Am I really going to have to be the one to say I just don’t care that much that Senator Larry Craig (supposedly) solicited gay bathroom sex in a Minneapolis airport? Am I going to have to be the one who says this is getting blown way out of proportion (pun unintended but inevitable)? I don’t think a lot of you are going to agree with me on this one, but I have to say it anyway.
First off, the dude was railroaded into confessing his impropriety by the police to avoid embarrassment, and that bothers me. As unseemly as it may be that Senator Craig (supposedly) felt compelled to alert the plainclothesman in the next stall that he wanted to get his knob polished, it’s not a crime. Really, it isn’t. Just the same way that talking to a prostitute about her/his services isn’t a crime until you hand over the cash. Theoretically it might be construed as harassment if he just walked up to a stranger in the restroom to solicit sex in plain English — but it seems to me that the case is pretty thin when you have to be familiar with the whole procedure to even know you’re being solicited in the first place.
Now, actually having sex in a public restroom is a crime, and if the senator was paying a stranger to have sex it’s also a crime. But what if the man in the next stall had responded to Craig’s solicitation by slipping him a note saying “I’ve got a condo two blocks away, why don’t we pop over there instead”? That’s not a crime. That’s called a pickup. Sleazy, yes. But not illegal, and I’m not even sure it’s immoral.
And let’s say he did actually get a BJ in a public restroom. Have we really lost all sense of perspective here? Have we become that prude of a society? Breaking news, North America: men love blowjobs. If there’s any man who claims he doesn’t, please stick your name in the comments below so the rest of us can snicker at you. And while quietly having sex in a semi-public place while nobody can see you is crude and crass and unbecoming of a public official, on the scale of moral turpitude it ranks pretty damn low. I’d say it’s somewhere around shoplifting in the grand scheme of things, but I can’t decide if it’s north or south of that line. Lots of people do dumb things like this when they’re young. Hell, I did stuff like that when I was in college almost twenty years ago.
Of course, nobody wants to walk in on two people having sex in a public restroom. Eww. And you don’t want unattended minors stumbling across something like this either. Which is why you haul these offenders down to the police station, slap them with a fine and community service, and put something in the file that your future employers can dig up if they want to.
But Dave, you sick pervert, I hear you thinking, Larry Craig’s a U.S. Senator! We have to hold him to a higher standard!
Well, sure we do. That higher standard is called “elections.” If this joker decides to run for re-election next year after all, his arrest record, guilty plea, and lame-ass excuses are fair game for his opponent(s). Of course, it’s never going to get to that point. The Idaho Republican Party will wisely decide that supporting Craig is too costly for them, and the national GOP will conclude the same thing. Right now, there are undoubtedly GOP bigwigs calling Senator Craig telling him that stepping down now and allowing a Republican replacement to gain momentum in office for the next 18 months will be a big boon to the party’s chances in 2008.
I’m convinced that 60% of this whole scandal has to do with public disgust at male homosexuality. It’s a quick opportunity to score some political points because most Americans are really queasy about gay male sex. Gut check time: if you walked in on Carmen Electra and Angelina Jolie engaging in hanky-panky in a public bathroom stall, would you storm out of there looking for a cop and demand that they be publicly humiliated and dragged through the mud?
In case you’ve forgotten, this is Carmen Electra:
And this is Angelina Jolie:
No, if you saw these two (or two women who look just like them) going at it in a public place and you’re like most people in this country, you’d probably back out of there very slowly, make lots of conspicuous coughing noises, and state in a loud voice that you hope nobody in this restroom is doing anything that the approaching police officers might take offense at.
If 60% of this scandal is motivated by public disgust with male homosexuality, then what’s the other 40%? I’ll allow that 20% of the impetus for pushing this story is purely morality. The remaining 20%? Why, a witch hunt against conservative Republicans who have supported the war and President Bush’s über-conservative policies. And I say this as someone who opposed the war from the start and who has vocally opposed Bush’s agenda for years now. I’ve still got a John Kerry 2004 sticker on my car, fer Chrissake.
Here’s an idea: let’s vote Republicans like Larry Craig out of office because they support the war and because they support discrimination against gays. Are the Democrats really proud of the fact that they’re holding a majority in both houses of Congress because of silly sex scandals, because George Allen once said the word “macaca,” and because Joe Lieberman refuses to officially join the GOP?
What makes me think this is partisan? If we’re so concerned with official corruption, we’d be seeing a daily drumbeat of Congressional leaders standing up and demanding the resignation of Democratic Representative William Jefferson, he of the $90,000 worth of bribe money stashed in his freezer. If it wasn’t partisan, then it wouldn’t be mostly the Republicans who are bum-rushing the airwaves to denounce Senator Craig’s moral unfitness. (Don’t you just love how Republicans always rush to loudly denounce anti-family values talk, while Democrats always rush to loudly denounce perceived weakness on national defense? This is how you get Barack Obama pushing for a big increase in military size and Hillary Clinton cozying up to the idea of threatening other countries with nuclear weaponry.)
Putting aside the sexual aspect of this case, what do we have? Not much. We have the potential intimidation factor of Craig throwing his Senatorial business card on the table and saying “What do you think of that?” Okay, this bothers me. But one statement is a pretty thin reed to hang an entire ethics case on, and you know that no sane jury would convict someone based on that evidence alone.
We have the hypocrisy factor. Definitely worthy of consideration that a senator who’s supported so many anti-gay policies over the years is himself gay. But again, I don’t think hypocrisy is all that great of a sin.
We have the supposed other instances of homosexual behavior. If you read the accusations, they’re all pretty flimsy. Craig followed some dude around in a store for half an hour? Some random guy claims he had sex with someone that looked like Larry Craig, but didn’t even get his name? Involvement in the page scandal would be a big deal if there was any evidence out there to support it. But all these things added up to so little that the Idaho Statesman wisely decided to kill the story until the guilty plea for disorderly conduct came up.
None of these accusations hold a candle to the fact that, you know, Senator Larry Craig supported anti-gay policies in the first place. Whether he’s straight, gay, bi, dom, sub, switch, decaffeinated, or unleaded is pretty irrelevant as far as I’m concerned. I’d just as soon not know.
I’m not suggesting we nominate Larry Craig for Senator of the Year or give him the Congressional Medal of Honor. I’m just saying, please America, stop it with the silly sex scandals. Larry Craig’s guilty plea for disorderly conduct should be a page 3 story at best, and the guy should be allowed to quietly step down from his committee leadership posts and then just not run for re-election.