THE BAITING GAME

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Why are these episodes happening now? Partly because the defeats on same-sex marriage and workplace discrimination raised bitter questions about whether closeted gay lawmakers were guilty of hypocrisy. "If Sarah Brady owned a handgun, would you write about it?" asks Frank, who tumbled out of the closet years ago. Thus Arthur Finkelstein, the mastermind behind the campaigns of antigay conservatives, was outed last month by Boston magazine. And there is the ever more permeable barrier between public discourse and the upwardly churning tides of gossip. At the Washington headquarters of the gay G.O.P. organization Log Cabin Republicans, executive director Richard Tafel says the traffic these days in gay-sex rumors is bumper to bumper, especially on the not exactly authoritative Internet. "These names come out of nowhere," says Tafel. "Rumors have grown exponentially in cyberspace, where you don't have to be responsible for what you say."

As backdrop to the latest episodes of who sleeps with whom, there is also the pre-emptive self-outing of divorced Arizona Congressman Jim Kolbe. Two weeks after voting for the bill restricting gay marriage, Kolbe, a Republican, went public with his homosexuality, which had been an open secret around Washington, to pre-empt an article that he knew was coming in the national gay magazine Advocate. Kolbe later won a primary race, but with well under the 80% margin he had enjoyed over the same candidate two years ago.

Maybe the worst thing about campaign-season outing--whether it brings out the truth or spreads a usable lie--is that it depends upon a climate in which simply labeling someone a homosexual is an insult. The tactic won't work on the day when calling someone gay might be an error but not an accusation. "The sad thing in all this," says Tafel, "is that everybody involved believes that being 'charged' with being gay is bad." Republicans may have fostered that climate. Will Democrats be any better if they turn it to their advantage?