Michelangelo Signorile - The Outing Controversy

The Outing Controversy

Signorile has been considered a pioneer of outing though has contended the discussion has often been distorted by the media and he has been opposed to using a violent, active verb to define the phenomenon Signorile was a co-founding editor of the gay magazine OutWeek, which launched in June 1989 and which was quickly at the center of heated debates inside and outside the gay community, including the controversies over outing. Signorile became the features editor at OutWeek and eventually officially stopped working within ACT UP and Queer Nation, though, like most of OutWeek's staff, maintained deep ties to the groups.

Signorile saw his role at OutWeek as one of taking on the media and the entertainment industry. From the start of the magazine he wrote a weekly column called "Gossip Watch," which was just that—a watch of the gossip columns. He began writing about the media's double standard in reporting on homosexual and heterosexual public figures, and how he believed it made gays invisible in the midst of the health crisis. Among those whom Signorile outed at that time included the Hollywood producer David Geffen (who has long since acknowledged that he is gay). Geffen, as a record producer, was promoting Guns N' Roses, the rock group which had been attacked for antigay lyrics ("fa**ots...spread some f**kin' disease") and other performers, such as the comedian Andrew Dice Clay, whose comedy routines in the late 80s were seen by many as homophobic and misogynistic. Clay had said in a 1984 stand-up act that in Hollywood they have "herpes, AIDS and fag-itis," crudely mocked desperate pleas for AIDS funding as thousands died and while many saw the government as negligent ("get a job, buttfu**a"), and used antigay slurs. "They don't know if they want to be called gays, homosexuals, fairies," he said. "I call them c**ksuckers." Signorile saw it as relevant to discuss Geffen's closeted homosexuality in that context. Signorile also outed the gossip columnist Liz Smith (who also eventually acknowledged her bisexuality), whom he maintained helped celebrities and others to present themselves as heterosexual when they were in fact gay.

The very media and celebrity culture that Signorile vilified soon took notice of his work. The chic fashion industry bible, W magazine, put OutWeek on the "In" list, calling it a "must-read" because of its mix of "culture, politics and vicious gossip" (Queer in America, p. 73), and Signorile would eventually be profiled in New York Magazine and in The New York Times. Signorile was both praised and attacked for his column. He was called "one of the greater contemporary gay heroes," while his work was also called "revolting, infantile, cheap name-calling" (Johansson & Percy, p. 183). New York Post columnist Amy Pagnozzi compared him to the right-wing, anti-communist 1950s senator, Joseph McCarthy, in a column headlined "Magazine Drags Gays Out of the Closet" (Queer in America, p. 73). It was Time magazine that coined the term "outing" at that time, something Signorile has always contended was a biased term. He saw what he was doing as simply "reporting."

The outing controversy amplified dramatically in March 1990, when Signorile wrote a cover story for OutWeek revealing the homosexuality of the publishing tycoon Malcolm Forbes within weeks of his death, headlined "The Other Side of Malcolm Forbes." In a subsequent article in The Village Voice, Signorile charged a media cover-up of his Forbes story, claiming that various news outlets were going to report on it but later decided against it. Eventually, over a period of months, the story was reported on, but The New York Times still refused to name Forbes, only referring to him as "a recently deceased businessman" who was outed. (It wasn't until five years later, during coverage of Forbes' son Steve's run for the Republican nomination for president in 1996, that the Times finally reported on Malcolm Forbes' gay life).

Soon after OutWeek folded in 1991, Signorile joined the The Advocate with a cover story that put him at the center of a firestorm over gays in the military as well as outing: he outed Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Pete Williams (Williams has since gone on to become a television journalist for NBC News). The outing caused Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney to call the gay ban "an old chestnut" during an interview with Sam Donaldson on ABC, while then presidential candidate Bill Clinton, citing the outing, promised at a gay fundraiser to overturn the ban if he were elected president.