I don't know the details of what Craig allegedly did, but if it was soliciting a sex act to be performed in public, yes, that's worse than Vitter. If only the conversation was to be public, then never mind.
I agree that the arrest was unjustified. But I don't doubt for a minute that he was looking for sex in that bathroom, either.
Also, Hugh is working hard for Mitt Romney this cycle and Craig was part of Romney's Senate supporters.
Romney is already suspect among the mouth breathers and fundies that look to Hugh for political guidance, so Hugh just had to throw Craig under the bus over teh Gay.
Wait, what? Wasn't the allegation that Craig was trying to peer in through the crack between the door and the wall in a bathroom stall?
I don't understand how Garance can declare that an unjustifiable arrest under a statute prohibiting surreptitiously gazing into an area where a person has an expectation of privacy and has or is likely to expose their intimate parts. And I really don't understand how she can call it entrapment for a cop to sit in a bathroom stall, wait for peepers, then arrest them.
It seems kind of like a waste of police time, but its not entrapment.
I'll admit that I don't know anything about this case that I haven't seen in the links posted here and at Garance's blog, including this one: http://www.rollcall.com/issues/1...ws/19763-
1.html. But assuming this is all there is, why the outrage?
The standard answer, Patrick, is that by all sorts of means, a variety of mechanisms make gay sex difficult, especially for those who are closeted and don't want to frequent gay bars. This is counter-intuitive to those who buy the gay promiscuity bit, but it has a lot of testimony behind it. The limited access to gay sex makes public washrooms a traditional meeting place. There are fairly elaborate codes in place that both establish plausible (or in Craig's case, not so plausible) deniability, and yet allow those in the know to hook up. Having police learn those codes, hang out in traditional meeting areas, and use their knowledge of the codes to arrest people can thus be seen as another form of harassment.
Now it might be that Craig was particularly clumsy in his performance of the codes. That still doesn't explain the presence of the police officer. "Waste of police time" is probably too charitable.
Craig has long been a supporter of the kind of law that he got arrested for. Every once in a while, there is justice in the world.
Are you even aware of the offense he pleaded guilty to? Hint: It wasn't "public lewdness."
Are you suggesting that "interference with privacy" is an invalid offense? That a person has a right to peer into your toilet stall in a public restroom? Touch you with his foot? Reach under the partition with his hand?
The better lament is that police resources and taxpayer money are being used in this manner. But not that no crime was committed.
P.S. I am gay and not a Democrat.
I've heard/read a couple of different versions of the story, which lead to fairly different conclusions about whether the arrest was justified. The first version says that Craig looked in the crack of the stall for a couple of minutes (and made it clear he was trying to check out the cop), then went to his own stall and started the cruising signals. That's pretty clearly a no-no.
The second version says that the cop was tapping his feet first, which is apparently a well-known cruising sign (good to know, since my musically inclined self will sometimes tap my feet almost subconsciously while on the pot), and then Craig started looking in and returning signals. That would be entrapment, IMHO.
Either way, the schadenfreude is pretty fun, and i for one am not going to expend very much energy defending this homophobic prick.
Scott,
A couple of things.
1) The guy plead out on the charges. It's reasonable he could have been found not guilty if it went to trial -- but his whole sordid closet would have been emptied.
2) It's precisely because of anti-gay hysteria whipped up by people like Larry Craig and the rest of his ultra-butch closet cases that drives this kind of thing into public bathrooms and the like. If he and his political allies didn't seek to portray homosexuality as a sick deviance, one that demands legal discrimination (and legal measures like bathroom sting operations), he would have been able to fight the charges altogether.
But that's not the world Larry Craig wanted and now he's just another john cruising and getting caught.
I don't know the details of what Craig allegedly did, but if it was soliciting a sex act to be performed in public, yes, that's worse than Vitter.
Really? I'm pretty sure that the penalties are significantly harsher for Vitter's crime - he just had the good fortune of not being caught by the police.
Wasn't justifiable? Craig obviously thought otherwise when he pled.
And I think "disorderly conduct" is a good fit with "sliding one's foot under a restroom stall partition so that it rests against the foot of the person in the next stall." Eeeew.
Really? I'm pretty sure that the penalties are significantly harsher for Vitter's crime
Are they? If I recall correctly, Dick Morris didn't suffer any criminal penalty at all, and my impression is that, other than possible public humiliation, johns generally get off with a fine.
But even if what you say is true, when I say "worse", I'm speaking only for myself.
What's behind the right's different response to David Vitter's call girls and Larry Craig's boy trouble? In a nutshell, the boys.
As the old expression goes, you are what you eat. And that imagery, apparently, is behind the growing conservative chorus calling for the resignation of disgraced Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig.
For the details, see:
"Behind the Right's Double Standard on Craig and Vitter."
"The standard answer, Patrick, is that by all sorts of means, a variety of mechanisms make gay sex difficult, especially for those who are closeted and don't want to frequent gay bars."
So? This doesn't grant closeted gay men an inalienable right to be creepy in public.
By this logic shy straight men, for whom sex is also hard to obtain, must have an inalienable right to rub their crotches against strange women in crowded subway cars.
John Protevi- I thought the idea was, gay men look up online which bathrooms are good for anonymous bathroom sex. This implies that the bathroom isn't so much a place to meet (they could always meet online in the first place) as it is a sort of special added thrill.
Not that this is especially relevant to whether a voyeurism type crime occurred. But if the question is, "should criminal law be used to dissuade people from having sex in public bathrooms, or is that unfair to closeted gays," which is what you seem to suggest, then its relevant to that discussion.
My understanding is that he was charged with interfering with another person's privacy. Which, yes, standing in front of a stall and peering in for a couple of minutes will do.
It's the invasiveness and harassment that bothers me more than the cruising-for-sex.
I'd think anyone would like to use the can without some guy trying to look at them though the crack in the door. Which is the reason for all the signaling, true, but it seems to me that if the signals are misinterpreted or ignored, then you wind up with a creepy asshole lurking outside your stall door.
Does this justify the regular posting of undercover cops in bathrooms seeking to bust this kind of behavior? I don't know. I only use the men's room when I really, really have to go.
In any event, as has been stated, Craig pleaded guilty to a charge which his own moral crusading has not only made possible, but made necessary. Because of the moral crusaders, people like Craig stay deep in the closet while simultaneously shoring up the system that keeps them there.
By this logic shy straight men, for whom sex is also hard to obtain, must have an inalienable right to rub their crotches against strange women in crowded subway cars.
A lot of them certainly feel entitled to do that, too.
I've heard/read a couple of different versions of the story, which lead to fairly different conclusions about whether the arrest was justified. The first version says that Craig looked in the crack of the stall for a couple of minutes (and made it clear he was trying to check out the cop), then went to his own stall and started the cruising signals. That's pretty clearly a no-no.
The second version says that the cop was tapping his feet first, which is apparently a well-known cruising sign (good to know, since my musically inclined self will sometimes tap my feet almost subconsciously while on the pot), and then Craig started looking in and returning signals. That would be entrapment, IMHO.
Right--this is the key distinction. If it's #1, then I agree with several commenters that the arrest may not have been unjustified, although it seems likely that these kinds of regulations are arbitrarily applied. I understood it to be #2.
I am the only one who keeps cracking up every time I hear discussion of the "run for Craig's seat?"
aimai
Jon H, who said anything about "rights"? Patrick asked what generated the "outrage" at Craig's arrest. (I think "outrage" is too strong to capture the reaction of most in the left blogosphere, but I let that slide.) I gave what I think is the standard left-liberal analysis of these sorts of borderline entrapment cases. (As Scott says, it's all about the details.)
In any event, your analogy is flawed: there's no symmetry between unwanted frottage in the subway and foot tapping, etc., as coded signals indicating desire for sex. The need to maintain plausible deniability is the whole reason for the code, which is why even leering or winking doesn't fit either.
Patrick, what's "fair" in this situation is indeed really complicated. I was just giving the shorthand version of what I understand is a common view. The important thing is to understand the historical context of police harassment of gays as well as the development of these coded signals as means of signaling desire for sex.
One of the most obnoxious aspects of this is that the police sting operation was apparently designed on the assumption that the officer's uncorroborated word ought to be enough to convict. I've worked as a lawyer on a couple of restroom sting cases: both had hidden video cameras supporting the officer's version of the events.
On another point, I suspect that the prosecutor would have argued with some success that of course defendant was soliciting for public sex, not sex to be performed in private later--defendant was a transient in an airport--where was he going to go?
If you go read the stories on this at Josh Marshall's site, you'll see that the Senator had an earlier accusation of sex with a man in a public restroom. You can therefore see why the Senator might want to hush the Minnesota incident up rather than deny it indignantly (until forced to). At least in the court of public opinion, two unconnected accusations are a lot harder to deny plausibly than one . . .
Actually, people are making too much of the claim that Craig peered into the decoy cop's stall. The judge threw out the invasion of privacy charge, probably because the cop specified that Craig had stayed three feet away from the door of his stall, and looked through the crack intermittently. It wasn't that Craig pressed his face against the door to get a good look. This intermittent behavior lasted two minutes, and it ended when the stall next to the cop was vacated and Craig took it. The cop also talked about a fair amount of other people using the stalls for the intended purpose. I don't see anything inconsistent here with Craig merely waiting for the next available stall, and making sure that those with closed doors were actually occupied. Further, I'm completely heterosexual, and I resent the claim that it is distinctly homosexual cruising behavior to bring one's luggage into the stall and to tap one's feet. I've always done the former because I didn't want a thief to either steal my bag or rifle through it. I've sometimes done the latter because I'm keyed up and anxious that the restroom visit might make me late to my gate for the flight, or late to the carousel for my checked baggage, in which case they might be stolen. As to the hilarious "wide stance" claims by Craig and the officer's description of the final details before the arrest, that would seem to put the lie to Craig's claim that it was all an innocent misunderstanding. But I still don't understand how a person can be arrested unless there was a verbal agreement to use the stalls for a tryst, or some sort of indecent exposure. Sexual escapades do not belong in public restrooms, both for the offense to sensibilities and the nuisance of making people who need to defecate wait in agony for open stalls. But I resent violations of civil rights and arrests without probable cause as well.
If KipEsquire were extremely wealthy, his political folly could be understood. But since wealth, social fanaticism, and stupidity are the only valid reasons for voting GOP, where does that leave him?
But since wealth, social fanaticism, and stupidity are the only valid reasons for voting GOP...
What a maroon! So what this poster is saying is that about half of the country are wealthy, social fanatics or just plain stupid?
What a narrow little mind
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