Outrage: Good movie!

Tonight I went to a screening of the documentary Outrage, which looks at closeted politicians and the detrimental effects of their closetedness on the rest of society. I felt especially inclined to attend because two of the three clubs of which I am a member, the Media & Entertainment Club and the Q+ Gay/Straight Alliance, co-sponsored the event.

It was good. I've seen several left-leaning documentaries in may day, and often they suffer from being too clouded in agenda and too lacking in research and reason. Outrage, while not balanced, did a pretty nice job of sourcing; I learned a lot and came away angry and convinced that closeted politicians who espouse venomous anti-gay rhetoric and push anti-gay agendas are awful hypocrites who should be exposed. I didn't necessarily need this movie to reach that conclusion, but I have to say I didn't realize how widespread this problem is.

I haven't talked politics on this blog, but I'm an increasingly right-leaning fellow who never votes Republican because the GOP hates me, and I refuse to support them out of principle. (For those just tuning in, I'm gay.) My family is all very conservative, and it's a widely known but rarely mentioned point of shame that I've voted Democrat in presidential elections. My parents and brothers tend to bombard me with conservative philosophies (my brother even sent me a conservative manifesto for Christmas). I think they might find it puzzling that I generally agree with their espousals (generally ... certainly not always). I'd love lower taxes, and not to be forced against my will to surrender my earnings to be redistributed to government programs about which I have no say. I am all for privacy and freedom and capitalism and all the rest.

But the gay thing trumps everything else without question -- I'm not going to vote for people who routinely vote against gay marriage, hate-crime laws, adoption rights, etc. (To be clear, I lean left socially on other issues beyond those that affect me.)

Anyway, Outrage is the kind of documentary I wish they would see, even though I could never get them to.