MY LONG TIME SPARRING PARTNER Glenn Greenwald has unearthed an old quote of mine that he thinks brilliantly illuminates my intellectual incoherence. When the campaign to out Larry Craig began last October hot on the heels of the Foley debacle, I wrote:
I'm sorry if this topic causes embarrassment to Larry Craig and his family, but I assume by now they've figured out that politics in 2006 is a thoroughly rotten business. . . .
THE FIRST LEFT WING PATHOLOGY "OUTED" by the Craig story is the relentless meanness that characterizes modern day liberalism. . . .BUT MOST DAMNING OF THE LEFT is the casual assumption of group-think that this exercise demonstrates. The logic is that if you're gay, you must therefore support gay marriage. What's more, you must support everything that someone like Glenn Greenwald supports. To do otherwise evidences self-hatred and a betrayal of the cause.
In his post on the subject
, Glenn wrote that I was specifically addressing the bathroom sex charges. If you read my post, I was addressing the general campaign to out Craig. I’m sure Glenn will rush to publish a correction. Since I consider outing a viciously mean political tactic, I remain comfortable with that post. For what it’s worth, I believe most of the gay community agrees with me on this matter.
So what’s happened to make things different now than they were back in October when the cretinous Mike Rogers began his outing effort? Craig outed himself. What’s more, he lied (and continues to lie) to his constituents. If he had said last year words to the effect of, “My private life is private, and will remain that way,” everyone would have understood the coded message and backed off. No one bother charting Barney Frank’s nocturnal activities once he came out of the closet. Barney’s honesty took his sex life off the table as a political issue.
There’s also the obvious additional note that cruising for sex in a public Men’s Room and getting arrested for those cruising activities are things that disgust most people. Kids presumably use that restroom. So presumably do unsuspecting travelers, who unsuspectingly heeded nature’s call in Minneapolis’ smelly indoor version of a highway rest stop. Senator Tappy-Toes’ activities are not acceptable, not for a United States Senator, a person in a committed relationship, or for someone who purports to live up to our community’s standards.
On a related note, reader BR emailed, “I don't understand, if it's not homophobic, how trying to pick up a date in a public restroom is any different than picking up a date in a tavern, or an office. Can you explain?” My answer is no. If you don’t understand the difference on its face, then it’s unlikely that I can explain it to you.
ONE LAST NOTE here for the gay community. As a Jew, I’m frequently disgusted by the Anti-Defamation League. The ADL purports to speak for all of American Jewry, and yet is led by a craven, intellectually dishonest hierarchy. Recently, the ADL once again stepped in the proverbial poo when ADL leader Abe Foxman refused to recognize the Armenian Genocide as a real genocide. This was Foxman at his finest: Pointless, stupid, and using our own experience with the Holocaust as a bullying club to beat his critics. Abe didn’t win this one, and relented late last week. Anyway, my point is that as a Jew, I rush to remind my Gentile friends and readers that this man doesn’t speak for me.
What I find odd about the Craig situation is how the left has rushed to either defend his actions or at least try to mitigate them by comparing him to someone like David Vitter. If I were part of the gay community, my initial reaction to Craig’s actions wouldn’t be a pathetic attempt to minimize the depravity of looking for love in an airport men’s room. It would be to insist that as a community, the people who engage in antics like that are outliers and degenerates.
I spent several years living in working in Boston’s Back Bay and South End neighborhoods. Both had large gay populations. I won’t resort to the old clich that many of my best friends are gay, because they’re not (although I do have questions about a few of them – you know who you are). But spending a lot of time around gays in my neighborhood, at the gym and at work, I got to know the community. Good people. I think these experiences are partly to credit for why I’m more favorably inclined to the gay agenda than most arch-conservatives.
Behavior like Craig’s confirms the worst and darkest prejudices of people who fear and/or loathe the gay community. Larry Craig is an outlier, and his behavior a disgrace to everyone who has associated or is now associated with him – the Republican Party, conservatives, Mitt Romney, and gay America. People who care about the gay community should be rushing to condemn Larry Craig and distance themselves from him. And yet they’d rather score cheap political points.
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