Editing Outing (section)

==Motives==
{{NPOV|Presents Signorile's moral postulates in support of outing LGBTQ individuals as factual.|date=February 2023}}

[[Gabriel Rotello]], once editor of ''OutWeek'', explained outing as "equalizing", stating: "what we have called 'outing' is a primarily journalistic movement to treat homosexuality as equal to heterosexuality in the media".<ref>{{cite news |last1=Rotello |first1=Gabriel |title=Why I Oppose Outing |work=OutWeek |date=May 29, 1991}}</ref>

Signorile described OutWeek's aim as an awareness raiser of the presence of gay people and political issues. The goal would be that being [[gay]] and [[lesbian]] is not "so utterly grotesque that it should never be discussed." (Signorile, p.&nbsp;78) Signorile posits that outing is not the airing of private details.<ref name="Signorile, p. 80">Signorile, p.&nbsp;80</ref>

Richard Mohr noted, "Some people have compared outing to [[McCarthyism]]..such outing feeds gays to the wolves, who thereby are made stronger....But the sort of outing I have advocated does not invoke, mobilize, or ritualistically confirm anti-gay values; rather it cuts against them." Thus Mohr argues that outing is "both permissible and an expected consequence of living [[morally]]."<ref>Mohr, Richard. ''Gay Ideas: Outing and Other Controversies'', Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.</ref>

In the context of [[Killing of Ali Fazeli Monfared|Ali Fazeli Monfared's murder]], Tara Far, a human rights investigator in [[Iran]] and [[Kuwait]], has described outing as "dangerous" within societies where the LGBTQ community is not protected by law, or families that do not accept the individual. Shadi Amin described the military exemption card as a danger to Monfared in her petition to the Iranian government to remove the sexuality information.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Gay Iranian man dead in alleged 'honor killing,' rights group says |url=https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/gay-iranian-man-dead-alleged-honor-killing-rights-group-says-n1266995 |access-date=2023-02-26 |website=NBC News |date=11 May 2021 |language=en}}</ref>

There is no widely agreed definition of '''"fair outing"'''. Warren Johansson and William Percy describe least four intermediate positions have been described to justify outing:<ref>Johansson & Percy, p.&nbsp;228</ref>
<blockquote>
# Only the dead;
# [[Hypocrite]]s only, and only when they actively oppose gay rights and interests;
# Outing passive accomplices who help run homophobic institutions;
# Prominent individuals whose outing would shatter [[stereotype]]s and compel the public to reconsider its attitude on homosexuality.
</blockquote>
Assessing to which degree the outer goes allows insight into the goal striven towards. Most outers target those who support decisions and further policy, both [[religious]] and [[secular]], which discriminate against gay people while they themselves live a [[wikt:clandestine|clandestine]] gay existence. A "truism to people active in the gay movement [is] that the greatest impediments to homosexuals' progress often [are] not heterosexuals, but closeted homosexuals," said [[San Francisco]] journalist [[Randy Shilts]].<ref>Johansson & Percy, p.&nbsp;226</ref><blockquote>[[United Kingdom|British]] activist [[Peter Tatchell]] says "The lesbian and gay community has a right to defend itself against public figures who abuse their power and influence to support policies which inflict suffering on homosexuals." In 1994 Tatchell's activist group [[OutRage!]] alleged that fourteen bishops of the [[Church of England]] were homosexual or bisexual and named them, accusing them of hypocrisy for upholding the Church's policy of regarding homosexual acts as [[sinful]] while not observing this prohibition in their personal lives.
"Outing is [[queer]] self-defence," Tatchell said in a 1995 speech to the [[Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement]] conference. "Lesbians and gay men have a right, and a duty, to expose hypocrites and homophobes. By not outing gay Bishops who support policies which harm homosexuals, we would be protecting those Bishops and thereby allowing them to continue to inflict suffering on members of our community. Collusion with hypocrisy and homophobia is not ethically defensible for Christians, or for anyone else."<ref>{{cite web |last=Tatchell |first=Peter |date=28 April 1995 |title=Outing Is A Catalyst For Social Change |url=https://www.petertatchell.net/lgbt_rights/outing/catalyst/ |access-date=15 January 2020 |work=petertatchell.net}}</ref></blockquote>