Just maybe, Sen. Larry Craig did nothing wrong in that airport restroom although if you’ve read any of the police complaint that’s a stretch.
Maybe undercover police Sgt. Dave Karsnia completely misinterpreted Craig’s actions June 11 in a stall at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Maybe it’s all a big, fat misunderstanding.
I’d still be outraged about Craig, who announced his resignation from the U.S. Senate on Saturday.
Did he, didn’t he? Is he, isn’t he?
Who really cares about his sexual orientation? I don’t care.
Two things about this story keep nagging at me, much as I try to get past its sleazy details. Both involve words, not bathroom behavior.
First, according to the police complaint obtained by the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, is the question the senator from Idaho asked when he handed the police officer a U.S. Senate business card: “What do you think about that?” Craig is reported by police to have said.
What do I think about that? I think that here’s a man, first elected to Congress in 1980, who’s grown mighty accustomed to special rights afforded members of the U.S. Senate. Membership is such an august and powerful distinction, it’s little wonder Craig might have thought his Senate status could make his troubles go away.
Special rights where have we heard that before? Oh, of course. “Special rights” is a description of equal rights favored by those who would deny gay people opportunities and legal protections the rest of us enjoy.
Craig’s voting record includes a number of decisions against gay rights. He supported a 2006 amendment to the Idaho constitution barring gay marriage and civil unions.
Watching coverage of Craig’s statement to reporters in Boise, Idaho, on Tuesday, the senator’s words again grated on me.
“I am not gay. I never have been gay,” Craig said in his first public statement on the restroom arrest.
I have no idea whether or not the 62-year-old Republican is gay. As I listened to his unyielding denial of homosexuality, I thought of the late Jim West. In 2005, when West was Spokane’s mayor, he was accused of offering a city job to a young man he chatted with on a gay Web site, of using city resources for personal pursuits, and of being linked to a Boy Scout leader who’d been accused of abusing boys in the 1970s.
With all of that, West told an editor of Spokane’s Spokesman-Review newspaper that “I’m being destroyed because I’m a gay man.”
Again with the troubles of the Idaho senator Craig pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, but said last week his plea was a mistake I am struck by how both men reacted most vehemently regarding sexual orientation.
Craig said “I am not gay” and West said “I’m being destroyed because I’m a gay man.” Both statements avoided the real problems in the spotlight. For Craig it was his admission he broke the law; for West evidence he abused his political position.
It’s as though in their minds all shame centers on sexuality.
At 78, Bob Teichman grew up in a time when no one spoke of homosexuality. The Marysville man is now chairman of the Snohomish County Gay Men’s Task Force. He and John Marsh, his partner of more than 30 years, recently established a legal domestic partnership under the state’s new law.
Teichman is unsympathetic to Craig’s plight.
“The thing that strikes me most, this man has consistently voted against gay rights,” Teichman said. “Maybe he’s a closet case, I don’t know. I don’t have any sympathy. If he was a victim of entrapment, all of us are against that. As a lawmaker being anti-gay, he can’t hide behind what should be all of our rights.”
Although he says he never tried to hide who he was, Teichman knows the difficulty of living in a time and place that couldn’t accept gay people.
“I do think a young person struggling with their sexuality might have it easier now,” Teichman said. “When I was growing up, you either stayed in the closet or paid consequences.”
Raised in North Bend, Teichman moved to college in Seattle after high school graduation in 1947. “It’s much better now,” he said.
“It varies a great deal, the person concerned, the community they’re in, and the attitude of their family that’s where it all begins,” Teichman said.
Having their partnership officially recognized which Craig would deny them is meaningful to Teichman and Marsh.
“It’s just a signal that things are opening up more and more,” Teichman said.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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