aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Tucker’s “gay panic defense”

Tucker Carlson says he was “bothered” in a public restroom so he got a friend, went back and “hit him against the stall with his head, then the cops came and arrested him.”

Let me be among the first to say, I don’t believe him. Is someone looking for the arrest record?

Tucker’s clarified:

Let me be clear about an incident I referred to on MSNBC last night: In the mid-1980s, while I was a high school student, a man physically grabbed me in a men’s room in Washington, DC. I yelled, pulled away from him and ran out of the room. Twenty-five minutes later, a friend of mine and I returned to the men’s room. The man was still there, presumably waiting to do to someone else what he had done to me. My friend and I seized the man and held him until a security guard arrived.

Several bloggers have characterized this is a sort of gay bashing. That’s absurd, and an insult to anybody who has fought back against an unsolicited sexual attack. I wasn’t angry with the man because he was gay. I was angry because he assaulted me.

Now let me be clear, I don’t want anyone having sex in bathrooms but it vigilante justice is no way to address the issue.

Further, it is obvious to me and should be obvious to everyone that a society that pushes gays underground - 45 out 50 states have passed laws preventing legal recognition of same-sex relationships - can’t then complain that they then seek furtive sex. I’m not alone in believing that public lewdness laws are the de facto means by which the anti-gay marriage crowd has effectively criminalized homosexuality.

More later.