I’m sure we are all having fun over another example of Republican hypocripsy on gay issues. But is anyone else disturbed about Craig being arrested for merely propositioning someone–and doing it in a way that most straight men would hardly recognize it as such?
I can see why laws against people actually having sex in a public restroom might be a good idea. But laws against a fairly subtle come-on? What is the point—except to harass gay men. After all, straight men make sleazy come-ons, too. And in public. Craig’s actions were actually pretty subtle.
I’ve seen a lot sleazier (and, sometimes, borderline violent) come-ons from straight men. But, of course, in our sexist and homophobic society lots of people laugh at sleazy straight come-ons and want to see much less sleazy gay ones prosecuted.
It’s not just come-ons but public sex. I’ve seen women giving men head or a hand job in a back corner of a bar far more than I’ve seen men giving men head or a hand job in a restroom (it’s 2-0). Why isn’t the vice squad trolling in those places? I guarantee you that, if attractive (or probably not so attractive) undercover policewomen were offering blow jobs to drunk straight men at 1am in the dark corners of some Philly bars, they would arrest far more people than they do in the restrooms of our department stores.
If you read the police report of the Craig case carefully, the arresting officer encouraged Craig. So you don’t have to approve or disapprove of what Craig did, or think him representative of gay men or not (and, for the record, he isn’t) to see something wrong with what the police did in his case. The issue for me is, as the title of my post indicates, civil liberties and bias against gays.
Anyone have an idea how often this kind of harassment occurs in Philly?
In the meantime this incident has given new meaning to the words “airport layover.”
I wonder if there are more gay Republicans than Democrats in Congress. It’s very sad, but I can understand how standing against gays in politics helps closeted gays live with sexual desires they think are immoral. So there is another reason to do everything we can to erase the stigma of being gay…it will reduce the number of Republicans.
This reminds me of a similar kind of hypocrisy. When Jesse Helms was running for reelection Senate in, 1990 I believe, he made a big deal about the Corcoran Gallery having a Mapplethorpe retrospective with federal dollars. But Helms took a loose leaf folder of Mapplethorpe’s homoerotic photographs with him on the campaign trail. He would tell his audience, “Now you women, step back, because I have some pictures here that will offend you. But I want the men in the audience to see the kind of trash we are supporting with your money.” And then his aids would pass around the photographs.
This showed the truth of the old joke, Democrats look at porn in the privacy of their homes, while Republicans get together in groups to look at it.
This was one of the most heartbreaking elections of my life. Helms beat Harvey Gantt, the former Mayor of Charlotte and just about the classiest politician I have ever known and worked for, by a few percentage of the vote.
That was the year Helms ran a famous TV add of a pair of white hand throwing away a rejection letter and blaming that letter on affirmative action. Helms was down in the polls (and if I remember correctly, far enough down to beat the likely pro-Gantt bias in the polls) a few days before the election.
And, while I’m free associating, I should point out that Gantt won election as Mayor in Charlotte despite the fact that whites were about 65% of the electorate. I wonder if that has ever happened in a northern city. He lost his second bid for reelection because he had taken advantage of the very progressive annexation laws in North Carolina and annexed large tracts in Mecklenburg County. Gantt won by a nice amount in pre-annexation Charlotte, but was overwhelmingly defeated in the areas he had annexed.