I am NOT Gay.

Larry Craig isn't gay. Thank god cuz we don't really want him to be. Ick. Now that he has told the country that he isn't gay in a press conference, I am so relieved.

I don't want him to be gay because he is such a pathetic figure. Bearing his outrage but not his shame before the cameras today. Fine Senator. Don't be gay. There are lots of people who don't identify as gay but DO have sex with guys (or women) sometimes. But those people usually don't have the power to pursue discriminatory laws against gays and lesbians or promote hostile viewpoints towards us in the halls of Congress. We all have enough information about how hypocritical it would be if someone like Senator Craig were to actually BE gay and vote in such an anti-gay manner. I won't bother making that point since I frankly don't think voting to hurt people is justified no matter what your sexual orientation.

Ironically on the LGBT blogs and "insider lists" today there was a huge discussion about whether or not Senator Craig should garner some sympathy from the community because of the historic antipathy that exists towards police entrapment methods against, particularly, gay men.

But seeing his performance, I have lost any notion of sympathy. The guy practically SPIT it out that he wasn't gay. Because if he WAS gay, then that would somehow explain his publicly lewd behavior.

Like I said, ick.

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Comments

[collierthanthou]

Notice how quickly Rev. Romney has cut Craig loose? Even the neocon suckups on msnbc are using words like "toast"... If Craig had been accused of any other crime, would the reaction be the same?

[gpr-2007]

Oh, understand this; If he wants to keep his job in rural Idaho, whether he is gay or not, he has to, has to deny he is gay. Idaho wont accept their politician as is. The fact is, they wont accept the action the police officer is reporting took place in the bathroom. That is what they will be most uncomfortable with. I don't see him maintaining his position as senator of Idaho but I could be wrong.

On the other hand, KSL, the conservative news in Utah has totally buried this story. He is not mormon and he was on the Romney campaign roster. I am thinking that this is going to reveal a love triangle between Craig, Orrin Hatch and Cheney. You ask maybe Romney? No, I don't think so, he is much too pretty for these trolls.

[lunaoscura]

Obviously in some men's mind only the men who want to be gay are gay. When you are ashamed and reduced to finding sexual gratification in public bathrooms then you obviously loath what you are doing and don't want to be gay. So there. You're only gay if you say you're gay. The other stuff, is just stuff. Everyone does it. It's not gay.

[JohnJames]

And, no doubt, by voting against every piece of gay rights legislation that came his way he made it even easier in his warped mind to think of himself as a heterosexual.

[Arky]

I think all these self-loathing closet cases try to outlaw gay rights is because they hope it will stop their homosexual tendencies (as if any of them care about the law). But that's another story.

[charon]

Or, as outed former WA State Senate Republican leader and Mayor of Spokane, James West, said to a 17 year old he was "prepping" in a gay chatroom, "I'm not gay, I just like to have sex with guys."

[JoshuasGrandma]

The fear and inability of men who have sex with men to self-identify as 'gay' or 'homosexual' is the main reason why the CDC doesn't use either term as a risk identifier. When it comes to STD's or HIV, the orientation is not what's risky, it's the behavior that is critical. And America's inability to rationally describe the behaviors is what makes the STD statistics so high.

More of this might be generally known if the media weren't such Puritans. The best thing about the Lewinsky scandal was that it put 'blow job' and 'foreplay' into the media vernacular and made people say the words out loud!

[JohnJames]

If gay means a self-respecting homosexual who's honest about his or her sexuality then Craig is definitely not gay.

[Qbear]

Larry,

Your REPEATED hit and run homosexual encounters along with voting against EVERY LGBT rights bill throughout your career, makes you a KAPO. I suggest you read up on what became of these folks who brutalised their OWN people in Concentration Camps, (at the first chance the Camp survivors had to get their hands on them.) Believe me you'll want to stay NOT gay and well away from REAL gays.

[alkamm]

I interviewed a Jewish holocaust survivor who did not turn in a Kapo he saw on a ship to America. He knew the guy would have been killed, but he decided to keep quiet and let him live with his own conscience.

I am uncomfortable with putting Craig into Kapo status, but the parallels are there. What is not there is that Kapos took the whip and the Kapo badge to survive and they knew someone else would take it or be killed.
Guys like Craig persecute those they refuse to recognize as their own. As Republicans, they refuse to be decent enough to care about anybody who has not had the luck to be born rich, amass wealth by hook or by crook, or is capable of being stupid enough to buy Republican hate messages over their very real economic needs.

[Qbear]

I suggest the KAPOs Karl Rove, Ken Mehlman, and Larry Craig slip on their pumps with sensible heels, and start RUNNING....to be sporting we'll count to 100, first

[kellygrrrl]

I'd proudly stand before the country and announce "I AM GAY"
but there is no form of torture that could ever force me to say "I am Republican."

[salespud]

For such an "oppressed" group...many gays certainly seem to have little tolerance for someone in trouble. Everyone "pile on" takes on a whole new meaning. The true way to tell if someone has class is to see how they behave when they are right. I agree with all of you but think that it's in bad taste to reveal in someone's elses misfortune...no matter how much they deserve it. Karma is a certainity and most people get what is coming to them.

[tbrnotb]

Interesting point of view. To be guilty of piling on this man's misfortunes? The man has never had the courage to be true to himself, thus he ends up a 60 year old man trolling around public restrooms when he is a government elected official. An official, I might ad, who is proud of his anti-gay record. This is not a choice about someone who has lived through real misfortune. This is a hypocrite.
Signed,
GUILTY of piling on!

[JohnJames]

We're not too fond of anyone, closet case or straight, who wins political campaigns by vilifying us and then votes against any and all legislation that would make us equal under the law. If that means we lack class then so be it.

[kellygrrrl]

Salespud - you know what else takes on a whole new meaning?
"Take one for the team."

[Maverick226]

At a certain point, behaving with "class" is synonymous with weakness and passivity. What is the proper way to respond to someone who actively works to deny you rights and says that you are going to hell? I don't want class, I want equal rights, and I'm not going to get them by turning the other cheek when it's hypocritical bigots like Craig who try to dominate the mainstream discussion.

[rmreddicks]

If Karma is a certainty how is that only "most people" get what is coming to them? Guess I must be one of "(T)he left behind. Of the Great Society." Either that or I got a serious bunch of good heading my way. Oh, that's it, Karma's a coin toss.

[MrMike513]

Ok, I can't stand it any longer..."I AM A LESBIAN!!" Hope my wife doesn't mind.

[situationcritical]

Lipstick or Diesel?

[dotmafia]

He said he isn't gay, but didn't deny being bi-sexual. Republicans love to parse their words.
_

[jmundstuk]

Depends on what the meaning of "isn't" is.

[jimpryor99]

What does being Republican have to do with it? He said he wasn't gay. For some of us, to have sex with a man makes you gay. Period.

[JimHinCO]

Would you agree that a man having sex with a woman automatically makes one straight? Cause if that's the case, then he technically is straight.

He's likely bisexual. He enjoys sleeping with men or women. It's really not that big of a stretch.

It's like me saying you are either a chocolate ice cream lover or a vanilla one. If you like chocolate at all, then you clearly don't like vanilla. Why is this the case?

Can someone not enjoy both? Lots of married men in conservative Colo Springs seem to really like both. Nearly all associate themselves as bisexual, a few label themselves gay stuck in a hetero relationship.

Life is not black and white...there are hundreds of shades of grey in between. Why insist on one or the other? Damn it...do you like brocolli or green beans...it can't be both! Even Apple Bee's let's me have both now. :)

[louisianalass]

"Bearing his outrage but not his shame before the cameras today."

Do you mean 'baring' as in revealing his outrage, or indeed 'bearing' as in being laden with his outrage?

[givemycountryback]

Why shouldn,t he be hiding this. Im not talking about being a homosexual. I am talking about being a married man. He is breaking his marriage vows no matter what the sex. I feel sorry for these women that get dragged through the mud by these despiable characters. What selfishness on his part. Didnt he think about his family. disgusting

[indypete]

Don't sweat it... his wife is crying all the way to the bank.

[weddedgay]

How Republican of her--show me the money. We all might as well get used to it, they have no shame, except to be what God created them to be.
I honesty pray that he can find my God, who made him and loves him just the way he is, and find peace in the way Jesus meant.

[Beagle]

I just wonder if it is possible to be gay, vote in favor of laws which ostensibly hurt many gay people, and not be a hypocrite.

Craig, and Haggard and all the other so-called Christian conservatives who have been outed recently are sad creatures. I have no doubt that they share a deep antipathy toward gays, and, therefore, hate themselves for the feelings they believe they should be able to control. But is it necessarily hypocritical to vote in favor of their beliefs even if they can't live up to them? In their own eyes, they are sinners. Can't they be against their own sins and not be hypocritical?

I oppose the stands this guy has taken because I believe they are bad for the country, and go against my own sense of morality. Isn't it possible for him to acknowledge he is gay, for example, and still believe he is not entitled to be married to another man? Do all gay people favor same-sex marriage, for example? Are the ones that don't hypocritical?

Is it possible to take a principled stand against one's own self-interests? And if you do, does it make you a hypocrite?

[CandideinNC]

It is not hypocritical to be gay and not in favor of gay marriage laws. Many of my gay friends feel that way. It is hypocritical to condemn the gays for failing to have so-called family values when you have no such values yourself. It is hypocritical to use the gay community as a whipping boy in election after election after election after election when you are screwing boys yourself.

[TheIndependenceParty]

I agree. I think he shames my friends who were and are gay, by pretending to be something else, ... except when he has the opportunity to do otherwise. My best friend friend from college, ... died of AIDS. My wife and our kids miss him so.
~
I was molested once, by a CEO with a wife and five kids, ... pretending to interview me for a job. Asshole. Saw him years later, ... and he was just old and withered. Live and learn!
~
So, Senator Craig, ... don't shame yourself and the many other gay people we know and love, and think that those of us who are straight give a flying shit for your lies. We have gay friends and family members and they are making their way into the light. You defile the identities of those who are straight AND those who are gay by not owning up to your beliefs. What do you stand for Senator? Please tell us!
~
Nothing? Thought so.

[kellygrrrl]

"friends who WERE gay" ... how does that work?
You mean friends from your past?
or do you mean they have "turned" straight?

[tbrnotb]

No he means they're dead. Thus the past tense. Many of us Homosexuals who are in our 40's and 50's are alive having escaped AIDS. But all too many of the best of our generation are gone. All too often people forget the numbers of people who were lost before we even knew it was a plague. Oh, by the way, thanks Reagan for dragging your feet for so long. I often wonder how many lives it cost.

[justice4juveniles]

money & power, that's what he stands for.

[Qbear]

Craig isn't gay, he's a remedial HOMOSEXUAL self-loathing to the core, with a "beard" (who may be the most clueless woman in the last Century,if 30 years of gay and cocaine rumors never gave her cause for pause.)

Not only did Larry pay a fine of $500.00 he is on a ONE YEAR PROBATION. What straight man who was doing nothing wrong in a restroom could be OK with being on a one year probation?
THAT doesn't happen,,,EVER!

[kellygrrrl]

She obviously was getting something out of the deal.
She was probably the luckiest lady at the garden party that she didn't have to feign headaches on a regular basis.

[jimpryor99]

So Fred, tell us what he did wrong? His foot touched another man's foot.

[justice4juveniles]

why would he plead guilty to that? and pay $500?

[transendentilist]

Qbear, you hit the nail on the head. I am not upset that the man may be gay, I'm upset because he is a self-loathing pervert who solicits sex in Men's rooms.
All the republican gays are self loathing. It just doesn't add up to their so-called religious beliefs. They seem not to understand that. They deny their own desires (in public) in order to gain by putting a pious face on, when in reality they know they are being hypocritical. They know deep down that they are gay, and they hate themselves for it. It is their own screwed up beliefs that cause such a paradox.

[fredmarkus]

The "tearoom trade" is so atavistic. What inner disharmony - perhaps internalized homophobia? - leads anyone to risk his or her good name, career, the respect of one's peers, one's offspring, one's sense of wholeness? Especially so late in life's journey! This isn't about a simplistic term of convenience (gay/not gay). This is more sad than ugly. Certainly unbecoming conduct whatever the feeble protestations of innocent intent.

[justice4juveniles]

so I don't have to look it up, the definition of atavistic? Just trying to learn something here!

[transendentilist]

Just replace atavistic with fanatical.

[gallery]

"I am NOT gay.... well maybe just a tad..... but I DO have a wide stance..... even though I'm sitting on the shitter.... but, yeah, no, REALLY you guys, cut it out.... NOT FUNNY.
I think the senator from spudsville is FAB-U-LOUS !
(but definitely NOT GAY)

[lennilenape]

gallery:

Maybe he's just experimenting.

[kellygrrrl]

"experimenting" for the past 30 years (at least that's all we know of)

[ChicaOfLight78]

yes, lenn. There's been public rumors of his homosexuality for the last few decades.

[rmreddicks]

maybe he's just got a shoe fetish. A podifile, as it were.

[Steamboater]

The incident does smack of police entrapment but even if there wasn't a cop in the next stall, Craig would have hit on some innocent heterosexual and the results could have been worse for Craig e.g., Headlines: "Rep. Craig Beat Up In Men's Bathroom". How would he explain that?
In defense of the police, I'm gay and never have had sex in a public toilet. I don't like other guys doing it either and if I went into a public toilet and heard or saw 2 guys doing it I'd be offended and would call the police. Going to the toilet is a very private thing and to have people in there having sex instead of doing something else is wrong.
When I was in college at CSUS in Sacramento, the university took the doors off of the stalls in the men's bathroom in one of the buildings because of rumors that guys were having sex there. I was writing for the school's paper then and went to the president's office and questioned them about it. I never got to see the president but his secretary must have told him what I said about rumors etc and the next day the doors were reinstalled.
As to Craig, it's no rumor that he has a pattern of male to male sex.

[kellygrrrl]

public sex is an odd fetish, hetero or homosexual.
it's just lewd behavior, especially in a place where children might be present.

[justice4juveniles]

you're hilarious. Love it. Thanks for a few laughs today.