IN GOES SENATOR CRAIG AND STICKS HIS TOOTSIE UNDER THE WALL TO PLAY A LITTLE FOOTSIE, AND OUT POPS THE UNDERCOVER COP TO ARREST HIM

In a perfect world, I wouldn’t be writing about some guy from Idaho getting arrested for “lewd” homosexual acts in the bathroom at the Minneapolis airport.  But this isn’t a perfect world.  This is the bizarre world of George W. Bush, and the guy that was arrested is a United States Senator.  In fact, he isn’t just any old Senator.  He is a conservative Republican named Larry Craig, best known for his opposition to gay rights legislation.  That makes it a better than perfect world as far as I’m concerned.

Craig, it seems, was busted for propositioning an undercover cop in the stalls in the airport men’s room.  The place was apparently a known pick up sight for anonymous gay sex.  Since we all know that sodomy, particularly gay sodomy, is a venal sin, forbidden by G-d and all things right, it is perfectly understandable why a police officer had to spend days sitting in that stall just waiting for some evil gay guy to stick his foot under the stall’s separating wall to play a little footsie, apparently something the cops believe is akin to soliciting illicit sex.  Yes indeed, that’s exactly what I would want my police officers doing.

So, in goes Senator Craig and sticks his tootsie under the wall to play a little of that aforementioned game of footsie, and out pops the undercover cop to arrest him.  Here’s where the story gets a bit strange.  Craig is arraigned and decides to plead guilty, figuring that if this happens in the silence of the night, nobody will ever know that he really isn’t the straight laced straight Senator that the righter than right wing Idaho electorate put in office.

What Senator Craig neglected to consider was the possibility that somebody in the press would get hold of the story and make it public.  To the Senator’s dismay, it was the largest paper in his state, The Idaho Statesman, that got the story and decided to look a little deeper into his other activities.  What they found was something Arte Johnson of Laugh In fame, might have called “Verrrrry interesting, but stupid!”  You see, this wasn’t Senator Craig’s first brush up with the law regarding public solicitation for gay sex.  In fact, the paper alleges that Craig was busted in the men’s room at Washington’s Union Station for having oral sex in a stall.

As I said, I really don’t give a fig about the type of sexual preferences any other person has as long as they are not asking me to participate in their particular form of passion.  I do care if that activity is taking place in a public place because, frankly, the kids might see.  More to the point, I am really offended if a person caught in that kind of compromising situation is publicly a moral tight ass.  I am further offended by the fact that this particular priss happens to be the man who during the Senate hearings to remove President Clinton from office wagged his finger and called Clinton “a bad boy, a naughty boy” when he was interviewed on Meet The Press. 

Now, if this were an isolated incident among members of the party of the religious right, I would not be spending the time to tell you about it, but it’s not.  I have, in the past, written several times about Republicans who have been busted for illicit sexual activity, and they have always been the vilest, right wing, moralists in the Karl Rove led party of hypocrites.  In the last year or so, three prominent Republicans who preached morality have been busted for similar activities, straight and gay.

Six term Florida Congressman Mark Foley was forced to resign his position after it was discovered that he had been sending sexually explicit e-mails to Congressional pages.

Senator David Vitter, a freshman from Louisiana, was found to have been named on the customer lists of a woman who has been accused of running an escort service.

Randall Tobias, The Director of Foreign Aid for the State Department resigned his position after it was found that his name and number also appeared on the same madam’s list.

The bottom line here is these guys are the scum of the earth, not for their sexual proclivities but for their hypocrisy.  They preach morality, but they get arrested for illicit sexual activity.  They vote against bills that provide equal protection under the law to gender minorities when it turns out that they are members of those minorities.  They tell us that they love kids, but they vote against health care and education for those kids.  They tell us that it is important that we support seniors while they try to privatize Social Security.  And, most important, they send our kids to fight and die in a war that was never meant to be anything more than a cash cow for the President’s buddies at Halliburton.

Remember, these are members of the party that took office on the basis of “family values.”  Yet, when push comes to shove, their values are far more decadent than those of the people against whom they wag their fingers.  Bill Clinton may have had an affair or two, but they were always with consenting adults, and they never, ever, involved public sexual activity.  Family values?  Bah! Humbug!

So, Senator Craig, it seems that another one has bitten the dust.

Pity!

HENRY A. HONIG – THE PUNDIT