Larry Craig, senior senator from the great state of Idaho, was arrested in early June for lewd conduct in an airport restroom in Minnesota. According to the police report, Craig attempted to proposition an undercover officer through ambiguous hand and foot gestures beneath the wall separating their bathroom stalls. These descriptions alone are enough to make you howl with laughter (though maybe this is actually how such things are done? I just don't know enough about it, maybe), and Craig's explanations are even more ridiculous. His foot nudged the officer's foot because of his "wide stance" when using a toilet. His hand was waving around, palm facing up, into the next stall because he was trying to pick up a piece of toilet paper. Mmmmh hmmm.
This whole thing, despite its inherent hilarity for those of us with no personal involvement in the public humiliation of the Larry Craigs, the Ted Haggards, and the Mark Foleys of the world, leaves me feeling slightly dirty. There's the deep discomfort I feel at the very idea of outing people against their will, even hypocrites working for ultra-conservative family-values types, or even worse, are them selves ultra-conservative family-values types with actual political power. When, as liberals, we place so much weight and value on a constitutionally-protected right to privacy, how can we live with ourselves when we're breaching this right for our own gain? Yet on the other hand, as Glenn Greenwald pointed out in his article today, the conservatives play the same game, playing both sides depending on convenience. It's hard enough to feel bad about the unwilling outing of someone like Ted Haggard, who publicly railed against 'alternative' lifestyles, preaching fire and brimstone and of course gay couples should never be allowed to have children, and then goes and sleeps with a male prostitute and snorts meth. And if it's hard to pity him, it's even harder to pity a guy like Larry Craig who, after all, effectively outed himself by soliciting sex in a public airport restroom, though there is a certain pitiable desperation in such behavior, coming from a man supposedly happily married.
It's a shame that these scandals are what reach the mega-churches and the vast mid-west and the Idaho panhandle of red America, that this is how the conservative masses so opposed to gay rights are exposed to gay lives, if that makes sense. I can't imagine that these scandals, much as they demonstrate the hypocrisy of these individuals, actually do much in the way of furthering gay rights. Ted Haggard claims to have been completely cured of his homosexuality after three weeks of therapy. Larry Craig claims to be the victim of a newspaper's witch hunt and still not gay at all anyway, damn it. And Mark Foley, as it turns out, claims to be an alcoholic and to have been molested as a child.
I don't know. Much as I still feel uncomfortable about the whole outing thing, I find it impossible to feel particularly sorry for these guys, given the power and influence they have, as church leaders and political leaders, over the rest of us. When I argue in defense of the right to privacy, I am arguing against the government intruding in to, yes, a person's right to an abortion, a gay couple's right to have sex without fearing arrest, their right to adopt children and marry and be fully recognized by our government. The invasion of privacy that these men have gone through, and the ensuing humiliation and potential downfall, is a direct result of their choice to meddle in other people's lives. Had Ted Haggard's male prostitute lover not found out who Haggard actually was, Haggard might not ever have been outed. Had Larry Craig not been an elected official, a hugely public person with a very established record of homophobia, his arrest would not have made such huge headlines. It is their very hypocrisy that has lead to their downfalls, and maybe that's not something to get too worked up about.
But still, I am open to discussion.
This whole thing, despite its inherent hilarity for those of us with no personal involvement in the public humiliation of the Larry Craigs, the Ted Haggards, and the Mark Foleys of the world, leaves me feeling slightly dirty. There's the deep discomfort I feel at the very idea of outing people against their will, even hypocrites working for ultra-conservative family-values types, or even worse, are them selves ultra-conservative family-values types with actual political power. When, as liberals, we place so much weight and value on a constitutionally-protected right to privacy, how can we live with ourselves when we're breaching this right for our own gain? Yet on the other hand, as Glenn Greenwald pointed out in his article today, the conservatives play the same game, playing both sides depending on convenience. It's hard enough to feel bad about the unwilling outing of someone like Ted Haggard, who publicly railed against 'alternative' lifestyles, preaching fire and brimstone and of course gay couples should never be allowed to have children, and then goes and sleeps with a male prostitute and snorts meth. And if it's hard to pity him, it's even harder to pity a guy like Larry Craig who, after all, effectively outed himself by soliciting sex in a public airport restroom, though there is a certain pitiable desperation in such behavior, coming from a man supposedly happily married.
It's a shame that these scandals are what reach the mega-churches and the vast mid-west and the Idaho panhandle of red America, that this is how the conservative masses so opposed to gay rights are exposed to gay lives, if that makes sense. I can't imagine that these scandals, much as they demonstrate the hypocrisy of these individuals, actually do much in the way of furthering gay rights. Ted Haggard claims to have been completely cured of his homosexuality after three weeks of therapy. Larry Craig claims to be the victim of a newspaper's witch hunt and still not gay at all anyway, damn it. And Mark Foley, as it turns out, claims to be an alcoholic and to have been molested as a child.
I don't know. Much as I still feel uncomfortable about the whole outing thing, I find it impossible to feel particularly sorry for these guys, given the power and influence they have, as church leaders and political leaders, over the rest of us. When I argue in defense of the right to privacy, I am arguing against the government intruding in to, yes, a person's right to an abortion, a gay couple's right to have sex without fearing arrest, their right to adopt children and marry and be fully recognized by our government. The invasion of privacy that these men have gone through, and the ensuing humiliation and potential downfall, is a direct result of their choice to meddle in other people's lives. Had Ted Haggard's male prostitute lover not found out who Haggard actually was, Haggard might not ever have been outed. Had Larry Craig not been an elected official, a hugely public person with a very established record of homophobia, his arrest would not have made such huge headlines. It is their very hypocrisy that has lead to their downfalls, and maybe that's not something to get too worked up about.
But still, I am open to discussion.
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