Outing

NY Magazine is speculating that R. Alan Stadtmauer, the former principal of the Yeshivah of Flatbush High School, was "outed before he was ready":

Actually, it’s not clear that Stadtmauer, who’d taught at the school for ten years, intended to come out—at least not yet. In September, after the rabbi resigned, a student politely e-mailed him to ask about rumors that he was gay. Stadtmauer replied, “I appreciate your understanding about my coming out . . . ”
But one close confidant of Stadtmauer’s, Rabbi Steve Greenberg (author of Wrestling With God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition), says that when Stadtmauer told the student he could share the e-mail “if your friends were wondering the same things,” he was thinking “maybe three or four friends. He didn’t want this information out like this. He told me this twice.”

This is just incredibly naive. Put something (especially like this...) on an email to a student and it is more than in the public domain -- it is only to be expected that it will spread like wildfire, especially if you explicitely give permission to share it. This is not passively "being outed" before he was ready -- this is actively "outing himself" before he was ready. It's hard to believe someone who has a secret of this magnitude and does not yet want to fully share it would be so reckless.

(Via SIW)