[DannyOcean_]

Larry Craig: Because Mark Foley is so last year

It appears the GOP (God’s Own Police) has yet another conundrum on their hands. As if the party didn’t have enough actual problems to deal with, Republican Senator Larry Craig of Idaho has been arrested by a plainclothes police officer for soliciting gay sex in a public bathroom.

According to the police report, the good senator peered through the stall to get a glimpse, and then sat in the next stall and “moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area.” The Senator wanted to play footsie, and honestly, who hasn’t wanted to play footsie before?

Next the police report alleges that he stuck his hand underneath the stall three times before the police officer responded by sticking his hand under to Senator Craig’s stall. Holding his badge. Busted! Senator Craig actually pled guilty to the charge, which he now says was a mistake.

One of Craig’s excuses was that he has a ‘wide stance’ when he goes to the bathroom. From henceforth we shall refer to the Senator as Larry ‘Wide Stance’ Craig.

What makes this arrest deliciously good political gossip is simple. ‘Wide Stance’ Craig votes against gay rights and gay marriage and gay-anything else as often as he can. He voted for the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and supported a proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in 2006. He voted against a bill in 1996 that would have prohibited workplace discrimination against gay individuals (The measure failed by one vote in the Senate). He opposed adding ‘gay’ to the categories which qualify for hate crimes. He's gotten A+ 100% ratings from anti-gay groups. Look, I don’t care if my lawmakers like men or women. To steal from Seinfeld, he’s a gay senator, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But the level of hypocrisy in this case is almost beyond words.

This case reminds any thoughtful observer of another republican senator, Mark Foley. Foley wasn’t just a predator of children; he was a predator of children who authored tough legislation against child-molesters and sex-crime offenders, and used the issue to get elected. Craig, like so many other conservatives, uses the anti-gay/pro-family social conservative propaganda get elected, but apparently the only gay agenda he tolerates is his own.

The GOP, predictably, is pushing him out the door. Good riddance. Congressional scandals involving sex, drugs, hypocrisy, etc. are nothing new, but they never fail to disgust me. Trying to legislate a version of morality on someone when you won’t even hold yourself to that standard is the worst form of hypocrisy. I’d like to throw a little Jesus-talk at Senator “Wide Stance” Craig.

‘Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank that is in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye (Matthew 7:3-5).