Should we out celebrities who pretend to be straight?

One day we will look back at this era and wonder how the whole world can be so blind, how we can, for so long, deny the obvious. A large percentage of celebrities in acting, music and dance are gay. By all indications, this has been true through the ages. Yet, by some unwitting conspiracy between them and the mass media, the men have pretend-girlfriends, and the women have pretend-boyfriends, and everybody goes about reinforcing the straight norm.

Singapore has more than its fair share of such nonsense. Television actors get the brunt of gay gossip. There is so much talk, often first-hand reportage, that if you go by the saying, "there's no smoke without fire", then boy, do we have some flaming beauties at TCS (Television Corporation of Singapore). Except that everybody denies it.

The silly media go on about who is now dating who else, always opposite-sex of course. They do interviews with the (male) stars and ask them what attributes they are looking for in their future wives and how serious they are with their current girlfriends ... everything, as you no doubt have noticed, on the assumption that he is straight. And the damn thing is that the stars and TCS' management (which from reports I've received, are very homophobic) play along with it since they too want to put out that goody heterosexual image.

This of course only fuels the gossip mill. And Singapore is a small place. Worse, increasingly, with the internet and all, gay community talk has become very easy.

I have heard accounts from friends who have seen TCS stars with their own eyes, maybe held them in their own arms, at the Babylon sauna in Bangkok. Now, I ask you, what is someone doing in a gay bath-house, with no more than a towel, unless he's gay? There are even more numerous reports of them being spotted at the famous hunting ground of East Coast Park.

Rumours have been circulating about a lead actor being gay for years. Let's call him Brent Lim. He's being presented by the station and the lapdog media as someone the female fans should absolutely die for, and magazines speculate to no end about which lucky girl he's currently seeing.

Well, just over a month ago, I bumped into someone in a Bangkok gay bar who said, "The last time I was here, Brent Lim came in and sat just behind me."

That particular bar celebrates sleaze. It's deep in an alley, and you don't 'accidentally' end up there.

"How sure are you that it was him?" I asked.

"He was no further from me than you are now. I'm sure. 110%," he said. "Of course he didn't know I was Singaporean and that I knew the face just like that!"

I'm a careful person. I discounted the tale to 90% sure. Corroboration still needed.

As it turned out, I mentioned this juicy gossip to an old friend a few weeks later. And he said, "Well, I have another story for you about Brent Lim"

"Tell me, then," I said, all ears.

"You know Arun right? Well, he apparently saw a promotional video for a gay cruise -- you know there are these tours organised in America -- and this video had a shot of happy customers coming down the gangway at the end of a cruise. Who did he see walking down with a potato, but Brent Lim! He's a potato queen!"

You are supposed to gasp at hearing that.

Earlier this month, a newspaper carried an exclusive interview, under a big headline "I almost became gay" with, well, I won't name him, so let's call him Nasir. In the article, he "confessed that he almost became gay, if not for his close friendship", with, well, let's call her Jane, who has been his "current flame for the past 7 years." [translated from Malay]

Nasir was quoted as saying, "When I saw them [female dancers and models] undressing backstage, I was never tempted. I look at women, just like I look at men -- everything's the same."

When asked when he would propose to her, he admitted that the issue of marriage did crop up late last year, not because of pressure from any side, but because of the realisation that age was catching up with them. "But we realised that as entertainers, there are many challenges to be faced," citing both sides' career demands and the need to deepen their individual ties with their respective families as factors.

When this news was posted on Singapore's gay and lesbian cyberforum, there was a small explosion of outrage.

One said, "I was totally flabbergasted when I read the article ... I felt like e-mail[ing] him and ask[ing] him to shut up! ... After all, who would know him better than I do... well, put it this way...we used to work hand in hand!"

"Of course, he's trying to cover his **se and to cool down unwarranted attention in the media."

"But, he should know better than [making] such a statement as 'I almost became gay'. It's totally irksome...where the hell he got that statement from...he should be given a slap with a **ick! ... Just wait and see....if I meet up with him one of these days...he surely will 'kena' from me!"

Another writer reported that Nasir "once made a pass at me (I'm male). The attention didn't do much to my ego, because he is not my type."

A lot of people, including gay men and women, would take the position that we should keep quiet and leave them alone. They are entitled to their privacy and their views.

Well, it isn't so simple. First of all, they are media personalities. They cultivate their exposure. They have consciously chosen to trade their privacy for riches. The question that should be weighed must be whether they are then entitled to the same degree of privacy as you, me, and the two gay teachers living next door.

Secondly, if, to further their own selfish interests, they use the media attention that they get in a manner which reinforces the heterosexual norm, then it has adverse consequences on gay and lesbian people. They are further marginalised through invisibility. Worse yet, when a personality like 'Nasir' makes a statement "I almost became gay", he is actually saying that one can become gay. This attitude is used to justify restrictions on free speech by gay people, censorship of gay issues and gay characters in films and the criminalisation of gay sex, because people continue to believe, mistakenly, that 'vulnerable' young persons can be led astray to turn homosexual. It is used to justify the gagging and effective disenfranchisement of a section of our population. They whole thing then feeds into pressure by parents on their gay children to deny themselves, at great cost to the emotional health and self-esteem of generations of gay people.

In other words, if someone says "I almost became gay" in a newspaper, this is not an innocent statement. It produces victims.

This is free speech, you may say. Alright then, victims should have free speech too, for their own self-defence. Gay and lesbian people would be quite justified then to say to the media, hey, this 'Nasir' guy -- he's talking a crock of shit, he's homosexual.

This is known as outing someone. It is highly controversial, particularly as to where to draw the lines. However, even in the West, it is usually not a tactic aimed at media personalities, because the damage they do by their pretence and lies are indirect at worst. The debate tends to arise when politicians, bureaucrats, senior military officers, and other persons with authority act in an anti-gay manner. They may pass laws or write new regulations that are aimed against gay people. Sometimes, these authority figures are closet homosexuals themselves, but to preserve their jobs or enhance their chances of promotion or win votes (if they are politicians), they willingly speak out or act against the interests of the gay community.

In response, the community may feel justified to out them.

There will be the argument that outing them merely attacks the man; it does not engage the issue of whether the proposed law or regulation, or the ideas behind them, are right. It creates bitterness without dealing with the substance of the issue. This is a fair rebuttal and should certainly be considered carefully.

But even so, there is one more angle to take into account. It is the question of disclosure of self-interest. For example, if a company wishes to do business with a supplier, except that one of the partners of the supply company is the wife of a senior manager in the first company, then that senior manager must disclose his personal stake in the matter and remove himself from influencing the decision on whether to buy from the supplier. If a magazine carries a story about a merger between two publishing companies, and the magazine is a subsidiary of one of them, the story should volunteer the fact. If a judge assigned to a civil case discovers that his son is somehow involved with one side, he must remove himself from the case. This kind of obligation has a name: integrity.

If a closet homosexual police superintendent sets up an anti-gay entrapment campaign, or a civil servant proposes new rules to deny promotion to unmarried persons, it is a fair presumption that they do it to earn their stripes. Integrity says they should publicly declare their private interest in the matter. If they don't, others may rightly do it for them.

© Yawning Bread 

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