So another Family Values Republican has been exposed as a closet case hypocrite.  As we say on Passover, “Mah nishtana?”

It didn’t hit me until this morning that six years ago, Jason Schafer and I wrote an episode of Queer As Folk that included a men’s room sting much like the one that nabbed Senator Craig in Minneapolis.  In our story, Michael’s Uncle Vic couldn’t help but notice an attractive man at the next urinal.  The guy flirted.  Vic flirted back.  The next thing he knew, Vic was in a holding tank.  (At least that’s how I remember it.  I never saw the finished episode.  It was that kind of job, if you know what I mean.)

Uncle Vic had trouble defending himself against what was a clear case of entrapment, because deep down he felt he was guilty of something.  He would have succumbed to the handsome cop’s advances had they been sincere.  And that’s part of what makes the men’s room sting so disturbing – it strikes at the very heart of gay secrecy and shame.  It is a time machine back to the days of constant victimization and self-loathing.

I felt sympathy for Uncle Vic, an openly gay man who entered the men’s room with no intention of finding sex.  And I’m inclined to feel pity for Senator Craig, who had his wildly compartmentalized psyche smashed open for the world to see after his “wide-stance” tap dance.  Of course people should be able to go to a public restroom without encountering lewd and lascivious behavior, but neither Uncle Vic nor Senator Craig was caught in the act of actually having sex, after all.  Looks and signals, coded invitations to intimacy were their crime.  Those subtle (well, usually) overtures, the elements of cruising, are known to every gay person on earth.  That’s why the undercover sting can feel like just another institutional reminder that being gay is akin to being a criminal.

And yet it is difficult to feel much pity for Larry Craig, a politician who has campaigned and voted against gay people throughout his career.  In his press conference yesterday, Craig was a typical right wing bully, blaming the press for his predicament and yelling over and over, “I am not gay!”  Maybe in his mind he’s telling the truth, the way Roy Cohn in Angels in America declares that he is not a homosexual but simply a heterosexual man who has sex with guys.  Craig’s excuses were pathetic.  He was so upset by a newspaper investigation into rumors about his private life – stories that hadn’t been printed – that he pleaded guilty out of panic.  But the guilty plea took place two months later than the arrest.  And is saying he perjured himself really a better defense?  According to the senator, the fact that he has been the subject of gay rumors (specifically having sex in public men’s rooms) for 25 years, and his arrest for solicitation in a public men’s room in Minneapolis this summer are simply one hell of a coincidence.  As Craig said when confronted by the Idaho Statesman, “Jiminy God!”

“Rumors are always true, you know that.” – The Player

Craig’s sexuality was apparently an open secret in D.C., just like Mark Foley’s.  And now, it is the butt (if you will) of everyone’s jokes.  The real story here is GOP hypocrisy (even though the media often drops the ball), and it is undeniably funny and satisfying for liberals who love to see another cultural warrior’s true colors exposed.

And yet…

The whole thing feels icky and sad.  In addition to the sympathy one can’t help but feel for Craig and his family (well, unless you’re Mitt Romney), there is the unseemly way the episode is being covered.  The mainstream media is always terrible at keeping the thorny issues of human sexuality straight, as it were.  A story like this can’t help but cue clumsy gay bashing, even though evidence suggests that many if not most men who engage in public restroom sex are closeted married men who identify themselves as straight.  The Craig story is not about gay sex, it is about a man who sadly gave his life to a political ideology and movement that denied and demonized his own inner being.

And how does Chris Matthews introduce his coverage?

The big story tonight, dirty politics.  Idaho senator Larry Craig, cultural warrior of the right, stands naked tonight, exposed as both a sexual deviant and a world-class hypocrite.  A crusader against gay marriage, gay civil unions, gays in the military, he faces his country, his party and his people having solicited sex in an airport men‘s room.

“Sexual deviant?”  Please define.

Later on the same network (MSNBC), Tucker Carlson practically bragged about the time he and a buddy assaulted a man who looked at Tucker the wrong way (must have been the bow tie).  And on it goes.

Let’s hope this sad spectacle is over soon and that its lingering political effect is simply to take the wind out of the sails of future family values opportunists.

I leave you with Toll House’s very first embedded video (thanks to Towleroad for the tip).  Here is Barney Frank on Bill Maher’s show long before Larry Craig stroked the stall, taking on GOP hypocrisy with magnificent eloquence.  (I’ve watched this many times and I always get a chill.)

Exactly.

- Jon