Larry Craig
I've run across two excellent columns on the Larry Craig scandal that are very much worth reading.
The first is by Jim McGreevey, the governor of New Jersey who was outed when his affair with a male aide was discovered. He has written a heartfelt op-ed in the Washington Post describing why so many older gays feel unable to come out, and revealing why so many closeted gay politicians take anti-gay positions.
The other is a column by Sandip Roy on AlterNet discussing the differences between the situation of David Vitter, who paid for extramarital sex with a prostitute yet didn't lose his committee positions let alone his Senate seat, and that of Larry Craig, who is being hounded out of the Senate for merely suggesting consensual sex with a peer.
On the surface it would appear that Vitter's offense against morals is much more grave -- but because the prostitute was a woman, the Republican leadership closed ranks and brushed it all away.
Craig didn't actually have sex with anyone, and wasn't going to pay for it, yet he became a pariah simply because the person he wanted to make it with was another man.
When a politician makes a pass at a woman in an elevator, it's not even news. Arnold Schwarzenegger has admitted to coming on to women and everyone just laughs it off. That's all Larry Craig did -- but because the person he came on to was another man, rather than a woman, he's going to lose everything.
The same thing happened to McGreevey. If the aide had been a woman, he'd still be governor of New Jersey. I said that at the time, and it's true of Craig as well.
Those two columns together shed a new light on the issue. Larry Craig is still a hypocrite and a liar, but so are many -- even most -- politicians. Just because he solicited homosexual sex is not a reason to destroy his life.
The first is by Jim McGreevey, the governor of New Jersey who was outed when his affair with a male aide was discovered. He has written a heartfelt op-ed in the Washington Post describing why so many older gays feel unable to come out, and revealing why so many closeted gay politicians take anti-gay positions.
The other is a column by Sandip Roy on AlterNet discussing the differences between the situation of David Vitter, who paid for extramarital sex with a prostitute yet didn't lose his committee positions let alone his Senate seat, and that of Larry Craig, who is being hounded out of the Senate for merely suggesting consensual sex with a peer.
On the surface it would appear that Vitter's offense against morals is much more grave -- but because the prostitute was a woman, the Republican leadership closed ranks and brushed it all away.
Craig didn't actually have sex with anyone, and wasn't going to pay for it, yet he became a pariah simply because the person he wanted to make it with was another man.
When a politician makes a pass at a woman in an elevator, it's not even news. Arnold Schwarzenegger has admitted to coming on to women and everyone just laughs it off. That's all Larry Craig did -- but because the person he came on to was another man, rather than a woman, he's going to lose everything.
The same thing happened to McGreevey. If the aide had been a woman, he'd still be governor of New Jersey. I said that at the time, and it's true of Craig as well.
Those two columns together shed a new light on the issue. Larry Craig is still a hypocrite and a liar, but so are many -- even most -- politicians. Just because he solicited homosexual sex is not a reason to destroy his life.