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i would echo the above (and my own ambivalence about the tactic)...it presupposes, reinforces--legitimates even--exactly the homphobia that one would imagine it to be combatting if you allow yourself to stay entirely within the logic of the tactic itself. the responses it would elicit would not be symmetrical with the intent of the act---you would probably get a shitstorm, but in the main it would be a homophobic shitstorm, the source of which would not necessarily be "pillory the hypocrite" but rather "pillory the queer".
do you really think, for example, that evangelical protestants--who would react to outing these folk--would do so in the main for the reasons that you would prefer?
and if one were to try to explain the motives--and so try to shape the responses--the tactic would be revealed in ways that line up with what loquitor is saying above.
had maher just thought this up and done it, you could have said that the consequences would be of the order of unanticipated consequences. but he didnt. at this point, the consequences, in all their perversity, would be predictable.
it is a bad tactic.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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