Just got done watching Outrage, documentarian Kirby Dick’s look at politicians—most of them, unsurprisingly, Republican and male—who promulgate hate and legal discrimination against gays even as they, well, fuck other men.


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A couple of Arizonas appear in the film; one is Neil Giuliano, the openly gay Republican former mayor of Tempe, a voice of reason who serves as a talking head throughout.

More interesting is Outrage’s case study on Jim Kolbe, the former Arizona congressman who in 1996 outed himself just as the Advocate was about to do it for him, in the wake of his pro vote on an anti-gay bill.

Kolbe remained in Congress for almost a decade before retiring before the 2006 election. (His seat is now held by Gabrielle Giffords.)

In the film, he discusses how easy it became to tell his friends and colleagues about his sexuality—that something he dreaded turned out not to be such a big deal.

“Probably the most uplifting experience I ever had. I felt literally 40 years lifting of my shoulders,” Kolbe says at one point.

He goes out of his way to mention John McCain: “I remember John McCain, who when I started to say, ‘John, there’s something I really need to talk to you about …’, he just put up his hand and said, ‘Oh, never mind, Jim, I know. It doesn’t make any difference, you’re a good legislator, you’ve always been, and you’re always gonna be my friend.’”

Outrage doesn’t go into what Kolbe thinks about McCain’s virulently anti-gay voting record, or the hypocrisy of McCain’s feeling that it’s okay for gays to serve as GOP congressmen but not, say, in the military.

Here’s the film’s trailer: