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Amos Lassen wrote on 11/08/2009:

“OUTRAGE”
A Must-See
Amos Lassen
“Outrage” is a must-see documentary. It looks at notable people in American politics that actively fight against any legislation that might help homosexual Americans gain the same equal rights that are enjoyed by everyone else. However, there is a twist here—these politicians are themselves gay and live hypocritical double lives. It is not just politicians who live like this as we all know. The movie also looks at journalists who investigate gay rumors and then go after the guilty with the truth and in doing so force them to come out. The majority of these journalists come from non-mainstream media and this is because the mainstream chooses to ignore these kinds of stories. (This is probably because the mainstream usually has a hand in demonizing something that is not wrong—in this case being gay).
This is a well researched documentary that is totally balanced and the topic is serious. People have died because politicians have voted against funding for AIDS and against hate crime legislation. The politicians that do so and then turn around and lead a gay lifestyle are beyond hateful; they are indeed criminal. Director Kirby Dick uses interviews and news stories to make his point. His attitude is to show us that those who vote no should vote yes. Here is the hypocrisy of the American government at its finest. We know that gay politicians rarely, if ever, emerge from the closet. We have two politicians here who have quite long interviews—Charlie Crist and Larry Craig. They are the frame around which the documentary is built. Crist denies his homosexuality and as governor of Florida he continues to put anti-gay judges on the seats of state courts. Here is an example of internalized self-hatred and this is also film making at its best.
Legislators are elected to represent the people—his sexuality is irrelevant but the voting records are totally hypocritical. The goal of the filmmaker is to catch conservative politicians with high family values with their pants around their ankles. Dick manages to out some of those living in the closet but it does not do so to invite personal lives but to make them accountable for the ways they vote. This is a provocative film which is well researched and extremely caustic. It brings to light a conspiracy that protects the secret lives of some of the most powerful politicians while at the same time ensures that their rights and interests of gays and lesbians remain marginal. There is a lot here about the nature of homophobia. The central idea or claim of the film is that politicians who vote against gay interests are horrible people because they pursue gay sex themselves. We see Washington as a very closeted gay town. What we see in the film has not yet been settled and we can only hope that everything will one day be welcome.