Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Politics In General Senator Craig’s Innocence

Steve, I may have missed the citizen complaint fact, but the way I read it that wqas the overall justification for the police putting undercover police there, not the specific incident.

That is always the reason given by the police, but if someone ever did research on this (and it may exist, a UCLA woman professor did some studies decades ago that led to the California Supreme Court ruling that if it is only a complaining officer and the person otherwise had a reasonable expectation of not disturbing anyone, it isn't a crime.

Of course, this decision has done nothing to stop the horrendous waste of police resources devoted to this non-crime.

Ardy, just think back to all the brouhaha over George Michael's willy waggin incident.

Here's a little advice for everyone, and especially for LAW MAKERS:

Obey the law.

Do Not, under any circumstances, solicit sex in a public restroom.

If you do, and the one you are propositioning turns out to be a cop, then you are busted. If you plead guilty, then people are going to believe you are guilty. If you are a law maker, odds are that career is over.

We have debated some complex subjects on RR, but this doesn't qualify as one of them.

For those who struggle with this, put your kid in the stall next to the Senator and reconsider your feelings on the incident. The cop is there taking the bullet for all of us. He's fighting the perverts so we don't have to.

I hope this clarifies my position and relieves any confusion I might have caused you, Steve.

Phil
If I understand your postings correctly, you seem to be of the opinion that the transactions involved in soliciting gay sex are mostly always done in subtle ways that would not even be noticeable to most non gay members of the public at large. Presumably that opinion is based upon your own experience.

I am not gay, I do not think I look gay, or act gay, or give a person cause to think I might be receptive to that sort of advance. I have been proposition in public at least six times.

Once, I was lying on a public beach when someone walked up and offered to do the Senator Craig on me. Stupid as I was, I had to ask him to repeat it three times before I understood what he wanted.

Once in the elevator at a federal court house.

Once in a movie theater where a leg and hand kept getting closer to my leg and knee even after I kept moving both away. I guess he thought I was being coy.

Once walking along the beach

Once a person I thought was a friend told me that he should have "taken" me when I was drunk... I would have enjoyed it if I just gave it a chance.

Once an acquaintance asked me for a lift.... when we arrived, he asked me to come inside the gay bath house.

Once a guy apparently saw me through our apartment window. He invited himself over, called on the downstairs telephone and invited himself up.

These are just the incidents I remember, there may have been others that do not now come to mind

....

It is not that I found any of these situations so very annoying. But they were unwelcome (even if a little flattering). And I can certainly see that many other people would in fact be very disturbed by any of these events.

A reminder: Senator Craig could easily have found "less public" ways to find a sex partner. He's a Senator fercryinoutloud! Also, let's not forget, Senator Frank was indeed involved in a sex scandal, years ago, when he was living with another man. The Right Wing Noisemakers invented a tale about his lover running a homosexual prostitution ring out of Frank's Washington apartment. Remember?

And what about that recent case of the Dem Governor of NJ who was caught having a homosexual affair with an aide? What happened to him?

Well of course that's right Phil, but that's how vice stings work, isn't it? The citizens indignantly report some smarmy goings on, the cops put some people on the street (or in the tea room) and they catch some, umm, customers.

Here in my town, it's the prostitutes that constantly get harassed in this way. The cop wanders into the red light district looking all rich and horny, and entices the prostitute into offering sex for cash. Bing! Bang! Busted!

But I agree. It's a waste of police resources. If brothels were legal, we wouldn't have drug addicts looking trying to get fifty for a blow. And I don't see anything "criminal" about toe-tapping.

Indeed it does. I infer that you are dead serious about this, and particularly concerned for an unsuspecting child getting caught up in a mistaken tryst.

Just a little reality check here, Ardy. You're a good looking guy, right? No, just establishing the facts, really. You've been propositioned an equal or greater number of times by women. True?

I'm a good looking guy too. I've been propositioned dozens of times by both men and women. One of my gay friends propositions me at least half the times I see him. The first time I was propositioned I was twelve. It was in front of the public library. When I was a teenager, several of my Mom's friends propositioned me, and her back neighbor, who was actually the "kept woman" of a very wealthy (and dangerous) man. I can remember an incident when I was in the Navy, hitchhiking in uniform, got picked up by a couple of gay guys and I ended up asking them to drop me off in Pascagoula, Mississippi at one in the morning because they wouldn't lay off. I remember my first redhead, who asked me to take her home from a play rehearsal, then detoured us to the Blue Ridge Parkway, and while we were sitting on a hillside in the dark, she said "You're the kind of guy who doesn't f^ck on the first date, aren't you?" I said yes I was. She said "We'll have to go out again."

It's flattering because it boosts my self-esteem to be looked upon as attractive. It's annoying because of my latent homophobia. If I weren't a little bit afraid of sexual encounters, it wouldn't be annoying at all.

I have "heard" that public sex/police busts are as old as prostitution and this is the reason that "bathhouses came into being."

I have never, ever heard of a heterosexual couple being busted for sex in public. In fact, there are magazines that devote forums to it: Penthouse


R-e-a-l-l-y!!!

Steve
I do not disagree with anything that you said. Actually, each of the experiences that I listed was interesting in it's own way.

But I think I was driving at a couple of different points other that what you discussed.

First, the implication of Phil's previous posting was (to my understanding) that these things all happen infrequently and subtlety. With the further inference that therefore really few or no one was bothered. No harm no foul.

My point is that there are people who are not so civilized as Phil and who would be much more blatant about these things. And in being blatant, these people would cause offense. Perhaps not to you or me, but certainly to some people this will be very offensive. And in the end, really unnecessary since there are many other options which do not have the problems of public cruising.

The second point I was making had to do with Phil's point that this sort of thing is infrequent and therefore trivial. And based upon my experience, I would not say it is infrequent. It is certainly not trivial to some people.

Tangentially, I would observe that in being hit upon like this, I discovered some sympathy for the experiences that women may feel with rude and unwanted attention.

Edit
By the way, I do not believe nor do I wish to imply that gays are somehow uniquely prone to this sort of behaviour. I would agree that the enforcement of laws in this regard is more tolerant of hetro behaviour.

If there were such a thing as mixed bathrooms, and if some guys were hitting on women in the toilet the way Craig is alleged to have done, I think that behavior would also be targeted by the police.