Larry Craig's Real Mistake

I feel sorry for Larry Craig. Truly. Even though Craig voted to censure Barney Frank for Frank's tryst with a male prostitute. Craig has been behind some of the most intolerant and anti-gay legislation that a US Senator could put his mark on. Now the very condition that drives countless gay men and women into the closet, the bathroom stall or the hospital may have claimed Sen. Craig himself. That is not a cause for gloating. That is sad. Pathetic and sad.

No one can honestly say what Craig did or did not do. No one can know his real intentions. In the new, jacked-up reality of airport "security", maybe those cops in Minneapolis jumped the stall. But if Craig has the chance, especially now that his Republican colleagues have cut his throat, maybe he will experience a change of heart and realize that to be gay, whether he is or not, ought not be a shameful thing, let alone a crime, for anyone. Had he embraced at least that he might still be a Senator today.

Comments

[barrycourage]

Alec,

I would not count on Larry Craig to be honest or have integrity about anything, especially his sexuality.

Craig was 24 years old at the time of the Stonewall Riots in 1969. He was a part of the generation that included a group of very brave young men and women who rejected life on the margins and began active pursuit of their civil rights.

Craig could have chosen to join that group. There were plenty of gays and lesbians from conservative western states who moved to coast cities to live with truth and integrity. And there were plenty who stayed in their home states and were true to themselves, even while suffering tremendous hardship.

For many politicians, Expediency is not only their religion but the force that governs expression of their sexual orientation, too.

Craig is now choosing to fight his guilty plea and continue to live a lie. Unfortunately, the contortions of his psyche are hard wired.

[NHGranite]

poor man

[dimphoenix]

As with Arianna's posts, Alec, you have a great eye for the larger issues. Why would people debate that sex in public bathrooms is illegal? That's sort of a foregone conclusion, isn't it? The issue is actually what in our society (and what in the political parties elected by our society) drive people to this kind of behavior and then turn around and sponsor witch hunts against people in similar circumstances. Self-worth and personal responsibility continue to get lost on both sides in this country.

[AlienLifeForm]

I usually don't consider it my business what consenting adults do to and with each other. But when someone like Craig uses his position to fight against everything that would give Gays basic rights and encourages making them outcasts and objects of hatred and violence, then it does become my business.

If politicians like him didn't set aside their humanity to pander to the lowest and creepiest of voter bases, there's a lot of things this country would not have endured.

I grew up in a time when people's lives were destroyed by McCarthy. I have friends whose families were rounded up and put in camps here in Washington state simply because they had Asian features. I lost friends in Vietnam. I have friends who were discriminated against because of their skin color, accents, ethnic origins. Without the immoral pandering to racists, bigots, and just plain crazy people for their votes, I believe these crimes would not have occurred so easily.

For politicians like Craig, it is my sincerest wish that they fall in love with someone of their own gender and then be denied the basic rights of being able to visit them in the hospital when sick. As they sit outside in the hallways waiting for a "blood" relative to give them permission to visit their loved one, I want them to feel the pain of exclusion they've inflicted on other human beings just for a vote. I want them to be shut out of all
planning for the care and funeral expenses of their loved ones. I want them to lose the homes they shared together. I want them to be cut out of any inheritance. I want the families of their loved ones to see them as unworthy of being part of the family of the one they loved. I want them to suffer the same as they've made others suffer so maybe then they will understand the cost of their bigotry.

ALF
mishkabear.blogspot.comt.com

[UrbanAddictiondotcom]

I appreciate your compassionate view on Larry Craig's troubles. Most of my gay friends are happy to see him die by the sword he wielded so to speak and I can't say that I blame them either.

[TheDude1369]

another repiglican playing wac-a-mole with his pecker. it is sad that his repression surfaced as self-hatred. it is sad that he screwed his family up with that repression. i learned a long time ago that hatred is fear. show me a neo-con and i'll show you some repression. it's self-reinforcing; the hatred breeds fear which brings repression thereby producing more hatred. the cycle of neurosis. now apply that to iraq, islam, everybody who isn't white, straight, christian.

[LiarLiarIraqsOnFire]

Aparently Sen. Craig's theme song should be Joan Jett's ' I Hate Myself For Lovin' You'.

[liveandlearn]

while you all wonder about republican senators, let me name two similarly situated and their different fates:

ted stevens of alaska for bribery and misuse of public funds (can you say bridge to nowhere?)

vitter of louisiana for strange requests from the dc madam

did the republicans throw out either of them?

[tdterry1999]

Just goes to show you being gay is not ok.

[Rabblerouser]

Everybody here seems to assume that Larry Craig is a closeted gay.
I don't think so. I think he's just a horny old man who wanted a quick bj ... and since he couldn't exactly follow a hot chick into the women's restroom, he sought out what was available. It is, I think, a case of "situational" homosexuality. Like prison sex. Men in prison can engage in homosexual behavior inconsistent with their heterosexual orientation because that's all that's available at the time.
As an ex-cop, police academy instructor and out/proud lesbian activist for over 30 years, I dealt a lot with the issue of gay men looking for anonymous sex in public parks, restrooms, rest stops, etc, and it's impact on our community, especially with regard to law enforcement's selective enforcement of lewd conduct laws.
Sex in public places has been an embarrassment to the lesbian community for decades -- and part of the reason we took on our own identity, separate from the generic "gay community," -- was to reject the label "promiscuous" long associated with gay men. If anything, lesbians tend to jump quickly into monogamous relationships. A popular joke in our community says it all: "What does a lesbian bring on the second date? A U-Haul."
My best friend is a gay man, and once in discussing why men in our community were so much more promiscuous than women, his succint answer rang true, for queers as well as heteros:
Women need a reason for making love; men just need a place for sex.
For Larry Craig, this time, that place was a Twin Cities airport men's room. As Alec said, that makes him sad and pathetic, and probably self-loathing. But it doesn't make him gay.
To those who think all gays are pedophiles, research has shown just the opposite: the vast majority (better than 90%) of pedophiles are heterosexual, despite what the right wing would have you believe. And, unlike evangelical Christians, we don't have to "recruit" people to our ranks...Go­d and mother nature take care of that for us.

[liveandlearn]

given her own experience with someone's variable sexuality, i would like to read what arianna has to say about all this. i suspect it is something remarkably like mine:

when you create hatred and discrimination, you make the world a worse place. are you listening, republicans? mitt? rudolph?

[AcmePosts]

According to the reports, the airport cop was sent in to that bathroom because of complaints from travelers who had witnessed public sex acts there. This bathroom wasn't a "pickup" place. In pickup places, like bars and art galleries, you exchange phone numbers or leave with the person to have sex elsewhere. The whole point of this bathroom apparently was to have quick, anonymous sex. And what a perfect place for Craig to satisfy his closeted desires. It's far from both of his homes, he's unlikely to meet anyone he knows there, he's unlikely to encounter the sexual partner again, there are no phone calls or emails to be traced, no exchange of money, no cameras recording his comings and goings, no outside witnesses of any sort. I'm not necessarily defending the practice of vice sting operations, but if one is going to take place, the undercover cop has to make an arrest without engaging in the act himself. Thus, the cop waited long enough to determine that Craig was soliciting him for sex. Is that entrapment? I don't know. Do I feel sorry for Craig? No. If this were 1960, maybe, but in 2007, only a coward remains in the closet into old age, deceiving and betraying his wife and family. For decades, he made a conscious choice to live a public hetero life while satisfying his physical desires in bathrooms. That he berated Clinton and voted against all things gay reveals the cowardly lengths he would go to keep his secret. Coming out would be difficult for someone like Craig, I know, but not impossible. Other celebrities have done it, risking their careers in the process. Is it any less scary for "ordinary citizens" to come out to family, friends and co-workers? Instead of feeling sorry for Craig I think we should applaud even louder those, like Ellen DeGeneres, who have had the guts to do the right thing. Isn't it ironic that Craig's political career has ended in a great humiliation, the very fear that kept him in the closet in the first place?

[Troubledgoodangel]

Forget Sen. Larry Craig; we are all sinners, and we should not cast stones! But because it involves a Senator of the United States, this affair is casting shame on the whole of the Nation! Every U.S. citizen has been harmed, not so much by Mr. Craig, but by the educational system which "created him"! Sen. Craig never thought he was doing anything wrong! He has been told by his teachers, since the kindergarten, that "homosexuality is a choice." Why not in the restroom, he thought? All he was doing, was to put into practice what he has been taught! This is why I say, forget his misfortune and pray for him! But at the same time, ask yourselves what can be done that our children are no longer conditioned to act out as Sen. Craig has acted!

[flim62]

has anybody stopped to ask why tax dollars were being wasted by posting a cop on toilet in a public restroom in a "sting" operation?

there must be criminals out there who need catching more than gays in the bathroom.

[PrideDEPOT]

THANK YOU Alec for saying that!!! As an open lesbian living in Boise, ID and an unwilling constituent of Craig’s, this is a point that is unfortunately lost on most. We have been saying similar things on our LGBT news site PrideDEPOT.com on this issue and reporting on Craig allocations for the last year.

Craig’s voting record helped build the closet he found himself in because if it were ok to be a gay in this country, Senator Craig would likely have never sought out anonymous sex in a public restroom and could have served openly no matter what his sexual orientation.