[Typed in by Todd Gross (tag@cs.utexas.edu)] -=-=- -=-=- -=-=- -=-=- -=-=- -=-=- -=-=- -=-=- -=-=- -=-=- Roehr, Bob, "Attempted outing of Oklahoma senator provides lesson", _The Texas Triangle_, volume 1, number 40, July 14, 1993, Austin, TX, pp 1,11 WASHINGTON, DC --- Self-described "media whore" Michael Petrelis of Queer Nation called a press conference for July 12th, outside room of the Russel Senate Office Building. His purpose was to "out" its occupant, Oklahoma Democratic Senator David Boren, as gay. Senate rules prohibit such activities in the corridor. The Sergeant at Arms asked if Boren would make a conference room available and he agreed. Petrelis had decided that "we have to play some serious hard ball politics before the compromise goes down" on lifting the ban on gays and lesbians serving in the military. That is likely to happen on July 15. "We're going down in flames and this queen wants to be loud and vicious about it" says Petrelis. No one has ever accused Petrelis of being shy and retiring. The only problem with the "outing" was a lack of proof. He hadn't talked directly with anyone who had claimed to have been harassed or had sex with Boren. There was no one with such first hand knowledge willing to speak with reporters on the record, or even on a protected background basis. Dan Webber, Boren's press secretary, said that because there were no specific charges, the senator's office was "not going to dignify it with a response." Petrelis claimed that Boren was the Senator profiled in Michelangelo Signorile's book _Queer in America_ who hit on many of the attractive young male members of his staff in both the Washington and the district offices. Signorile would neither confirm nor deny Petrelis' claim that Boren was the senator he wrote about, a policy he has regarding all unnamed persons and aliases used in the book. Meanwhile, in Oklahoma City, the statewide group Simply Equal hald an afternoon press conference at the Capitol. Their focus was on the issue of sexual harassment. "Homosexuality is not an issue with us. As far as we are concerned, he [Boren] was outed fifteen years ago" is the way Simply Equal spokesman Terry Gatewood put it. He says it is obvious to any Oklahoman reading Signorile's book that Boren was the senator being described. After all, "Boren is the only one who ever held a press conference to deny he was homosexual," according to Gatewood. Simply Equal is calling for an investigation of the charges of sexual harassment and for the victims to step forward to aid in the investigation. Gatewood says that the identity of the person Signorile called "Keith" is known be several people and it is only a matter of time before "Keith" and others speak publicly. "Oh my God, those poor boys" was the way the women at Gatewood's mother's bridge group reacted to the news. They were surprised by the charge of harassment, not that of homosexuality. This is not the first time that juicy rumors of homosexuality have dogged Boren, nor the first time that those rumors have not been substantiated. This is what can be pieced together from news clips, discussions with a scholar who was politically active in Oklahoma in the 1970s, and trading rumors with other sources. It is a mass of innuendo worthy of a soap opera. Some trace it back to the mid-1970s when the state prison at McAlester burned down in a riot. Then-Governor Boren talked of reform and decentralizing the prison system. State Senator Gene Stipe, who represented McAlester, didn't take too kindly to the charge that all of the guards' jobs there were state patronage positions which he controlled. They were a significant part of his political base. Stipe is said to have bugged the governor's hotel room at the Southern Governor's Conference in 1976. He was hoping to get something on Boren's dealings with the state's powerful oil interests, but what he got allegedly involved another type of scandal. The tape supposedly revealed a liaison with a male member of the governor's staff, a man Boren had met when he was a Rhodes Scholar. Boren's wife filed for divorce in 1976. It was granted quickly and quietly, and she took the children and moved to Dallas. Boren decided to run for the U.S. Senate in 1978. Stipe joined the race, primarily as a vendetta against Boren, some say. At one point Stipe set a major news conference that was supposed to blow his opponent's campaign right out of the water, but it was canceled. Some speculate that Stipe stumbled on the fact he would have to explain the legality of how he obtained his tape, while others say that Boren somehow stole it and Stipe was left empty-handed. Boren ended the controversy by standing on the steps of the Capitol, hand on the family Bible, swearing that he was not a homosexual. The _Tulsa World_ captured it all with a photo and the headline "Boren issues denial on questions of abnormal sexuality" on the front page of its August 11 edition. In 1978, that was enough for Oklahomans. So when reporters raised the fact that similar allegations were made in 1978 but weren't proved, Petrelis responded with the sound bite, "They weren't disproved either. If I'm wrong I'll eat the Bible that Boren swore on." Beyond the humor associated with this melodrama is the serious issue of sexual harassment. What is particularly upsetting about these alleged incidents of harassment is the negative view it presents to the public of gay people. They play to the false stereotypes of an older gay man preying upon younger ones unsure of their sexual identity. It perpetrates an image of recruitment, of corrupting the innocent, of being gay as something bad, something to be ashamed of and hidden. If the senator described by Signorile does in fact turn out to be David Boren, if the allegations raised at the news conferences in Washington and Oklahoma are true, they would constitute an abuse of power but not necessarily any illegal action. Ironically, any possible illegality would likely center upon the sodomy laws of the jurisdictions within which the acts would have taken place. So ends this morality tale of outing, which started with a desire to influence the debate on gays in the military and is rippling into a much broader domain. What conclusions can be drawn? That life is complex, that different people can do the same thing for different reasons, and that life can indeed be stranger than fiction.