YR665 Now is the Time for All Good Lesbians to Come to the Aid of Larry Craig

Madge, you made a really good point about Larry Craig. Admittedly, I’m not too saddened to see people who deny the GLBT’s rights get humiliated because I believe they are just being crewel to other human beings for no good reason and further, seeing Mr. Craig get raked over the coals for something he has attacked other about made me feel as if he got what he deserved. However, your take on pre-out gays being in denial was something I never had to think about. You took a very “turn the other cheek” approach in an effort to help the GLBT cause. I think that’s rather impressive.

There have, however, been two things that have bothered me about this case:

1. Whenever one of Larry Craig’s fellow Republicans are interviewed about this case, it seems as if they act like he has done something really heinous and I doubt it’s the fact that he withheld the story or that he was arrested (that’s probably nothing to a congressman or senator). It seems as if his having gay tendencies is the BIG SIN and you can see it all over their faces when they talk about it. The tone I hear/see from them is “Hey, we all get in a little ‘trouble’ but he’s being gay — that’s just unforgivable”.

2. It seems as if the police are specifically targeting gay men in this kind of sting operation. If you think about it, Larry Craig didn’t actually do anything to harm anyone and for a lot of people who didn’t know, the signs he gave meant nothing. Of course, now I know that if there is foot tapping and hands showing under the stall, they person is trying to pick me up but before this broke, I would have just figured it was someone who didn’t know how to act in a bathroom. Of course, if they two men would have had sex in the bathroom for others to witness (see, hear, etc) then that’s wrong weather the sex is gay or straigh (wrong = an intrusion on others within our societal standards). If the antagonist pushed the issue to a point of making the target uncomfortable, that’s wrong, too, but once again it’s the same for the heterosexual world as well. But, what if Mr. Craig was basically just asking for a date — maybe he and the other person were going to go back to a private residence where sex would not be in appropriate? Wouldn’t that be like picking a girl up at a bar? I realize it’s a fine line but it seems as if the reason for Mr. Craig’s arrest was a little heavy handed against gays.

I wonder if there would be more dates arranged in bathrooms if they were bi-gender. On second thought, even though it’s a little parochial, I’ll just appreciate that fact that the girls can’t witness my bathroom habits and I can’t witness theirs.