aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Monday, August 27, 2007
Larry Craig: sad, but true
Idaho’s Larry Craig on the issues:
* Voted YES on constitutional ban of same-sex marriage. (Jun 2006)
* Voted NO on adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes. (Jun 2002)
* Voted NO on expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation. (Jun 2000)
* Voted YES on prohibiting same-sex marriage. (Sep 1996)
* Voted NO on prohibiting job discrimination by sexual orientation. (Sep 1996)
Craig has a 0% rating in HRC’s 2006 Congressional Scorecard
Favorite Quotes. Roll Call:
A spokesman for Craig described the incident as a ”he said/he said misunderstanding,” and said the office would release a fuller statement later Monday afternoon.
After he was arrested, Craig, who is married, was taken to the Airport Police Operations Center to be interviewed about the lewd conduct incident, according to the police report. At one point during the interview, Craig handed the plainclothes sergeant who arrested him a business card that identified him as a U.S. Senator and said, “What do you think about that?” the report states.
Emphasis mine.
Romney scrubbed YouTube of Larry Craig video. Craig served as a co-senate liaison for the Romney campaign. A 1982 preemptive denial:
TPM:
The Idaho Values Alliance--"Making Idaho the Friendliest Place in the World to Raise a Family"--is going to have a hard time swallowing the latest news about its beloved Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID), who pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct for lewd conduct in an airport restroom.
Here’s one page of the group’s site, a news update where it praises Craig for his “pro-life” vote on stem cell research, followed by a “Bonus Byte” on the perils of homosexuality and airport restrooms
I wonder if the GOP’s burgeoning “bathroom problem” isn’t reflective of something larger than just a bunch of conservative dudes who couldn’t come out of the closet. There’s something palpably sad to me about what happened to Allen and Craig too, something oddly touching about their misplaced faith in the fading world of secret, anonymous gay sex. That world--once found in bathrooms, parks, piers and adult bookstores; the furtive refuges of adventuresome queers, married men, the curious--has been swept away by so many police raids, privatization schemes, quality of life campaigns and internet dating services. But mostly, it’s fallen away as gays have become increasingly integrated into the mainstream, and also, paradoxically, more marked than ever. “You’re either gay or you’re not” seems to be the equation.
Until someone like Craig, Allen, Mark Foley, Ted Haggard or Jim McGreevey shows up to ripple momentarily the waters of public discourse on sex. These guys have problems, no doubt. But we might also pause to wonder if there’s some cultural knot that gay liberation--despite its original and best intentions--has left in place. At the very least the link between public power and domestic heterosexuality--with all the fetishistic displays of family life that entails--has yet to be completely severed. Just ask Rudy Guiliani, or Hillary Clinton! Moreover, that knot, perhaps best described as sexual propriety, is what fuels the moral campaigns against homosexuality that have become one of the Republican Party’s identifying causes--loyally supported by the likes of Craig, Haggard, Foley, et. al. It’s also what leads Bob Allen to the stunning and revealing calculation that it would be better to be seen in the public eye as an avowed racist than as someone who likes to have sex with men sometimes.
