The Craig Scandal in Retrospect

by Cliopatria

Yesterday afternoon, Roll Call broke the story that Idaho senator Larry Craig, a married, ultra-conservative Republican, was arrested on August 8. The arrest came in a men's room of the Minneapolis men's room on the charge of disorderly conduct, allegedly for soliciting an undercover police officer engaged in a sting operation. The arresting officer's report is here.

According to the report,"At one point during the interview, Craig handed the plainclothes sergeant who arrested him a business card that identified him as a U.S. Senator and said, 'What do you think about that?'" The officer, evidently, was unmoved. Craig then entered a guilty plea, paid a $575 fine, but, it seems, told no one--either in the state Republican Party or from his congressional staff. After Roll Call published its article, the AP, the Idaho Statesman, and an Idaho TV station picked up the story.

Last night, Craig issued a peculiar statement:"At the time of this incident, I complained to the police that they were misconstruing my actions. I was not involved in any inappropriate conduct. I should have had the advice of counsel in resolving this matter. In hindsight, I should not have pled guilty. I was trying to handle this matter myself quickly and expeditiously."

Rumors about Craig's sexual orientation had existed in the past, and the blog that first publicized the rumors returned to the story yesterday. (The senator publicly endorsed an anti-gay marriage amendment to the Idaho constitution in 2006.)

It's hard to miss the eerie parallels between the Craig arrest and the Walter Jenkins scandal of 1964. Like Craig, Jenkins, a longtime aide to Lyndon Johnson, was married with several children. Like Craig, he was arrested for indecent conduct in a men's room (in Jenkins' case, the Washington YMCA). Like Craig, Jenkins quickly pled guilty, paid a nominal fine, and returned to work without telling anyone about the arrest. One week later, GOP operatives discovered the arrest report, and the next day, Jenkins resigned his office in disgrace.

Craig immediately resigned his post in Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. Even before the scandal, he hadn't made public his plans for re-election in 2008; it's difficult to imagine him running now. As the Jenkins affair demonstrated, this kind of scandal is very difficult to survive.

Update, 10.39am: Today's Statesman has a long and very well-done article exploring the Craig rumors in depth.

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Gareth Evans Jones - 8/31/2007

Here's the source:

http://www.extrememortman.com/congress/wrecking-on-the-craigy-rocks/

Gareth Evans Jones - 8/31/2007

It was, as the report makes clear, the "detail" that was assigned for "lewd behaviour" detection. Craig's behaviour is nowhere in the report called "lewd". People can make up there own minds.

There are interesting parallels and non-parallels to the Walter Jenkins case. LBJ cut off Jenkins in a heartbeat, and then later tried to sell the idea to Doris Kearns Goodwin that the Republicans had set Jenkins up.

The supposed involvement of Bill Moyers in LBJ's games has been noted by others. It is reported that LBJ, as a reaction to the Jenkins case, ordered Moyers to seek derogatory information on Goldwater's staff from J. Edgar Hoover. And that Moyers complied.

Jonathan Dresner - 8/29/2007

Many thanks, Mr. Loftin, for that clarification. That's exactly the kind of context and history I was looking for.

Craig Michael Loftin - 8/29/2007

Jonathan,
Your initial questions are valid; let me offer my perspective. As a gay historian who is familiar with the mores of gay culture, and one who has just submitted a book manuscript on gay men and lesbians in the 1950s, let me say that there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Craig was egging on a sexual encounter. No doubt. The peeking, the foot-tapping, the touching of the shoe, the hand signal--these rituals of bathroom sex have a long history, and Craig's behavior fit everything to a T. Let me recommend a fascinating and classic sociology study on bathroom sex from the 1970s: Tea-Room Trade by Laud Humphries. The patterns Humprhies details in the book are still practiced by thousands of gay men, and very often those who are in some degree of denial about their sexuality, and often married to persons of the opposite gender. It was very common in the fifties of course because of the secrecy of the period, and let us not forget that Craig is of that generation. He is also of a generation that was taught that being gay was disgusting, evil, and subversive, so the fact that he is in denial about his sexuality--and his whole embarrassing reaction to all of this--is not terribly surprisingly.
Let me also say that you raise valid questions about what right police have arresting someone for merely tapping his foot, peeking through, etc etc. There is an element of entrapment in police surveillence of public restrooms in which sex occurs. This has been going on for over a hundred years. Police over the years have installed two way mirrors, peepholes from adjacent rooms, and a bunch of other sleazy tactics to catch men having discreet sex. Many lives have been ruined over the years. Sometimes, when the entrapment is blatant, the charges will get thrown out and the police might get scolded by a judge, but in most cases people just want to end the embarrassing ordeal as quickly and with as little publicity as possible. This was Craig's initial reaction exactly--to paraphrse him, he wanted just to make it go away, which he now regrets. So there is something disturbing that these types of arrests still persist.
You mention this is all sort of Kafka-esque: welcome to world gay men have been living in for the last hundred years. Kafka-esque does not even begin to describe it. When you are a persecuted minority, that's just how it is.
Finally, let me say that everything Craig says in denial just makes him look more pathetic. He has a serious problem about his honesty about his sexuality. He needs to confront this and admit that he has had sex with men in the past and has sexual feelings for men. He doesn't need to even use the word "gay", he just needs to realize that millions of people across this country can see through his web of lies very easily.
My personal reaction is more pity than anger (anger from the fact that he is a hypocrite for not supporting gay rights causes). As a gay man who as struggled with this issue very hard when I was younger, I have a sense of what he is going through. If he just made an honest statement that he's attracted to men, I think people would quickly forgive him, maybe even the Republicans.

Ralph E. Luker - 8/29/2007

I was about to say that the last person who referred to me as "Ralphy" got to walk everywhere in Labor Day weekend.

Andrew Ackerman - 8/29/2007

Ralph, even

Andrew Ackerman - 8/29/2007

Well, Ralphy, you must remember that Vitter asked for and received forgivness from God for his behavior.

Timothy James Burke - 8/29/2007

The arrest report says that the officer had been in the stall for approximately 13 minutes before he became aware of Craig's presence. I don't think there's anything else unusual; in a bathroom that's gotten a reputation as a place for cruising, I suppose you could argue that staying in there for 13 minutes is a sort of come-hither. But it's not exactly entrapment. If there had in fact been public complaints about sexual advances in the bathroom, as some reports suggest, I'm not sure how else the police could go about issuing citations.

Jonathan Dresner - 8/29/2007

There are things one can choose to question about it that are just asserted

Precisely.

I think you either have to think the cop's report is simply wrong at that point, or that Craig was at the very least acting pretty oddly.

Again, I am unclear when or how "acting oddly" translates to "lewd behavior" -- the conventional term for what Craig is asserted to have done is "peeping" (and it's not "odd," but a form of sexual deviance; lets be clear about our terms, here) but I'm not entirely sure that you can claim sufficient privacy in a restroom. The report itself begs the question because it attaches no weight, particularly to the peeping, but seems instead to focus on the solicitation aspect.

If Craig had hired a lawyer, a lot of aspects of this report would have been questioned, including precisely what, if anything, the officer himself was doing in the stall to attract attention to himself, etc. If a historian wanted to use this document to prove something, a great many aspects of this report would have to be questioned.

Jonathan Dresner - 8/29/2007

None taken: it's a very common misunderstanding.

There is, actually, very little background in the report: it is, precisely as you describe it, a description of events with little or no social, cultural or legal context. It is a simple narrative of action, which begs the question of what the actions mean -- I think quite deliberately, because the police report is a genre of action prior to interpretation (however artificial that might be).

Timothy James Burke - 8/29/2007

It's a pretty detailed narrative. There are things one can choose to question about it that are just asserted: that this bathroom was a popular site for sexual advances (though perhaps that's why the police were staking it out, due to public complaint? that hasn't been documented yet, to my knowledge) and that men seeking sex in bathrooms signal by foot-tapping.

But the narrative has a detailed assertion that Craig spent 2-3 minutes directly outside the policeman's stall and peered through the crack in the door several times. I dunno about you, but if I need to know whether a stall is occupied from outside, generally a quick peek under the door from a distance tells me whether there are feet on the floor. Peering in through the crack repeatedly seems to me something different. I think you either have to think the cop's report is simply wrong at that point, or that Craig was at the very least acting pretty oddly.

Serge Lelouche - 8/29/2007

With no offense intended, there is tremendous background in that report. You get a precise sense of what happened from beginning to end, and I think the cop painted a picture of what happened as clearly as most historians.

Jonathan Dresner - 8/28/2007

I'm sorry I wasn't clear, Tim, but the "document" to which I was referring was, in fact, the arrest report.

It's entirely unclear what part of that narrative consititutes actionable behavior: you're guessing. That's precisely the kind of context which is missing.

Timothy James Burke - 8/28/2007

Read the arrest report. The actionable part under the statute, I think, is not the foot touching and tapping, or the hand under the stall--it's that Craig spent 2-3 minutes repeatedly peering in the crack in the door at the undercover cop at a time when there was apparently another stall available.

Jonathan Dresner - 8/28/2007

What an interesting document. It cries out for context, for challenge.

Would an examination of other arrest reports for public lewdness indicate similar actions? Are there any in the gay community who will corroborate the idea that these motions are invitations of sufficiently widespread and clear nature to constitute cause for arrest? When did the definition of "public lewdness" extend to fingers and toes, and isn't there a First Amendment lawyer out there willing to defend our right to make lewd invitations to potentially consenting adults?

I'm actually deeply troubled by this arrest; the news reports alone were bad enough, but this is almost Kafkaesque without some really sound supporting material.

Ralph E. Luker - 8/28/2007

I didn't think so much about Walter Jenkins, though your point is well taken. I thought about Craig's fellow Republican Senator, Vitter of Louisiana. I didn't study the public evidence of his visits to prostitutes, but people I trust told me that he liked to put on diapers and be disciplined. Louisiana isn't Idaho and Vitter wasn't accused of homosexual behavior, still I'm surprised that Vitter seems to have survived. I always keep in mind Edward Edwards' comment that he'd be re-elected in Louisiana, as long as he wasn't caught in bed with a dead woman or a live boy.