Wide Stance Dept:
We wish we could enjoy this more
Ordinarily, your humble editors here at Culture Warrior would revel in the destruction and public humiliation of someone like Larry Craig. Back in October of 2006, when deviant gay sex among Republican members of Congress was new, we reveled in the sinking of Rep. Mark Foley and, with him, Republican Control of Congress. Craig is a closeted gay man who, over his years in the Senate, hasn’t been particularly gay friendly. He, of course, is your typically “family oriented” conservative Republican and in a particularly hypocritical move, he voted to censure openly gay Rep. Barney Frank for having sex with a 
prostitute. Craig also has a long history of having anonymous sex with men in public restrooms, as revealed last year by a gay rights blogger. So by all counts, we should be having a ball with this. And yet, there is something unmistakably sad about Larry Craig’s situation and it’s ruining all our fun.
Once, before eating dinner at the Diner in Adams Morgan, we went to wash our hands in the men’s room. After a moment at the sink, a gentleman in the bathroom stall pushed the door open enough to reveal that he was vigorously masturbating, querying, “wanna come suck this dick?” That, friends, is public lewdness, and certainly the kind of thing we would hope law enforcement would try and keep a handle on in public places. The kind of foot-tapping, wide-stance bullshit that got Larry Craig into this mess seems to be a far more predatory preoccupation for police. This is America, and if two consenting adult individuals want to get their fuck on in the privacy of a bathroom stall, that seems to us to be their God-given right. We really hate to be defending this guy, you know, because we think he’s an asshole, but since we can’t enjoy this we have no choice but to try and spoil it for you too.
The second thing. The list of Republican elected officials and political appointees under investigation for corruption is staggeringly long. In the past two years there have been dozens of persons of interest, un-indicted co-cospirators, resignations, convictions and jail sentences. Most of this administration’s major decision makers are criminals, from the Vice President on down (We give Bush a pass - we’re strong believers in animal rights and, as smart as chimps are, we don’t really feel they have the very human sort of awareness necessary to commit a crime and therefore can’t be put on trial). You also have guys like Ted Stevens, in the Senate for decades and corrupt just about every second of it, but it’s Larry Craig who gets thrown out in three days just tapping his foot in a bathroom stall.
He’s gone, and the GOP is probably going to lose that seat and so, fine, we’ll take it. But honestly. There’s a war on.
