posted by Damozel |
In a note entitled Why Do Conservatives Like Larry Craig Seem So Gay?, sensible conservative Jon Swift remarks:
For months The Idaho Statesman investigated rumors that Craig was gay, but withheld publication of the article until he pleaded guilty to seeming to be gay, which apparently is a crime in Minnesota. According to the officer who arrested him in a restroom at the Minneapolis airport, Craig used gay "code" to signal that he wanted a sexual liaison, tapping his foot and fidgeting with his hands and touched the officer's foot with his foot, which Craig attributed to having a "wide stance." In Minneapolis one doesn't actually have to proposition someone to have sex in a bathroom to be arrested, one just has to give off certain signals that can be decoded according to a gay handbook the police have apparently obtained.
But Jon Swift isn't only concerned about the thinness of the current allegations against Craig; his goal is to urge Americans not to gay bash conservatives just for seeming a little, well, gay.
A lot of conservatives got picked on as children because they seemed "a little different." I don't know what kind of childhoods William Kristol, Jonah Goldberg and John Podhoretz had but I'm sure they got made fun of a lot by the other kids because kids can be cruel. Luckily, they all have very strong mothers who protected them. But being "a little different" or being close to one's mother does not make someone gay....
You might think that with all the things conservatives say that seem really gay, but aren't, we would all be more sympathetic to Craig's plight. When conservatives gush about how macho Fred Thompson and President Bush are, we do sound a little bit like Village People fans. Some people could mistakenly view conservatives' passion for the bulging, oiled-up muscles on display in the movie 300 as homoerotic instead of merely intellectual admiration for the allegorical parallels with the War in Iraq.
But, in fact, many conservatives are now abandoning Craig, despite the fact that he denied, with biblical defiance, three times that he is gay in his press conference. Hugh Hewitt says that Craig should resign, even though he admits that he didn't call for David Vitterto resign, which has nothing to do with the fact that Vitter admitted to hiring female prostitutes, which makes him, thankfully, not gay... I think my fellow conservatives should not be too quick to turn on Craig. If everyone who just seems gay is drummed out of the Republican party or the conservative movement anyone could be next. Every effete mama's boy with precise speech patterns, every hawk with a physical inability to perform military service, every unmarried man with an awkwardness around women, every admirer of Fred Thompson and President Bush who gushes over how manly they are, every aging adolescent fan of comic books, Star Trek, World of Warcraft, Star Wars action figures and the movie 300 will come under suspicion. If we start going after every conservative who seems kind of gay, the only conservatives left will be Fred Thompson, President Bush and Rudolph Giuliani. Well, maybe not Giuliani.. [Why Do Conservatives Like Larry Craig Seem So Gay?]
I recommend that you read the entire posting. It is one of JS's most cogent.
Here at BN-Politics, we are waiting anxiously for the tide to turn and for conservatives to stand up in defense of Craig, who has evidently been convicted in the mind of the public on practically no evidence, as my colleagues have argued....
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