Senator Craig, Closet Case, Doesn't Know "Gay Is Good"

U.S. Senator Larry Craig (R - Idaho), who was recently caught using non-verbal signals to request sexual conduct in the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, announced that he is "not gay." This is true. He is a closet case.

A closet case is a man who at one level or another craves sexual contact with other men, but because of personal "moral" convictions or societal pressures can never display an honest representation of his personal sexuality. A closet case is not just "in the closet." (Even a committed gay couple living together could be in the closet.) A closet case lives one public life, but hides his physical desires within the shadows of semi-public sexual meeting spaces. Gay folk singers Romanovsky and Phillips in their 1984 song "Closet Case" call these liaisons "ten-minute love affairs."

Senator Craig has constructed a life that consists of contradictions, denial, and compartmentalization. He must be struggling terribly. He knows deep down he has these feelings, but he only knows how to navigate this "upright" public persona he has crafted for himself over decades. He has prayed that no one would catch him during one of his compulsive bottom-feeding moments, but with the flash of a badge under a stall his future streamed before his eyes eliciting the cry: "No!" Now his own deep personal shame has become the punch line of every joke on the lips of everyone in America.

Imagine your own deep personal shame. Now imagine it as some hack joke on Leno.

You see, this is the kind of society that the religious right wants. Men who desire women have constructed elaborate societal laws, organizations, and traditions to avoid the icky feeling they get when men desire men. Men who desire other men are supposed to suppress that basic truth (while women may only desire other women if it titillates). Men who desire other men and their female equivalents are not part of society: no equal rights, no marriage, no job security, no military service, no housing security, no relationship recognition. But you can't suppress sexuality, you can only hide it. The only way of satisfying sexual desires when you are not part of society is trolling the shadows for sex.

I feel bad for Senator Craig. As a closet case, he is a representation of a bygone era. In that era homo sex was never admitted. It was hidden in interstate rest stops, behind rows of library bookshelves, and under bushes at lightly-used public parks. Homo sex was found cruising malls and executed in cheap motels or back alleys. Sure, men had sex with other men, but they weren't "gay." They went home to their wives, after all.

That era is ending. Fifty years ago an astronomer got fired from his government job for admitting that he desired men. He proclaimed the truth was self-evident. "Gay is good," he said. He knew he had only one life, and he wanted to live it his way. Nobody was going to tell him different. His example was part of the beginnings of a social movement that agrees: Gay IS Good.

Even today under tremendous pressure when everyone knows better, Senator Craig cannot admit what he was trying to do. He formed his lifestyle believing gay is bad – "gay" only means hiding, fear, shame, attacks, and self-loathing. Out of fear, he chooses to live a life that contradicts his natural tendencies. He can not square his chosen lifestyle with his actual desires. As a result, a U.S. senator was willing to risk everything – life, marriage, character, fortune, high public career – to give a stranger a hand job under a stall.