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Same SexLarry Craig's anti-gay hypocrisy.

By William Saletan
Posted Thursday, Aug. 30, 2007, at 4:00 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

Last year, the Army discharged Bleu Copas, a sergeant, from the 82nd Airborne. The basis? Anonymous e-mails. The first time superiors asked Copas whether he was gay, the context was informal, and he denied it. The next time, they put him under formal interrogation—"Have you ever engaged in homosexual activity or conduct?"—and he refused to answer. Eventually, to avoid prosecution for perjury, he gave in.

Four days ago, the Stockton, Calif., Record reported the recent expulsion of Randy Miller, a paratrooper who served in Iraq with the 82nd Airborne. His offense? Being in a gay bar—and rejecting a proposition from a fellow soldier, who apparently retaliated by reporting him to the Army. Like Witt, Miller admitted his homosexuality, but only under interrogation. If you don't tell, they make you tell.

Compare any of these cases to Craig's. You cohabit quietly with a same-sex partner for six years. You write a letter to a friend in Portuguese. You deny being gay but are interrogated until you give up. You're spotted in a gay bar rejecting a sexual overture. For these offenses, you lose your career, thanks to a man who stared and extended his hands and feet repeatedly into a neighboring bathroom stall.

Were Craig's gestures ambiguous? Not by his own standards. He signed off on the arrest report. Under DADT, he'd have to prove that what he did was "a departure from [his] usual and customary behavior," that it was "unlikely to recur," and that he did "not have a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts." But the Idaho Statesman reports three other incidents, from 1967 to 2004, in which Craig allegedly made similar overtures. On the Statesman's Web site, you can listen to an interview in which one of the men describes his tryst with Craig in a public bathroom. These accounts, combined with Craig's arrest report, would easily get him thrown out of the Army if he were a soldier.

Has Craig's arrest chastened him about DADT? Not a bit. Two weeks ago, in a letter to a constituent, he reiterated his support for the policy. "I don't believe the military should be a place for social experimentation," Craig wrote. "It is unacceptable to risk the lives of American soldiers and sailors merely to accommodate the sexual lifestyles of certain individuals."

Now you know why Craig is trying to withdraw his guilty plea. The cardinal rule of "don't ask, don't tell" isn't heterosexuality. It's hypocrisy. The one thing you can't do is tell the truth.

In that sense, Craig is honoring the policy in his own life. But that's the only sense. I don't think what he did should cost him his career. I'd like to cut him some slack. But first, I'd like to restore the careers of a few thousand other gay Americans who have done a lot more for their country.

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William Saletan is Slate's national correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War.
Illustration by Robert Neubecker.
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Remarks from the Fray:

What bothers me the most about these things is that the willingness to roast elected officials on personal foibles that contradict public positions seems like political extortion.

For instance, if Ted Kennedy were caught recklessly discharging an illegal gun in Massachusetts, (a state with draconian gun control laws) would we really expect him to vote against the assault weapons ban?

I should hope not, since a big majority of his constituents would strongly support it. So is it OK for the NRA to threaten to expose his arrest to pressure his vote? Is he a hypocrite?

The votes of Sen. Craig should rightly represent the sentiments of his conservative Idaho constituents, and public positions do not translate into personal hypocrisy. To imply, as Saletan has, that public positions should be taken only correlation with personal behavior is simply foolish.

--Reprobate

(To reply, click here.)

Observers in the media have simplistically concluded that Senator Craig must be some sort of a hypocrite, just because he's a secretly gay man who's devoted his entire political career to attacking and undermining the interests of gay people.

In public, Senator Craig denounced gay Americans as a gang of costumed degenerates passing themselves off as decentpeople. Moral lepers, under a foul sexual compulsion that dooms them to shuffle mindlessly from one public toilet to another, anonymously sodomizing one another and thus raining down a catraract of vile, incurable, agonizingly fatal diseases down on the heads of their innocent and unsuspecting wives.

And in private? Well, in private the man lived exactly the kind of sleazy, risky, dishonest, disreputable lifestyle that he accused the broader gay population of participating in when he was out in public. Small wonder the man despised gay people, if he thought that the entire gay population was like him.

--Thrasymachus

(To reply, click here.)

What's really a shame, is that the reaction of conservatives in and out of Idaho seem to be as concerned with what he is as with what he did. And while liberals, progressives and Democrats can enjoy from the sidelines as the GOP continues its slow implosion due to yet still another Conservative/Republican sex scandal, the Larry Craig chapter should present a prime opportunity to highlight the essential difference in the progressive and conservative visions regarding homosexuality.

On the right hand, you have the culture of shame, sham marriages, anonymous bathroom stall sex, male prostitutes (in the White House press room or local Megachurch), and page/choirboy molesters.

On the left hand, you have healthy adult relationships and a culture of love and acceptance. Families, parents, friends, neighbors, coworkers and soldiers serving their nation proudly.

In a sufficiently gay-friendly culture, Larry Craig and Ted Haggart might have come out and met nice young men and spared their spouses, children, constituents and congregation, and themselves, the pain and aggravation of living a lie and having the facade fall apart.

Frankly, the left has the superior vision here, and should use the Craig incident as the springboard to articulate that love, openness and acceptance are loftier principles than shame, lies and hate.

--LastManOnEarth

(To reply, click here.)

Saletan speaks of Sen. Craig's hypocrisy in supporting "don't ask, don't tell" and his other presumed principled stands against gay rights. I suppose I agree, but even that isn't what bothers me most about this episode. I find dishonor in the Senator's conduct, not merely for the how it throws open the disparity and the hypocrisy between his stated political beliefs and his personal behavior, but mainly because when his behavior became public, he could not find the courage to acknowledge it and apologize, to his family and his constituents. He may yet find that courage, I'm sure it's not easy. But to me, that failure to own up has been what's most objectionable in his behavior.

--Steve-R

(To reply, click here.)

The logic is here is elementary, not complex. Craig could be described as a hypocrite if he has come out strongly against (a) cheating on your spouse (he is guilty of that) or (b) gay sex in public bathrooms (he is guilty of trying to do that). Saletan is smart enough to understand that. Larry Craig is guilty of stupidity (e.g., lying to a police officer) and immorality (e.g., attempting to be unfaithful to his wife), but not hypocrisy.

--Engram

(To reply, click here.)

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