people stop going there? Or protest outside the place? It's possible that business has, in fact, dropped off; but the article doesn't say so, and it seems like the sort of thing that would have been mentioned by the reporter. I myself am not recommending ruining people based on hearsay, but boycotts are the sort of showily self-righteous gesture the left seems to specialize in, and, I mean, it's racism we're talking about here. What's more important than that? Any gay club owner who would set racist policies has clearly internalized his own Otherness in the eyes of society and needs to be educated.

Maybe the part of the story not told by the SF Gate article makes things clearer. The SF Badlands website (note prominent black guys in photos) is here, and there is an ad hoc website about the charges of racism here. As someone who lives in a city in which not allowing foreigners, allowing Westerners but not Koreans, or not allowing military guys is a pretty common bar policy, I find all this fascinating.

I cherish freedom of assembly as much as anyone, but it sure does bring out the lamest in some people, on all parts of the political spectrum. You have puns that not even Dad would stoop to:

On the Capitol steps, Brian Mock held a sign chastising the governor that read "Truth is not RELL-ative." He said he had little hope that lawmakers would repeal the civil union statute, but said they need to know voters are watching.

Especially the majority of Connecticut voters who approved of the idea of civil unions?

You have self-refuting inanities:

"Civil unions are merely a stepping stone to redefining marriage," he said at Sunday's rally. "Anyone who voted for this bill voted for same-sex marriage."

Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell signed the bill last week after it overwhelmingly passed the House and Senate. The law, which takes effect in October, also defines marriage as being between one man and one woman.

And you have those tin-eared folks who think satire has unlimited usefulness:

Meanwhile, about 80 gay rights activists took part in a mock wedding ceremony on the Capitol lawn Sunday, criticizing civil unions as second-class citizenship. Many said they were happy the state approved civil unions but wished lawmakers had given gays and lesbians full marriage rights.

One thing I'd like to know--the article doesn't mention, and there may be no way of finding out--is how many of the 3000 protestors against the bill were from Connecticut. I suppose you could say the same about the participants in the mock wedding, but there were only 80 of them.

New rule! New rule! It's improper for legislators to vote on any issue that wasn't an explicit plank in their campaign platform. I don't think many US congresscritters mentioned military responses to terrorism in the election cycle before 9/11, but you didn't hear the right squawking when they voted to authorize them, even most of those who represented leftist urban enclaves. Yes, I know--that was an emergency, and it was at the national level. But that's all the more reason to conclude that Connecticut voters have had ample time to register their opinions on civil unions with Hartford.

I can't read Spanish and haven't seen the text of the bill, so I can't determine whether the hilarious spelling mistake in the second paragraph of this Reuters report is accurate:

Spain's parliament gave initial approval to a law legalizing gay marriage on Thursday in a move likely to rekindle conflict with a Catholic Church that has just elected a new conservative pope.

A packed public gallery erupted in cheers and applause as the speaker announced approval of the Socialist government's proposal, making Spain the third European country to legalese gay marriage.

"It's unfair to be a second-class citizen because of love," Socialist legislator Carmen Monton said. "Spain joins the vanguard of those defending full equality for gays and lesbians."

I can't say I'm entirely impressed by the reasoning used by one quoted activist: "I'm going to get married for the sake of activism, for love, and for a question of dignity." Getting married to make a point? Lovely. But then, activists of any stripe often do have a serious case of single-issue-itis.

In any case, the bill has another round or two of approval to go through, but it's apparently expected to pass. It also appears to have good public support.

Civil unions have been signed into law by the Connecticut governor. No court case. Very cool. Even the marriage-or-bust types are reeling it in enough to recognize that there's much to celebrate:

Love Makes a Family, a gay rights organization that wanted legislators pass a gay marriage bill, called civil unions an important step toward protecting the rights of same-sex couples. But Anne Stanback, the group's executive director, said the fight is not over. ["Love Makes a Family" sounds like the kind of entity that should have a headmistress, not an executive director--SRK]

"As important as the rights are, this is not yet equality," she said.

Naturally, it's that last quotation that 365Gay has seen fit to use as its quote of the day. Whatever. On the opposite side of the country, the Montana domestic partnership bills were voted down by its House of Representatives this week; that it passed the Senate was apparently big news. Things go in fits and starts.

My first thought on reading the news that the pope had been selected this morning was, as you might imagine, "Hmm...I wonder whether Andrew Sullivan has torn himself clean in half with rage yet, like Rumpelstilskin, or I'm a little early." I was just in time, apparently, but QandO already has it covered.

Camille Paglia dealt with this amply in an essay when I was in college, but it's not an issue that's likely to go away soon. To add to what Dale writes at QandO: if you believe that your principles are moral and just, and you believe that external, obdurate reality bears them out without the gloss of wishful thinking, that's that. Religions don't have line-item vetos. There are gay-friendly churches around, and I'm at a loss to figure out why gay Christians don't join them instead of trying to shift thousands of years of tradition to fit their beliefs this very minute.

That doesn't mean they should just sit down and shut up if they seriously believe that scripture is being misinterpreted or interpreted too narrowly. It's just that lasting change happens slowly. If their chief concern is that the long-term trajectory of Christianity be in the direction of truth, they have to accept that their arguments may take hold slowly and not have any effects on doctrine within their lifetimes. And if what they're arguing really isn't clearly supported by the Bible, it may never take hold in the church in which they were reared. They must be content with serving God to the honest best of their understanding, and standing firm in the face of earthly disapproval. I still think Andrew Sullivan has contributed a great deal to the public discourse, but I can't get his position on religion to boil down to anything but "I'll fuck whoever I damn well please, and the church will love me for it." That seems to me just a bit off the mark.

Added on 21 April: Susanna is back to posting more frequently, which is a good thing. She had this to say about the ascension of the new pope and Andrew Sullivan's reaction to it.

Also, Michael thinks I'm engaging in pro forma Sullivan-bashing. Well, I'm not. When people attack or belittle Andrew Sullivan as if he were useless, I am more than happy to defend him. But you can defend his overall contribution to the public debate and still conclude that his recent positions are either not well supported or mutually inconsistent, and that the flibbertigibbety way he's taken to expressing them doesn't do him any favors, either.

This shouldn't need to be said again, but it does, and Ghost of a Flea says it.

Man, you know how sometimes you wish you could take some of your good fortune and give it to someone else? It never becomes easy to see a friend who's open and giving and true get screwed over by some shallow charmer, even if you know that he'll get the guy he deserves eventually.

Joe Riddle has a simple but good post up at Ex-Gay Watch about one of my pet peeves: the way ex-gays (at least, those whose profiles are published as inspirational) tend to blame homosexuality for all their hang-ups:

Blaming the "gay community" sure seems like a convenient way for them to avoid taking responsibilty for their own behavior, dontcha think? Still, there's probably a kernel of truth there... Chances are, their gay friends were not questioning their reckless behavior, and in fact may have been enabling it. Sometimes we out gays are reluctant to encourage responsible behavior in our friends because we don't want to be viewed as another moralizing voice. While the "gay community" isn't responsible for the bad choices of Paulk, Bennett, et al, it's possilbe we did contribute to driving them into the arms of the ex-gay movement. If I thought my only options were to be a drug-addicted slut or ex-gay, I'd choose ex-gay every time.

Sure, so would I; but the nurturing, supportive part of the gay community that brings out the best in you is there (and not as icky as that description makes it sound). I found it without having to look terribly hard. My friends are perfectly capable of encouraging responsible behavior without turning into sanctimonious hard-asses.

If there are people who can't handle their homosexuality, then I seriously wish them the best in celibacy or learned heterosexuality or whatever allows them to live happier lives. But I have no patience with those who act as if all the non-sex-dungeon hang-outs and non-abusive boyfriends were somehow in hiding and could only be discovered with superhuman effort and an oscillating electron microscope. That's malarkey. If drawn to nothing but ephemeral pleasures and exploitative people, you've got more fundamental problems than being gay.

It's nice to see stories like this:

Sen. Paul Koering, who publicly revealed Wednesday that he is gay, received nothing but kindness from his colleagues on the Senate floor today.

He was greeted with hugs and handshakes from both conservative Republican and liberal Democratic senators and from moderates of both parties. Many of the senators said they have long known of the Fort Ripley Republican's sexual orientation.

Koering, who was described as a teddy bear by several other Senators, was beaming Thursday and told one Senate colleague that he felt liberated.

No kidding, buddy. The truth shall make you free, to coin a phrase.

I do look forward to the day when the tone of these stories carries a bit less astonishment about people's goodwill--you could almost headline this one "State Senator not shot by fellow Republicans after outing self." But progress is progress.

The Connecticut House has passed its civil unions bill. The governor hadn't threatened a veto, but she had supported an amendment (eventually added) to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

Following the House vote Rell issued a statement saying, "I am pleased that the House of Representatives passed this amendment and made it clear that while we will recognize and support civil unions, marriage in Connecticut is defined as the union of a man and a woman.

"Passage of this bill will extend civil rights to all couples, no matter their gender, and send the unmistakable message that discrimination in any form is unacceptable in Connecticut."

Good for them.

You should be reading Eric even when he's not gallantly quoting me, but the follow-up to his original post on Bill Clinton's ridiculous comments about campaign strategist Arthur Finkelstein's opposition to Hillary's political ascendancy makes a point that deserves to be raised more often:

The fascinating thing about self-loathing is that if we assume that there is such a thing (and obviously there is) why would it be restricted to gay conservatives? Is it not possible that gay leftists might also suffer from self loathing?

And how about heterosexuals? Liberal, conservative, moderate, libertarian... What's to stop any of these individuals from hating themselves?

You would think that if these jokers (as in, the sorts of gay activists Clinton is likely to have picked up the wording from) were serious about combating self-loathing among gays, they'd devote their energy to outreach programs for gay youths who are terrified out of their minds at what they've just discovered about themselves. Or for drug and sex addicts, whose behavior is flat-out self-destructive. It seems to me that the last place a reasonable person would go looking for self-loathing is among centered, ordinary people going un-hysterically about their daily lives; but, then, for some people, the opportunity to take potshots at political opponents is a good that trumps all others.

Via everyone, comes this website. My trust-no one instincts say it could be a well-intentioned fake (the guy is utterly adorable--Japan is like a chest-hair deprivation tank, lemme tell you--but it seems odd that he would use those pictures as part of a testament of how tradition-minded he is...not that I mind). Assuming it's genuine, the guy has balls. It's the easiest thing in the world for guys like me to be out at home; I fled my little hometown for college so fast there were skidmarks on Main Street, and since then, I've lived in Philadelphia, New York, and Tokyo--I go back to Emmaus because that's where my family and a friend or two are. If they weren't, I'd be perfectly happy to forget the place existed, though I don't look down on others for choosing to stay or make their home there. Good on Daniel for not backing down and for being able to write with feeling without getting drippy. I'm moved.

Can some of you people get it through your thick heads that civility is a value in its own right?

Just a second...something a little off about the tone there...[takes restorative gulp of plum-wine spritzer]...there we go....

There's a thread running through several of the blog posts that have gotten me exercised this week. That Riding Sun post that kind of annoyed me the other day may have sprung from a comment he made on this spot-on post of Japundit's, which I found through Plum Blossom. [Ooh, plum! Time for another sip!] Japundit says the following:

Talking about the weather or chopsticks may be trivial, but they [Japanese people] figure it's the easiest way to create and maintain a pleasant relationship without ruffling any feathers. Getting involved in a discussion about politics or any other subject that generates strong opinions could easily become unpleasant for both parties and nip the potential for a harmonious encounter in the bud.

I find that once you get to know Japanese people, they will lay out their opinions on just about any issue in startlingly direct terms. But that's once you get to know them. First, a relationship of trust has to be established--and you do that by demonstrating that you're capable of having lively but scrupulously polite conversations about things that don't really matter. Topics start with the weather or how hard it is to learn English--if you show yourself to be a gentleman there, things get more interesting. If you show yourself not to be a gentleman, your conversation partner can drop you without feeling embarrassed about having made some personal revelation that you can now hold over him. Polite society works this way in America, too, though it's hard to find.

Oh, yeah, speaking of which, Gay Orbit notes an exchange Another Gay Republican has had with a member of Sister Talk. The Sister says this:

We should be kissing conservative ass and playin' nice, according to the Republican homos; for them, it's our best chance at accomplishing anything for our team. SINCE WHEN? Since when has diplomacy ever won an oppressed group of people any damn thing?

AGR's response, in part:

I don't see how confrontation gets us anywhere. Railing against hypocrisy may make us feel better, but the people that aren't molesting their kids, beating their wives, divorcing, and running gay porn web sites, tend to get pissed off when they're tagged with guilt by association. Just like liberals get all worked up when they're accused of being the root of all evil. Once they're mad, they tend to shut their minds to anything you have to say.

How is it, I am frequently moved to wonder, that people have not figured this out? I'm talking about those who believe that every conversation must be seized on as an opportunity to Make a Point ("I actually am cool enough to know how to use chopsticks," "I speak languages that are actually harder than Japanese," "There are right-wingers who make a buck from behavior they condemn") in the most literal political sense, without recognizing that the subtext can be equally important. We all have to live with each other. I love Japan, but I'm American through-and-through--I like plenty of good-natured rough-and-tumble argument mixed in with my harmony. It keeps all of us alert and makes life interesting.

There are limits, though, and people who don't stay within them when it comes to political debate raise the suspicion that they won't in the actions of daily life, either. If all you ever do is criticize your political opposition while making excuses for your team, people start to wonder whether you're capable of mature self-criticism in your work and sex lives, too. If you hog the floor all the time, you might be the sort of person who takes a ME-ME-ME! approach to other resources, too. There's no law against being a pain in the ass, but there's no reason people should encourage you to be one, either.

You don't have to be a pushover to be polite; I certainly don't think I am. You just have to be willing to give people a chance unless they've put themselves outside the bounds of civility from the get-go. You can always distance yourself later if they prove to be jerks. It's hard to undo the damage of dismissing them out of hand if you later realize you should have been more sympathetic, though.

This AP story about a gay soldier who would like to continue serving after recovering from his wounds is making the rounds; it was Gay News where I first saw it.

Out of all the sticking points over gays, I have to say, this is one of those I understand the least. The Center for Military Readiness, whose president is quoted in the AP article, has a full page of links on gays in the military, including one to the exclusion law. But the actual nuts-and-bolts reasoning given for the exclusion is very thin. It's self-evident that the armed forces should only train those elibigle for service, but eligible is one of those words like efficient or positive; it only means something if we all agree on the criteria by which it's being applied to a given case.

The CMR releases and the text of Public Law 103-160, Section 654, Title 10 refer to the fact that the armed forces are a special environment requiring unusual discipline, close quartering, little privacy, and unit cohesion. That having gays around would compromise these things is an assumption--it's not even really asserted, much less justified. I understand the value of tradition, and I know it's been found that military service is not a constitutional right.

But you'd think that the reasons for declaring people unfit (that "ineligible" bit is a PC euphemism worthy of the English department at Duke, and it conveniently avoids the question of whether people such as the discharged linguists were more qualified for their jobs than others who might have been trained for them) would be less vague. Given that "Don't ask, don't tell" has been in effect for a decade, if homosexuals were going to throw a wrench into the works, wouldn't we know it by now? Not having two gay guys serving in the same unit makes sense--family members are separated, too, unless they've done away with that rule.

But a lot of opposition, when you press people to be clear about what it is they're so afraid of, comes down, in my experience, to the old shower-room argument. And try as I might, I can't find it in me to take the whole "Well, see, I'm such a tough guy that I'm obliged to get spazzy if I think some gay guy just looked at me cross-eyed" routine seriously.

In any case, Sgt. Stout was wounded while operating a gun, so whether or not he has any influence on policy, he did his job defending his unit and at least serves as an example that all gay guys don't compulsively flee physical conflict. I'm grateful for his service, and here's hoping he's recovered fully. (I'm assuming so, but the article doesn't say.)

Added during a particularly overdone episode of Homicide: Apparently, Michael's trackbacks are not, in fact, getting through. Here is where his response, in addition to his comments here, is.

I normally don't talk this way, but...

Man, I'm old.

Look at this:

My partner of 12 years, Alison Maddex, gave birth to a baby boy in November 2002 — Lucien Harry Maddex. I am Lucien's adoptive parent — but certainly NOT his mother! Alison is Lucien's one and only mother. That "Heather Has Two Mommies" business gives me the creeps! — and it can only confuse a kid.

12 years?! Oy. I remember when that relationship was all rumor--Paglia's a local celeb in Philadelphia, and I was in college at the time.

Of course, she talks about a bunch of things: the absence of poets from the pop-culture landscape and the limitations of blogging in helping people develop as writers among them.

It's touching that Dean has the patience to keep coming up with new anagrams of his position on gay marriage, as if one day one of his gay friends might listen. But then, as someone's bound to point out, I'm sitting here writing this post, so who am I to talk?

Anyway, one thing he's going off about in the comments is the epidemic of revisionist history among quite a few SSM advocates. I think it's worth expanding backward on that point a little.

People used not to understand fertility. I don't just mean human fertility--they didn't understand why crops grew and hunt animals were plentiful sometimes but not others, either, any more than they understood why sex sometimes produced children and other times didn't. Further, the competition for precious resources was fierce. Even after the invention of cavalry and chariots and catapults and cauldrons of pitch, war essentially meant hand-to-hand combat; and there was a lot of war. There was also a lot of disease.

What all this boiled down to was that human societies knew they desperately needed to keep replacing themselves and the things they subsisted on, but they were never quite sure what was going to work. Things like nitrogen-based fertilizer, filmstrips of sperm and ovum meeting under a microscope, and mechanical refrigeration are all very, very new in human history.

You already know this, so why am I bringing it up? Because I think it's easy to forget how the pressure to ensure fertility at all costs has shaped civilization. (Well, Japan, with its disorienting blend of super-modernity and raw primalness, has not lost a lot of its old rites.) When people oppose gay marriage because they assume there's no love or commitment in our relationships, they're being ignorant and need to be told so. Even in old times, there were people who reproduced and people who didn't. There's no reason gay people can't contribute to civilization just because we're not contributing children, and having two people willingly take stewardship over each other's welfare has obvious benefits.

But you can argue that, and argue that our ability to care for each other needs protecting in a world of competing interests, without necessarily concluding that marriage has to be expanded to do it. The ability to choose your own life partner is a pretty new thing. Maybe it needs a new institution. Maybe it would do better without any overarching institution but a range of contract options. Maybe, maybe, maybe. The point is, the debate is still going on, and not even all of us who are gay can agree that SSM should be legalized or why. Its advocates are not doing themselves any favors by acting as if the correct conclusion were obvious to, like, any fair-minded person with a brain.

I meant to draw attention to a link I got from Joe yesterday, but I got sidetracked by spring cleaning. (Is there anything worse than having dingy sheers at your windows? I feel so much better now.) Anyway, here's part of his response:

I realize that for me hypocrisy is the trigger, but the justification is political. Outing is a legitimate and reasonable political response to the current political climate. It's a deliberate, open, and peaceful act of nonviolent resistance, an act in some ways similar to civil disobedience. (And not, as Mike Rogers suggests, merely reporting.)

I know it's obnoxious to assume that people are disagreeing with you because they don't understand what you're saying, rather than that they do and just think you're wrong. Nevertheless, I think Joe isn't focusing on the real point.

One of the most precious things in a free society is the ability an individual has to set his own priorities, to make his own trade-offs when he can't optimize all values at once. In traditional societies, the wider group decides what trade-offs are best, which is why people who have their own ideas about where their talents lie or what means happiness for them so often leave them. Outing someone takes away that right. It says that self-assigned arbiters of the proper way to be gay get to dictate that someone has to be openly homosexual and just deal with the resulting loss of options. Anyone who plans on doing such a thing had better be armed with something less lame than "But he's a hypocrite." (Sorry, Michael. I know you're not writing a dissertation here, but when we're talking about revealing things about people's private lives without their consent, you're going to have to do better than that.)

It's not just that hypocrisy is insufficient as ethical grounds for outing--though it is. It's that there may be nothing hypocritical about these people at all. If some people believe the best work they can do is as legislators or campaign leaders, and they're willing to keep quiet about their private life to facilitate it, where's the hypocrisy? I'm about as big a flamer as you can get without physically being on fire (as a straight acquaintance once put it), but I oppose the campaign for gay marriage, I oppose hate crimes laws, and I oppose the endless workshops for elementary school students about the variety of sexual options open to them. Perhaps I sincerely and mistakenly believe a few things that are inconsistent with each other, but I can assure you that there's no double-dealing or cowardly self-preservation involved. It's not at all hard to believe that there are conservative gay politicians in the same situation, and that's their lookout.

And as for the civil disobedience analogy, I'm sorry, that just doesn't work. Civil disobedience involves putting yourself on the line and risking arrest in order to make a point. Outing involves screwing up other people's lives without risking anything of yourself. There's no comparison.

Michael has posted a review of a new book on gay marriage. It's an issue he and I disagree over, and from what he says, the book doesn't break a whole lot of new ground--though even I hadn't heard Naomi and Ruth described as lesbians. Did Orpah leave because she felt like a third wheel? Anyway, Michael's a fair-minded guy, and his evaluation is worth reading. The book is In Support of Same Sex Marriage and Gay Rights in America.

Megan McArdle has an essay up about gay marriage, which is a fascinating read. It's fascinating both because she makes good points and because she falls all over herself to assure people that she's not just ragging on gays. Personally, I find it a little insulting to be approached so gingerly, but I can understand where she's coming from. These days, we're flatly informed that anything less than full marriage equality is a mark of second-class citizenship.

Added on 4 April: Megan says that there's nothing wrong with assuring friends and loved ones that you're not trying to stick it to them. Point taken, especially since she didn't soften her argument itself in order to do so.

Eric has his own post up that, as always, is worth reading. I think there are gays who are sincere in wanting to commit to the obligations of marriage in order to get the benefits, but the far louder talk about getting our relationships respected sure makes it hard to believe that the majority aren't more concerned with self-esteem-building. It's a mark of how mainstream we've become that we're as entitlement-minded as everyone else now.

Those who know Yukio Mishima's 仮面の告白 (kamen no kokuhaku: "Confessions of a Mask") may be interested in this (English, Japanese):

A diary that novelist Yukio Mishima kept when he was a student is believed to have provided material for his later novels, contradicting previous theories on his works.

...

"Railway fare, 1 yen," and "Nikkan Sports (a sport newspaper), 0.5 yen," the diary partially reads.

...

In the diary he kept from 1946 to 1947, Mishima described in detail his efforts to become a novelist, his relations with another famous novelist, Osamu Dazai, and his reunion with a woman believed to be the model of Sonoko, a woman in his masterpiece, "Kamen-no-Kokuhaku (Confession of a Mask)."

...

In the novel, after the main character rebuffs Sonoko's advances, she marries another man, but they are subsequently reunited.

Well, you could kind of put it that way. Here's a hurried translation from part of the café reunion scene, in which Sonoko tells the protagonist that she still doesn't understand what kept him from marrying her:

[Warning: clunky literalness below!]

At that point, my eye was drawn to one of them. He was a very rough-looking, swarthily handsome youth--22 or 23. He was shirtless, and he was retying a white loincloth, dingy and moist with sweat, around his waist. All the while, his chatter and laughter with his friends went on, and he seemed to be purposefully taking his time about winding the cloth band. The thick, taut swells of muscle on his chest were on brazen display; downward from the center of his chest fell more solid bands of muscle, deeply ridged. On his left and right sides were thick chains of flesh, like fast rope bindings. Around this smooth, hot mass of a torso the bleached loincloth was being wound and pulled tight. His naked suntanned shoulders glistened as if oiled. From the hollows of his armpits peeked a black thicket that threw off the sunlight in a glinting gold tangle.

Seeing these things--seeing, above all, the tatoo of a peony on his toned upper arm--I was assailed by lust. My feverish gaze was fixed on this rough, barbaric--this uncommonly beautiful--body. He was laughing beneath the sun. When he threw his head back, he showed the swell of his Adam's apple. A dangerous flutter ran beneath my chest. I couldn't tear my eyes away from him.

I'd forgotten that Sonoko existed.

In fact, much of the book is like this: the progtagonist lusts after the nightsoil man, an athletic boy at school, and a print of St. Sebastian. Gay humanists frequently make a big to-do about homosexual content that doesn't really seem to be there, but there's no mistaking it in 仮面の告白. Of course, it's no surprise that a Japanese newspaper would glide over it. For one thing, a lot of people still take the line that there's no homosexuality here. (I'll wait for you to stop laughing. Done? Okay.) For another, describing the book accurately might be skirting close to commenting on Mishima's own sexuality. This is, after all, a country in which you can find articles about Mutsuo Takahashi that don't mention his sexuality.

Michael uses a locution you see a lot in regard to outing:

I'm in. My perspective on outing is simple. If you are a public figure, like a politician or whatever, I'm tentatively ok with it as long as it's done to expose some hypocrisy.

Some months back, I was taken aback to see Dale Carpenter use it, too, in establishing what he thinks are the criteria for justifiable outing:

First, the outed person's homosexuality must be directly relevant to some matter of public policy.

Hypocrisy by an officeholder meets this test, as when a closeted politician opposes gay equality for homophobic reasons.

Second, there must be credible evidence made available to the public that establishes the person is probably homosexual.

The word that gets me is hypocrisy, an extremely useful term that unfortunately is extremely easy to use as a catch-all. Hypocrisy is acting in a way that clearly and directly goes against your professed beliefs. Someone who advocates a law against homosexual conduct and still indulges in it is a hypocrite.

Just about everything else is a grey area, though. Opposing pro-gay legislation for "homophobic reasons"? Who gets to decide what's homophobic? Does a politician just have to be "probably" homophobic the way she has to be "probably" homosexual? I'm afraid I still don't think this is sufficient justification for revealing things about people's private lives.

The way to treat people you think are hypocritical and up to no good is to shun them. This seems to be the last move anyone thinks of nowadays, what with all the opportunities to sue people or sell their stories to tabloid shows. It's still the best course, though. People who are just interested in tricks are unlikely to feel the sting, but those who act straight in public and then want to be all matey and down with the Family behind closed doors would, I think, get the message. And if they don't, there's not a whole lot we can do. It simply isn't possible to stick it to everyone who deserves it, and we all lose when the boundary between public and private becomes even more blurred than it is now.