Documentary filmmaker Kirby Dick is outraged at the many closeted homosexuals in government who have used their influential positions to support anti-gay legislation, and he takes aim at many of them in Outrage.

Dick’s film is a surprising, sometimes shocking and always entertaining look at the upside-down “do as I say, not as I do” world of people in power who deny and hide their own sexuality by playing an elaborate game of pretending they are something they are not. Although some of his targets deny that they are homosexuals — most famously Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, who was arrested for pandering for sex in a men’s room at the Minneapolis airport — Dick comes up with enough first-person testimony to the contrary to make his case, albeit sometimes using people who are only seen in shadow on screen.

There are times when Outrage seems like the most blatant tell-all ripped from the pages of the supermarket tabloids. Except the supermarket tabloids — and mainstream newspapers, magazines and television news — almost never tell this kind of story. Dick carps that there seems to be some sort of cabal among “respectable” journalists to hide the fact that many senators, congressmen, governors and high-up staffers in Washington are gay. It’s only when someone like New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey or U.S. Rep Jim Kolbe (D-Ariz.) steps forward to reporters to proclaim his sexuality that a spotlight gets shone on the gay angle.

Both McGreevey and Kolbe (and McGreevey’s ex-wife, Dina) give poignant interviews for Dick’s camera. McGreevey is especially moving when he discusses the day he decided to make his announcement and his realization that “the right value isn’t living somebody else’s truth.”

Dick’s focus is not on congressmen whose homosexuality is a matter of public record, although U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) are interviewed about their sexuality. Frank is frank in discussing how when he first came to government prominence he tried to play it both ways — being both publicly gay in the clubs of Washington and closeted to his constituents — and discovering that he couldn’t do both. Kolbe says that when he finally announced his homosexuality in the pages of The Washington Post, it felt like the weight of 40 years was immediately lifted from his shoulders. He was surprised that most of his friends either already surmised he was gay … or didn’t care.

On the other hand, Mary Cheney, the publicly lesbian daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, comes in for some drubbing for having been a paid staffer in the George W. Bush White House, which Outrage depicts as especially hostile to gay interests despite having employed several important staff members who were not only gay but writing and promoting legislation detrimental to homosexuals.

Dick pokes around in the private lives of some of these people who worked behind the scenes — at one point Washington is described as the gayest place in the nation because of all the homosexuals working in government — as well as those who became famous overnight for their transgressions. Among those are Sen. Larry Craig, whom we see denying to the press that he was a homosexual as far back as 1982.

In his film, Dick attempts to create a sea of hypocrisy around some of the gay senators and congressmen, listing their many “no” votes on legislation that would have been beneficial to gays. Then he takes aim at the lives they lead behind closed doors, which seem to be at odds with their public faces, although some of Dick’s evidence seems a mite flimsy and depends on innuendo or unnamed witnesses.

A case in point is Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican who has helped defeat legislation on gay marriage and even gay adoption. Crist’s 1979 marriage ended after six months (Dick says Crist’s ex-wife went on to a relationship with a woman) and whose dates with trophy women only were played up when he was trying to impress voters — such as before an election — or Arizona Sen. John McCain, when Crist felt he had a good shot at being named McCain’s vice presidential running mate. But much as Dick presses on with hints of Crist’s homosexuality and presents clips of reporters asking Crist about his sexuality, nothing quite sticks to the silver-haired governor, who took a bride last December.

Some claim that it doesn’t matter whether a person is gay and votes against pro-gay legislation, because that person is only doing the bidding of his or her constituents … the voice of the majority. Others claim that homosexual legislators should not be playing a game of let’s pretend to the public with the collusion of the news media. As Barney Frank says in an on-screen interview, “It’s important that people who make the law have to live with the law.”

****Outrage

Featuring: Barney Frank, Jim Kolbe, James McGreevey, Tammy Baldwin, Michael Rogers.

Rated: Not rated, contains adult themes.

mjanuson@projo.com