DISGUSTING

Sen. Larry Craig’s arrest for soliciting gay sex in an airport men’s room is still in the news, and the word that keeps coming up is “disgusting”. Republicans are literally tripping all over one another in the rush to get their statements on the air and on the record that Craig’s behavior was disgusting. Several have called for his immediate resignation. Even former Congressman Tom DeLay, currently under indictment for money laundering and conspiracy to violate election laws, said he hoped Craig would do the “right” thing. Too bad Mr. DeLay couldn’t.

You know what I think is disgusting - a tight-ass society marching in lock-step to a single tune, rejecting any melody it didn’t write and doesn’t recognize; a vicious society, so insecure in the values it espouses that it must condemn all others. These aren’t the actions of a democratic society but of a schoolyard bully, someone who may call you four-eyes one day and faggot the next, anything to make you smaller and him bigger.

What’s disgusting is a closed society, so thick with fear that a man seeking affection must risk everything by going to a public bathroom to get it. This is the same society that allows its leaders to spy on people and torture people, and feel righteous about it.

And what’s really disgusting is a political party, supposedly built on the bedrock of American values, whose first reaction to a drowning friend is to turn its backs and publicly condemn him, not just ignoring his cries for help but actually pushing him under. These are politicians for whom compassion is never a choice, for whom re-election will always trump friendship and loyalty.

To quote Sen. Craig, “I am not gay and I have never been gay,” but I have marched from time to time to a different drummer. And I have been a coward, allowing political bullies to steal my freedom while I sat in comfort and watched it on television. I have allowed them to persecute gays, liberals, immigrants, and minorities, while I hid in the shadows, grateful that Jews were not in season. I have been a coward, and I am ashamed. Now that’s disgusting!

a foot on either side