Democrashield.com

Reading through the right-wing blogs this morning, I found several recurring themes about the Larry Craig incident, so I decided to spend a bit of time responding to them.

1. Why are you attacking Larry Craig for being gay? Doesn’t that make you homophobic?

The problem isn’t that Larry Craig is gay.

The problem is that Larry Craig is a hypocrite.

On one hand, he attacks gays, votes for the gay marriage ban and the defense of marriage act, votes against allowing gays in the military and promotes himself as a “family values” conservative.

On the other hand, he cruises for gay sex in airport men’s rooms—and this isn’t the first time Craig has sought public sex with other men, either.

2. I don’t care if he’s gay, that’s his private life.

I agree with you wholeheartedly. It’s his private life, and unless it interferes with his job or breaks the law, it’s not the public’s business.

But, again, it’s an issue of hypocrisy.

Conservatives dragged Bill Clinton’s private affairs out into public and used them to attack him over and over again—in fact, many of them are still bringing that up ten years later.

Conservatives have also centered a large part of their agenda on gays and gay rights. They insist on taking what should be private matters and turning them into political fodder. Remember, gay sex itself was illegal in many states until just four years ago, when the Supreme Court struck it down—an action that was greeted with massive indignation by the right (you can read Scalia’s dissent in Lawrence v. Texas for a taste of it).

As long as conservatives drag private conduct into the public spotlight, they’re hypocrites for protesting when someone else does the same to them. They set the rules, and now they have to play by them.

3. Craig didn’t do anything wrong. What’s the underlying crime?

Craig committed disorderly conduct.

How do we know that? Well, he plead guilty. He was charged with a crime and he said he committed it—case closed.

Of course, you could argue that what he did wasn’t disorderly conduct, and you could probably make a good case in that regard. Craig had a chance to do just that, and he didn’t—he plead guilty.

4. Craig didn’t know what he was doing—he pled guilty just to make this go away.

If that’s true, Craig committed perjury. He lied under oath about what happened and said that he was guilty when he wasn’t.

Craig isn’t your everyday man on the street, either. He studied at the University of Idaho and George Washington University. He’s been in politics since 1974, going from a State Senator to a Congressman to a U.S. Senator. Someone as experienced and educated as Craig should know the laws, know his rights, know the legal system, and know that you shouldn’t plead guilty to a crime you didn’t commit. In fact, I’d say that last part is pretty much common sense.

5. This is all just a witch hunt!

Like I said before, this is about hypocrisy, dishonesty, and lawbreaking—all performed by a public official. Craig himself said it best: “As an elected official, I fully realize that my life is open for public criticism and scrutiny…”

And keep in mind that conservatives—Larry Craig included—have made a cottage industry out of turning the private into the public when it suits them.

So this no mo more a witch hunt than any other scandal involving the personal life of a politician—whether it’s David Vitter or Bill Clinton.

That’s the risk you run when you turn the personal into the political—you give people free reign to look into your own personal life, to scrutinize your private activities. And when you do something wrong, something hypocritical, something illegal, it means you’re going to be attacked for it—just as you would attack others for doing the same things if they got caught.

Like I said, they set the rules and now they have to play by them.