A Mess of Cottage
After all that Mike Vick chin-pulling, it’s a relief to be able to take the straight, er, doctrinaire libertarian position on the Larry Craig case.
Look, I figure I’ve been using public restrooms for close to 47 years. In all that time I’ve been aware of one sorta proposition. Ironically, it happened on my honeymoon, in the men’s room of a mall in Hilo. A chubby young fellow of Polynesian descent was just hanging out by the sink counter and smiled at me winningly as I finished peeing. And that was it. It was, odd. I assume someone eventually took him up on his offer.
Now, part of this is that gay men don’t appear to find me that attractive. But the rest of it is that this elaborate code system, part of which is described in the Slate roundtable, is just opaque to most straight guys. Even those of us who have read The Motion of Light in Water.
Not opaque to the cop though:
“Craig tapped his toes several times and moved his foot closer to my foot. I moved my foot up and down slowly.”
Dude. Don’t lead him on if you don’t want to have sex. My point, and I do have one, is that there’s not even an issue of offensiveness here. If nobody knows what you’re suggesting except the in-group, it can hardly count as “lewd behavior.” Chances are straight guys are dropping the signal on a large number of propositions every day. Craig’s behavior on being arrested – trying to bigfoot the cop with his Senate ID card – and today’s absurd denial campaign do him no credit. But in the first instance I’ll cut him a smidgen of slack for the stress of the moment.
And while Craig won’t be winning my Senator of the Year award, Dave Weigel reminds us that Craig voted to reform the PATRIOT Act for the right reasons a couple years ago. Very few Republican Senators have done as well. You don’t suppose that’s why so many Republicans are eager to throw him over now, do you? No, it’s gotta be the morality of it.
UPDATE: Post title explained in a not-so-worksafe way at Wikipedia.
Comment by Walt —
August 28, 2007 @ 8:46 pm
The details paint the dumbest sting operation and arrest in the history of law enforcement. I feel dumber just thinking about it.
Comment by Thoreau —
August 28, 2007 @ 9:08 pm
Close your tags.
Comment by Thoreau —
August 28, 2007 @ 9:08 pm
Test.
Comment by SomeCallMeTim —
August 28, 2007 @ 9:13 pm
young fellow of Polynesian descent was just hanging out by the sink counter and smiled at me winningly as I finished peeing.
Nobody likes a braggart, Henley.
Comment by solarjetman —
August 28, 2007 @ 10:04 pm
I don’t know if he’s opposing the Patriot Act for “the right reasons”. That excerpt paints a picture of a guy who is fine with the Patriot Act as long as a Republican is in charge, and is against it as soon as Hillary is inaugurated.
His quote continues in the source after Weigel’s cutoff:
Not this president? Are you kidding me? I suppose it’s better than nothing, but I’m having a hard time interpreting that quote in a non-cynical way. After a decade of libertarian rhetoric coming out of the mouths of Republicans, I’m a bit jaded.
Comment by Gsnorgathon —
August 28, 2007 @ 10:22 pm
I have to admit it’s a very guilty pleasure. The fact that a homophobic Republican is busted for cruising is great, except that he shouldn’t have been busted in the first place. Oh well. At least there’s some lemonade to be made from this particular lemon.
Comment by Leonard —
August 28, 2007 @ 10:30 pm
I agree with you, as usual, but for the minarchist it’s worth thinking about what, if any, “lewd” behavior warrants criminalization. Surely private coded signals like Craig supposedly sent don’t warrant any repression, but what about sex in the bathroom? Loud sex? Sex in the streets? How far will you go before the “ick” factor gets you criminalizing consensual, victimless behavior?
Comment by buermann —
August 28, 2007 @ 11:02 pm
Hm. Maybe the cop should have commenced relations before the arrest, on charges, then, of something remotely like public indecency rather than a “lewd” proposition in a public place.
From what’s described I don’t even understand what’s lewd about it, men drop signals to women like this all the time, and women never ever drop signals like this to me, ever.
OTOH, if there wasn’t a prohibition on sex in public it wouldn’t be a turn on anymore, and the last thing this nation needs is more sexual repression.
Comment by Gary Farber —
August 29, 2007 @ 12:48 am
I figure that if Jim hadn’t been peeing in the sink, the Polynesian-looking fellow wouldn’t have propositioned him.
“Surely private coded signals like Craig supposedly sent don’t warrant any repression, but what about sex in the bathroom? Loud sex?”
That’s what noise ordinances are for.
“Sex in the streets?”
Frightening the horses, littering, jay-walking, and soliciting are all against the law. What other problem might it cause?
Comment by bryan —
August 29, 2007 @ 6:13 am
“Frightening the horses, littering, jay-walking, and soliciting are all against the law. What other problem might it cause?”
exploding republican rectums.
we must be safe from this terror.
Comment by dbomp —
August 29, 2007 @ 6:21 am
Compared to Larry Craig? Puhleeze.
Comment by Kevin J. Maroney —
August 29, 2007 @ 8:49 am
According to the arrest report, Craig was also repeatedly peeking through the gap in the stall door. That’s more than just making a signal.
While I am an avowed sexual libertine, and thus don’t really care what private places Larry Craig likes touching in private places, I don’t like people having sex in public (because, at least in our current society, it’s intimidating).
Furthermore, there needs to be a name for the sin of passing laws to put in prison people who indulge in behaviors you yourself practice. Craig advocates and works towards such laws. Anything that hoists him on his own wicked laws is, in my mind, justice.
Comment by Kevin J. Maroney —
August 29, 2007 @ 9:55 am
Incidentally, I feel the same way–except more so–about Sen. Vitter. “More so” because it is vaguely possible that Craig didn’t think of what he was doing as illegal; it’s certain that Vitter knew that paying for prostitutes was and is illegal in Washington, DC and in Louisiana.
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August 29, 2007 @ 8:35 pm
Video: Sen. Craig steps down from 3 committees…
Aug. 29: As the calls for Larry Craig to resign get louder on Capitol Hill, the senator agrees to st…
Comment by Jon H —
August 30, 2007 @ 1:59 am
” How far will you go before the “ick†factor gets you criminalizing consensual, victimless behavior?”
Victimless? Maybe if the bathroom in question only has one stall and a door that locks.
Sorry, but there’s just no need for people to be having sex in bathrooms in airports.
I refuse to accept that this would amount to oppressing these people. Can’t they keep it in their pants long enough to find someplace else to go? It’s sad, and pathetic.
It’s not like Mr./Ms. Iraq War Soldier is coming off the plane, grabbing his/her gal (or guy), and running into the bathroom after 18 months of separation and celibacy (or whatever). We’re talking about people who have, at most, been without the opportunity to get off for mere hours.
(Worse, I doubt there are many cases where Mr./Ms. Iraq War Soldier exhibited as little self-control as these bathroom loiterers.)
There are no people on Earth for whom ‘access to the airport bathroom’ is the requirement for them to get laid.
Lack of access to sex in bathrooms is not a hardship.
Comment by Doug M. —
August 30, 2007 @ 6:33 am
Sex in airport bathrooms is asshole behavior. I’m okay with laws punishing asshole behavior.
(N.B., sex in nightclub bathrooms is not necessarily asshole behavior.)
One thing I haven’t seen discussed much: it appears the cop was in there because this particular bathroom had become a cruising spot. So, not an isolated incident; there was a lot of sex going on over a long period of time. Probably to the point where people were complaining to the airport.
Jim (and other libertarians): most airports are public property, but a few are private. I assume you’d have no problem with a private owner prohibiting sex in their bathrooms, and/or bringing cops in to enforce that?
Doug M.
Comment by Jim Henley —
August 30, 2007 @ 6:39 am
Doug, true, and there’s probably a touché in there somewhere. Keep in mind though, that Craig was not arrested having sex. He was arrested for propositioning someone in code.
Comment by Jon H —
August 30, 2007 @ 1:14 pm
Doug M. wrote: “So, not an isolated incident; there was a lot of sex going on over a long period of time. Probably to the point where people were complaining to the airport.”
And they probably weren’t all as careful and delicate as Craig was. He’s just the one we heard about because he’s a Senator.
Comment by Doug M. —
August 30, 2007 @ 3:42 pm
It looks like Minnesota police made no less than 41 arrests in that bathroom over the last year.
Apparently it’s a pretty well known tearoom; people were making appointments on internet forums.
– On a related note, have you ever noticed how few airports have cheap places to sleep or shower? Inside the United States, I know of exactly one: Honolulu.
Honolulu has a little place inside the main terminal where you can rent a small room (just a bed and a shower) for $7 an hour. I’d call it a hotel, but it’s just a corridor with a dozen or so little rooms. There’s a check-in person at a desk, and there’s a cleaning lady. And that’s it.
Very basic… but if you have a couple of hours to kill between flights, this is indescribable bliss. And it probably means no foot-tapping in Honolulu’s airport restrooms, either.
But it’s a weird exception, and here’s why: airport floorspace is just too valuable. One day that little sleeping area will be ripped up and replaced by shops selling Hermes bags and Rolexes.
Doug M.