Republicans Break Their Hypocritic Oath to “Moral Values”
When Roll Call opened the door to Sen. Larry Craig’s closet, the Capitol Hill newspaper outed more than one Senator’s internalized homophobia. The Republican Party was again exposed for its seemingly endless hypocrisy and devotion to the double standard. The shades are rolling up, one by one, on the social conservative glass house. Inside the glass house, the closets are overflowing. And there’s not much sleeping going on in the bedrooms.
Sen. Craig’s resignation today should not be seen as the personal “shame” of one man’s secret life. The shame is on the Republican Party and their Rovian routine of demonizing and marginalizing their fellow citizens for the purpose of political power. When you play the politics of personal destruction, as the Republicans have done so well for more than 30 years, it’s “game over” sooner or later. Advantage: Democrats.
Mixed metaphors aside, perhaps there’s an opportunity for rehabilitation that can result from Sen. Craig’s June 11th arrest on misdemeanor lewd-conduct charges, after allegedly soliciting sex in a Minneapolis airport bathroom. (The Senator plead guilty on August 8, 2007, and Roll Call broke the story on August 27.) Will Republicans finally learn that when you sling mud, everyone gets dirty? Or will values voters continue to hold onto the hypocrisy that is leading this country down a slippery slope of self-righteousness, hate and intolerance? The answers will likely be found in how the Democrats and the media play it through the current election cycle.
The mainstream media must not play into the politics, reporting past the Republican spin machine in favor of real balance, fairness and appropriateness. Is personal conduct relevant to a candidate’s fitness for public life? Sure. But the Senator’s conduct simply reflects an all-too-common struggle to deny a sexual orientation in order to avoid facing intolerance and hate. The hailstorm of coverage and reactions to the story came close to becoming an indictment of the queer life, rather than what it was: a glimpse into a personal struggle with secrecy coupled with a public dissembling of his duplicitous political views.
For Democrats, the Craig caper is a legitimate talking point on hypocrisy, shedding light on the on-going dishonesty and pretentiousness of Republican politics–a chance to put an end the Republican control of the high ground on morality. An article on dKosophedia lists more than 100 examples of immoral behavior, mostly sexual, by Republican public officials and their highest profile supporters. But it’s not just talking about sex. The rest of the story is a more important conversation. Democrats may have an opportunity to neutralize, at least in part, the propaganda machine that ignores all manner of Republican incompetence and impropriety.
Sen. Craig’s outing also opens a door for gay rights leaders and activists, as well as the community at large. With National Coming Out Day just around the corner, Sen. Craig’s story is an example of how many LGBT people struggle with fear, shame and risk when coming to terms with their sexual orientation. Now is the time to talk about how homophobia and hate are not the moral values that our country–or our politicians–should embrace.
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September 18th, 2007 at 12:18 am
An interesting development in this story: CNN is reporting that Sen. Craig is receiving new legal support in asserting his innocense. Today the American Civil Liberties Union filed a brief in court that stated that the bathroom bust at the Minneapolis Airport was most likely unconstitutional.
What I find most interesting about this story is the following argument the ACLU is making about his case: “Police must be able to demonstrate beyond a doubt that the sex was going to happen in public, he said. Regardless of whether it occurs in a bathroom or a bar, solicitation for private sex is protected speech under the First Amendment, the ACLU argues.”
As much as I detest this latest example of Republican flip-flopping style hypocricy, I must now agree with the ACLU that the Minneapolis Police must proove that he was making a solicitaion for public sex. From what I can make of the stories that have been told of the inncident, Sen. Craig was arrested before this distinction could be made and therefore he is in fact not guilty of breaking any public sex act laws. I am, however, NOT making any statements of innocense on his destruction of character, lack of sound judgement and moral failing.
Fortunately we are a nation of laws and the law provides that one is innocent until prooven guilty. It is my belief that Sen. Craig was in fact soliciting sex in that public restroom, but the failure of the police to allow the situation to progress to an actual law breaking one should clear his record of charges here.