Outed

"You're a bum." "No, you're a bum!" "No, you're a bum!" "No, you're a bum!"

When we were kids, we would do a few heated rounds of that, and then all of a sudden, on the 10th time, your sneaky opponent would trip you up by switching pronouns: "No, I'm a bum!" And if you weren't on your toes, you would come back with, "No, I'm a bum!" And then everybody would laugh at you for falling into the trap.

A version of that old game is taking place in the 182d state House district in Philadelphia, as the primary warm-ups take a strange twist. In the good old days, people hoping to get enough folks to vote for them would go to great lengths to hide their sexual orientation in the closet. (In the better old days preceding that, there was no such thing as the phrase "sexual orientation," and closets contained mostly coats.)

That great flipping sound you hear in the Babette Josephs versus Gregg Kravitz contest for the Democratic nomination is the game turned on its head. It is the arrival of Isaiah's prophecy:

"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter" (Isaiah 5:20).

The longtime incumbent, Ms. Josephs, is accusing her young challenger, Mr. Kravitz, of being straight. She says he claims to be bi-sexual but it is all a big lie; he is as straight as a pin and only pretending to be "bi" so he can win an election. Mr. Kravitz, for his part, has given an interview to The Philadelphia Inquirer's Karen Heller, assuring us: "I am a bisexual man. I am attracted to men and women."

Who has time to know what issues they stand for when the circus is in town? Really, who has any doubt about what issues they stand for?

In West Side Story, the juvenile delinquents mount their own defense to the beleaguered Officer Krupke, hoping for a little sympathy:

"My sister wears a mustache, my brother wears a dress. . . . With all their marijuana, they won't give me a puff. . . ."

As Mr. Kravitz mounts his defense and Ms. Josephs her prosecution, it is hard to muster the sympathy for either of them when you're in culture shock.

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