Gawker Editor Fires Parting Shot

Yesterday Gawker's two top editors resigned in protest of the removal of their homophobic hit piece against a previously unknown executive. But not before one of them apparently expensed a $546 lunch on the way out the door.

Gawker Editors Resign Over Removal Of Story That Outed Corporate Exec

Mediaite reports:

Gawker Media editor-in-chief Max Read and executive editor Tommy Craggs resigned Monday in protest of the managing partners’ decision to remove a piece accusing former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s brother David of soliciting a male prostitute. “On Friday, I told my fellow managing partners… I would have to resign if they voted to remove a story I’d edited and approved,” Craggs told Gawker staff in an internal memo. The managing partners did indeed put it to a vote, deciding 4-2 to remove the post. “This was not an easy decision,” Read continued. “I hope the partnership group recognizes the degree to which it has betrayed the trust of editorial, and takes steps to materially reinforce its independence.” The editors’ decision comes after Gawker’s staffers issued a statement on Friday slamming the “business side” for deleting a post over the objections of the entire editorial staff.

Gawker founder Nick Denton has published a lengthy reaction. It begins:

The Managing Partnership as a whole is responsible for the Company’s management and direction, but they do not and should not make editorial decisions. Let me be clear. This was a decision I made as Founder and Publisher — and guardian of the company mission — and the majority supported me in that decision. This is the company I built. I was ashamed to have my name and Gawker’s associated with a story on the private life of a closeted gay man who some felt had done nothing to warrant the attention. We believe we were within our legal right to publish, but it defied the 2015 editorial mandate to do stories that inspire pride, and made impossible the jobs of those most committed to defending such journalism. I’m sorry also that Jordan Sargent, reporting this story impeccably despite a personal drama, was exposed to such traumatizing hatred online, just for doing his job. And I’m sorry that other editors and writers are now in such an impossible position: objecting to the removal of a story that many of them found objectionable.

Gawker Slammed For Outing Exec

Via USA Today:

Gawker drew heavy criticism Friday from online readers after the news and gossip site ran a story about the CFO of Conde Nast allegedly soliciting sex from a gay porn star. David Geithner, a married father of three and brother of former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, denied the allegations. Gawker nevertheless reported that Geithner planned to go to Chicago to meet a gay porn star and escort and was prepared to pay $2,500 for the encounter. David Geithner cancelled the meet-up after the escort tried to get him to use his political connections to help with a housing dispute. Previously, the anonymous escort had asked Republican Sen. Ted Cruz for help with his housing dispute, the online article said.

I read the entire Gawker piece early this morning and I'm with Greenwald on this one.

UPDATE: Gawker founder Nick Denton says the post is coming down.

MICHIGAN: Mother Says Outed "Grindr Pastor" Told Her Gay Son To Kill Himself UPDATE: The Son Speaks Out Himself

Via the CBS affiliate in Flint, Michigan:

A mother came forward with new accusations against the local pastor who resigned after being outed as gay. She said what that pastor told her son nearly drove him to suicide. Jennifer Kish is angered over the recent revelation that Matthew Makela might be gay, not because of his alleged sexual preference, but because of how he treated her son while they were parishioners at his church. Makela is a Midland pastor who resigned after being outed by a website. The website said it outed Makela because of his outspoken stance in recent years against homosexuality, a stance one woman said was particularly harmful to her family. Kish said her then 17-year-old son Tyler suffered from serious depression and was considering suicide because he was told by Makela he was going to hell because he was gay. "If he's going to hell for being gay then he might as well commit suicide," Kish said. Makela is the subject of scrutiny because of the alleged hypocrisy. The website Queerty posted a conversation it claims shows Makela soliciting sex with another man on the app Grindr, an app geared toward gay and bisexual men.

UPDATE: Some readers have noted that the mother in the above story may be putting words into the mouth of the so-called Grindr Pastor, who may have "only" told her son that being gay was as bad a sin as committing suicide. In the clip below, the teenager tells the story himself.

Queerty Outs Closeted Anti-Gay Pastor

Queerty reports:

Until 2 p.m. on Monday, the ‘Our Church Staff’ section of St. John’s Lutheran Church and School’s website described Reverend Matthew Makela as an associate pastor who enjoys, “family, music, home improvement, gardening and landscaping, and sports.” Screenshots obtained by Queerty from a source who asked that his name be withheld shed light on some of the Reverend’s other favorite past times — namely nude make out sessions and sex with other men. Of course, how someone behaves between the sheets is really nobody’s business but his own, except when he’s actively doing damage to others. We’ve seen it time and time again. The lawmaker who spends his days fighting against gay rights and his nights cruising for bottoms, or the ex-gay activist who isn’t quite as ex-gay as he’d like everyone to believe. Which brings us back to Makela. The married father of five from Midland, Michigan doesn’t just preach Jesus’ love and help with bake sales. He also uses his position of authority and respect in his community to broadcast his self-loathing view on same-sex attraction.

Hit the link for much more, including anti-gay and anti-trans statements from this totally gay pastor.

KENYA: Tabloid Outs Local Gays

From Kenya's Citizen Weekly:

When Kenya National Human Rights Commission and a section of non-governmental organisations came out guns blazing and demanded William Ruto apologises to the gay community for saying Kenya has no room for gays and lesbians, many were left wondering whether they were hearing right. Others wondered whether they were still in Kenya or in the Godless America or Europe. Addressing a press conference, KNHRC executive director Atsango Chesoni said Ruto’s remarks during a church service are homophobic and put the lives of gays and lesbians in the country in danger. [snip] Homosexuality and lesbianism are slowly taking root in Kenya. It was initially in boarding schools, prisons but now has found its way in churches and other institution including blue chip companies and even among sportsmen and women. Government institutions such as the judiciary, parliament, senate and counties have not been spared. Of late, there are thousands of homosexuals and lesbians. The list of gays has well known faces including two governors, two senators and a cabinet secretary. Two women MPs are lesbians and one principal secretary is said not to be straight. A well-known billionaire who owns a media house is also said to be a homosexual.

From Gay Star News:

Citizen Weekly has exposed 12 LGBTI activists and leaders. Several were previously in the closet. While some are known internationally as proud spokespeople for the community, others include a senator and a gospel singer. Few Kenyans are openly LGBTI as it is illegal to be gay. Activists fear the newspaper will incite mob violence, similar to when Ugandan activist David Kato was killed after being 'named and shamed' on the front page of a tabloid in 2010. While the frontpage headline reads: 'TOP GAYS, LESBIANS LIST IN KENYA OUT', the actual article as seen by GSN does not call for violence or murder like other past tabloid lists of this nature. It references how Kenya's high court has ordered the government to allow a gay rights group to register after they initially refused it on the basis of moral and religious grounds.

Homosexual acts in Kenya are punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

NORTH DAKOTA: GOP Lawmaker Outed, Claims Retaliation For Anti-Gay Voting

Via Fargo's ABC affiliate:

A North Dakota lawmaker who sent an explicit photo of himself to another man says the exchange being made public is retaliation for a recent vote against expanding gay rights. Rep. Randy Boehning, a 52-year-old Republican legislator from Fargo, says a Capitol employee told him a fellow lawmaker vowed to out him as gay if he continued to vote against bills granting gays legal protections against discrimination. Boehning refused to identify at this point who he believes is behind the purported political payback for his vote against Senate Bill 2279, the third such bill defeated in the past six years by North Dakota legislators.

The exchange came to light when Dustin Smith, a 21-year-old Bismarck man with no known connections to the Capitol, contacted The Forum earlier this month, saying he recognized Boehning from a gay dating smartphone app called Grindr. Chatting under the user name Top Man!, Boehning sent Smith sexually suggestive messages and, in the early morning hours of March 12, an unsolicited photo of his penis, according to exchanges reviewed by The Forum. "How can you discriminate against the person you're trying to pick up?" Smith said in a recent interview. When first questioned about the messages two weeks ago, Boehning declined to comment on whether he sent the explicit photo and messages. But on Saturday he confirmed he was Top Man! and said he doesn't think sending a graphic photo of himself to a stranger is a lapse in judgment, as Grindr is an adult site where users often exchange such images.

Boehning defends his anti-gay voting record, saying he is merely following the wishes of his constituents. He also says that he's now glad the have the "1000-lb gorilla" of the closet off his back. (Tipped by JMG reader Mark)

FRANCE: Magazine Ordered To Pay €20K For Outing Leader Of Neo-Nazi Party

France's Closer Magazine has been ordered to pay €20K for invading the privacy of a neo-Nazi party leader when it outed him as gay. Via Pink News:

Florian Philippot is the deputy leader of the French Front National – which was allied with the British National Party, and has been accused of fostering homophobic violence by aligning itself with aggressive anti-equal marriage factions and violent groups. Earlier this month, Closer published four pages of photos taken in Vienna of Mr Philippot with a television journalist presented as his boyfriend whose face was blurred out. AFP reports Gregoire Lafarge, Mr Philippot’s lawyer, had argued in court that the magazine had not acted in the public interest but purely to make money. “Mr Philippot is admittedly a public figure but he is not a celebrity and has always explained that sexuality is an intimate affair,” he said. “To ‘out’ (someone) is to stigmatise. After sexuality, what will we throw out to the public – religion, health?” added Mr Lafarge, who had initially asked for 50,000 euros in damages.

The magazine has also been ordered to publish the verdict on its front page.

FRANCE: Neo-Nazi National Front Leader To Sue Magazine For Outing Him

Via Radio France:

The deputy leader of France’s Front National is to take Closer magazine to court for printing photos it implies prove he is gay. Florian Philippot is to lodge a complaint against Closer for invasion of privacy, the party leader, Marine Le Pen, announced on Friday. The case comes amid dissent in the far-right party's ranks over recruiting openly gay members. Philippot does not want to give “this rag” any publicity, Le Pen told a press conference, but he will take Closer to court. Claiming that she and her children had also been victims of invasions of privacy, the far-right leader said she hoped that Philippot’s case would lead to a sentence severe enough to prevent the paper from continuing such practises. Le Pen is a trained lawyer and she and her party have a penchant for taking critics, including US-born singer Madonna, to court.

For a recap of the National Front's history of anti-gay actions, go here.

FRANCE: Vice President Of Neo-Nazi National Front Party Outed As Gay

Via the Telegraph:

A French gossip magazine sparked outrage across the political spectrum on Friday by "outing" the far-Right Front National's vice president, Florian Philippot, as homosexual. The rare breach of Gallic press protocol is an embarrassment for the FN, whose attitude towards homosexuals has historically ranged from ambivalent to downright homophobic. Closer, which scored a global scoop in January by publishing photos of French president, François Hollande, visiting his secret lover Julie Gayet, on Friday released pictures of Mr Philippot with his boyfriend, an unnamed TV journalist, on a trip to Vienna last week. "At last a real weekend away from Paris," it headlined, followed by an inside article entitled: "Yes to love for all" – a play on words with France's recent Marriage for All bill legalising gay marriage. Politicians across the board slammed the revelation as an unacceptable breach of Mr Philippot's private life.

Among those denouncing the revelation are National Front head Marine Le Pen and the Socialist Party, which pushed through France's same-sex marriage bill. Two weeks ago the Kremlin lent the National Front €9M in the first installment of a reported €40M payment presumably meant to help tilt France's government to the far right. And today we learn that there's an even worse French version of Ken Mehlman sitting on that pile of Russian money.

PREVIOUSLY ON JMG: The National Front is a backer of the anti-gay Manif Pour Tous and has supported its numerous, vicious and often violent rallies, as have hate group leaders Brian Brown and Tony Perkins.  Founder Jean-Marie Le Pen has been convicted six times for inciting racial hatred, including for denying that the Holocaust took place. Earlier this year he "joked" that his critics, who include Madonna, will be in the next "batch" headed for the gas chambers.  He has also "joked" that ebola is the "solution" to Europe's immigration problems. Last year Le Pen's daughter, Marine Le Pen, herself a failed candidate for France's presidency, praised the man who committed suicide at Notre Dame Cathedral in protest of same-sex marriage. In February of this year Le Pen's granddaughter, 24 year-old Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, led a massive anti-gay march through the streets of Paris. In January of this year the youth leader for the National Front called for France to institute anti-gay laws similar to those in Russia.

Peter Tatchell On Outing Whitney Houston

WaPo Profiles Signorile & Griffin

The Washington Post today published a lengthy profile of SiriusXM radio host Michelangelo Signorile and Human Rights Campaign head Chad Griffin. Here's a setup:

In 2004, 38 percent of respondents supported same-sex marriage, according to a Washington Post-ABC poll. Ten years later: 59 percent. And today, only a decade after Massachusetts ushered in same-sex marriage, Freedom to Marry says that nearly 44 percent of Americans live in jurisdictions that have legalized it — 19 states and the District of Columbia.

Even observers who welcome the gains often seem pleasantly puzzled: How did that happen so fast? But the changes are the result of decades of struggle, from early gay-marriage efforts in the 1970s along with AIDS and anti-discrimination activism in the 1980s and ’90s, to challenges at the Supreme Court in the new millennium. In Lawrence v. Texas, Lambda Legal, another major gay-rights group, won a huge victory in 2003, as the justices struck down state laws that criminalized sodomy.

Gay-rights activists — including the “Let’s get this done NOW!” camp and those who proceeded more methodically in order to build support — kept pushing. In a way, Mike Signorile and Chad Griffin framed a remarkable generation, each each representing a different historical moment, Signorile at the start and Griffin at the close. Here are their stories.

Hit that link, it's an interesting piece.

CNBC Host Casually Outs Apple CEO Tim Cook, Panel Reacts With Awkward Silence

That Apple CEO Tim Cook is gay isn't exactly a secret - after all, he's regularly listed at the top of Out Magazine's annual list of the "Most Powerful Gays" in America. Still, there was some awkward silence today on CNBC after one of the panelists casually dropped Cook's name as one of the nation's gay CEOs. Valleywag weighs in:

The inadvertent discussion of reality came after CNBC contributor and New York Times columnist James Stewart said, with an air of surprise, that he had reached out to many (gay) CEOs and received a "cool" response. Stewart journalistic mothership, of course, has stayed in the realm of innuendos when it comes to Cook's sexuality. The paper's star media reporter, David Carr, has been emphatic that a gay CEO isn't even newsworthy. And yet Stewart, who only seconds before had expressed with frustration how unwilling people are to discuss gay CEOs, becomes entirely unwilling to discuss this gay CEO. If Tim Cook's sexuality is truly "consonant in the personal résumé," it's hard to explain this stunned television silence.

Mike Rogers On Aaron Schock

"I think outing is so, so 2004 at this point. So 2008. Anybody who knows Aaron Schock, anybody who has half of a brain cell, knows he's gay. I'm kind of out of the business. For me, it's like—big deal. That's how I looked at it. The people who care might get a mailing with the Huffington Post article about it. If they don't, blame a bad campaign manager. My strongest emotion is pity. Republicans want this. They want him to come out. They want him to come out before the election. The Louie Gohmert voters aren't going anywhere. Anyone who's nutty enough to vote for Gohmert will stay with him. And the power structure in the gay community will literally and figuratively be on its knees the minute he comes out. He'll get awards, he'll march in parades—an Aaron Schock outing, for the GOP, is a gift!" - Outing kingpin Mike Rogers, speaking to Slate.

Schock Makes Instagram Account Private

A few days ago John Aravosis posted an AmericaBlog column titled The 7 Gayest Aaron Schock Instagram Posts Of 2013 in which he needled Schock's famous sense of fashion and devotion to bodybuilding. That AmericaBlog post was referenced in yesterday's Facebook piece on Schock by CBS reporter Itay Hod. And JMG reader Michael reports that Schock today made his Instagram account private. Previously the account was open to all, including non-members. Read into this as you will.

CBS News Reporter Itay Hod: That GOP Congressman From IL Is Definitely Gay

"Here's a hypothetical: What if you know a certain GOP congressman, let's just say from Illinois, is gay... and you know this because one of your friends, a journalist for a reputable network, told you in no uncertain terms that he caught that GOP congressman and his male roommate in the shower... together. Now they could have been good friends just trying to conserve water. But there's more. What if this congressman has also been caught by TMZ cameras trolling gay bars?

"Now what if you know that this very same guy, the darling of the GOP, has also voted against repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, opposed the repeal of DOMA, is against gay marriage; and for the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would add language to the US Constitution banning gay marriage and would likely strike down every gay rights law and ordinance in the country? Are we still not allowed to out him?

"Let me ask another question. Doesn't the media have an OBLIGATION to expose his hypocrisy? If he had done something so hypocritical and he wasn't gay, wouldn't we demand journalists do their job? But they can't... because we won't let them. you're not allowed to out ANYONE, we tell them. We've created a situation where even though news organizations know this guy is gay, they can't report it because he hasn't said so on Twitter." - CBS News reporter Itay Hod, writing on his Facebook page last night. In case it's not obvious, Hod is doubtlessly referring to Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL.)

NOTE: I've changed some punctuation and capitalizations in Hod's post for the sake of clarity. Click the above link and read his Facebook post in full in its original form.

UPDATE: Schock has an offer of help.

HomoQuotable - Tam O'Shaughnessy

"It’s scary to be open because you don’t realized the impact that it might have on so many aspects of your life. You worry about grants, about whether you’ll be able to continue writing children’s textbooks; we were scared that if sponsors knew the founders of Sally Ride Science were two lesbians, if that would affect our organization. I wanted to ensure Sally’s legacy reflected the integrity in which she lived her life. For her not to be open in this one way felt wrong." - Tam O'Shaughnessy [background in photo], on the decision to out Ride in her obituary. O'Shaughnessy says Ride left it up to her. "‘You decide,’ she said and that shocked me. That girl was great about surprises."

Today Sally Ride and Bayard Rustin, the gay black man who organized the 1963 March On Washington, will posthumously receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

HomoQuotable - Javier Suarez Pascagaza

"We do not see [gays] as being a family or married or an integral part of the social fabric but as needing clinical, psychiatric, medical and spiritual care, if possible, to help acknowledge their condition so that they can reverse it and recover their gender identity. I don't think God created homosexuals. That would be an evil God." - Colombia's leading anti-gay activist Javier Suarez Pascagaza, who has been outed by classmates at the seminary he once attended. As the director of Colombia's Husband & Wife Foundation, Suarez filed unsuccessful lawsuits in attempts to overturn the few same-sex marriages granted there so far. Hit the link and read the full story at Blabbeando.

New York Times Slams Gawker For Hunting Down Shepard Smith's Boyfriend

David Carr writes at the New York Times:

What if Gawker tried to out an anchor at Fox News and no one cared? Cue the innuendo, the salacious follow-ups and the specter of mainstream media outlets picking up the item with a pair of tweezers. Except after the post was published, there was nothing but crickets, other than a piece in Slate wondering aloud why Gawker had bothered. Otherwise, there was no significant pickup, and no broad expression of outrage. We know why: The culture has moved on. People see other people who happen to be gay at their workplaces, in their schools and on their televisions. Somewhere along the way, what was once a scarlet letter became just another consonant in the personal résumé. And now that gay marriage is a fact of life, a person’s sexual orientation is not only not news, it’s not very interesting.

Carr continues:

The frisson of the Gawker tidbit was supposed to derive from the contextual equation — Fox News + gay = hypocrisy — but the channel has hardly been of one voice on the issue and there is no indication that it has any special obsession with sexual orientation, like, say, Gawker. From what I can tell, Fox News has done a decent job of representing the broad range of conservative views on same-sex marriage and seems to have, along with the rest of the country, evolved. Bill O’Reilly, who once suggested that gay marriage could lead to nuptials between humans and turtles, has come around to the point that in March, he said he had been convinced that the government should not decide who should marry.

While Carr is correct in that Gawker's piece has generated relatively little attention in the teabag-o-sphere, I'd chalk that up to those sites providing cover for their holy news channel. And Fox's "decent job" of covering same-sex marriage usually involves giving air time to vile hate group leaders. (Something CNN is guilty of as well, not incidentally.) Otherwise, I agree that I can't see the point in hounding some kid who has done nothing worse than taking a low level job at Fox News.

Mike Rogers Outs Sen. John Barrasso

Outing kingpin Mike Rogers, who has an unblemished record in these things, yesterday posted the above tweet about GOP Sen. John Barrasso, who has a 15% rating from the Human Rights Campaign. Rogers has not yet expounded on his claim. Barrasso, a former Wyoming state senator, was appointed to the US Senate in 2007 after the death of GOP Sen. Craig Thomas. The following year he won the special election to fill the remainder of Thomas' term and he was reelected last year with 76% of the vote. With three children from his first wife, Barrasso remarried in 2008 before the special election. (Ahem.) He vehemently opposes same-sex marriage and voted against the repeal of DADT. Last fall the Vote Smart project wrote: "John Barrasso refused to tell citizens where he stands on any of the issues addressed in the 2012 Political Courage Test, despite repeated requests from Vote Smart, national media, and prominent political leaders."