What I really hope for, ultimately, is that the closet will be a non-factor in American politics in a couple of decades.

There's a whole gay culture in DC, and there are as many gay Republicans as there are gay Democrats.

I do think there are very few extreme right-wing gay Republicans. Although it depends how you define "extreme right-wing." They're making a political calculation.

The closet exists because people don't talk about it, so that people going into political careers make a calculation early on. They say to themselves, "well, the closet is under the radar, I can do this."

What I really hope for, ultimately, is that the closet will be a non-factor in American politics in a couple of decades.

The upside of being in the closet is that you develop skills of duplicity, which are great for big-time politicians.

What I don't understand is how a policy against outing trumps a policy of reporting. Whenever you're reporting on hypocrisy, you're kind of 'outing' something to begin with.