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A double life
Gay right-wing character
assassin comes clean
by
K e v in M o o r e
avid Brock wants to tell the truth.
As a muckraking journalist for the
conservative press during the late 1980s
and early ’90s, he made a name for him
self hy trashing political reputations— most
notably those of Anita Hill and President
Bill Clinton. In both cases, he mostly
relied upon conjecture, distortions,
unreliable witnesses and a poison pen
well suited to the sexual McCarthy-
ism and scandal machinery dogging
the Clinton presidency.
While lying to the rest of the
world, Brock began lying to him
self. As a closeted gay man in an
increasingly homophobic politi
cal culture, he led a precarious
double life. His suppressed emo
tions, isolation and fear of being
outed helped drive his character
assassinations.
Only when faced with a possi
ble outing hy the Washington Post
could Brock begin to tell the tnith,
first confessing his homosexuality
and eventually revealing his role in the C lin
ton scandal machine that forms the basis of
Blinded by the Right: The Conscience o f an Ex-
Conservative (Crown Publishing Group, 2002;
$25.95 hardcover).
Brock recently discussed his new book and
his new conscience with Just Out.
Kevin Moore: You converted from liberal
to conservative in the mid-’80s. Did this new
ideology accommodate your sexual identity?
David Brock: Well, at the University of
Berkeley, it didn’t strike me as a conflict
between the two. Coming to terms with being
gay was relatively easy for me.
At the time I wasn’t aware of the extent to
which the Christian right was a key con
stituency of Ronald Reagan, who struck me as
a more of a Goldwater edition of “live and let
live” libertarianism. And, of course, the Christ
ian Coalition hadn’t been founded yet.
The gay issue... wasn’t as much of a political
issue in the country as it
became towards the late ’80s....
It wasn’t until the Soviet
Union fell that the Republican
Party started to adopt explicit
gay-hashing tactics.
W hen I got to Washing
ton, I gradually got hack in
the closet. It wasn’t at first a
conscious decision, hut I
found myself doing that over
time.
KM: You describe it as
“living like a cockroach.”
D B : By the late '8 0 s...I was
leading a double life. Everyone
I knew [who] was gay and
Republican...was doing the same thing.
Nobody was out professionally or was integrat
ing their personal life with their professional or
public life.
There was a somewhat integrated bar scene.
Gay conservatives were able to go to gay bars
and not really fear they were going to he outed.
That was considered a “safe zone.”
But it became more difficult over
time...there was an inevitable collision course
I was on: By the time I became at all known for
David B ro ck ’s new book
tattles on the right wing
my writing, as a figure that would he somewhat
recognizable in Washington, I made the choice
to protect...the position I had in the conserva
tive movement. I had to basically not have
much of a personal life at all.
KM : And that fueled your animus.
D B : Yes, an unfortunate consequence was
that this misdirected emotion fed some of the
anger that was in the writing I was doing at
the time.
Also, I had never resented the fact that I
was gay until I started to realize that it might
he an impediment to sustaining the position
I had in the conservative m ovem ent...once
1 had a constituency and an audience, 1
started to realize this was definitely problem
atic. T h at lasted a couple years until I came
out in early '94-
KM : And even that you had to “spin”—
D B : Right. Troopergate [Clinton’s alleged
use of the Arkansas State
Police to solicit women] came
out in December of ’93— an
unprecedented invasion into a
president’s private life involv
ing allegations of consensual
sexual errors— so there was a
way into the question of my
private life. I was basically “out
ing" Clinton, so I was fair
game.
Even though I was closeted,
it’s still impossible in a small
town like Washington for every
one not to know. So The Ameri
can Spectator [Brock’s employer]
got a few calls from the gay
press. Then Frank Rich wrote a
column for the New York Times which was inter
preted hy some as a thinly disguised outing.
I decided to come out to get ahead of a
story [in the Post] and tell it my own way
rather than have it told for me. To give it an
added twist and to get conservative support
was to blame Frank Rich— that I was being
penalized...becau se I was a conservative. It
worked to the extent that several prominent
conservatives took my side of it and “heat up"
Rich while defending me.