THE LARRY CRAIG DEBATE

Town Hall, DC
-b5b7-c6200795763f
Aug 29 2007

MY LONG TIME SPARRING PARTNER Glenn Greenwald has unearthed an old
quote of mine that he thinks brilliantly illuminates my intellectual
incoherence. When the campaign to out Larry Craig began last October
hot on the heels of the Foley debacle, I wrote:

I’m sorry if this topic causes embarrassment to Larry Craig and his
family, but I assume by now they’ve figured out that politics in 2006
is a thoroughly rotten business. . . .

THE FIRST LEFT WING PATHOLOGY "OUTED" by the Craig story is the
relentless meanness that characterizes modern day liberalism. . .

.BUT MOST DAMNING OF THE LEFT is the casual assumption of group-think
that this exercise demonstrates. The logic is that if you’re gay,
you must therefore support gay marriage. What’s more, you must support
everything that someone like Glenn Greenwald supports. To do otherwise
evidences self-hatred and a betrayal of the cause.

In his post on the subject, Glenn wrote that I was specifically
addressing the bathroom sex charges. If you read my post, I was
addressing the general campaign to out Craig. I’m sure Glenn will
rush to publish a correction. Since I consider outing a viciously
mean political tactic, I remain comfortable with that post. For what
it’s worth, I believe most of the gay community agrees with me on
this matter.

So what’s happened to make things different now than they were back
in October when the cretinous Mike Rogers began his outing effort?

Craig outed himself. What’s more, he lied (and continues to lie) to
his constituents. If he had said last year words to the effect of,
"My private life is private, and will remain that way," everyone
would have understood the coded message and backed off. No one bother
charting Barney Frank’s nocturnal activities once he came out of
the closet. Barney’s honesty took his sex life off the table as a
political issue.

There’s also the obvious additional note that cruising for sex in a
public Men’s Room and getting arrested for those cruising activities
are things that disgust most people. Kids presumably use that
restroom. So presumably do unsuspecting travelers, who unsuspectingly
heeded nature’s call in Minneapolis’ smelly indoor version of a
highway rest stop. Senator Tappy-Toes’ activities are not acceptable,
not for a United States Senator, a person in a committed relationship,
or for someone who purports to live up to our community’s standards.

On a related note, reader BR emailed, "I don’t understand, if it’s
not homophobic, how trying to pick up a date in a public restroom is
any different than picking up a date in a tavern, or an office. Can
you explain?" My answer is no. If you don’t understand the difference
on its face, then it’s unlikely that I can explain it to you.

ONE LAST NOTE here for the gay community. As a Jew, I’m frequently
disgusted by the Anti-Defamation League. The ADL purports to speak
for all of American Jewry, and yet is led by a craven, intellectually
dishonest hierarchy. Recently, the ADL once again stepped in the
proverbial poo when ADL leader Abe Foxman refused to recognize the
Armenian Genocide as a real genocide. This was Foxman at his finest:
Pointless, stupid, and using our own experience with the Holocaust
as a bullying club to beat his critics. Abe didn’t win this one,
and relented late last week. Anyway, my point is that as a Jew, I
rush to remind my Gentile friends and readers that this man doesn’t
speak for me.

What I find odd about the Craig situation is how the left has rushed
to either defend his actions or at least try to mitigate them by
comparing him to someone like David Vitter. If I were part of the
gay community, my initial reaction to Craig’s actions wouldn’t be a
pathetic attempt to minimize the depravity of looking for love in
an airport men’s room. It would be to insist that as a community,
the people who engage in antics like that are outliers and degenerates.

I spent several years living in working in Boston’s Back Bay and South
End neighborhoods. Both had large gay populations. I won’t resort to
the old clich that many of my best friends are gay, because they’re
not (although I do have questions about a few of them – you know who
you are). But spending a lot of time around gays in my neighborhood,
at the gym and at work, I got to know the community.

Good people. I think these experiences are partly to credit for why I’m
more favorably inclined to the gay agenda than most arch-conservatives.

Behavior like Craig’s confirms the worst and darkest prejudices of
people who fear and/or loathe the gay community. Larry Craig is an
outlier, and his behavior a disgrace to everyone who has associated
or is now associated with him – the Republican Party, conservatives,
Mitt Romney, and gay America. People who care about the gay community
should be rushing to condemn Larry Craig and distance themselves from
him. And yet they’d rather score cheap political points.