The party of family values strikes again. To the list of Foley, Haggard, Gannon..., add Larry Craig. It's like a moral implosion. As the Buddha said, if you wind the bow string too tight, it will snap.
The Senator from Idaho, was arrested in June at the Minneapolis Airport for trying to solicit sex from an undercover officer in a men's toilet. Craig had two months to think about it before he copped a guilty plea to disorderly conduct earlier this month. He probably thought pleading guilty to the misdemeanor would be less conspicuous than a trial. But he didn't take into account that certain indie rag would start digging into the circumstances of his arrest. Now he says it was all a misunderstanding and he didn't do anything wrong at all. I dunno. I read the cop's testimony and find it hard to believe it was a misunderstanding. Would you plead guilty to a sex offense if you felt the officer was making things up? At any rate, the judge is not letting him recant his plea. He's guilty.
Despite the fact that he thinks being gay is "despicable" the assertion that Craig is gay is not new. There have been rumours of him hooking up with guys in DC restrooms for years. And DC gay-activist blogger, Michael Rogers, outed Craig last year because he was pissed off by his hypocrisy. The mainstream media didn't believe it at the time and "outing" someone is a controversial tactic in the GBLT community, even if the guy being outed is an anti-gay rights law-maker.
At any rate, this last incident finally convinced the GOP leadership that Craig is gay, which is why they dropped him like the homophobes that they are. The party of family values maintains that same-sex couples must be barred from marriage for the sake of preserving the sanctity of marriage. Yet fornicating with prostitutes seems to be perfectly ok if we are to judge by who gets stays within the graces of the GOP. Otoh, it could just be that Idaho is a firmly red state and they feel that Craig is expendable while Vitter of Louisiana is not.
Despite the hypocrisy, I feel sorry for the guy, just as I felt sorry for Ted Haggard when he fell. Yes, I realize that these guys are out there preaching intolerance, making the lives of millions of good people miserable for no good reason, and being total hypocrites about it. But just think of how conflicted these men must be. They're gay and they can't admit it, even to themselves. They live their lives in secrecy, always afraid of getting caught. And the reaction of the Republican Party confirms these fears as valid. To me that is a living hell. I really wish they could have a little more compassion for their true selves. And then maybe they could have more compassion for others as well.
Addendum (08/31/2007):
Yeah, I feel sorry for the guy but I still thought this cover was hillarious.
(So, I'm not always a good UU.)
