Queer Gnosis

by Troy Williams

(The following interview occurred June
14th at the Tower Theatre in conjunction with KRCL’s RadioActive and
the Damn These Heels Film Festival. Podcast the entire interview HERE!)

Kirby Dick is going into the closet.  Not his own mind you, but rather the closets
of powerful conservative politicians who actively fight against the
queer community. His new documentary Outrage explores
the well known stories of Idaho Senator, Larry Craig, Kirby Dick also
outs current Florida governor, Charlie Crist, California Congressman
David Dreir, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith and former Republican
National Committee chairman, Ken Mehlman. Outrage also looks
back at former New York Mayor Ed Koch, who ignored the plight of AIDS,
as well as the infamous Roy Cohn, a conservative lawyer and close ally
of Senator McCarthy.

Troy Williams: There are a lot of gay people in Washington D.C!

Kirby
Dick: We out all of D.C! Everybody in D.C knows that perhaps 30 to 40%
of all staffers on Capitol Hill are gay.  And interesting enough, when
George W. Bush came into office, the gay escort business spiked up
dramatically.

TW:  You describe a “conspiracy of silence”, of which the mainstream corporate media shares culpability.  Why?

KD:
There are a lot of reasons this issue doesn’t get covered.  First of
all, some of these news outlets are concerned that any reporting on gay
sexuality might offend some of their readership.  Some of these news
outlets are owned by large corporate entities that do a lot of business
on Capital Hill.  And they think, “what’s the upside of going after a
powerful congressperson?”  I’ve found it’s not the reporters
themselves.  They’ve been wanting to report on this for many years.
This film is really built on the reporting of the gay press.  They’ve
been trying to get this message out – to report on hypocrisy wherever
it is.

TW: I think is the heart of your film is really summed up by Al Pacino, playing Roy Cohn in Angels in America, “The homosexual has zero clout”.
In our culture, through religion and through politics we are
conditioned to believe that some people are chosen to rule and others
are not.  Some have privilege and some do not.  In our culture, if you
are white, male and of certain economic standing, you have ultimate
power and privilege. Until suddenly, through some quirk of whatever,
you are marked as a menace.  As a gay man you must go into the closet
to obtain power.

KD:  That’s a very astute observation.  People
are brought up to be Republican before they know they are gay. When I
interviewed everyone in my film I was astounded, because they all said
they wanted to go into politics by the time they were in first grade.
They are being groomed by their families to take 
over their father or grandfather’s seat in Congress.  And suddenly they
find out they’re gay.  So they box it off.  They treat it like any
other political problem and they choose to live their life in the
closet.  I think there are two kinds of politicians.  Some like Charlie
Crist, who I think is very comfortable with who he is sexually.  And
then you have others perhaps like Larry Craig who thinks it’s wrong
every time he does it.

TW: These politicians are willing to viciously go on attack against people who are just like them.

KD:
It’s a political calculation too.  The closet is perhaps their greatest
vulnerability and they’ll do anything to protect it. This is how the
closet contorts the American political system.  You have people like
Charlie Crist, I’m certain, who doesn’t want to offend anyone.  He’s
the most bland politician ever.  But there are rumors out there, so he
has to vote against the way he really wants to vote.  Again, that’s the
importance of the media.  For along time people thought the media will
give us a pass on this hypocrisy, so I’ll be able to pull off a career
in the closet.  But now, with the discussion going on around this film,
I think a lot of people are going to rethink that.

TW:  What have been your reactions to the recent coverage of the Mark Foley and Larry Craig scandals?

KD:
They sensationalize but they don’t go deeper.  I conceived of the film
before either of the Foley and Craig reports, so I was very interested
to see how the media would cover these stories.  But I was very
surprised that they didn’t go deeper. The issue of hypocrisy was very
rarely approached with Larry Craig.  One of the reasons Mark Foley
isn’t in the film is because, for the most part, he voted pro-gay.  He
wasn’t a hypocrite.

TW:  The thing that struck me as I was
listening to the Larry Craig audio – is that this was a sting operation
targeting gay people. And that is something that we don’t talk about.

KD:  You are absolutely right.  He was flirting.  There is nothing illegal about flirting.  It shouldn’t have happened.

TW:  Are there other politicians that you wanted to explore but didn’t have enough information?

KD:
We looked at a number of others, but we couldn’t get enough to be
certain about having them in the film.  What we did encounter was a
great deal of fear in talking to sources.  I would get on the phone
with a source, talking about a certain representative, and they would
want to talk, but when I would call them back, they wouldn’t want to do
it.  They were very afraid of repercussions.

TW:  Has there
been resistance from people like Charlie Crist?  Have you had any
official responses or challenges from people who you are featuring?

KD:
Ed Koch said he was “outraged by Outrage.”  I was very appreciative
that he mentioned the name of my film twice in his response.

(Outrage is currently playing at the Tower Theatre in SLC.)