Outing Yourself by Michelangelo Signorile

Their defence contended that there was no libel as no accusation had been made, rather than arguing that the accusation was true. The newspaper responded that columnist William Connor Template:'s words (written under his byline 'Cassandra') did not imply that Liberace was gay. For example, in 1957 American pianist Liberace, successfully sued the Daily Mirror for merely insinuating that he was gay. Outing may be found to be libel by a court of law. Vandenberg Jr., who had briefly served as President Eisenhower's Appointments Secretary. Among the political figures targeted by the magazine were former Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles and Arthur H. In the 1950s during the Lavender Scare, tabloid publications like Confidential emerged, specializing in the revelation of scandalous information about entertainment and political celebrities. Left-wing journalists outed Adolf Hitler's closest ally Ernst Röhm in the early 1930s, causing Brand to write, 'when someone - as teacher, priest, representative, or statesman - would like to set in the most damaging way the intimate love contacts of others under degrading control - in that moment his own love-life also ceases to be a private matter and forfeits every claim to remain protected hence-forward from public scrutiny and suspicious oversight.' United States Harden's accusations incited other journalists to follow suit, including Adolf Brand, founder of Der Eigene. Left-wing journalists opposed to Kaiser Wilhelm II's policies outed a number of prominent members of his cabinet and inner circle-and by implication the Kaiser-beginning with Maximilian Harden's indictment of the aristocratic diplomat Prince Eulenburg. The Harden–Eulenburg affair of 1907–1909 was the first public outing scandal of the twentieth century.

Before the Christian era, sodomy was not illegal in Greek or, most believe, in Roman law, between adult citizens, but homosexual acts between citizens were considered acceptable only under certain social circumstances. Outing was a common put-down of Greek and Roman orators. While the term is recent, the practice goes back much further. Henry III in Time (January 29, 1990) introduced the term 'outing' to the general public. The article 'Forcing Gays Out of the Closet' by William A. In a 1982 issue of Harper's, Taylor Branch predicted that 'outage' would become a political tactic in which the closeted would find themselves trapped in a crossfire. It is hard to pinpoint the first use of outing in the modern sense.

Outing Yourself by Michelangelo Signorile