RM is right.

I need to say something about Larry Craig--and for that matter--something about Bob Allen.

For those of you not watching much scandal-related news lately, Larry Craig is the gay-bating senator from Idaho who, despite his protestations to the contrary, was—if the police report can be believed, and it appears it can—trolling for sex in the public restroom of the Minneapolis Airport earlier this summer. Bob Allen is the state representative from Florida who was arrested for offering to pay an undercover cop $20 to allow Allen to perform oral sex on him.

Senator Craig insists that his actions (playing footsie with an undercover cop in the next stall, and reaching under the stall with his hand—clear and well known come ons (according to the authorities on public toilet sex, one of which I am not)) were misconstrued and he should not have plead guilty to the lesser included offense related to his arrest for public indecency. As RM notes in her comment, his verbal bleating this week “I am not gay, I have never been gay” is infuriating, and rather begs the question of whether he was soliciting sex from another man in the Minneapolis toilet.

On the other hand, Representative Allen swears he stepped into the toilet in the Florida park last month to escape a rain storm and was so frightened by the big burly African-American undercover cop he encountered there that he offered to perform fellatio so he wouldn’t become “a statistic.” Rep. Allen seems to have masterfully crafted a cocktail of mendacity, homophobia and racism that has not gone down well with the folks in Florida.

These two pathetic souls join the pantheon of Republican sex fiends who have gotten their comeuppances of late: Congressman/Pedophile Mark Foley and Kinky Straight Sex frequent purchaser Louisiana U.S. Senator David Vitter.

Foley appears to be escaping criminal penalties, though his public career is, rightly, at an end. Craig has been stripped of his committee posts by his Republican colleagues but remains in office (despite many calls for his resignation by his fellow Republicans who don’t relish his visage being broadcast during the upcoming 2008 election cycle). Vitter, oddly enough, seems likely to weather the storm for now—due in no small part to his Republican colleagues' fears of who the Democratic governor of Louisiana would appoint to replace him should he step down.

All of that makes for interesting politics, I suppose, but is there something else to say as it relates to Messrs. Craig and Allen from my particular perspective, to wit, a gay Christian ex-lawyer pastor?

Just this.

Dear self-loathing apparent closet cases,
Your incongruous coupling of clandestine, anonymous gay sex with self-righteous right-wing political pandering would be just sad if both of you weren’t so brazen in your quest for an alternate reality and your apparent belief in our gullibility.

I’ll be honest, and not very pastoral for a moment. The two of you disgust me. Not because you may have a sexual attraction to men (or even if you are simply sex-addicts, desirous of the thrill of forbidden sex, regardless of the gender of the “other”). What disgusts me is that, to many, you are now the public face of the LGBT world...and you are grasping, desperate apparent sex-offenders. You have nothing to do with me and how I live my life, or how most of my LGBT friends live their lives. And until you get yourself some help, come clean about who you are and what drove you to these acts of desperation, I’m not very interested in anything you have to say, and would suggest that others respond accordingly.

You both live in states where homophobia is rampant (though both also have thriving gay communities, particularly in Florida). By your actions of the past few months, you have inflamed more hatred, mistrust, and fear of LGBT persons than all of the past pontificating and positioning in your lengthy and dubious political careers. My hope is that the electorate can see you—-and your former friends who now want to burn you both on the altars of American Republican Christo-fascism—-for the antediluvian relics you are.

I urge you both to seek the guidance of a professional therapist—-not some ex-gay presto-change-o quack, but an honest to goodness mental health professional who can help you deal with your self-loathing, your sociopathic behaviors, and your twisted world-view. I can also recommend a pastoral counselor, one who might be able to help you see and follow a God of love and a Christ of compassion, and not the angry, demanding, patriarchal Dominus Dominator you both appear to worship, presuming you have a theology and that your faith claims are not more pseudo-butch window-dressing.

Okay, perhaps that last sentence was needlessly judgmental. There are plenty of nice, albeit misguided, people who believe in a loving God and still believe God is anti-gay. My bad.

But here’s the thing fellas…you’ve hurt a lot of people and you’ve given others lots of ammunition that they can now use to further marginalize LGBT women, men and youth. I believe that through Christ, you are forgiven for those wrongs…but that does not free you from accepting responsibility for the damage you have done or from needing to work to right those wrongs.

So for now, I’ll watch and wait. I wish I could say I have a lot of hope that either of you will do the right thing. But as they say, with God, all things are possible.

Peace,
NotShyChiRev