Jim West, Jim McGreevey, Ted Haggard, Mark Foley, Bob Allen, David Vitter. Now Larry Craig.
Public figures' getting caught with their pants down is nothing new. What is new is a high-tech culture that makes exposure likely, rapid, and widespread. Larry Craig pleaded guilty to "disorderly conduct" in Minnesota in the hopes that no one would notice in his home state of Idaho. A quarter-century ago, when Craig started his congressional career, that strategy might actually have worked.
For those who haven't been following the news: Craig is a U.S. Senator who was arrested in June for soliciting sex in a Minneapolis airport men's room. He also happens to be a staunch opponent of gay rights, with a zero voting scorecard from the Human Rights Campaign.
People love sex scandals, and they especially love a sex scandal that brings a moralistic finger-wagger to his knees (ahem). Perhaps that's why the above list -taken from recent memory, and by no means exhaustive-includes only one Democrat. Liberals enjoy sex as much as anyone, and they surely have their skeletons. But when someone soliciting forbidden sex is known for railing against sexual sin, it makes for a juicier story.
What is striking about the Craig saga is this: despite his over thirty years of public service, virtually no one rallied to his defense. Conservatives view him as a deviant. (Mitt Romney, whose Idaho presidential campaign Craig had chaired, referred to Craig's behavior as "disgusting" before the senator even had an opportunity to release a statement.) Liberals view him as a hypocrite. Absolutely no one views him as credible. (His claim that he touched the arresting officer's foot because he has a "wide stance" rang especially hollow.)
Various sides in the culture wars will try to make an example of Craig. Gay-rights opponents will spin the story as further evidence of homosexuality's sordid nature, not to mention its vicious power. After all, if seemingly God-fearing men like Ted Haggard and Larry Craig can succumb to such behavior, who among us is safe?
Gay-rights advocates, by contrast, will spin it as evidence of the dangers of the closet. After all, openly gay people generally neither want nor need to troll restrooms for clandestine encounters.
The opponents are right to point out that sex is powerful, in a way that can make smart people do dumb, sometimes disastrous things. They're wrong to think that this point is any more applicable to homosexuality than to heterosexuality (note Vitter's name in the list above).
True, straight people don't typically seek sex in public restrooms. But that's partly because (1) public restrooms are mostly segregated by sex and (2) "quickie" sex is anatomically less convenient for women-which still hasn't prevented some from joining the "mile high club" in cramped airplane lavatories.
The bigger reason is (3) straight people don't feel the desperate need to conceal their erotic interests in the way closeted gay people do.
And that's where gay-rights advocates make a decisive point: the culture of the closet is unhealthy for everyone involved. Lying about one's sex life makes it easier to lie about other things; it also precludes the counsel of friends in an area where such counsel is desperately needed. (See previous point about sex being powerful.)
Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank put it well in a Newsweek interview regarding the Mark Foley scandal: "Being in the closet doesn't make you do dumb things, doesn't justify you doing dumb things, it just makes them likelier." Frank should know: he was once embroiled in a scandal of his own involving a gay prostitute living in his Washington apartment during the 1980's, when Frank was still closeted.
I'll concede one point to gay-rights opponents: the fact that Larry Craig sought sex with men doesn't prove he was wrong to condemn gay marriage, oppose workplace protections for gays, or support the military ban. He was wrong about those things independently of his sex life. In any case, our lives don't always reflect our best judgment.
But the fact that Larry Craig sought sex with men does mean that he ought to have mustered more compassion for gays than his public stance suggested. (It's one area where his stance was decidedly narrow.)
It's easy to call Craig a deviant, a liar, and a hypocrite. It's hard to feel compassion for someone who showed little of it to those who deal openly with challenges he knew privately. But compassion is still a virtue. Craig may not deserve it, but right now, he desperately needs it.
15 Comments for “Compassion for Craig?”
posted by Brian Miller on
Bible thumpers like Larry Craig are apt to cite scripture when things get bad for people they don’t like.
Here’s one for Mr. Craig:
Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
posted by JohnJ on
Craig was wrong about opposing gay rights independent of being gay? Well, yes, except that a profoundly closeted man like Craig is pretty much certain to oppose gay rights. Let’s not imagine that a person in his position, trying to throw everyone at all times off the scent, as it were, was ever thinking dispassionately about the good of society. A moot point.
posted by Charles Wilson on
Okay, fine. I feel sorry for the low-down, lying hypocrite. Satisfied?
posted by Brian Miller on
Goddess help us if Craig decides to “do a McGreevy.”
posted by Charles Wilson on
It’s too late for Craig to do that. His opportunity passed him by. But it’s certainly not too late for, say, David Dreier or Lindsay Graham or Mitch McConnell to come out of the closet as a forthright gay Republican.
posted by Brian Miller on
I’m not so sure. He could decide instead to reinvent himself as a victimhood posterboy and go on to some new career ala David Brock, who changed from a career in the closet smearing liberals to a career out of the closet smearing conservatives.
Remember, politicians have to eat too (and they often are good at compromising their scruples to do so).
posted by Bobby on
As I told a homophobe who said this:
“If gays didn’t have the innate guilt (the deep down feeling that what they desire and what they do is WRONG) then they wouldn’t go to such extremes to seek/demand acceptance from the majority.”
My response: Actually, it’s the ones with the guilt that shut up. Sen. Craig and Ted Haggard had guilt. They never came out of the closet, they were outed by their own actions. And frankly, they deserve it. Those people made careers bitching about gay people in public while enjoying them in private.
So I will not have compassion for Craig. He is evil, he has done evil, he has betrayed the party, he has been a hypocrite and a liar. I might miss that reliable pro-gun vote Craig was, but the second amendment doesn’t need perverts defending it.
posted by Mike on
While I have no particular sympathy for Craig, I think much of the discussion has missed something that became apparent during the early days of the AIDS epidemic. That is, that “men who have sex with men” do not necessarily identify with being “gay”. The former did not respond to messages directed to individuals who identify themselves as gay. The sexual act is about the only thing that the two groups have in common.
I think Cindy Adams’ comments in her Post column are the best statement I’ve heard on the whole issue.
posted by Mark on
So, Bobby…you have to be heterosexual or openly gay to endorse the 2nd Amendment? Or did I just completely miss your sardonic wit? As a liberal who supports the 2nd Amendment (AND the death penalty, by the way), I would think that you’d welcome the support even of one who has demonstrated such “evil,” as you have indicated. That’s the very kind of hypocrisy which implies that you have to be the “right kind” of gay person or the “right kind” of conservative, or the “right kind” of Republican. It’s what causes guys like Craig to have to “hide out” in the first place, for fear of not measuring up to someone else’s expectations or definitions of what “normal” is. Maybe…just maybe…”perverts” ARE normal?
posted by raj on
I hesitate to point out the obvious, but the facts are
i) nobody can force Craig to resign (and it isn’t clear that he even has resigned);
ii) the Senate can expell him, but it’s unlikely that he will; the last Congress Member who IIRC was expelled was Adam Clayton Powell in the 1960s, and that was for a clear criminal violation, not a floor-tapping incident;
iii) he can put himself up for reelection, and, if his constituents vote for him, the Senate will have to sit him, pending an expulsion vote.
posted by Bobby on
Mark, the NRA and the GOP welcomes liberals who support the second amendment, and your support of the death penalty is accepted as well.
The GOP does not welcome people who have sex with underage pages, people who send erotic text messages to former pages, and people who have sex in bathrooms.
Jim Kolbe is or was an openly gay republican in congress, and unlike Craig, he didn’t have sex in the bathroom. He had a RELATIONSHIP. And before Kolbe was outed, he spoke to The Advocate, thus outing himself.
Craig hid because he’s a coward and a liar, and to blame republican expectations you’re basically endorsing the “theory of low expectations.” The same theory liberals use to excuse crime among blacks, hispanics who don’t learn English, and gays who sleep around too much.
Perverts are not normal, NAMBLA is not normal, rapists are not normal, and people who have sex in bathrooms are not fucking normal.
posted by Mark on
Bobby, thanks for the further clarification. I couldn’t agree more seeing it as you have described. You are probably harder on Craig than I would be…but I agree that his behavior…and all the others you itemized..are completely unacceptable. But if I can dredge up any personal compassion for Craig, it is because he is such a pitiful character with so much self-hatred that he can’t begin to accept that he prefers men to women. I don’t know how old you are…but I’m in Craig’s age group, and growing up gay in the sixties was pretty much a “closeted” affair. There was little or no openness, few if any in Congress who would have supported any kind of rights for gays and lesbians, and people were summarily fired from their jobs for “being” homosexual. I’m glad to live in a generation where people are beginning to see that marriage between two men or two women is as valid as marriage between blacks and whites, which was also once proscribed as illegal. Perhaps…just perhaps…we will come to a time in this society when there will be no more need for the Larry Craig’s of the world to hide out in public bathrooms and hope someone will acknowledge their tapping feet, however “wide their stance.” Thanks for responding.
posted by Bobby on
Hey Mark, I’m 32, I guess it was different for me. Although when Ellen came out it was a big deal. Now it’s not a big deal anymore.
I do feel sorry for Craig, specially for his poor wife who he dragged when he made that declaration of not being guilty.
I read that in the 50s and 60s some gays did go to bathrooms, while others went to undercover gay bars, gallery events, etc.
But the reason that Craig makes me angry is that I wish he had used craiglist, gay.com, or just hired a hooker from the yellow pages. I mean, we all have temptations, each one of us has desires, but most of us use the proper channels.
Ever seen “All the Presidents Men,” it was kinda said that the gay character, a politician himself, ended up commiting suicide after being exposed. So I can at least try to understand where you’re coming from, and where is Craig coming from.
And it’s true that some men discover they’re gay after they get married. On the other hand, there are closet homosexuals who don’t get married, including the one who sent erotic IM’s to pages. So to me, Craig was just asking to get in trouble.
posted by Mark on
Bobby…we’re probably not too far apart in much of our philosophy. I do envy guys your age just a bit, while at the same time, being happy for you that it is much easier to be openly gay now and not have it be the sum of who you are. I think the healthy attitude that I see in many younger guys is that “yes, I’m gay, but that doesn’t define me…I’m also this, this, and this.” That’s a wonderful progress from the seedy things that were done in the 50’s and 60’s. I suspect that there are few times in Larry Craig’s conscious life when he is not consumed by this dreadful, awful, horrible thing that “has hold of him” (to paraphrase Ennis in Brokeback Mountain). His life, I suspect, has been a living hell…and now, as you point out, he has inflicted that self-hatred on his wife and children, his colleagues, his party, the Congress, and you and me. Thanks for the dialogue!
posted by Bobby on
You’re welcomed, Mark. Nice talking to you to.