He Did Nothing Wrong
Larry Craig is out the door, and he doesn't have many fans left. I'm certainly not one of them. As has been widely reported, Craig is the proud recipient of a zero -- ZERO! -- from the Human Rights Campaign for his anti-gay voting record. As HRC concluded, it's pretty hard to find any issue on which Craig has taken a stand for justice, fairness, or decency.
I'm also horrified by the mobius-strip like way in which Craig's legacy turns in on itself: Anti-gay lawmakers like Craig work so hard to inflame homophobia that it becomes all the more difficult for closeted individuals like Craig to live open lives, which in turn enables anti-gay leaders to foment fear. In a sense, Craig has done everything wrong. I'm glad to see him leave.
That said, Craig's story saddens me at so many levels. As I argue in an op-ed in the Washington Post today, Craig's career has been destroyed as a result of the most trivial of infractions. My partner, upon reading Craig's arrest report, shouted, "But he's done nothing wrong!" And indeed he hasn't. This is the extent of his crime:
Craig walked into a public restroom and fidgeted with his fingers for two minutes as he stood outside an occupied stall. Several times, he peered through a crack in the door. Then, he entered an empty stall, sat down, tapped his foot, and touched the shoe of the person in the next stall with his own. Finally, he swiped his hand under the stall divider three times.
That's the totality of his crime.
Craig probably was looking for sex, but there is a big difference between seeking sex and having public sex. What if, for example, Craig planned to ask the occupant of the next stall to follow him to a private hotel room? What if he simply enjoyed the chase and planned to stop short of sexual conduct? It's sickening that lawmakers who support torture eagerly condemn Craig for a toe tap.
Society, of course, has the right to enforce standards of public decorum. But when we punish people for a wink and a nod, we let our anxieties about sex override the best traditions of what it means to live in a free society.
Let's be frank: Craig is being punished because he is gay, not just because he was arrested or because he has a vexed relationship with the truth. A student of one of my colleagues, Professor Tobias Wolff, did a study showing that gay men in a major metropolitan area are arrested on lewd conduct charges for public behaviors which heterosexuals engage in commonly. According to Wolff, "The double-standard -- including the selective treatment of different public places as implicitly acceptable or unacceptable for exploring assignations, corresponding closely to whether the places are coded straight or coded gay -- is stark."
Craig's personal anguish must be nothing short of extreme. If Craig were being punished for his destructive voting record and the numerous ways in which he has used his authority to crush people who needed help, that would be one thing. But to see him destroyed for being gay brings no comfort at all.
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Excellent commentary Aaron! Except I want to take issue with you on one thing. There is an expecation of privacy when a person enters a public bathroom stall to relieve themselves. I don't expect to have someone pearing in the stall at me, rubbing their foot against mine or running their hand under the stall divider. I think any reasonable person would find that highly provacative and irritating if not wanted. Regardless of Craig's motives and whether he is gay or straight, a public bathroom is not the place to be playing seduction games; it's is a place to relieve yourself. There are certain basic rules we all must follow in this society. Minding your own business in a public bathroom is an important one.
hahahah...
"public restroom", amigo.
"public restroom".
As others has mentioned, he plead guilty to coverup an embarrasing situation and when that failed he admitted the coverup and denied the guilt. That's enough right there, regardless of any other circumstances, but...
I don't want people peering in at me while I'm in a bathroom stall or sticking their feet and/or hands into my stall. I assume you'd think it was ok if a ring of men surrounded my stall and peered in. Are you normally a libertarian, or are you just converting temporarily to grind that axe? And I'm saying that as someone who would be a liberatrian if they weren't all so looney-toons.
And, as has been mentioned, it's a safety issue. People are much more vulnerable in a bathroom and not all of them are adults.
Absurd arugments like yours do more to threaten tolerance rather than encourage it.
I have mixed feelings on this all the way around. More than anything else the last couple of days, I feel sorry for him. I can't imagine what it would have meant for a man of his background, position and stature, to carry around that duplicity for his entire life, and to make it so far along, only to have it all blow up in his face in the end.
More than anything, this just shows what happens when we allow a lie to fester, how it continues to grow to a point where the reality and fantasy lines are always blurred. How did this poor man know how he felt about anything? If I were someone close to him, I would keep an eye out. There's not much more a man like this can take.
Can we put this behind us now, and get back to the fact that Bush and Cheney are still in office, and that 1800 civillians died last month in Iraq?
re: all the postings that this is only happening to Craig because he is gay: if this were Barny Frank, an openly gay member of Congress, would he be forced to resign for this? I'm thinking not (others may disagree). He is being forced to resign because it is so hypocritical, because his behavior is at such odds with his public career. He has betrayed his constituency, and that's why he's forced to resign.
"He did nothing wrong."
Yes, he did.
Craig embarrassed the Republican party, in a state with a Republican governor.
Vitter embarrassed the Republican party, but in a state with a Democratic governor.
Craig goes, Vitter stays. It's politics, not morals, stupid...
But, alas, Craig, sir, IS NOT GAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am so absolutely over the story about the self-loathing Senator from Idaho! It’s not that the story isn’t important as an anchor for Americans who are finally realizing that the GOP hasn’t been just infiltrated by these demented gents, but that they ARE these demented gents!
Foley and Craig are but two examples of what a culture of loathing towards a person’s sexual urges can evolve into—self-hating hypocrites.
The story that we as a society and that our media outlets should be focusing on isn’t the one about a dirty, perverted, heterosexual senator who wanted to have toilet sex like the “dirty, perverted gays do”. It should be this story: Republicans are hypocrites and have contributed to, if not created, a cultural climate of hate towards gay Americans to use as a political tool.
Can’t we learn anything from all of this hypocrisy? Ted Haggart, Mark Foley, and Larry Craig are but three Jokers in a deck FULL of only fucking JOKERS! Think of the circle of shame the Republicans have been spiraling down now for months. They have set the bar for themselves ethically through a proclaimed affiliation to religious faith and yet they continue to fall short of even the most modest of moral behaviors.
And meanwhile, this unconsummated bathroom connection continues to obscure the treachery afoot in our government. We all squirm, but none of us are out of our seats.
If Craig had come out as gay, then your argument might make sense. And in fact, he might have got some sympathy as a gay man. But he denied being gay, so I suppose that makes him straight or bi, a hypocrite, a pervert, and a liar.
His arrest is because he's gay. Simple. Should there have been a law like this in the first place? No. Victimless crime, and only 'criminal' by definition. Gay flirtation is apparently illegal in the john.
He deserves the hoisting on a petard he built, but let's agree that laws like this shouldn't exist in the first place. Like busting people for smoking pot.
To those who are worried about 'protecting the kids': Nobody was trying to grab an unconsenting patron and bend them over the sink. By all accounts, these encounters are highly coded, mostly discreet (briefcase block e.g.) and shockingly quick. If Craig peeked into that cop's stall for as long as mentioned, that cop must have been returning a rather 'come hither' expression or such a nervous homo as Larry would have moved on.
Enjoy.
I agree that arresting people for soliciting sex with consenting partners is a waste of law enforcement time, money, and effort.
Craig is being destroyed from within his OWN party for having been convicted of a crime - but make no mistake they'd be defending him and calling this a partisan witch hunt if the "crime" didn't have to do with gay sex.
But Craig is a laughing stock right now and should step down not because he is gay, but because he is a hypocrite. As a member of congress, he worked sanctimoniously against gay rights, while at the same time engaging in high risk - and illegal (even if we think the law is dumb) - gay sex.
I don't care if my congressman or senator is gay - what he or she does in private is none of my business. But I do care if he or she is a hypocritical phony who pushes for/against laws based on fear, intolerance and self-hatred.
Ironically, you are right - it is that self-hatred and fear that makes being gay a liability for republicans in congress. Fear of being found out pushes people into dangerous situations and opens the possibility of blackmail, etc. No one will every blackmail Barney Frank for being gay.
So good riddance to the sanctimonious hypocrite Mr. Craig, and hello to anyone, gay or straight, who is interested in telling the truth and leading us with tolerance and thoughtfulness.
I agree with you. When the interrogation interview was released all I could think of is how the police officer blew it, totally, and completely. Probably one of the worst examples of police work known to the public.
Then the police office shifted into that all too common tactic when they blow an arrest, try like hell to get the suspect to confess to anything with the promise of pleading guilty will make this whole thing go quietly away, fight it and you're spending the night in jail and everyone will know.
The Minnesota Police Department is a disgrace and that police office should be shown the door and never work in a capacity of public trust again. Disgraceful, completely disgraceful.
I don't get it. It seems it all went down way too fast. Not the arrest, but the abandonment by his fellow Republicans. Seems to me that someone wanted him out of office NOW, big time. With all the lying, stealing and murder that goes on in every administration, especially Bush's, how come the sting just happens to be at the time Craig is following his well-known planned commute schedule? I care nothing for Craig, but the hyenas attacked their own way too fast for me to think this was ordinary happenstance. There's something more going on here we aren't privileged to know.
Being gay or bisexual is not a problem. Being anti-gay while being gay is. Standing there and wagging your finger at someone else is.
If it were just being gay, I would be up in arms but it isn't. It is putting yourself out there as an icon of rectitude while being profoundly dishonest that rankles.
Karen
Gay or straight, Craig is another Republican hypocrite that needs to experience some of the pain he and his buddys have been inflicting on the American people for 15 years.
The crime Craig was convicted of wasn't hypocrisy; it was "disorderly conduct." For how many years have the police in the US been using this term--disorderly conduct--to punish minority self-expression?
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