Senator Larry Craig and Hypocrisy

Last year I wrote a column about the scandal which broke when Congressman Mark Foley of Florida was found to be making sexual advances toward pages in the House of Representatives. I said that there was a great deal of hypocrisy among the Republicans about such "Family" issues. Now Senator Larry Craig of Idaho has been exposed as a homosexual. There are probably still are some other Republican representatives and senators hiding in the closet. I have no problem with their being gay. What bothers me is that the Republican Party continues to cater to the anti-gay elements in America. While not all Republicans are homophobic, Republicans have taken the lead in efforts to pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage. Senator Craig has spoken out in favor of such an amendment. The 2004 Republican Platform called for the amendment and opposed allowing gays in the military.

Shortly after I wrote the Mark Foley column, Ted Haggard, a key Evangelical in the religious right and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, admitted that he had had a homosexual affair with a man. As an evangelical, Haggard was expected to speak out against homosexuality as sinful. When Haggard spoke against same-sex marriage, his homosexual lover, exasperated at the hypocrisy, exposed him.

I don't think Senator Craig should have resigned because of his homosexuality. Rumors regarding Craig's sexuality have circulated for decades. In 1982, as a congressman, Craig denied having inappropriate relationships with male pages. According to The Idaho Statesman, a 40-year-old man reported having sex with Craig at Washington's Union Station in around 2004. The Statesman also spoke with a man who said that Craig "cruised" him for sex in 1994 at the REI store in Boise. There are other reports of Craig’s homosexuality going back to his college days. He has obviously been an active gay man all his life. I do not approve of anybody, heterosexual or homosexual, soliciting sex in public places, but the description of what Senator Craig did hardly seems like enough to justify criminal prosecution or the frantic calls by leading Republicans for his scalp.

In my opinion, Senator Craig was entrapped by a police officer. In an article in the Op Ed section of The New York Times, Laura MacDonald explained the series of signals given by gays who wish to solicit sex in a bathroom (what an awful, smelly place to solicit sex!) The signals described by Ms. MacDonald are identical to those attributed to Senator Craig. There are several phases. Senator Craig allegedly peeks into the stall. Then he takes the stall next to the policeman. He then taps his foot and touches it to the officer’s shoe, which is positioned close to the divider. He then slides his hand along the bottom of the stall. There are more phases — maneuvering, contracting, foreplay, and payoff — but Senator Craig was arrested after the officer presumed he had “signaled.”

Ms. MacDonald explains that no straight man would be offended by these signals because he would not know what they mean (until now). In order for the signals to progress to a higher level, the recipient of the signals would have to signal back a willingness to go further. No straight man would do so. It is clear that the police officer, by tapping his foot, did signal back to Craig that he was ready for gay sex. That is entrapment.

Frankly, I do not understand how any gay person can be a Republican or an Evangelical Christian. There is even an organization of gay Republicans called the "Log Cabin Republicans." I can understand that gay people may be conservative on many issues and may consider themselves born-again Christians, but right-wing Republicans and Evangelicals have viciously attacked gays for many years. They have not only sponsored efforts to prevent gay marriage or civil unions but have opposed including homosexuality in equal rights laws and hate-crimes legislation. They have opposed allowing gays in the military and have spoken out against the Supreme Court decision nullifying anti-sodomy laws. I would think that the right to be free from bigotry and discrimination would be by far the most important issue for gay people.

Senator Craig should have followed the lead of former Governor Jim McGreevey of New Jersey and come out of the closet. He should have declared that he is a homosexual. He should have announced that he was not going to resign and that he was switching to the Democratic Party. He would probably have been welcomed by the Democrats. The Democrats have not been as hypocritical on the subject of homosexuality as the Republicans.

Here is the column I wrote last year:

HYPOCRISY

Republicans proclaim themselves to be the party of morality, family values, and religion. At the time of the Clinton impeachment proceedings, they self-righteously condemned Clinton for lying under oath about having sexual relations with a White House intern. On the floor of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, Henry Hyde, Bob Livingston, Bob Barr and others called for Clinton’s scalp. It later turned-out that at the time of the impeachment, Gingrich was having an adulterous affair with a congressional staffer. In addition, a campaign worker admitted that she had sex with Newt while he was still married to his first wife.

During the impeachment, Henry Hyde, who oversaw Clinton's impeachment proceedings as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, admitted he had had an extramarital affair with a woman who was married and had three children.

Bob Livingston, Speaker of the House after Newt Gingrich, resigned from the House in the wake of revelations about his past adultery.

Bob Barr, a leader in the impeachment battle, said: "The flames of hedonism, the flames of narcissism, the flames of self-centered morality are licking at the very foundation of our society, the family unit." Barr was married three times, paid for his second wife's abortion, failed to pay child support to his first two wives, and while married to his third wife was photographed licking whipped cream off of the bare breasts strippers.

Over the years we have been subjected to repeated lectures on morality by the likes of Bill O’Reilly (charged with sexual harassment), Rush Limbaugh (guilty of drug abuse), and William Bennett (gambling addiction). We have been bombarded by the moral sermonizing of right-wing ministers like Jimmy Swaggert (voyeurism), Jim Baker (sexual affair and prison time for fraud), Pat Robertson (got wife pregnant before they were married), and Robert Tilton (exposed as a fraud by Diane Sawyer). We have seen the Republican Congress degraded by unscrupulous lobbyists like Jack Abramoff, corrupted by big businesses like the Tobacco, Oil, Health Insurance, and Pharmaceutical industries, and besmirched by the lure of pork and earmarks.

In recent years the Republican Congress has been led by the likes of Tom DeLay (indicted), Bob Ney (indicted), and Randy Cunningham (convicted). Now we are confronted with the scandal of Mark Foley. It appears that Republican leaders like Dennis Hastert, John Boehner, and Tom Reynolds knew about inappropriate advances by Mark Foley toward congressional pages months ago —and possibly years ago. One can pity Mark Foley for hiding in the closet so long, but it was profoundly hypocritical for him to act as chairman of a committee for protection of children while he was writing sexually suggestive emails to teenage pages. It was far more hypocritical, however, for those congressional leaders, who obviously knew about Foley’s behavior, to ignore it.

I am not saying that Republican sexual and other misbehavior is more reprehensible than that of Democrats. We are all human beings and are subject to all the weaknesses conferred on us by human nature. The sexual drive in most people, both heterosexual and otherwise, is the most powerful instinct we have. Sexual misconduct is probably commonplace by members of both parties.

But I believe that there is a striking difference between Republicans and Democrats on one item—hypocrisy. Republicans, conservatives, right-wing commentators, and evangelical and religious leaders specialize in hypocrisy. You would think that the constant sermonizing about morality and family values would stick in their hypocritical craws, but they go on telling us what is moral and what God wants.

The Republican leaders of the House of Representatives at the time of the Clinton impeachment were a bunch of hypocrites. The Republican House leaders today, who knew months--and possibly years--ago about Mark Foley’s improper behavior toward pages, are hypocrites. They covered-up in the hope of retaining a congressional seat in the coming election.

This November, if you want to have a government free from sexual, moral, and ethical scandals, you will not do any better with the Republicans than with the Democrats. If, however, you want to reduce the sheer size of the dung-heap of hypocrisy that has been spread by Republicans around Washington for the past six years, you are better-off voting for the Democrats.