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Speaking of the myth of male indifference to appearance, while trying (I think) to be sympathetic to the plight of DebrahLee Lorenzana, who was fired for looking too “provocative,” brooklynbadboy of Daily Kos hits a bird and eventually crashes into the Brooklyn Bridge.

For men, it’s difficult to dress provocatively. Men have to go pretty far over the edge to provoke any sort of response, excepting for men in uniform. You’d have to wear extremely tight pants around the crotch, no shirt, and basically parade around like a peacock. Otherwise, for men, a standard issue suit or jeans and workboots constitute a rather simple workplace habit. In fact, for most fellas who don’t wear a suit everyday, casual dress rather closely resembles work attire. Personally, I grab whatever shirt, tie, and dark suit that appears clean and put it on, sometimes not even noticing various stains until I have my coffee. No matter the body type, it’s pretty difficult for a man to get it wrong when going to work.

He said it here.

Really? As long as I’m speaking of things, how about speaking of homophobia and homophobia-phobia?. How’s about showing up at the bank in a skirt? Or even just an impeccably bespoke-tailored lavender suit?

Even if you’re straight.

If your own homophobia won’t do it your fear of… provoking homophobia probably will.

You wanna know why most guys really wear “a standard issue suit or jeans and workboots constitut[ing] a rather simple workplace habit?” It ain’t just simplicity, champs, it’s fear.

(Note: Simplicity is one convenient, comfortable, and affordable side effect of homophobia and homophobia-phobia. But it’s still just a side effect.)

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones challenges uuber blogger Andrew Sullivan’s justification for prying into Attorney General and Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s sexual orientation. He challenges Sullivan’s further assertion that it’s actually homophobic not to pry.

Andrew Sullivan explains why he thinks it’s OK to ask public figures if they’re gay:

If someone’s entire private life is on the table except that, it’s a function of homophobia. Period. A gay person is free to adopt such a homophobic veil; but a reporter need not enable it. So when does Benjy Sarlin write a piece on his own magazine’s “ethics”?

Look. I get why Andrew feels this way. And if that really were the only thing off the table, he’d have a point. But here’s a short sample of other questions that are generally off limits when you’re interviewing public figures:

• So, have you ever had an affair?
• Do you masturbate when your wife isn’t around?
• Have you ever had a three-way?
• Do you download a lot of porn from the internet? Or do you prefer buying it old school on the newsstand?

• I think Asian guys are really hot. How about you?

Notice a trend? They’re all related to your sex life. And [unless the interviewee brings it up] they’re all generally off limits.

He said it here.

I think that’s about right. For better or worse (I agree slightly with Sullivan that it’s worse) sexual orientation is classified as a type of sex one can be interested in (i.e. part of a continuum that includes threeways, masturbation, and, say, oral sex) when instead sexual orientation more accurately categorizes who you’d want to do some or all of those activities (threeways, masturbation, oral sex, etc) with!

I’d disagree with Sullivan, though, that the confusion of categories is evidence of homophobia.

So even though I completely get his point, in defense of Sullivan I’m going to give Drum a very mild ding for not using even more bland but still quite off-limits questions such as “Do you use insertable weights when you do Kegels?” or “How long is your refractory period after ejaculation?”

Three recent and/or current events provide a nice platform for examining if and when outing someone over their sexual orientation or inclination would be appropriate.

Disgraceful Outing

I’m pretty tolerant of outing figures who take stands against their own closeted situations. I’m not at all tolerant of outing people for one thing simply because they support or oppose an unrelated issue. So it’s particularly annoying to hear from Gabriel Arana of TAPPED that…

Looks like the nativist group Americans for Legal Immigration (ALIPAC) is getting desperate. William Gheen’s rant at a rally “outing” Sen. Lindsey Graham, who supports comprehensive immigration reform, has gone viral. Though Graham has said repeatedly that he is not gay (just single), ALIPAC insists on pushing this line. The organization sent out a press release praising Gheen for correcting the “information imbalance”:

When you have a U.S. Senator from such a conservative state like South Carolina working hand in hand with Obama and New York liberals like Senator Chuck Schumer to pass an Amnesty bill for illegal aliens, there is something very wrong.

So ALIPAC thinks the only possible reason Graham could support immigration reform is because liberals are holding his “alternative lifestyle” over his head? The logic here is so bizarre I have trouble seeing how Gheen could believe it himself.

Arana points out that Gheen’s using the exact intimidation tactic he’s accusing pro-immigration activists of using. (No surprise there since projection backed up by self-loathing is central to conservative character.)

Graceless Outing

If Mr. Gheen’s behavior is disgraceful, Babette Josephs’ insinuations about her primary candidate Gregg Kravitz was merely graceless. Talking Points Memo’s Rachel Slajda says longtime state legislator Babette Josephs is backing away from her prior accusation that the young man challenging her in the upcoming primary in her heavily LGBT Philadelphia district is straight!

Kravitz, who says he’s bisexual, is currently partners with a woman. Josephs considered that enough of a “gotcha” to call him a liar and brag that “I outed him as a straight person.” According to TPM’s Slajda she now says “I don’t even care, because a person’s sexuality has nothing to do with any of this.”

Which, of course, is perfectly true! Josephs herself appears to be the most actively pro-LGBT legislator in Pennsylvania even though she also appears to be 100% heterosexual. And meanwhile Kravitz might not end up being as effective a legislator even if he’s not 100% hetero.

Still, it’s approximately as graceless to assume that having, or having had, an opposite-sex partner makes one heterosexual as it would be to assume that a former or current partner of the same sex makes one homosexual.

Barely Regrettable Outing

On the other hand, when it comes to cases where a legislator or other public figure is aggressively and actively antagonistic to their own orientation or inclination, as with the closeted sex-purchasing of anti-prostitution activists David Vitter’s or Randall Tobias, or as with aggressive anti-homosexual activist legislator Roy Ashburn’s homosexuality, or family-values stalwart John Ensign’s affair? I feel pretty comfortable saying that when you make it your business it becomes everybody’s business what your business really is.

Jeffe Fecke of Alas, a blog is as weirded out by J.D. Hayworth’s haste to leap into man-horse sex as I was earlier today.

So here’s something I don’t get: why is it that whenever people start talking about same-sex relations, members of the right instantly leap to bestiality? We all remember former Sen. Rick “Man On Dog” Santorum, R-Penn. Then there was Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and his box turtle lovin’.

He said it here.

I can’t find a link at the moment but I’m pretty sure conservatives have also brought up the creepy prospect of NAMBLA members marrying juvenile boys variation as well. I can’t possibly, on the planet, be the only person to see it this way but…

The really, giant, big, distinguishing difference between grown men or women marrying each other, vs. Arizona Senate aspirants marrying their horses, is that the law already allows men and women to marry. Whereas, at least as far as I know, there are no provisions in law for horses to marry each other. Same with dogs. Same with box turtles. And for good reason. In civic if not celestial terms marriage is an establishment of fairly complex set of legal, contractual, tax, and property rights, including the establishment of legal inheritance and even powers of attorney. None of which, again to the best of my knowledge, are recognized in the case of animals.

Note: As for the NAMBLA scenario, Hayworth’s native Arizona already wisely prohibits marriage of children under the age of 18 without parental consent. Even with parental consent children can’t marry under age 16. Although, disturbingly, Arizona does permit children under age 16 to be married with the consent of the parents and approval of a superior court judge. (That last bit may be a nod to the state’s large child-marrying FLDS population.) To the extent a state wished to forestall the NAMBLA scenario they could simply update their child-marriage laws to 21st 20th Century standards. But I digress…

Point being that whereas legal marriage can (and should!) be easily extended to adults of the same sex with very trivial modifications of civic laws governing marriage adults who currently are allowed to marry each other, before people could marry animals it would first be necessary to establish all the other legal rights and responsibilities for animals that are now the domain only of humans.

Update: Although via Neatorama.com see also Injured Dog Checks Himself into Hospital. :-)