Tonight I actually felt a twinge of sadness for this man Larry Craig.
Imagine what a tortured life he has led. 60-some years of age and having been hiding this awful, terrible, vile, yet irresistible secret from the whole world, a secret that he loathed and despised so greatly -- even as he allowed it to consummate him -- that the only way he could acknowledge its presence was to bring it down to the lowest level he could -- wallowing in the stench and filth of a public toilet.
Imagine, really, the agonizing, anguished psychic pain he has been suffering under for probably his entire life. (Rumors to the contrary, an adult doesn't just suddenly wake up one morning and decide to embrace "The Gay Lifestyle.")
I truly felt deep sadness for this poor, tormented man and wished it did not have to be so for him.
But then the image of Matthew Shepherd's mangled and broken body strewn across that wooden fence in the cold, dark, lonely Montana night flashed into my mind and rudely intruded into my sadness for Senator Craig.
Matthew, too, suffered a terrible fate because of rabid, hate-infused, repressed homosexual passion. Only in his case it was not HIS own homosexual loathing that brought him not just public humiliation but indeed straight to death's door: It was the twisted, burning hatred of homophobic (ergo latent homosexual) psychopaths who dragged him, kicking and screaming, to his death. They literally tore the life out of his tortured body.
And that image to me is far more grievous and gut-wrenching than some pathetic, horny old man sitting on the piddle-pot with his trousers around his bony ankles and tapping his foot, hoping to entice the handsome young man in the next stall. Who just happened to be an undercover vice officer. Drat the luck.
As I said, the blood and suffering of the many Matthew Shepherds are on the hands of the many Larry Craigs who tacitly endorse hate crimes against gays by boldly and with great rancor speaking out against "the iniquity of homosexuality" -- pointing at homosexuals and calling them vile, evil, immoral and intolerable. And who also tacitly endorse hate crimes against gays by their incessant, shrill insistence that gays are less-than citizens and thus unentitled to equal rights, equal status and equal tolerance.
Then the very minute these pathetic hypocrites can scuttle out of the limelight and back into the darkness of their secret lives, they are leering through the cracks in the doors of public men's rooms, fervently hoping for the chance to indulge in the very "debased acts of iniquity" that they were just railing against in their churches, their meeting rooms, their congressional chambers, and their courts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard
