The Bigger Picture

There is almost a sense of vindication on the part of gays by whats happening to Senator Larry Craig. After years of having his sexual orientation questioned his guilty plea may just prove everyone right. However, the bigger picture, as I see it, is not that Craig plead guilty nor that he now regrets it, it is that having sex in a public bathroom has become synonymous with gay men.

For many, many years gay men have seen fit to indulge in public sex because, as history tells us, they didn't have anywhere to go or that they were hiding in the open. In the 1950's and very likely before then, gay men have been arrested in Central Park and other places where they sought the company of other men. A furtive look, a stroll in the same direction was all it took for these men to acknowledge their "sameness" and then engage in anonymous sex. Engaging in such activity afforded them the opportunity to stay in the closet, return to work the next day without having their image splattered on the front page of the local newspaper and it didn't require a long term commitment. One would think that with the passing years this type of behavior would have abated especially with the advent of no tell motels. But here we are in 2007 and we are debating the sexual orientation of a Senator that should have known better.

So, the question here shouldn't necessarily be, is he gay but rather, why is he or anyone else for that matter seeking sex in a public restroom? I would guess that this question has many different answers but the one I'm looking for. The bottom line here is that no one should be having sex in public bathrooms. Ok, maybe that's a bit naive and why we have undercover cops patrolling public bathrooms but there is something to be said about this statement. My simple point is this, if gay people are going to cast off the horrible impressions that some have about us we have to start saying, I don't care if Senator Craig is gay or straight what he has done is inappropriate and he should suffer the consequences. Unfortunately, that is not going to happen because to do that we would then have to hold gay men, or men in general, accountable for their behavior and of course we can't do that. So in a sense we have a double standard - we condemn the hypocritical Senator for soliciting sex in a public bathroom but ignore the larger issue of men having sex in a public bathroom. Sorry, but I have a hard time buying into this hypocrisy.