Thread Title: "I am not Gay" or Just Desserts or Tappy McHappy Pants

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Okay, you wanna go one for one?

Jeff Gannon?

Foley?

Let's see some more of that Republican "fortitude"....

You don't think these bastards get PAID for participating in every one of these scandals? You don't think there's a big payday at the end of all of that "shame", with just enough to pay little wifey off to disappear now that her job is done?

The neocons are masters at this. Why?

FOR, IN CHAOS, THEY CAN STEAL.

Just look at some of the stories they got to smooth over this week, with all of this nonsense.

The failed war in Iraq, now being repainted as a success.

The casino areas being the only thing in New Orleans apparently worth reconstructing.

Fred Thompson joining the GOP race (when he in actuality has less funding or popular support than Ron Paul)....

Tony Snowjob's greedy little exit and Karl Rove's sneaky little one.

Get real, folks. The only notable news this week should have been that there are sizable numbers of Americans who would kill you for your choices of life partners, and perhaps even more surprisingly, a shocking number of Americans who would stand by and do nothing to help you.

This is the most depressing part of being gay and being an American citizen, but the fact is you are NOT relatively safer here than elsewhere in the world. This IS an angry, repressed, frustrated people, and the only thing different about the Republicans is that they believe these emotions should be state-sanctioned.

Take heed, folks. None of this was designed to be subtle, although the comedic aspects are custom-designed to titillate and woo you back in slumber.

IMHO the most important thing is the courts. We HAVE to wrest our courts back from these flat-earthers and knuckle-draggers.

A half-dozen more "executive orders" and our lives are toast.
 
Yikes.

I'd be willing to cut Snow some slack. He's had a relapse of his cancer. He probably wants to earn some big bucks to leave his family (I'm assuming he's married with children). He seems like a decent enough sort, even if he made the mistake of working for Bush.

Rove and Gonzales? Good riddance to bad rubbish.
 


Another facet of residual fallout that no one here has addressed is what this incident is leading some people to believe about gays and their sexuality.

"Gee ... is THAT what they do, and is THAT where they do it?" This I heard a conservative talk show host say today.

Naive or elderly people, or those in small towns, rural areas or tightly controlled religious or political communities don't know any differently. Now, suddenly, a man has a global spotlight on him because he was entrapped attempting to indulge in homosexual sex. And the conservatives and religious fanatics are spinning it to death to paint the awful immoral portrait of all those "homa-saix-yals wallerin' in a snake-pit of ihhh-NICK-wah-tay."

It is going to be very hard to persuade certain groups of people that all us gay people aren't lurking about in public toilets, tapping our feet on the floor in some sort of coarse and vulgar mating ritual.

I can honestly say that in 51 years of living on this planet and being sexually active for 35 of those years, I have never once had any sexual encounter in a public toilet. But try telling that to "Rev. Lou Sheldon or Sean Hannity.
 
Can We Stop And Think Here?

I am probably going to get bashed to heck and gone for what I'm about to say, but unpopular stances are nothing new to me, so here goes...

Before I begin, I want to make it clear that I fully, fully share the general opinion that Craig is a hypocrite. It's my opinion he was doing a little cruising in that restroom. And I don't think restrooms are the place to have what the old song called Afternoon Delight. But- and there's always a but...

If you'll read the transcript of Craig's interview by the cop (it's all over the net, abc.com has it), you'll see that Craig was busted because he tapped his foot, his foot tapped the cop's, and the cop saw Craig's left hand beneath the stall partition. That's it. No groping, no spit-swapping, no explicit talk- in fact, no talk period. Nothing- repeat nothing- covered by any statute I've ever heard of transpired.

For this, an American citizen was arrested, booked, photographed, interviewed, and charged. That should be of at least as much concern to everyone as Craig's homophobic voting record. The man has been arrested, subjected to job loss, and pilloried in the press over what was essentially a flirtation. It was in a somewhat inappropriate place, yes. It was heavily at odds with his voting record, yes. It was a tacky thing to do, yesyesohyes. But it wasn't public sex, nor was it anything approaching that.

It's easy to forget, in this era of more relaxed mores and slightly more liberal laws, that there are those who hate gays so much, that they will get them any way they can. If there isn't a broad-brush sodomy law to throw at people any more, then other laws can be used- or misused- to harass gay Americans. Loitering, public indecency (define that one for me, willya? I think body-painted Bubbas at football games are indecent, myself), and vaguely worded "lewd conduct" statutes will do just fine, when it comes time to play that time-honoured game, Get The Gays.

What I'm getting at here is that what happened to Craig should not have happened, at least not the way it did. This case makes it clear that nearly any eye contact, conversation, or gesture could be construed as "lewd conduct" if an arresting officer wants to pitch it that way. And if it can happen to a United States Senator- no matter how hypocritical- it can happen to anyone.

Even more distasteful is how the media has lost all sense of proportion and decency. Yes, I share the general opinion that the guy is a major slime, making his living by voting against at least one of the ways he likes to make Mr. Happy happy. But Thursday night's Jimmy Kimmel Live had Kimmel saying that he'd show viewers the reason Craig was gay, then cutting to footage of Mrs. Craig and disparaging her appearance. That's not only way over the line; it may be libelous. It wasn't comedy, it was bullying.

So, while we're all criticising and laughing and circulating Senator Craig cartoons and jokes, I think there's a bigger issue here. Fair treatment for every citizen of this country is too precious a thing to be ignored just because someone's gay, or because this time, the person who was mistreated has been caught out as a hypocrite.

I don't like Larry Craig- never have, never will. But what he was doing could- and should- have been handled by the cop checking the restroom, and upon seeing loitering, calling out, "Minneapolis Police. No loitering in this facility!" I promise you, the place would have cleared in a twinkling. Only upon witnessing overt sexual behaviour or being explicitly propositioned to make whoopee on the spot should a cop have the right to make an arrest. Otherwise, we're on a slippery slope, where it's not okay to flirt and it's not okay to make a date if you belong to a group the cops don't like.

Think about it.
 
Sandy,

You do make a good point there. There are just two big problems with the Craig case, regardless of the evidence: he pled guilty to a lesser charge, signing a statement that he was not innocent. He also has a record of being rather stridently and actively (publicly at least) anti-gay.

Craig didn't have to plead guilty. He didn't even have to talk to the arresting officer other than to provide ID. I agree with others that he's probably had similar detainings in the past, and been able to talk his way out of them. Not this one.

It's quite possible, you're right, that if he had refused to cop a plea, that he might have won his case in court based on insufficient evidence. And he's certainly old enough and been around enough to know that. But once he made that plea, he was trapped. It was just a matter of time before the arrest and conviction would be made public.

And Craig has said and done other things that seem to indicate he was guilty. For one thing, he's claiming that his only mistake was not to consult with a lawyer before taking the plea. But other evidence is that 11 days after the arrest, he contacted the court and said he was going to consult his lawyer. Then, two months later, he took the plea (August 1). He'd had plenty of time to get legal counsel, and if indeed he didn't do that I'd have to say I'd have serious concerns about his mental capacity and fitness to be a senator on that basis.

So yeah, the bathroom patrol was a bit over the top. But on the other hand just announcing at the door that the cops are watching would just make the "johns" scatter like so many cockroaches, only to be back as soon as they felt the coast was clear again. From a law enforcement point of view, the Craig case is probably a big win: with all the publicity, I figure it's extremely unlikely that anyone will be tapping their shoes in the Minneapolic airport restrooms for quite some time.
 
Suds:

I agree 100% that Craig was major dumb when it came to legal counsel; after all, he probably enjoyed better access to counsel than 99% of the people in this nation. And I totally agree that his mishandling of his legal crisis brings up a serious question about his competence to hold high public office.

And, as I've already said, I don't think he was up to any good in that john. I don't like goings-on in public restrooms; they're disrespectful of the rights of others who want to use the place for its intended purpose.

But Mr. Cop buffaloed a citizen, seems to me, and if he can buffalo a Senator, he's free to buffalo anyone he likes. That should be of much greater concern than anything Craig did. If we don't recognise that Craig was railroaded and speak out about that, then in my opinion, just as much harm is done to gay rights as is done by the laws passed by Craig and his ilk, if not more. Joining in the general round of Craig-bashing is playing into the hands of the right; if it's okay to bust Craig over nothing just because he's a sleaze, then it's okay to bust anyone over anything.
 
"I am probably going to get bashed to heck and gone for what I'm about to say..."

Not at all....your point is a valid one, that needs to be made.

Maggie...I listen to the conservative radio shows as well.

With the possible exception of Andrew Wilkow, ALL of them attempt to use the right's hate of gays as a catalyst for change, in all sorts of different manners. Hannity is particularly obnoxious because he covertly tries to make the case that being gay is synonomous with being unpatriotic.

Savage hits you straight between the eyes with it, but, from what I've read of his history, he's hypocritical at the very least....I sometimes wonder if his homophobia is part of his shtick. A lot of the rest of that boys' club (Limbaugh, Levin, etc.) is just your typical locker-room stupidity, but that's become the norm....yet someone like Steve Malzberg always slips in under the gay community's radar, and it's shocking.

For some strange reason, some of the most vile, gay-hating pundits are women (Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Monica Crowley, Laura Schlessinger)....

I had become sort of ashamed at the excesses of the gay community and probably do have more internalized self-revulsion than I should, but that all changed two years ago when I started to read the posts and comments at moonbattery.com.

The idea that such sentiments could be expressed, and so many Americans could agree with, and actually add to them, was a serious wake-up call for me.
 
Well stated:

From the Idaho Statesman: Thank Jiminy, Craig is not gay.

I am a gay resident of Idaho, I am thrilled to learn that Sen. Larry Craig is "not gay." I believe him. This entire scandal is not about sexual orientation. Lewd sexual acts are lewd sexual acts regardless of one's sexual orientation. Craig may be a heterosexual man. I hope he is. It is bad enough that he represents Idaho ... we certainly do not want him representing gay and lesbian people.
 
I think it's important to point out that the cops generally only do these sting operations when the place in question has become so notorious, and there have been so many complaints, that they are pressured to do something.

Even then, a ticket for "lewd behavior" seems to do the trick. It's not like they're hauling these guys off someplace. It's Craig's dumb luck that he's a US Senator. They are - and should be - held to a higher standard.

I'm no gushing fan of law enforcement - if you get me started on the "free speech zones" or the ban on protests at Bush events, we'll be here all day - but I don't really see anything wrong with these sorts of operations. Law enforcement has to be responsible to complaints from the community.
 
Mzybe it was one of the doctors on Larry King, maybe it was somewhere else, but a medical professional in a discussion about the Craig thing said that he is a strong candidate for attempting suicide. Everything shameful has been put under the spot light and he probably feels that he has nothing to live for. This closet stuff can be serious and if anyone wants to say that being gay is curable, I would refer him to Senator Craig and the latest batch of fundamentalist ministers who got caught squeezing the Charmin. If anything could be done through prayer, would not the ministers have found it? And if it was possible to buy a medical cure, don't you think that Craig and other powerful gay republican spewers of hatred towards GLBT people would have had his or her doctor treat him and keep it in confidence? Anyone who is gay or lesbian or bi or transgender knows the agony of realizing we are different and nobody will like us if we don't hide this from everyone. Prayers go almost constantly, "Please, I don't want to be gay. Please help me be normal, like the others." Aside from the fact that the prayers never work because there must be a purpose we cannot see from here, we often later find out that some of the "normal" ones we admire are similarly blest. I believe it is further proof as to why I cannot accept that the Bible can be taken as literally written by the Creator. Why would we be created to be abominations if, as the Bible states, a part of the Creator is present within each of us as our soul? It does not make sense that the One who created us hates the portion of eternal spirit that is placed inside some of us, especially when, in most religions, we are taught that G-d is love. How can the Source of purest love hate? And how can the Source of purest love hate a part of itself? This is the sort of disconnect that shows the defects in the way religions "interpret" whatever message from "above" that they are passing on. I also believe that it is one of the reasons that the polls show that many people are describing themselves as "spiritual" instead of "religious."
 
Conservatives

Hello Friends,
All conservatives are not haters-I,like PeterH770,am a Libertarian.I am also straight.Few are more conservative than me.True conservatives want to be left alone to do as they please,as long as they don't do things that hurt others-and are prepared to offer that same freedom we want for ourselves to everyone else.All conservatives are not represented by the 'Moral Police'mentality-in fact George Bush,who many people consider conservative,has presided over a huge increase in the cost,size,and scope of government.
Tom
 
For some strange reason, some of the most vile, gay-hating pundits are women (Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Monica Crowley, Laura Schlessinger)....

Probably because all of them - except "Dr." Laura, have philandering husbands - and I don't mean philandering with callgirls, I mean philandering with callBOYS.

As for "Dr." Laura (whose doctorate credentials in the field of counseling and psychology are imaginary), her problem is that she's just an uptight, mean, frustrated c-you-know-what who has gotten in touch with her Inner Bitch and made a fortune off of it.

How she entices people to call in and have a session of radio S&M with her is a mystery to me. She's a true dominatrix of verbal abuse.

http://www.fortunecity.com/bennyhills/curtin/784/laura.html
 
Ann Coulter is an alien. But they made a mistake when they
altered the appearance to be human. They were trying to make
her appear normal, but they didn't understand the human race
has many differences. They incorporated thoughts from the
brain of a neo-con-neanderthal when she landed on earth. The
tragedy is the number of people that actually identify with
her/it.
 
Ann Coulter reminds me well her face reminds me of a Greyhound...not the bus but the dog. If you put the her face next to a pic of a greyhound you can see they look the same. I dont know why people give her the time of day for what she has to say. I know she doesnt speak for all Republicans but my gawd get her a vibrator with batteries or one that plugs in...she needs somethin.
Mike
 
Does anyone ever wonder...

...about the character of a man who would solicit for sex as an undercover agent on behalf of the state? I don't approve of sex in public bathrooms, but I question the logic of using tax money to pay the salary of someone who patrols public bathrooms actively soliciting for sex. I'm not convinced that this is the best use of my investment in the state. And what type of person would want that job?

While I personally believe that the senator had every intention of having sex with this officer, either in the bathroom or elsewhere, the fact is that he was arrested and yet no sexual activity occurred. I question the practice of arresting someone for a perceived intent to commit a crime.

In the case of the senator, given his history, I have little doubt that he would have had sex in the bathroom given the opportunity, and the arrest would have been justified. But is toe tapping, the perceived intent to commit a crime, sufficient evidence to arrest as though a crime had been committed?
 
Ann Coulter is the liquid detergent of the laundry room. Beneath that hard shell of an exterior, is a wimpy, ineffective, slightly slimy concoction whose main function is to waste space, time, and money.
 
I tend to agree with those who are disturbed by the whole deal. OK so this guy is a Republican who voted for anti-gay legislation and in my book that maked him one of the bad guys.
But I also believe everyone should be treated fairly under the law, and that victimless crimes should be abolished. (If nodody suffers, why should it be illegal?)

If some guy in the next cubicle taps his foot or makes hand signals under the wall, what is so hard about saying, "no thanks, I'm not interested?" Why does valuable police time have to be wasted on some big operation?

It's all based on hate and fear. Straight men are encouraged to fear being approached by a gay man, that's why so many times gay men have been bashed or murdered when they have made a pass at a homophobe.

I actually don't think the senator should be found guilty of any crime. Even if there was some police operation, why was he arrested at the stage when his only action was to tap his foot and wave his hand? That is NOT lewd conduct. Maybe the copper should have waited a little longer to see if things went further, if somebody actually DID something sexual in public then fine, book 'em Danno. If someone gets all of a lather because someone smiled at him in a rest room, get over it!
 
a picture worth a thousand words

I've kept out of this discussion so far and intend to continue to stay out of it.
I do think this little cartoon touches upon the root of the matter rather cleverly, tho'.

9-3-2007-09-59-9--panthera.jpg.gif
 
While this may be a "victimless crime", it's also a real pain in the ass for building managers, and I can see why they bring the cops in. A public bathroom, even in a government building, is only "public" in the sense that it is provided for convenience and sanitation.

I am very open-minded about things of this matter, and am certainly no angel when it comes to doing trashy things. However, I've also worked in hotels and buildings that got known for their bathrooms, and sometimes the only way to get the gents to knock it off, is to scare them with a few arrests.

If it were simply a matter of people saying "no thanks" and the other person taking no for an answer, it would be one thing. But many of them don't. Many of them plant themselves in a stall, and don't leave for hours.

There are other aspects of their activity that are more problematic. I'm trying hard to be delicate here, so I'll ask you to use your imagination regarding the possible housekeeping ramifications. It ranks right up there with sloppy IV users who decide to shoot up in a stall.

The same is true with parks. There is a nicely wooded park near where I work that is quite popular with cruisers. If you walk along any of the trails, you're going to find all sorts of nasty things that have been left there. I am usually the last person to be concerned about "the children", but then I think back to when I was a kid, when my friends and I pretty much had our run of Fairmont Park back in CB, and it makes me mad that these guys won't even clean up after themselves.
 
Oh why be delicate...I have seen condoms with goo in them left on the street near a bar in Boston and sticky floors in a bathroom at Macys in Boston and Portland. So yeah I would agree if your going to do the deed at least be kind and clean your mess. If your going to "let if fly" then you should clean it. Thats my 2 cents.
 
Oh heck, I remember seeing used condoms on the playground at my grammar school in Connecticut... didn't know what they were at the time, but recall a teacher being visibly upset at the sight. Also recall swimming in the beach one late summer, and my brother and I recall seeing strange "jellyfish" floating in the water. When my mom saw what they were, she yanked us out of the water real quick. She said we all got sick after that, I don't recall. But in those days there was a lot of pollution - barges used to dump their trash right into the ocean, and unfortunately Long Island Sound isn't big enough to deal with it.

As far as restroom sex goes, I agree that it's inappropriate and an inconvenience to those who simply want to attend to more mundane bodily functions. I don't understand why the practice persists in these days when just about anything is legal - but then I guess some people get an extra kick out of doing it in an illicit way, regardless of orientation. Ever heard of the "mile high club"? I doubt that kind of activity is quite legal, either. And a lot of boss's desks have probably seen more than just rubber stamps.
 

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