Diary Of A Mad Voter: Jessica Peck Corry
Secret Lives Of Gay Republicans
By Jessica Peck Corry, 8-30-07
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I don’t know Larry Craig personally. I’ve never met the guy. Before yesterday, he was just another U.S. Senator. Today, he is just another sad example of what has become of my political party’s tragic relationship with sexuality.
As everyone from Boise to Buffalo knows by now, Craig - a Republican from Idaho - recently pled guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct stemming from an encounter he had with an undercover police officer in the Minneapolis airport bathroom.
According to the government, Craig’s behavior signaled “a desire to engage in sexual contact” with the man in the bathroom stall next to him. Craig claims he has a wide stance and that is why his foot was underneath the stall next to him. Police say Craig was tapping his foot, using a well known tactic in a bathroom infamous for lewd conduct.
While Craig is saying that he hasn’t done anything wrong and is suggesting that he only pled guilty to a lesser charge in an effort to keep the story quiet, some in the GOP are seeking to force his resignation.
Already, party leaders have temporarily pushed him from senior committee posts, including his position as ranking member on the Veterans Affairs Committee. In an interview with CNN, Craig’s fellow Senator John McCain urged Craig’s resignation, saying, “My opinion is that when you plead guilty to a crime, you shouldn’t serve. That’s not a moral stand. That’s not a holier-than-thou. It’s just a factual situation.”
McCain was joined by Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman, who said in a written statement, “Senator Craig pled guilty to a crime involving conduct unbecoming a senator.”
But what if Craig wasn’t accused of soliciting sex in a bathroom, but instead was charged with something much more dangerous to public safety, like driving drunk?
Certainly a DUI conviction represents conduct unbecoming of elected officials, but such convictions didn’t stop George Bush or Dick Cheney from assuming the executive branch.
What if Craig had instead accidentally driven a car off a bridge and killed a young woman? Such conduct hasn’t stopped an infamous U.S. Senator with the last name Kennedy from enjoying his lengthy political run.
One can only assume that the GOP is coming down so hard on Craig because the accusations are, well, kind of disgusting.
Certainly, if they’re true, it’s awful that he would cheat on his wife. And if they’re true, it’s unnerving for men across the nation who will likely think twice before entering any bathroom stall.
But should social outrage be enough to end a political career? In this case, maybe and maybe not.
Craig has come out adamantly in the last few days denouncing rather solid accusations that he is gay. But if the allegations are true, I just wish Craig could come clean. How tragic indeed is the prospect that at the age of 62, Craig feels stuck in a life where he can’t tell the truth about who he really is.
McCain and other Republicans, together with social conservatives, feign shock about the allegations, but in fact, this situation represents nothing new. For Republicans and conservatives, we’ve seen one after another of our peers “outed” as gay. In 2006, Florida Republican Congressman Mark Foley was forced to resign after his solicitations of young men who were congressional pages came to light.
Instead of shaking our heads in disbelief, maybe the GOP should accept that, well - as hard as this may be to believe - gay people can be conservative and conservatives can be gay. It shouldn’t take disturbing national scandals to make us realize this.
There must be no place more lonely than the heart of a gay Republican. Imagine believing so passionately in the basic tenets of the GOP - ideals many in my party’s leadership have abandoned, including limited government, personal responsibility, and individual freedom - but finding yourself rejected because people can’t accept that you are attracted to people of the same sex.
Perhaps Craig is telling the truth and the allegations are false. Cops have been known to lie a time or two in this country. But if they aren’t lying, I can only pity Craig, part of the world’s most powerful club, and yet so weak, he continues to live a lie.
An ethics panel will conduct an investigation into the situation, but in the meantime, the GOP will have its own time to regroup. It will likely focus on whether a senator convicted of a crime should resign. Maybe instead it should ask whether a Republican convicted of being gay should be forced to do the same.
We know this: Craig has pleaded guilty to a crime. But as Congress ponders his fate, I can only hope that those administering justice will know for which crime exactly they are punishing him.
Editor’s note: Jessica Peck Corry’s weekly blogs are part of a new feature on NewWest.Net/Politics called “Diary of a Mad Voter,” a group blog, published in partnership with the Denver Post’s Politics West intended give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the ‘08 election cycle. Check back this week at www.newwest.net/madvoter.
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Comments
LarryCraigVideo.com
Disgusting accusations against members have been ignored by the GOP over the years of their rule of congress (Gingrich, DeLay, Folly to name a few). And the record shows that Craig has been under a cloud since 1982 which means that the party has ignored his behavior for about 25 years. So why their fit of conscience now? Simple, the GOP congress is staring into the pit of well deserved political annihilation in 2008.
Better late than never.
The family value party, once you open the dungeon, is full of skeletons.
Or perhaps it's because of the monumental hypocrisy of "your" party. How else are they to save face when one of their own is exposed as a sham? They've simmered collectively in the same slimy stew of phony righteousness, of course they have to eject the tainted one. They came roaring in on a God, guns & gays agenda, pandering to the Christian base they hoodwinked for votes (Rove, you evil genius), meanwhile playing footsie under bathroom stalls and ogling (or is that googling) studly young pages in the halls of power. Who hasn't seen a proliferation of "one man + one woman = marriage" bumperstickers during the Shrub's tenure? Gag me if I see another one. As noted, Craig has been under suspicion for a long time. He just had the bad luck to slip up when the voters are finally FINALLY getting around to noticing that the emperor is, indeed, stark naked.
My compliments on your well written and well reasoned article/blog.
From my left-coast/left-wing perspective, we have a very large piece of common ground to stand on.
"Keep the f*&^%#g preacher out of my politics!" I'm a north left-coaster living in exile among such and can often find common ground when that crap is avoided.
Bi-sexual, maybe, gay, no, just perverted power jerks.
Sincerely,
Pudlo Pudlat
Mini Wirehair Dachshund
http://www.idahostatesman.com/localnews/story/143801.html
Is Senator Vitter being removed from his posts in the Senate after admitted running around in diapers with a hooker? Is Senator Stvens being asked to resign after federal agents raided his house in an open corruption scandal?
What we are witnessing is a bunch of closeted gays screaming for Craig's bald scalp in the hopes that no one will come after them. How sad and pathetic.
What has happened to the G.O.P?
As to Senator Craig, whatever happened, he has only made the matter much worse, a major reason why I believe the Bush Administration, RNC and Senate leadership are so upset. The "incident" occurred in June and he pleaded guilty about 7 weeks later in early August. He had all that time to discuss the matter with his family, counsel and Republican leadership. We are led to believe he told no one, as he must have hoped the record would never come to light. This way he could live on and on one would know, perhaps just like all the times before. But not this time --- not with a transcript, an audio recording, a mug shot and past allegations being repeated in every media outlet all over the US political map, including Missouri, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Virginia, all states the GOP counts on.
My conclusion is he was and is living in a mentally and emotionally disordered world. Of course, people would find out --- information always becomes public at some point, in these times, sooner rather than later ... and who would ever think pleading guilty to soliciting sex in a bathroom was OK and could somehow be justified, through an ingenious legal and public relations defense?
If the police report is correct, and it certainly appears damning, Senator Craig appears to have been living a confused life for quite some time. I find it very sad that what he believed people were concerned about was that he was gay --- that being gay was the issue, and as long as he could convince people he was not gay, the problem would go away. By making sure everyone knew he was married and had children, well of course, he could not be gay ... a remarkably ignorant and politically unrealistic approach.
What most people are concerned about is that an elected official would engage in this kind of behavior, most certainly inconsistent with our expectations for a man in his position. On the day of the incident in June, Senator Craig should have immediately returned home, assuming personal responsibility, informed his family, called state and national leadership, resigned and in his resignation letter, stated he was working through a personal issue with the support of his family and friends. Everyone on your list, Republican and Democrat should have done the same, but of course they did not and the rest as they say, is history. Perhaps there are multiple lessons here, and we can hope that people in positions of responsibility would think twice about the significance of this entire tragic episode.
The truth is that Larry Craig was, throughout his career, one of the most predatory, conniving, deceitful, sneaky villains to be found. With regard to conservation issues, which happen to be one of my primary interests, he was one of the worst legislators in American political history. The fact that he kept a low profile that hid a good part of his villainy from the mass public simply points to the same ability for hypocritical deceit that he used to hide his sexual activities. There are openly gay members of the House and Senate and they do not need defending. Larry Craig needs defending because the real issues are not centered on his sexual preference. The issues have, for many years before this incident, been his hypocrisy on a full range of topics, his tremendous and long demonstrated capacity for deceit, and the fact that he spent a whole career cementing his legacy as a villainous puke on a whole host of topics and in a whole host of ways, none of which had anything to do, besides the continuity of his deceitfulness, with his sexual preference.
Where Craig and his ideological colleagues are concerned, I'd be saying good riddance to bad rubbish if they had twenty mistresses each. It's the hypocrisy, the deceit, and the ideological pus down in their souls that are the crimes and the reason that few have risen to their defense.
You can't get a bucket of water out of the Columbia in Oregon because we have to be devoted to saving sockeye at Red Lakes. How about the salmon cannery for sockeye at Payette Lake years ago? How about Idaho Fish and Game poisoning sockeye in their natal lakes to better the trophy trout fishery? Anyone ever talk about IHN virus, fish biologists, and how they have killed sockeye because they carry the virus, in attempts to favor chinook salmon? How about the fish ladder at Brownlee being useless, so Idaho Power just didn't have to build them at Hells Canyon and Oxbow? Did Democrat Senator Church try to stop all that? He was in office at the time. A powerful voice for Idaho. Was he filled with ideological pus?
Poor Craig has been isolated in the heady airs of the Capitol for so long he has no connection to reality in his personal life. He has no life to celebrate. A Senatorial nerd. The parsed word is so much apart of those 100 lives that none are to be believed or trusted, and that is who we get for presidential candidates. Poor us. Just like leaving the family Ford at the beach for too long. It corrodes from the inside out. And so do the oft elected politicians. They rot from the inside out. No moral compass. Just advice from very smart, ambitious kids just out of college on how to skirt any issue, twist the words to mean nothing, negotiate only from power. Their goal is to regain the majority no matter the cost or the means. From the majority emanates power. Sick deal. Machiavellian, sick, and that is why we go to war not with the politicians we would like, but with the politicians we have. That Craig is toilet troller, looking to hook up for a dangerous thrill, just goes to show how demeaned his life must be. That he has avoided the IED's (improved exposure details) of the press for so long just goes to show sordid his lot was. Anyone who is sneaking around in the shadows in his personal life, is not to be trusted to be open with his constituency.
If you are following the Ted Stevens and Alaska deal, you know the Republicans are in for a lot more stormy weather. A purge of bad actors (no offense candidate Thompson) in the party needs to happen, now, and cleaning house is usually a good deal in the long run. Maybe Craig can take tap dancing lessons. Add some spice to his life. Hook up with a trophy boy. His pension is safe, except maybe from his wife.