The practice of outing "conservative" gays always provokes a sick feeling deep in my gut--you know, the kind of feeling you get when something just feels unalterably wrong even though you might not be able to quite put your finger on what precisely is wrong about it.

I'm not talking about Larry Craig, who basically outed himself, but the kind of witch hunt we've been witnessing for years now where the most personal aspect of a person's life are made public to satisfy a political agenda.

I would have like to have written about it, but not being gay myself, I didn't think I could do the subject justice.

Fortunately the Gay Patriot has both the requisite sexuality and the eloquence to provide some real insight into the nature of this peculiar sin--and "sin" is the right word for this. This isn't merely a mistake, and error in judgment or carelessness. It is sadistic, cynical delight in the pain of others.

Even worse, that sadism is being harnessed to advance a political agenda. Comparisons to the Nazis are so overdone that they've become risible, but the fostering hatred and "exposing" enemies of the glorious revolution is pretty typical behavior of some thoroughly unpleasant regimes.

In yesterday’s Washington Post Marc Fisher wrote that such “work requires” the “outers” to “play God” (Via Michael Silence via Instapundit). As if they know better than the rest of us. An attitude not too different from that of religious zealots. Indeed, the very title of the column, focusing on the actions of blogger Michael Rogers, Who Among Us Would Cast the First Stone? This Guy suggests that Rogers has the same certainty of belief as do those judgmental voices on the religious right whom his allies on the left are ever eager to criticize.

Fisher is right to ask, “who elected him moral arbiter?” A question not too different than that many ask of social conservatives eager to label gay people sinners.

Like me, Fisher questions if these outings “liberate anyone” or if they “just add another bolt and chain to the closet door.”

I agree that these outings don’t accomplish much, but wonder at the religious zeal with which the outers attempt to make their case. For they seem to know how all gay people should vote on certain issues. Just as certain social conservatives seem to know how all people should express their sexuailty.

Both groups act as if they know better than the rest of us. And neither seems to understand the complicated lives, the perplexing passions and personal struggles of those whose political beliefs or sexual orientation makes them so uncomfortable.

I have one objection--GP is equivocating between conservatives who object to the gay lifestyle, and left-wing brownshirts who are engaged in an updated version of Krystalnacht.

I may discount the hypocrisy argument, but critics of the GOP seem to celebrate it. As Robbie, now of The Malcontent observed two years ago, “The hypocrisy argument is a tactic used by thought fascists who believe an immutable personal characteristic must dictate – without exception – the ideological and political state of a person’s mind.”

Certainly that is true of left-wing gays, but GP appears to be guilty of much the same frame of mind as it concerns religious conservatives.