The Mad Professah Lectures

Mr Schock, who is 33, was for a while the youngest member of Congress and remains the only one to appear semi-shirtless on the cover of Men’s Healthmagazine, revealing what the journal called “ripped” abs. His Instagram account showed him dancing the tango in Buenos Aires and surfing in Hawaii.
This whirl of politics, jet-set travel and donor-stroking (he was one of the top five House Republican fundraisers in 2013) began to unravel in February, after his interior designer gave the Washington Post a chatty tour of Mr Schock’s offices on Capitol Hill, revealing deep-red walls, gilded sconces with black candles and an arrangement of pheasant feathers—all inspired by the TV drama “Downton Abbey”. Reporters began to dig and the Associated Press, ingeniously, matched location data from his Instagram images with flight records and expense claims.Mr Schock soon faced questions about $90,000 in campaign funds spent on private air charters, a taxpayer-funded private flight to a football match and unreported foreign travel. He repaid over $41,000 to the government in office and travel costs. Asked if he had broken the law, he replied: “I certainly hope not.”

The question is, now that he is no longer in  Congress and a political career to defend, will Schock "live his truth'?

Another year, another round of gay rumors about a closeted, homophobic Republican politician. This time the politician in question is Aaron Schock, a.k.a. The Congressman With Abs, who is a Republican representative of the 18th Congressional District of Illinois. Schock has long been the subject of rumors about his sexuality, possibly because he is attractive enough that he catches attention of most gay men, and the fact that he seems more inordinately interested in his appearance than most politicians.

He is also a target because he has repeatedly expressed anti-gay positions and voted to enact those opinions as public policy.

Former CBS Reporter Itay Hod posted the following comments to Facebook, which will work as today's Queer Quote:

people always say, no one has the right to out anyone. that coming out is a private matter. i disagree. as you can imagine, not a very popular opinion. but bear with me.  

here's a hypothetical: what if you know a certain GOP congressman, let's just say from Illinois, is gay... and you know this because one of your friends, a journalist for a reputable network, told you in no uncertain terms that he caught that GOP congressman and his male roommate in the shower... together. now they could have been good friends just trying to conserve water. but there's more. what if this congressman has also been caught by tmz cameras trolling gay bars. now what if you know that this very same guy, the darling of the gop, has also voted against repeal of don’t ask don’t tell, opposed the repeal of doma, is against gay marriage; and for the federal marriage amendment, which would add language to the us constitution banning gay marriage and would likely strike down every gay rights law and ordinance in the country? 

Are we still not allowed to out him? 

As I have said before many times, I do believe in outing people. In this case, things have become even more interesting  since Rep. Schock responded to this Facebook posting going viral and the associated increased attention to his social media posts along with by making his Instagram account private.

I do not have a problem with someone outing Aaron Schock, but I do have a problem with reporting about someone's sexuality without using the same journalistic ethics that one would use to report any other fact. Hod is not reporting any first-hand knowledge that he has of Schock's sexuality (which is obviously difficult to obtain) but he also does not have multiple identifiable sources supporting the assertion that Schock is gay.