The Larry Craig Affair (and not much of one---he didn't even get any)

In this day of live-and-let-live---which, mind you, is largely a good thing---we still prohibit things like sex on the sidewalk. We all draw our lines, the only question is where.

Former US Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) attempted something like having sex on the sidewalk in the restroom of a major metropolitan airport, and has paid for it with his career. That should be the end of it, but it's not.

Because there is an aspect of homosexuality to all this, and necessarily so: if heterosexually-inclined men could get some action simply by tapping a foot in a public toilet, even the Super Bowl would play in front of a helluva lot of empty seats. Most of the guys would be in line outside the crapper.


Now, experts in gaydom have opined that cruising public men's rooms is largely amateur hour for the bi-curious or almost-fully repressed, and that seems logical; gay bars are usually far more tastefully appointed than the airport loo, although you still have to listen to disco either way. Still, if a person wants to be closeted, most people are willing to honor that, including most gay folk.

It's a fact that there are many people in the closet who hold ranking posts in the GOP, and even the straight people they're surrounded by have some functioning level of gaydar. They're dimly aware of it, and that's how they like it, with the emphasis on "dim," not "aware."

Are you now or have you ever...? Ehh. Been there, done that.


So we might say Larry Craig's sin was in getting caught, which makes it a legal/prudential issue, not a moral one. Stupid. Sex on the sidewalk. Geez, get some self-control, man. At least hire a professional, who's paid not for the sex but for the confidentiality. Don't chase your bliss on the cheap. What do we pay you people so much for?

Republicans stand on their heads to avoid sexual-preference McCarthyism. They'd heard the rumors about Larry Craig. He was on the downlow, but it hardly seems proper that the party should gather rumors, investigate, and kick out anyone who's suspected of being on it. Mark Foley's closet was half-open, but what would have been the hue and cry if the GOP had made an issue of his improper advances?

We know the answer to that: "anti-gay," heads or tails. You lose.

So they let the Foley rumors slide, and it might have cost the control of Congress in the 2006 election. But what can ya do? To be seen as persecuting him as a gay man would have been even worse, nor was there any genuine enthusiasm for it. (His real sin against the republic and the polity was in trying to diddle the help, but outrage at sexual harassment seldom leads to anyone being removed from office, as we discovered a decade or so ago. It's a perk, not a crime.)



No, what's clearly disgusting about this whole (non-)affair is that in some circles, it's not being gay, but being "anti-gay" that justifies taking the gloves off. But what is "anti-gay?"

I can't find much that Craig said or did politically except his opposition to gay marriage (with an apparent openness to civil unions) and objections to entering sexual preference into hate crimes legislation. This brings down the pejorative "anti-gay," a hideous term of art, on the order of "baby-killer."

If one is "anti-gay," then, is he fair game for "outing," by opposition activists and even "journalists?" Apparently some people think that's A-OK, including the Idaho Statesman, a newspaper that admitted investigating if not stalking him.

That's the disgusting part, folks.

They might have had a point if Larry Craig had been an advocate of overturning Lawrence v. Texas and restoring anti-sodomy laws, which do indeed extend to the private bedroom. But the issues of gay marriage and of hate crimes legislation are entirely ones of public policy.

Larry Craig may have stepped over the line between public and private, but if there was ever any line between public and private, it was they who obliterated it.


Now, it turns out that some of the Democratic presidential candidates don't support gay marriage either. And at least one has been the subject of, um, rumors which do not bear repeating.

What shall be done with them? Has the Idaho Statesman assigned a reporter to the beat?

More questions to which we already know the answers.