Larry Craig May Not Resign

Everyone in the universe (yes, everyone!) has emailed me about the news that Larry Craig may not resign from the Senate after all. Basically, Senator Arlen Specter (R-Almostnotadouche) gave him a call and urged him to reconsider, his kids have evidently told him not to resign because that will make it look like he's admitting he's gay, and he hired Michael Vick's attorney (seriously), Billy Martin, who's saying that Craig's arrest "raises very serious constitutional questions."

As I thought the whole push for resignation by the GOP was rather ridiculous in the first place, just piling more hypocrisy on top of an incident already rich with it, I can't say I'd be disappointed if Craig didn't resign and fought the GOP machine. But it's really sad that he's obviously looking at it primarily as a way to "prove" that he's not gay.

It's not about the constitutional questions, or raising awareness about these sorts of police stings, or advocating on behalf of the gay men who are targeted by them, or pointing out the hypocrisy of his stinking party, or anything else that might be of real value. It's about a man—who has been dogged by rumors that he is gay for twenty-five years, who married, a year after a weirdass preemptive denial that he'd diddled Congressional pages, a woman with three kids he adopted and with whom he maintains a "commuter relationship," who was outed last year by Mike Rogers, and who, in the midst of an investigation by a home state newspaper into allegations he is gay, coincidentally got caught soliciting sex in an airport bathroom in Minnesota—so desperate to not be gay that he'll fight the very power structure that aids and abets and requires his shame and self-loathing to try to prove he's not queer.

This is the wrong fight for you, Senator. You're not going to find many allies on your side of the aisle, who aren't ever going to regard as evidence of your not-gayness any possible exoneration of the charges to which you pleaded guilty. You will, however, find plenty of allies if only you renounce this cockamamie charade and come out of the closet at long last—and tell them you're not leaving your job just because you're gay. Now that's a fight worth having, sir.