I find it strange hearing myself say this, but I agree with Larry Craig's decision to fight his railroading out of the Senate.
I don't agree with Larry Craig's politics at all. If he's indeed gay, he's the ugliest kind of hypocrite. If he isn't, he's shown a kind of spinelessness in the face of adversity that does not speak well to his character.
But I would be a hypocrite, too, if I took schadenfreude out of his current predicament. The charges against him are misdemeanors, and there's no precedent for someone being forced out of office for the equivalent of a speeding ticket (in fact, one could argue somebody speeding is more of a danger to society than someone playing footsie.) More on the flip.
Let's backtrack for a moment to the "charges" against him.
The police report doesn't accuse him of using a glory hole, verbal solicitation, or anything other than allegedly using some gestures that may or may not be commonly associated with soliciting unspecified gay sex.
I've seen far worse gestures at hotel bars among straight people that apparently weren't crimes.
I'm also asking myself if this is the best use of police and justice system resources: does Minneapolis have such a low crime rate that they seriously want to prosecute a guy for a little hand-waving below the men's room stall?
Even if one assumes Craig is guilty of the charges, I fail to see how this is really a "crime" in America. Making gestures and ogling and so forth is one of the ways we as a species go about making those kinds of connections. I don't know anything about gay codes or anything like that, but I know there's a big difference between my raising my eyebrow meaningfully at my wife and full-on snogging.
Then we get to the Republican stampede against him. We have Republican representatives who are caught having repeatedly engaged in the use of (female) prostitutes who don't even get a vote of censure from the House, while Craig's got a serious ethics charge leveled against him for...for what? Doing a tippy-tap in the men's room?
This is entirely, 100%, about the vilification of homosexuality by the Republican party. And ironic as it is, I think anyone who feels that this kind of sexual Jim Crow enforcement on homosexuals is part of a pattern of discrimination and ostracism ought to be defending Craig's right to stay in the Senate.
Sure, he's probably a liar and a hypocrite. But if those were reasons to vacate a Senate seat, we'd have 98 or 99 vacancies right now.
So (gulp), you go, Larry. Take a stand against the fearmongers in your own party. It may be the best thing to do for the republic, human rights, and in fact your own marginalized sense of human rights.