Another Public Moralist Gets Busted in Public

Aug 31, 07:42 AM

Current Headlines: By JOEL CONNELLY

By JOEL CONNELLY

With a June arrest at a Minnesota airport, and an August guilty plea to disorderly conduct, Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, becomes the latest right-wing moralist in American public life whose career has come a cropper in a public crapper.

He can make unconvincing, convoluted denials, but Craig joins a list of public hypocrites - those who bash gays and lesbians in public, while privately soliciting anonymous sex.

The list goes back to Rep. Robert Bauman, R-Md., defeated for re- election in 1980 after being accused of soliciting sex from a 16- year boy. He later came out, joined the lecture circuit and published a memoir, "The Gentleman from Maryland: The Conscience of a Gay Conservative."

The list includes a Nixon nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court; a general who distributed John Birch Society literature to his troops in Germany; and at least three members of Congress.

Bauman was a sponsor of the original Family Protection Act legislation in Congress and a founder of the conservative Young Americans for Freedom.

Craig voted to bar gays from the Boy Scouts. He has opposed legislation to prohibit job discrimination by sexual orientation. He voted against adding sexual orientation to categories of hate crimes.

The three-term senator backed the Federal Marriage Amendment, a proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriages and a similar ban included in Idaho's Constitution.

On rare occasions, the door has opened a crack on closeted gays in the upper reaches of our capital's conservative elite.

A former conservative scribe, David Brock ("The Real Anita Hill"), gave an account of the "laissez-fairies" in his book "Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative." It recounts Brock's own effort to resist advances by a prominent columnist on the night of Christian conservatism's great 1994 election victory.

A few defenders of traditional values opted for a traditional commitment.

Conservative Republican media consultant Arthur Finkelstein is famous for running U.S. Senate campaigns on the theme of "too liberal for (name of state)." An example, in Minnesota: "Paul Wellstone: Embarrassingly liberal. Decades Out of Touch."

In December 2004, after the Bush campaign manipulated anti-same- sex ballot measures across the country, Finkelstein married his longtime male partner in a Massachusetts civil ceremony.

Craig is up for re-election in 2008 in the nation's most solidly Republican state, and Idaho voters have shown a high tolerance for private missteps by those who publicly espouse traditional values.

For example, they re-elected a moralizing Rep. Helen Chenoweth in 1998, after disclosure of a long affair with a married business partner.

Craig has triggered rumors about himself. In the House, during the early 1980s, he called a news conference to deny any role in a scandal in which two colleagues were censored for having sex with House pages.

The news conference baffled many; no one had accused Craig of anything.

A quarter-century later, Craig is spinning as if his survival is at stake - which it is. The Minnesota airport police officer was "misconstruing my actions," Craig said in a written statement, adding that he "should not have pleaded guilty."

Yet, the police report by Sgt. Dave Karsnia, a plainclothes officer working a restroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, delivers a clear message: Craig knew the rules of the game.

He first saw "an older white male with grey hair standing outside my stall." It was the senator. "I could see Craig look through the crack in the door from his position. Craig would look down at his hands, 'fidget' with his fingers, and them look through the crack into my stall again."

The officer said Craig then entered an adjacent stall.

"At 1216 hours, Craig tapped his right foot," the report said. "I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times and moves his foot closer to my foot Craig then swiped his hand under the stall divider, with Karsnia noting: "I could see Craig had a gold ring on his ring finger as his hand was on my side of the stall divider."

The senator was then placed under arrest.

Two months later, on Aug. 8, he pleaded guilty - on the same day he appeared by satellite at the vesting of an Idaho judge taking a seat on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

One more detail on the arrest: When interviewed, Craig handed Karsnia a business card that identified him as a U.S. senator, and asked, "What do you think about that?"

The question is for Idaho voters to answer.

Joel Connelly is a columnist with the Seattle Post- Intelligencer.

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