Bless me Dubya for I have sinned

Andrew Sullivan is unhappy with gay people who keep their identity secret and in so doing empower those who would seek to persecute them:

I am actually tired of hearing from all these gay priests who refuse to use their names and give blind quotes to the press. Memo to them: your silence is empowering Benedict and the forces of bigotry ... If you cannot speak truth to unprincipled power, why are you priests in the first place?

Andrew Sullivan is unhappy with gay people who are unhappy with gay people who keep their identity secret and in so doing empower those who would seek to persecute them:

GAY PATRIOT SILENCED: I don't buy everything that GayPatriot writes; and his rhetoric can be a little much at times. But it's a shame he has been intimidated by the gay far-left into ending his blogging. A shame but unsurprising. If the gay "outers" spent a fraction of the time they spend attacking other gay people actually making the case for equality to straight people, the world would be a better place.

What's the difference? In the first case, the Supreme Authority is the Pope. In the second, it's the Holy Texan Emperor. For complete background on the Gay Patriot case and the role of fealty to George Bush in driving it, see Sullywatch.

UPDATE 14 OCT: The duc de Sully returns to this issue, in the context of closeted gay senior Republicans:

As readers know, I don't believe in forcibly outing other gay men and women. But I do strongly believe that those gay men and women now in powerful positions in the Republican party have a pressing moral responsibility to be out to their bosses and colleagues and public. The head of the Log Cabin Republicans, Patrick Guerrerio, has just written a stirring call for these people to realize that they have a unique responsibility at this point in history ...

Sacrifice for something more important than your own comfort level. No one should be forced into a decision he or she feels uncomfortable with. But that doesn't mean and shouldn't mean that the Republican gay closet is morally defensible. It is increasingly a failure to do what is simply right at a time when so many in the GOP are intent on doing wrong.

Having just pitched it as a powerful moral issue, is his position really that far removed from the outers? And note his carefully stated requirement that senior gay Republicans should be out not just to their bosses, but also the public. Just who does he have in mind? Could be it that his own reading habits have become similar to those Sun readers who take it only for the sports pages?