I know, I know, I'm way behind the curve blogging about Larry Craig. This story is last week's news or maybe the week prior. Well, I get around to things when I can, and I was on vacation for one week of the time between then and now.The story is now second or third page material, but the punchlines keep coming from comics and elsewhere. This story is still alive, because as was the case with Mark Foley, Craig was a "Family Values" politician who has voted against measures that support civil rights for homosexual people. We love to lave at hypocrites. Of course, we just love to catch famous people with their pants down.
I have to agree with Mary Sanchez who titled her column in yesterday's K.C. Star: "Is He or Isn't He? Wouldn't it Be Nice if Nobody Cared?" She wrote:
The feeding frenzy has the whiff of homophobia. Really, Barney Frank should have more gay colleagues in Congress. OK, make that more openly gay colleagues. The fact that he doesn’t says much about what voters, and the general public, are willing to accept. In 2007, our society ought to be enlightened enough to cease being aghast that some people are gay. One benefit would be that U.S. senators and other respectable people would no longer feel compelled to hide their homosexuality, covering it with a loving spouse and family, whom their deception will someday disappoint and embarrass.
She goes on to say:
We’re all having fun with his predicament. We all want to be Jay Leno with this one...But maybe we should be a little less eager to come up with new punch lines. Working toward a place where gay men would be less apt to hide behind the cover of a wife and family would be preferable. Maybe then discretion could return to our private lives, because no one would care anymore.
Here! Here! As much as I want to revile Larry Craig for living a life in secret and then working publicly against people who seek to live openly with that same lifestyle, what I feel more than anything is pity. Sure, the male libido is involved, but is a bathroom stall really any body's first place to hook up? Only somebody looking for anonymity, seeking to respond to their inherent desires in a safe place and possessing no other place in their life for sexual expression would want to get together in an airport bathroom. Craig's actions seem awfully sad and like the actions of someone who wishes they could be authentically themselves but is unable to do so. I end up feeling little besides pity for Larry Craig.
Sure, Craig's efforts to get out of his guilty plea and his political maneuvers behind the scenes strike me as slimy and duplicitous. I felt that similarly about Bill Clinton's squirming refusal to admit wrongdoing. (For an interesting comparison between the two, listen to Daniel Schoor's commentary on NPR.) I'd much rather Craig take the route of Mark McGreevey and admit he's gay and resign. Of course, I also don't know what it is like to be a gay man, and I don't know what it is to struggle with my sexual identity in today's society. Whatever I may feel about Craig's caginess, I have to keep in mind that I really do not know what struggles he has faced with his sexuality.
What I would wish out of this whole mess is that everybody spent less time gleefully watching Craig's weaknesses and more time thinking about the kinds of antagonism that exist in our culture towards people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered. Would Larry Craig's life have been different if his church, his political party, his family, etc. had been supportive of him regardless of his sexual orientation? I have to believe that it would.
Grace and Peace,
Chase
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