Every other Tuesday, Steven Petrow, the author of “Steven Petrow’s Complete Gay & Lesbian Manners” (Workman, 2011), addresses questions about gay and straight etiquette for a boomer-age audience. Send questions for Civil Behavior to stevenpetrow@earthlink.net.

Q. Dear Civil Behavior: Gawker’s recent outing of Shepard Smith troubles me. As Fox News personalities go, Smith seems to be among the most tolerable. He’s not anti-gay; he’s even criticized the G.O.P.'s anti-gay positions. Since he’s not a hypocrite, why is the media going after him? I’ve always felt a person should be allowed to come out at his own pace. Shouldn’t he be allowed his privacy? — Name withheld, California

A. What a fascinating question as it zeroes in on the changing rules of outing. In the 1980s the term was first coined by AIDS activists who used the tactic as a weapon to expose the alleged hypocrisy of closeted gay politicians (and often others) with a record of homophobic votes and positions. Michelangelo Signorile, then an activist and now a radio host, was both praised and vilified for his outing of the rich and famous in his Gossip Watch column. Representative Barney Frank, (now retired from Congress) among others, has long argued that outing can be legitimate, notably if the person in question is working against L.G.B.T. rights and causes. In 2006, Mr. Frank elaborated to Bill Maher on what is now referred to as the “Frank rule”: “I think there’s a right to privacy. But the right to privacy should not be a right to hypocrisy. And people who want to demonize other people shouldn’t then be able to go home and close the door and do it themselves.”

Fast forward to Shepard Smith of Fox News. For anyone who missed the recent contretemps, the gossip site Gawker was recently castigated for outing Mr. Smith in an article about his bad behavior at Bathtub Gin, a Chelsea bar. According to the article, the news anchor rose from his table, grabbed a waitress’s elbow and yelled at her to get him a cocktail in expletive-laced terms. The article also noted in the seventh paragraph that “Smith had arrived earlier that night with a straight couple and his own regular date, a muscular 6-foot-2 30-something white male, whom Bathtub Gin employees refer to as ‘his boyfriend.'”