How dare you question the great gay hope?

Timothy Egan in the NYTimes takes on the scandal surrounding Sam Adams, the mayor of Portland and the first homosexual mayor of a major US city:

The politician was in his 40s, a rising star, a man with the pilot light of ambition burning bright. The intern was just 17, sorting through emotions about his sexuality, a boy who said he needed someone to mentor him in the political world.

They had an affair, just kisses at first, the teenager said. And then, after his 18th birthday, sex, and a relationship that was hidden from the public eye.

Came the mayor's race and allegations of the affair. The politician, with the sturdy patriotic name of Sam Adams, denounced the rumors as scurrilous -- they played to the worst stereotypes about homosexual predators, he said. How dare you.

Yeah, how dare you? But, of course, it was true. I'm not all that interested in the scandal itself. Powerful men taking sexual advantage of younger people is a disgusting story, but it's an old story, and it's not just a gay story. What I find interesting is the "how dare you" defense that the cretinous Adams and his defenders used when this story first came out -- you know, the accusation that only a nasty anti-gay bigot could possibly traffic in a story like that, for shame, etc. Critics who point to the inconvenient fact that the Catholic clerical sex abuse scandal was primarily not a matter of pedophilia, but one of adult male priests exploiting sexually mature young males are typically frosted by a blast of "How dare you play to the worst stereotypes about homosexual predators!"

The point here is not to blame the scandal on gays. It was a complex matter, and I think most well-informed Catholics and others place more blame on the culture of clericalism and gutless bishops -- including the egregious and vile Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles, who, it is reported today, is under federal investigation for his role in the cover-up -- than on anything else. Still, it is useful to think about how people use the "how dare you!" line to shut down inquiry that could lead to inconvenient truths. While the culture of clerical homosexuality cannot by itself account for or explain the Catholic sex abuse scandal, the scandal cannot be understood without reference to it, and the central role a secretive culture of homosexuality plays within the relatively closed world of the clergy. It's the elephant in the sacristy.

For a sad and, to me, weird example of how "how dare you!" worked to aid denial from both the cultural left and cultural right in one family, I offer you the case of "Fr. Smith," a seminarian I interviewed in 2002 who was completing his work in a diocesan seminary. He had been in the seminary of a Catholic religious order, whose province was known to Catholic insiders to be particularly gay-friendly. He said the homosexual sex among seminarians was barely concealed; it was known by the seminary administration, which accepted it as a fact of life. It led this seminarian to despair (and ultimately out of that religious order and into a regular diocesan seminary). He told his parents what he was dealing with in the order's seminary, and his own mother and father refused to believe him. I don't have my notes anymore, but as I recall, it wasn't a matter of "how dare you!" about homosexuals, but of "how dare you!" suggest that priests and seminarians would behave that way. In either case, the refusal to admit to the possibility of something that would disturb their inner tranquility kept them from seeing the truth of what their son was telling them. It's a frustratingly familiar dynamic.

Anyway, while it's important not to let stereotypes warp our investigations and analyses, it's equally important not to let fear of stereotypes warp same. Someone once said to me that what makes a stereotype a stereotype is not that it's untrue -- stereotypes often have a basis in truth -- but that people mistakenly assume that the stereotype is the whole truth.