Men’s Room behavior: excuses, punishment and prayers

August 30, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

Wayne Besen, who is an experienced, very thoughtful writer on public affairs, and author of Anything But Straight about the ex-gay phenomenon, has already convicted Senator Larry Craig in his commentary, “Looking for Love on the Sly.” (Read it now, because his column at www.365gay.com is apparently not archived.) He assumes that Craig was in fact cruising for a momentary sexual hook-up, and goes on to ask bluntly:

“How many of these incidents will it take before America realizes that the family values crowd is a big, fat fraud? They are a batch of moralizing molesters, pious pervs, closeted creeps and values voyeurs. It is time the right just closes shop and stops pointing fingers - because we have no idea where those sticky fingers have been.”

Yesterday I had several conversations with parishioners about the Senator Craig episode, after posting my views two days ago.  Some felt it was a pathetic example of hypocrisy (and so personally convicted him without a trial).

A portion of the police report about Senator Craig’s lewd conduct

One spoke very intelligently about police “entrapment” – what this undercover officer does is within the law but catches people in such a way that, although they are not necessarily “innocent” it still destroys careers, families, and lives. If such undercover operations are meant to protect public morals, even what is within the law for a vice officer to do, in this person’s opinion, it is a punishment out of proportion to the “crime.”

Besen’s truthful observation is that “one has to be quite desperate and pathetic to try to find his man in the can —especially with the advent of the Internet, which can deliver a pick-up faster than a pizza.”

I never got my own point made last night, that regarding this particular public restroom where Senator Craig was arrested, there had been complaints about sexual solicitation. The room has a reputation. Therefore the officer assigned had a duty. In other words, it was not the officer’s own initiative to go and try to catch some homosexual for the sport of it.

Over potluck dinner, more opinions emerged from other parishioners. One gay man simply named Senator Craig as worthy of our prayers. We pray for all manner of things and diversity of people before our Bible Study. I don’t remember ever before being asked to pray for someone arrested in a men’s room trap.

But I guess even my commenting about Senator Craig implies a prayerful concern: for him and his family; for social conservatives and liberals and radicals; for all who have suffered irreparable harm because of public morality yoked with private hypocrisy; for all people who cannot face their inner conflicts, and for those whose inner conflicts lead to inappropriate, embarrassing and even criminal behaviors. God, have mercy.

Will Senator Larry Craig run for re-election in November 2008? He has a strongly conservative base in Idaho. He has supported the Federal Marriage Amendment, argued against federal hate crimes legislation adding protection for LGBT people. He backed Idaho’s anti-gay marriage amendment. According to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Senator Craig has even refused to promise that his own office would not discriminate against LGBT people.

Whether he runs again partly will depend on how his version of the men’s room scene (his excuses) play out within the United States Senate.

Will the Senate’s ethics review process help him sweep the whole thing under the rug? Or are Senate Republicans concerned enough about their corporate survival in the next election that he will be encouraged to step down now so another Republican can fill his shoes quickly, before this incident becomes yet another campaign issue for which the whole party must answer?

According to Daily Quote, Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790) has said “He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.”

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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