Dancing as fast as he can

I’ll admit it. I enjoy watching politicians get caught doing the very things they’ve railed against, so it was a pleasure to watch Republican Sen. Larry Craig squirm after being charged with soliciting an undercover cop for sex in the Minneapolis airport. Given that the GOP has made gay-baiting their favorite sport, it was nice to see a member of the party be caught by the very net he himself supported being cast.

But I’ve developed some pity for Craig in recent days. His party has tried to throw him overboard while at the same time it continues to support Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, whose name showed up on a call log from a prostitute’s phone. Vitter, presumably a staunch “family values” supporter, was cheating on his wife, yet there have been few calls for his resignation.

One could argue that both politicians deserve punishment, but I don’t think that’s true. What, after all, did Craig actually do? It seems his “crime” was a bit of toe-tapping and hand-gesturing designed to let the man next to him know he was interested in him sexually. They never had sex, though, so what conduct was disorderly? I think Craig deserves some pity because he’s a product of conservative religious rhetoric designed to make LGBT people feel so ashamed of themselves that they cannot be truthful about their orientation. Granted, he has participated in his own subjugation, but all the while he’s also been swimming in homophobic waters.

We know if we subject children to continual withering criticism, they will consider themselves to be bad, and act out accordingly. Little Larry was taught that men who loved men were the worst kind of people, and that self-loathing has surrounded him always. In a testament to how engrained orientations are, he hoped to find a way to acknowledge a bit about who he was, even if only for a few furtive minutes.

God calls us to healthy relationships, relationships where we can be honest about who we are, and where another person can accept us for who we are and love us as our full-strength selves. When anti-gay pundits begin to quote statistics that homosexuality is a “dangerous lifestyle” that leads to shortened life spans, they always fail to think about the millions of children who, like Larry, were told they were bad simply for being who they were. If you’re looking for a sin, look no further.