Defending gay Republicans
I'm amenable to Matt's argument that it's both a violation and a waste of resources for police officers to hang out in public bathrooms, entice other men to flirt harmlessly with them, and then arrest them for petty, questionable violations of the law. But a couple things about Larry Craig. Perhaps the main one is that he plead guilty, and not exactly on the basis of a unlawfully extracted confession. It's just what he decided to do. That makes him a criminal (at least technically) and subject to congressional investigation.
The other issue here, though, is that upon his confrontation with the officer, Craig brandished his business card, hoping to use his stature and clout as a U.S. Senator to avoid being brought to perhaps not-so-righteous justice. I suppose it's somewhat mitigating--at least to me--that in this instance he tried to muscle his way out of a ridiculous situation, but we should always reject this sort of leveraging, perhaps especially when it's perpetrated by elected people, over whose power we have at least some control.
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I think Amanda Marcotte has this just about right:
he believes in a world where it’s just to harass gay men for tapping their feet at each other.
He's supported this by his voting record and his political associations. What's more, he thinks that he particularly should be immune to it for reasons of power and privilege. If he thought this "justice" wasn't righteous, he would have used his capacity as a lawmaker to do something about it.
If it is a waste of resources to put plain clothes officers in a mens bathroom where there have been numerous complaints of lewd behavior, how does one deal with the problem of the lewd behavior in a place that is some people's first impression of Minneapolis.
I know that if I took my kid into an airport bathroom and there were people having sex in the stalls, not caring whether others were around, I'd be pissed. And since one assumes that Minneapolis police and not TSA officials are responsible for such issues, I would want them to deal with it.
So how would you suggest solving the problem besides prosecuting people for petty crimes and hopefully spreading the word that bathroom sex is no longer permitted in the Minneapolis airport?
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