{"id":473,"date":"2007-08-28T12:21:24","date_gmt":"2007-08-28T16:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/2007\/08\/28\/on-senator-craig\/"},"modified":"2007-08-28T12:21:24","modified_gmt":"2007-08-28T16:21:24","slug":"on-senator-craig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/2007\/08\/28\/on-senator-craig\/","title":{"rendered":"On Senator Craig"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Kurtz and a reader over at TPM cover pretty much all that’s worth saying<\/a> about Sen. Larry Craig:<\/p>\n

Look at the police report. Did he directly ask a cop for sex? No. Did he expose himself lewdly (as opposed to exposing himself to use the facilities)? No. Did he do anything that was unambiguously sexual? No.<\/p>\n

All he did was tap his foot, reach down (possibly to pick up a piece of TP), wiggle his fingers, and put his bag in front of him when he sat down. Oh, and he waited in front of an occupied stall. Even if he did everything the cop said he did, where was the lewd conduct? No actual sex happened. No actual sex was discussed. And if it wasn’t for the sheer embarrassment of the situation, you’d be writing about the overzealous cop who arrested a sitting US Senator for no apparent reason.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You know, when this story came out and I read the details, I thought – huh, I was in the MSP airport a couple of weeks ago.\u00c2\u00a0 I did wait in front of a stall.\u00c2\u00a0 I did set my bag near the door.\u00c2\u00a0 And I did pick up a piece of paper (I dropped my boarding pass – believe me, I wouldn’t have picked anything else up).\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t do a tap dance nor flash my US Senator card, so maybe that’s why I was safe.<\/p>\n

But the bigger point is this:<\/p>\n

If Craig was looking for sex, I hope that he can look into his heart and realize that it’s 2007, and gay people are allowed to be out, and even get involved in meaningful relationships that don’t begin and end in a squalid men’s room. I’d hope that he’d recognize that there are even gay Republicans out there (look at former Rep. Kolbe, for one), and that a lot of the stigma and fear that still exists about homosexuality in this society has to do with the behavior of people who are in the closet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Kurtz and a reader over at TPM cover pretty much all that’s worth saying about Sen. Larry Craig: Look at the police report. Did he directly ask a cop for sex? No. Did he expose himself lewdly (as opposed to exposing himself to use the facilities)? No. Did he do anything that was unambiguously […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-society"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}