So they caught Idaho Senator Larry Craig supposedly offering some vague sex act to someone in the men’s room.
The police report—all over the internet—is a primer on how guys apparently do this: you put your left foot in, you put your left foot out…
It’s easy to take shots at Craig, who has made a living demanding that the law curtail same-gender activity—and is caught inviting the same thing. In fact, Craig has a history of surreptitious male-male sex. And a history of wanting his disgust for gay people enshrined in American law. He recently urged a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, saying it is “important for us to stand up now and protect traditional marriage, which is under attack by a few unelected judges and litigious activists.”
Craig joins an enormous list of people who behave like hypocrites—ranting on about “morality” when his own behavior and impulses fall outside his own definition of morality.
Clearly, the guy is tormented. Apparently, a lot of people demanding that everyone conform to their narrow “morality” are conflicted. This is old news. In fact, reasonable people are asking, “is anyone who rants on about morality NOT afraid of their own impulses?”
But what we should be asking is, why is it against the law to offer a quickie to a stranger? What kind of sick country criminalizes an adult’s non-coercive, non-commercial offer to another adult—just because it’s about sex? Everyone who plays tennis has gone to a public court, walked up to a stranger, and asked, “want to play?” Everyone with a telephone is periodically asked, without invitation or warning, if they want to buy something, or listen to something, or reveal stuff about themselves.
The proper response to a single, non-coercive invitation to do something—anything—is “no thank you.” Not “you’re busted.”
There’s the lewd, obscene, disgusting behavior: busting someone for an invitation. Our nation has again exposed its horrendous ambivalence about its own erotic impulses. In doing so, it has shamed itself, and explained its obsessive concern with enforcing “morality”—i.e., limiting sexual fantasy and behavior.
Yes, Senator Craig should be thrown into the Potomac—not for expressing his sexuality, but for preventing the rest of us from doing so.