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-- The fall of a moralizer: the great American spectacle

The fall of a moralizer: the great American spectacle

No matter how liberal or progressive this country claims to have become, moralizing and preaching about "values" and "morality" and religion is still America's favorite pastime.

I'm not keeping track of how often or how many of these people are falling from grace, but here we have a brand new one:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20467347/

quote:

Sen. Craig's future in question after sex arrest WASHINGTON - Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, who has voted against gay marriage and opposes extending special protections to gay and lesbian crime victims, finds his political future in doubt after pleading guilty to misdemeanor charges stemming from complaints of lewd conduct in a men's room. The conservative three-term senator, who has represented Idaho in Congress for more than a quarter-century, is up for re-election next year. He hasn't said if he will run for a fourth term in 2008 and was expected to announce his plans this fall. A spokesman, Sidney Smith, was uncertain late Monday if Craig's guilty plea in connection with an incident at the Minneapolis airport would affect his re-election plans. "It's too early to talk about anything about that," Smith said. Sexuality rumors denied A political science professor in Idaho said Craig's political future was in jeopardy. And a spokesman for the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, Hannah August, said Craig's guilty plea "has given Americans another reason not to vote Republican" next year. The married Craig, 62, has faced rumors about his sexuality since the 1980s, but allegations that he has engaged in gay sex have never been substantiated. Craig has denied the assertions, which he calls ridiculous. The arrest changes that dynamic, said Jasper LiCalzi, a political science professor at Albertson College of Idaho in Caldwell, Idaho. He cited the House page scandal that drove Florida Rep. Mark Foley from office. "There's a chance that he'll resign over this," LiCalzi said. "With the pressure on the Republican Party, he could be pressured to resign. If they think this is going to be something that's the same as Mark Foley � the sort of 'drip, drip, drip, there's more information that's going to come out' � they may try to push him out." Already Craig has stepped down from a prominent role with Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. He had been one of Romney's top Senate supporters, serving as a Senate liaison for the campaign since February. "He did not want to be a distraction and we accept his decision," said Matt Rhoades, a Romney campaign spokesman. Guilty plea According to a Hennepin County, Minn., court docket, Craig pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct charge on Aug. 8, with the court dismissing a charge of gross misdemeanor interference to privacy. The court docket said Craig paid $575 in fines and fees and was put on unsupervised probation for a year. A sentence of 10 days in the county workhouse was stayed. Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, which first reported the case, said on its Web site Monday that Craig was arrested June 11 by a plainclothes officer investigating complaints of lewd conduct in a men's restroom at the airport. Minneapolis airport police declined to provide a copy of the arrest report after business hours Monday. The arrest Roll Call, citing the report, said Sgt. Dave Karsnia made the arrest after an encounter in which he was seated in a stall next to a stall occupied by Craig. Karsnia described Craig tapping his foot, which Karsnia said he "recognized as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct."

god damn this is hilarious, read this:

quote:

Sen. Larry Craig peered through a crack in a restroom stall door for two minutes and made gestures suggesting he wanted to engage in "lewd conduct," according to the police officer who arrested him. Craig's blue eyes were clearly visible through the crack in the door, Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport police Sgt. Dave Karsnia wrote in the report he filed on the June 11 incident. "Craig would look down at his hands, 'fidget' with his fingers, and then look through the crack into my stall again," Karsnia wrote in documents accompanying the arrest report. The Idaho Republican later said the officer misinterpreted his actions. But Craig, 62, pleaded guilty August 8 to a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge in the incident, according to Minnesota criminal records. The officer wrote that he was on a plainclothes detail in the restroom because of citizen complaints and arrests for sexual activity there. Karsnia wrote that when the person occupying the stall beside him left, Craig entered it and blocked the door with his rolling suitcase. "My experience has shown that individuals engaging in lewd conduct use their bags to block the view from the front of their stall," the officer said in his report. The senator then tapped his right foot, "a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct," Karsnia wrote, and Craig ran his left hand several times underneath the partition dividing the stalls. "The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area," the officer's report said. When the police interviewed him later, the senator said that "he has a wide stance when going to the bathroom" and that was why his foot may have touched the officer's, the report said. Craig also told police that he had reached down to the floor to pick up a piece of paper, the officer wrote. "It should be noted that there was not a piece of paper on the bathroom floor, nor did Craig pick up a piece of paper," Karsnia wrote. "During the interview, Craig either disagreed with me or 'didn't recall' the events as they happened."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/08...rest/index.html

for once... we are in agreement

I can't help but feel sorry for these people. They have perfectly natural sexual desires, but because of an extremely fucked up sense of morality they try to supress them, causing the desires to manifest themselves in quite unnatural ways. This guy was soliciting policemen in public toilets, Haggard was soliciting meth-using gay prostitutes, Foley was soliciting teenage boys and the president of the Young Republicans was caught sucking off an unconscious man. That's just from the past year or so.

Surely this is evidence that trying to shame people into supressing their homosexuality isn't going to work and is only going to lead to patterns of sexual behaviour that - even didactic homophobes would have to agree - are clearly far more immoral than your average homosexual relationship?

quote:

Originally posted by Renegade I can't help but feel sorry for these people. They have perfectly natural sexual desires, but because of an extremely fucked up sense of morality they try to supress them, causing the desires to manifest themselves in quite unnatural ways. This guy was soliciting policemen in public toilets, Haggard was soliciting meth-using gay prostitutes, Foley was soliciting teenage boys and the president of the Young Republicans was caught sucking off an unconscious man. That's just from the past year or so. Surely this is evidence that trying to shame people into supressing their homosexuality isn't going to work and is only going to lead to patterns of sexual behaviour that - even didactic homophobes would have to agree - are clearly far more immoral than your average homosexual relationship?

i disagree. openly gay men participate in those same lewd acts you described those Republican lawmakers engaged in everyday in every city in America and get caught doing it.

closeted gay men who are not necessarily religious get caught doing the same things. take LazFX for example. (couldn't resist man, sorry)

those patterns of "immoral" or unlawful behavior are not symptomatic of repressed homosexual desires they are a product of deviant homosexual desires. the repression exists seperately.

these same men could just as easily lead sexually fullfilled, non-deviant "closeted" lives but either chose not to or in all likelyhood actually do. how do we know?

quote:

Originally posted by Q5echo closeted gay men who are not necessarily religious get caught doing the same things. take LazFX for example. (couldn't resist man, sorry)

well at least I don't air my affairs or have open spats in a forum like you and Z.. just take him out for a beer and hug him every so often... he is a good kid...
bwa ha ha ha


I loved though how some of the Top GOP members today started off with , "well Bill Clinton......" in their comments to support this guy...

Gay, Straight I don't care, I just want a truthful politician.....and don't try to legislate morality to ME when you are doing shit that would be considered immoral by the people that elected you...
I hate these Holier than Thou types.... focking fakes

quote:

Originally posted by Q5echo those patterns of "immoral" or unlawful behavior are not symptomatic of repressed homosexual desires they are a product of deviant homosexual desires. the repression exists seperately.

interesting angle. even though this story would still be in the news had it been any other senator, the sizzle is not that it was deviant behavior by a senator; rather the senator's own track record as an avid anti-gay lawmaker. this makes the repression connection a little too easy. standing at the podium and belittling a philosophy that you personally believe in can lead to some interesting if not dangerous lifestyle actions.

quote:

these same men could just as easily lead sexually fullfilled, non-deviant "closeted" lives but either chose not to or in all likelyhood actually do. how do we know?

cause they fuck pages?

seriously, Craig was outed in 1982 during the last page scandal. he then could have embraced it and lived a fulfilling life. Rather than to do that, he gets married soon after (i think the term is growing a beard) and now has to solicit sex in public bathrooms because of his profile and to hide it from his wife. keep in mind that the officer was there because of previous complaints regarding that particular restroom.

this is hardly deviant behavior compared to some of the options out there (we had a police chief caught on film at a diaper party a while back).

just another header for the "family values" party

doh!






this is too much fun.. i should get back to work before my laughter gets any more obnoxious

His press conference
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJgSl_auejM

"Thank you for coming out" - hahaha!

At the end, some guy says, "Hey, what if you *were* gay? Not like there's anything wrong with being gay" - LOL.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...ml?hpid=topnews

quote:

A Senator's Wide Stance: 'I Am Not Gay' From the opening line of his statement yesterday, Sen. Larry Craig was in trouble. "Thank you all very much for coming out today," he began. "Coming out" was perhaps not the best phrase for a guy who had pleaded guilty to some rather un-senatorial conduct in an airport men's room -- and now stands accused in his home-state paper of a homosexual encounter in Union Station. Alas for the Idaho Republican, it was not his first mistake. No, his first mistake was on June 11, when he went into a restroom stall in the Minneapolis airport and, according to the arrest report, tapped his foot in a "signal often used by persons communicating a desire to engage in sexual conduct." This was followed closely by his second mistake: handing the arresting officer his business card and asking, "What do you think about that?" Mistake No. 3? Explaining to the police that his foot touched the undercover officer's foot in the next stall because he has "a wide stance when going to the bathroom." Mistake No. 4: Pleading guilty on Aug. 8 to disorderly conduct, and telling nobody -- not even a lawyer or his wife -- before the news broke Monday and Craig's spokesman chalked it up to a "he said/he said misunderstanding." This quartet of errors landed the senator before the television cameras yesterday outside the Wells Fargo building in downtown Boise. Standing next to his wife, who wore sunglasses and looked as if she felt ill, the senator almost shouted as he asserted his heterosexuality. "Let me be clear: I am not gay. I never have been gay," Craig said. Evidently, Craig did not think this was clear enough, because moments later, he explained why he kept the arrest a secret. "I wasn't eager to share this failure, but I should have anyway -- because I am not gay!" The Associated Press rushed out a bulletin: "Sen. Larry Craig says, 'I am not gay.' " CNN put up a "Breaking News" banner announcing, "Sen. Craig: I am not gay, and never have been gay." The Drudge Report went with the headline "Brokeback Bathroom." As the Craigs departed, somebody in the crowd that had gathered called out after the senator: "Hey, what if you _were_ gay?" Heckling the disgraced lawmaker at that moment seemed over the top, but the question was a reasonable one. Craig didn't get into trouble for being gay; he got into trouble because he "engaged in conduct which I knew or should have known tended to arouse alarm or resentment." Though he has been writing laws for the past 32 years, the senator spoke yesterday as if he lacked the most basic grasp of the legal system. "While I was not involved in any inappropriate conduct at the Minneapolis airport or anywhere else, I chose to plead guilty to a lesser charge in hopes of making it go away," he said, blaming this on his failure to hire a lawyer. "I have now retained counsel, and I am asking counsel to review this matter and to advise me on how to proceed." The retained counsel will have a difficult job, given the two statements that appear on the guilty plea right above the signature of one Larry Edwin Craig: "I understand that the court will not accept a plea of guilty from anyone who claims to be innocent," and "I now make no claim that I am innocent of the charge to which I am entering a plea of guilty." Who is to blame for this fundamental misunderstanding by the veteran lawmaker? Of course: the media. In particular, the Idaho Statesman, whose article published Monday night quoted a man with close ties to Republican officials as saying he had a sexual encounter with the senator in the men's room in Union Station. "My family and I had been relentlessly and viciously harassed by the Idaho Statesman," Craig complained. He was so mad about it, in fact, that the word "viciously" at first came out has "vicially." The senator wore a casual, short-sleeve shirt tucked into a pair of khakis -- presenting a softer image than the mug shot that had been on television all day showing a severe Craig in business attire with an American-flag pin on his lapel. But no fashion adjustment would overcome what the senator acknowledged was "an issue that is not yet over." That's a safe bet, considering that his Senate colleagues offered no support as they sent the matter to the ethics committee, and presidential candidate Mitt Romney, on CNBC, dismissed the man who had until Monday been his Idaho chairman as "disgusting" and beneath "the level of respect and dignity that we would expect." Twice in his statement, Craig, speaking beneath sunny skies, apologized for the "cloud over Idaho" caused by his arrest. Actually, the cloud is over Craig, not his home state. But it's easy to see how Craig might overestimate the size of his shadow: He has a wide stance.

quote:

Originally posted by Q5echo i disagree. openly gay men participate in those same lewd acts you described those Republican lawmakers engaged in everyday in every city in America and get caught doing it. closeted gay men who are not necessarily religious get caught doing the same things.

The issue isn't that the average homosexual is incapable of dangerous or immoral patterns of sexual behaviour, but rather that the probability of dangerous or immoral sexual behaviour is far higher among those homosexuals who believe that their homosexual desires are inherently immoral to begin with.

Off the top of my head, I could think of four conservative politicians / religious figures that engaged in promiscuous or - much worse - criminal acts of homosexuality and yet can think of no conservative / religious figures that are involved in healthy homosexual relationships. I needn't even indclude Catholic clergymen and their taste for alt... well, you get where I'm going with this, right?

There are undoubtedly many outed homosexuals - men that are comfortable with their sexuality - who still engage in "lewd" acts as you put it, but the ratio doesn't even compare to the number of self-loathing homosexuals - and I would include basically any homosexual involved with conservative politics or religion in that number - that engage in the same sort of behaviour with the same sort of consitency.

quote:

those patterns of "immoral" or unlawful behavior are not symptomatic of repressed homosexual desires they are a product of deviant homosexual desires. the repression exists seperately.

The repression of desire causes deviancy of desire - we've known this since Freud. If you prevent yourself from being angry - even in cases where anger is a natural reaction to the situation you find yourself in - then the anger will often manifest itself in "catastrophic" (in the psychological sense) ways. If you try to prevent yourself from laughing in a situation that you find profoundly humourous, then you'll find the same thing happens: small, managable bursts of laughter are supressed, while large, "catastrophic" bursts emerge beyond your control. The same, I'm sure, could be said for sexual desire: supress the desire for long enough and it will emerge in a capacity largely beyond your control.

quote:

these same men could just as easily lead sexually fullfilled, non-deviant "closeted" lives but either chose not to or in all likelyhood actually do. how do we know?

No, they couldn't have "just as easily lead sexually fullfilled, non-deviant 'closeted' lives" because that was just the sort of life that they had programmed themselves (or been programmed) to be repulsed by. No-one - particularly not conservative politicians or Christians with a vested interest in living the chaste lifestyle - would choose to live a life in which their sexual desires could only be satisfied by deception or criminal misconduct, regardless of their sexual orientation. The four men I mentioned believed their desires to be "lewd" and the actions they performed to satisfy these desires, unfortunately, reflect those initial beliefs. If you think that homosexual desires are inherently "lewd", then chances are your expression of homosexual desires will be "lewd" too!

quote:

Originally posted by ResonantDrag cause they fuck pages? seriously, Craig was outed in 1982 during the last page scandal.

no he wasn't. your talking about Dan Crane and Gerry Studds.

Crane admitted to having sex with an underage female page and Studds admitted to having sex with an underage male page then subsequently outed himself during the investigaton.

Studds continued to have a "fabulous" Congressional career until 1997.

Foley sent some E-mails.

the voters gave Studds a pass.

the Party gave Foley the boot.

does that seem odd to you?

quote:

Originally posted by Renegade The issue isn't that the average homosexual is incapable of dangerous or immoral patterns of sexual behaviour, but rather that the probability of dangerous or immoral sexual behaviour is far higher among those homosexuals who believe that their homosexual desires are inherently immoral to begin with.

of course not, but there are far more openly gay men and gay men who are not and not necessarily religious doing these sorts of things for reasons that have nothing to do with religion.

where do they fall in to this notion that "most" deviant homosexual behaviour is somehow evocative of being religiously repressed?

sure there are religiously and socialy and professionally repressed gay men out there who get off one way or another. but why do the ones who go out of their way to enjoy certain perversions have to be always catagorized as victims of the repression and not just be perverts? for lack of a better term.

quote:

I needn't even indclude Catholic clergymen and their taste for alt... well, you get where I'm going with this, right?

totally different dude. a lot of those guys if not all of the severe offenders were predators that used their positions as clergy to fufill their deviant appetites.

those assholes lived a complete lie and repressed their deviant behaviour, not because of religious guilt but for other more selfish reasons

this way of thinking or whatever your combative feelings toward religion which i know you dislike intensely are affecting your argument and you may not be realizing it.

just a hunch.

quote:

There are undoubtedly many outed homosexuals - men that are comfortable with their sexuality - who still engage in "lewd" acts as you put it, but the ratio doesn't even compare to the number of self-loathing homosexuals - and I would include basically any homosexual involved with conservative politics or religion in that number - that engage in the same sort of behaviour with the same sort of consitency.

sure "some sort of behavior" because they're gay and not out, but not "always dangerous and immoral" behaviour that would cause them criminal shame like you just asserted?

quote:

If you think that homosexual desires are inherently "lewd", then chances are your expression of homosexual desires will be "lewd" too!

again i disagree but i don't have the actual stats to prove it. and neither do you. all i can be certain about is these episodes of deviant behaviour we see from people who are supposed to be repressed are isolated. there has to be many people a majority of which, live double lives who are lying about one of two things (maybe more who knows) and chances are they fullfill themselves but will lie about what represses them not manifest their repression in self destructive behaviour. if they are engaging in self destructive behaviour chances are it is because they are prone to do so for whatever reason but somewhat seperate from their repression.

quote:

Originally posted by Q5echo no he wasn't. your talking about Dan Crane and Gerry Studds.

outed, not implicated. i suppose that's what i get for making tasteless jokes.

quote:

Foley sent some E-mails. the voters gave Studds a pass. the Party gave Foley the boot. does that seem odd to you?

I don't exactly believe that Foley was only guilty of the submitted evidence.

and yes it does seem a little odd, but at least Studds embraced who he was. perhaps the voters have more respect for a politician who can at least be honest with himself.

of course bigotry wasn't on the platform for the rep party back in the '80s

quote:

Originally posted by ResonantDrag I don't exactly believe that Foley was only guilty of the submitted evidence. and yes it does seem a little odd, but at least Studds embraced who he was. perhaps the voters have more respect for a politician who can at least be honest with himself. of course bigotry wasn't on the platform for the rep party back in the '80s

so just be honest about having consentual sex with minors in your attendance and your constituency should give you a pass?

got it, i'll pass that on to the RNC Chair

which brings us back to repressive behavior

the other Congressman in that Page scandal, Dan Crane. he had sex with an underage female page, and unlike Stubbs who was exalted for it, was voted out the following year.

was he "repressed"? was he some sort of victim to be given a pass as well?

yes, every victim needs a pass.. pedophiles especially.

whatever makes you sleep well at night.

quote:

Originally posted by ResonantDrag yes, every victim needs a pass.. pedophiles especially. whatever makes you sleep well at night.

dismiss whatever you want but you've proven there is plenty of hypocracy to go around.

i don't know if i'm the one proving it.. but hell, i'll bite.






[resonantdrag secretly hopes he didn't leave the boards open to a zingy clinton comment]

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