Now that Larry Craig has belatedly done the honorable thing and resigned from the Senate we are spared the torturous explanations to the effect that he is not gay but was merely tapping his foot in time to the Pat Boone tunes he was listening to on his iPod. Nor will we have to hear that in reality he has silently suffered from Restless Leg Syndrome (as a result of childhood trauma) and has now realized the need to place himself under a doctor’s care and hopes other sufferers will be inspired by his example to get the help they need before it’s too late and their own actions are horribly and publicly misconstrued.
My objection to Craig’s behavior isn’t so much because he was allegedly cruising for gay sex (not that there’s anything wrong with that. of course) in a public restroom, but that he was doing so in violation of his wedding vows. Whether it happens in the men’s room of the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport or in a windowless hallway outside the Oval Office study, infidelity is sleazy and despicable. How can you trust anyone who has sworn to protect the Constitution against “all enemies foreign and domestic” on behalf of millions of people he’ll never meet when he’s already disregarded the “love, honor and cherish” promise to someone he’ll have to face the rest of his life?
The most disappointing thing about the whole Craig episode and its coverage is that it is the gay-sex angle is what is sensationalized and not the faithlessness. Strangely, in today’s supposedly metrosexual, Will & Grace, Queer As (just plain) Folk, just-another-form-of-normal culture it’s the gay angle that gets the Man-bites-dog treatment while the marital infidelity aspect is apparently so common as to be unremarkable.
And really, aren’t all of these scandals becoming so common that they barely justify the shock treatment in the media? It’s looking as if the page-abusing, hooker-visiting, perv-inducing legislators in D.C. are the norm and the front-page, 24-hour-news-cycle treatment should be reserved for the men and women who don’t lower themselves. It’s to the point where saying, “A pox on both your houses” isn’t a curse of disgust but a prophetic statement.
