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By Republican-bashing on big topics like gay marriage and AIDS-funding, [director Kirby] Dick avoids exploring ideas. Outrage diminishes crucial, non-partisan gay-identity issues of fear, guilt and self-acceptance.

"One can at least partly embrace the concept that outing pols who torpedo gay rights is defensible and still find Dick's film too frequently a would-be sensationalistic bit of tut-tutting for queer Dems and their politically-connected friends." - Bill Weber

Instead of offering interesting commentary on the psyche of the closeted conservative homosexual politician and their choice in anti-gay policy positions, we have a film that just seeks to out closeted conservative gays. Even worse, Dick goes beyond politicians, and without much evidence, outs Fox News anchor Shep Smith. Dick's unnecessary drubbing and outing of Smith and careful exclusion of anchors like Anderson Cooper show his partisan leanings. Pass on this one.

While I appreciate the film's goals of trying to illustrate how harmful a closeted and self-hating homosexual can be in the political world I feel that the main problem, that of homosexuality taught to be horribly evil is simply glossed over. There is a reason that people are still in the closet and it is a culture that teaches any sexual orientation besides straight is a sin. Outing homosexual politicians simply feels more like treating a symptom rather than addressing the heart of the problem.

Kirby Dick stays behind the camera for this doc on the fascinating and seldom-explored topic of closeted politicians. It really is unfathomable to a rational-thinking person how any individual could poison their existence and self-worth by not just living a lie, but manipulating the laws of the land to take rights from people who they would be if they were only true to themselves. Rather frustrating.

Everyone should see this. It boils down to this: There are closeted gay Republicans who vote anti-gay. It's sort of exhilarating--albeit a little bit mean--to watch increasingly evil men get what by all accounts should probably be coming to them through cosmic justice anyway. Seriously, Congress should vote for equality regardless of party, but that's a different movie.

A piece of advocacy journalism by Dick, a name-naming witch hunt to ferret out closeted gay politicians who in public life work against the cause of gay rights. This is of course an interesting phenomenon worth examining and understanding, though Dick prefers to skim over the examining and the understanding in order to get down to the condemning. With the aid of allies, tattletales, and gaydar, he states a strong case. Or anyhow he states the case strongly.

Pretty powerful argument 4 outing closeted politicians, the film does a lot more than detail the increasingly familiar hypocrisies of Larry Craig-types; but connects some pretty convincing dots between the corrosive, self-hating effects of choosing 2 remain closeted 4 power & the destructive policies 2 the gay community that often follow.

I don't particularly care for the position, but I appreciate the underlying cause, and the transparency and tolerance that it encourages. The huge conflict in America over gay rights is sadly repetitive given the history of strife resulting from unequal consideration.

'Outrage' is one of those weird examples of how a film can get less entertaining by making your case too well. Everything Kirby Dick has to say in this film is completely valid, and he does so with some overwhelming proof. The only problem is, as a documentary, there is only so much to say about the topic and too much time to do it. It ends up repeating itself, not bringing up any new arguments, just making the same ones over and over. The topic is interesting and the doc is slick, but too long.

Dick has to traffic in a lot of hearsay and innuendo to make his points, but he's on to something in examining the way that these political figures gladly, callously, heartlessly use bigoted policy statements as bulwarks to preserve their own power. On the basis of the interviews he got, he may have been able to create something more meaningful if he had settled for a sober-minded survey of the current state of gay issues in American politics. The urge for stunning revelation grows tiresome.