I'm glad to see that AS has a more nuanced treatment of the subject that he introduced with the acerbically dismissive "another closet case".
This statement, from Lord Browne, seems to me to echo older assertions from AS himself, that he was 'fighting just to be left alone':
“In my 41 years with BP I have kept my private life separate from my business life. I have always regarded my sexuality as a personal matter, to be kept private.”
Now, I'm not sure how exactly AS believes Lord Browne "mismanaged" his 'coming out'. I feel that he implicitly suggests that trusting an escort and bringing him into his close circle for four years was ... foolish. That Browne might well have been expected to be blackmailed. If so, that's a pretty sweeping statement.
And let's be clear, he was blackmailed with details of his life, with publicity about the private details about conversations and the like, not with "gayness". In short, it was an assault on his privacy, not his sexuality.
I'm not sure it is so successful psychoanalyzing people from a distance. There are plenty of heterosexuals who also live in a "glass closet", perhaps more so from Brown's generation but not limited to that. I was just on a military board 'talking' about the DADT and one person suggested that he thought it was a good idea not as discriminatory policy but as practice, not just for gays and lesbians, but for everyone. Some people's sense of propriety or reserve or personal privacy puts in them in a category where they really just do not want publicity or politicization of their private affairs.
So, when it comes to this, I'm not sure what AS has in mind:
He lived in what is best described as a glass closet. It’s when a gay man wants to have an openly gay life but not a publicly disclosed one. He tries to manage the contours of his identity on his own terms and in the way he was accustomed to in decades past. But those days are gone. With new freedom comes a transparency that also demands a new responsibility.
What "new responsibility" would that be, exactly? Responsibility to whom? AS doesn't seem to consider that it is perfectly possible to live a life of integrity without seeking the spotlight to prove it, or even making general declarations. (And no, that doesn't cover those who are shut up for highly questionable reasons, like so many possums serving the GOP and pretending that it is not a gay-hostile political organization).
