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The Stance on Craig

Unless you've been a cave in Afghanistan for the past few, you've heard about Senator Larry "Wide Stance" Craig (R) and his bathroom courtship rituals.

Is it just me, or does it seem like a Republican Senator can't solicit homosexual sex in a public place anymore without getting plastered all over the news? And don't we have any runaway brides to report on?

I'm cutting to the chase on this one. People who think that Larry was just possibly misunderstood (and there are those people) are full of baloney. The police have now released the tape that they made when questioning GOP Senator Craig and you can hear the frustration in the police officer's voice when Craig refuses to be honest in his description of the lengths he went to to make it clear to the undercover officer that he was soliciting sex.

Craig touched his foot to the officer's foot in the next stall. He reached under the stall with his opposite hand (the officer saw his wedding ring) and rubbed his hand along the underside of a stall.

In all my years of public restroom behavior, I've never had someone touch their foot to mine or stick their hand under the stall (or peer at me for minutes through the crack, as Craig says he did). These are highly irregular activities for a guy in a public restroom. Most male bathroom behavior is antisocial, so this stuff stands out. Craig was soliciting sex, he was not misunderstood, and he is lying to the police officer on the tape.

Is soliciting sex in a restroom a crime? I'll let more legal-minded folks debate that one, but probably not. To quote Dale Carpenter on the Volokh Conspiracy blog:

What really seems to have happened is that the airport police had received complaints about sexual activity and were acting over-zealously to deter it, regardless of the niceties of state criminal law.

A court will decide. Do I fault the police for trying to keep sexual encounters out of the public bathroom? These are the bathrooms we send our children into. And, frankly, I already don't like public restrooms -- I don't want the added fun of walking into a sexual buffet. I don't mind the police discouraging this behavior any more than I would mind the police discouraging some guy in the ladies room touching his foot to my wife's, peering at her through the space in the door and propositioning her under the wall between stalls. Do you think people feel safe alone in a bathroom when this kind of behavior goes unchecked?

As Tucker Carlson showed us this week, you're a lot safer being picked up by the police than if people take the matter into their own hands. Tucker "I'm Not Gay, Just a Gay-Basher" Carlson admitted to having been solicited in a bathroom, and then returning with his friends to bust some heads. (Literally, busting his head against the stall wall) Oh, and apparently this is what passes for humor on MSNBC.

I do have some sympathy for Craig, for the conservative hole he's dug himself into, even though he dug it for himself. Only the looniest can stick by this guy. Cheating on your wife with random strangers in airport bathrooms makes Bill Clinton's activities look like high school antics. My sympathy is more like pity.

The ironic, hypocritical sin is that Craig's public activities have been efforts to reinforce the elements of society that have pushed some homosexual activity underground where it remains secret but becomes dangerous (especially if you run into Tucker Carlson). And the people who he stood with are running away from him as fast as they can. Why? Because the Republicans rely on wedge issues like gay rights to pry their constituents away from Democrats who are more consistent in their beliefs and actions. Political gay bashing is a gamble that's becoming dangerous as people see the hypocrisy behind the Republican straighter-than-thou agenda and as they re-examine their assumptions. (See Iowa's recent ruling allowing gay marriages Yes - Iowa)

Craig is definitely getting some cosmic karma applied directly to his hypocrisy. Sometimes, gambling on hatred wins you an election. Sometimes it turns what could have been a quiet incident into a national issue.

Posted by James at August 31, 2007 9:19 AM
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