Here we go again. Another prominent Republican conservative advocate of virtuous family values has bitten the dust. U.S. Senator Larry Craig got himself arrested for lewd conduct in a public restroom. Sex solicitation in the men's shitter - how low can you get?
Responding to numerous complaints of inappropriate sexual conduct in a particular men's room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, an undercover police sergeant was assigned to bust miscreants in that facility. Last June, while the officer was sitting in one stall during his shithouse stakeout, Sen. Craig entered an adjoining stall, sat down on the crapper, slid his right foot underneath the partition to touch the officer's left foot, then reached his left hand (the officer saw Craig's wedding band) down to brush the underside of the partition.
The officer, his foot being well inside his stall, then arrested the senator for lewd conduct. Sen. Craig accused the officer of entrapment and of being the one who solicited sex. Denying that he had brushed his hand on the underside of the partition, he told the officer "you saw something that didn't happen," Nevertheless, Sen. Craig pled guilty in August to a reduced charge of disorderly conduct.
When news of his arrest became public some two months later, the senator denied being gay and vehemently insisted he did not engage in any inappropritate behavior. He claimed it was all just a misunderstanding and that he only pled guilty so it would all go away. Now he claims to be the victim of a dumb (he earned a master's degree) cop's imagination and insists the only mistake he made was to plead guilty to an offense he did not commit. Liar, liar!!!
In addition to his protestations of innocence, the good senator claimed he was also the victim of a five-month long "witch hunt" by his local newspaper, The Idaho Statesman. After the lewd conduct arrest became public, The Idaho Statesman then published allegations that Craig previously had oral sex with a 40-year old professinal man in a restroom at Washington's Union Station. Whopee!!!
The senator's defenders question the undercover sergeant's judgement resulting from some innocuous foot and hand movements. They should wake up and smell the roses. Police officers trained to work the shithouse stakeout know lewd conduct for what it is and do not make such arrests unless they are convinced the charges will stand a good chance of holding up in court. Men's restrooms in transportation terminals, public parks and shopping malls are often used by gay men for a quickie oral sex encounter.
In the '50s and '60s, when I worked the streets, there was so much lewd conduct by gay men in California's public park restrooms that the men's rooms, not the women's, were constructed with false ceilings which allowed officers to hide up there, observe any lewd conduct through peepholes, and make the appropriate arrests, of which there were many. Civil libertarians eventually convinced the courts to rule that peeping-tom cops hiding in false restroom ceilings constituted an unlawful invasion of privacy.
Sen. Craig is just the latest fallen member of the fraternity of social conservatives who trumpet the virtues of family values. There was Ted Haggert, former president of the National Association of Evangelicals. Reverend Haggert, who had also been the religious adviser to President Bush, had a three-year sexual relationship with male prostitutes and was a user of crystal meth. And, there was U.S. Senator David Vitter, another staunch social conservative family man, who was exposed as a phony for having engaged in sex with Wahington prostitutes.
Why were Craig, Haggert and Vitter such ardent champions of family values? These consevative hypocrites used the oldest trick in the world - strongly support traditional morals and publicly condemn other people's behavior, like infidelity and gay life styles, thereby covering up their own participation in the very same behavior. Hmmm, how many other family values trumpeting social conservatives are out there having sex in a men's shitter?
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