Sherry Chandler » “I am not gay!”
“I am not gay!”
Sounds a lot like Nixon’s “I am not a crook!” Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much.
But…
Joan Garry at the Huffington Post has a good point:
The problem is, as I see it, is that Larry Craig is talking about the wrong “problem.”
No one is accusing Craig of being gay. They are accusing him of being a pervert.
He doesn’t have to answer to the American public about being gay. He has to answer to the American public, the Idaho voters and the police about being a pervert in a public restroom.
It would be a good thing if the nation at large saw it that way but I fear a good portion of Mr. Craig’s voters think the problem is homosexuality.
Postscript: From Dana Milbank in the Washington Post:
From the opening line of his statement yesterday, Sen. Larry Craig was in trouble. “Thank you all very much for coming out today,” he began.
“Coming out” was perhaps not the best phrase for a guy who had pleaded guilty to some rather un-senatorial conduct in an airport men’s room — and now stands accused in his home-state paper of a homosexual encounter in Union Station.
…Craig didn’t get into trouble for being gay; he got into trouble because he “engaged in conduct which I knew or should have known tended to arouse alarm or resentment.”
Though he has been writing laws for the past 32 years, the senator spoke yesterday as if he lacked the most basic grasp of the legal system.
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4 Comments
1. Helen Losse replies at 29th August 2007, 2:36 pm :
Yes, indeed. People don’t seem able to separate deeds from desires. Sad.
2. sherry replies at 2nd September 2007, 7:32 am :
Craig is human enough at least to act chagrined, indignant, maybe guilty, Helen, though I can’t feel too sorry for him. I was struck by this post at BagNews, comparing Craig’s mugshot to that of the madly grinning Tom DeLay and also to the antic MC Rove:
When I asked Poppysmatus, rhetorically, what made these white family-values men so prone to sexual indiscretion, especially the dreaded homosexual indiscretion, he opined that this kind of episode is more about power and dominance than sex. He’s probably right.
3. Terry replies at 3rd September 2007, 1:46 pm :
I would agree with Poppysmatus, but I’d also toss in control. These “family values” politicians have set up for themselves a pedestal that requires they remain in control of every aspect of their lives at all times. In that situation, taking wild risks, such as anonymous sex, prostitutes, messaging teenagers, could well be exhilarating. For someone under such tight strictures, being off the leash, even briefly, in giving up control to another person or even to chance, could become addictive. That addiction can lead them to greater and greater risks until they self-destruct. I would theorize that it is the risk, more than the sex, that these men are after.
4. sherry replies at 3rd September 2007, 4:36 pm :
How simple and obviously true, Terry, once you’ve said it, and yet the idea of risk had not occurred to me, maybe because I’m not much of a gambler myself. You are wise.
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