OUR first black president could be followed by our first gay president — that’s the provocative, and highly debatable, assertion in Kirby Dick’s political outing documentary “Outrage.”
Even if you buy Dick’s claim that Florida Gov. Charlie Crist — whose sexuality has been the subject of pointed speculation for years — is one of the leading GOP candidates, there’s the questionable “evidence” Dick presents to claim Crist is a closeted gay.
Two anonymous sources assert Crist — a longtime bachelor who has repeatedly denied he’s gay and who married for the second time last year — hooked up with other men in the past.
Why is Dick — best known for “This Film Is Not Yet Rated,” an exposé of the film ratings system — outing Crist and others?
He says Crist is one of numerous closeted pols who have hypocritically compiled negative voting records on gay issues.
Dick’s poster boy is Idaho’s family-values-loving Sen. Larry Craig, who continues to maintain he’s straight even after being arrested by a cop while apparently flirting in an airport men’s room.
Strangely, the documentary holds up former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey, who is interviewed extensively, as something of a role model.
But Dick doesn’t mention that McGreevey’s dramatic coming out was precipitated by a scandal that ultimately forced McGreevey from office: He had hired an alleged former male lover as the state’s director of homeland security.
Unlike McGreevey, most of the film’s targets — from the closeted Roy Cohn, who pursued homosexuals on behalf of Sen. Joe McCarthy, to disgraced Virginia Rep. Ed Schrock — are Republicans.
A notable exception is Democrat Ed Koch, who gay activist David Rothenberg claims ditched his longtime boyfriend. The boyfriend later died of AIDS in San Francisco.
Larry Kramer and others claim Koch — who has always refused to answer questions about his sexuality on grounds of privacy — was indifferent to the AIDS crisis.
But the former mayor, who, strangely, is not interviewed in “Outrage,” defended his record at length recently to Page Six — and reminded readers he was the first mayor to march in the city’s gay-pride parade.
And what is Dick’s excuse for outing one cable news anchor but not a rival counterpart who is far better known? The anchor isn’t antigay, but Dick likes the other network’s politics better.
Hypocrisy? Your call.
OUTRAGE
Who’s in the closet?
Running time: 90 minutes. Not rated (profanity, graphic sexual references). At the Chelsea, 23rd Street and Eighth Avenue.