Larry Craig is not gay

That's what he says. And I have to agree with him. You see, when I came out, the word gay had a particular meaning that was distinct from the word homosexual.

In the 60s, gay activists used the word gay to speak of something beyond a sex act to mean a way of living one's life, which included being out and proud. If one is out and proud, then you're gay. If you're closeted and engaged in same sex activity, you are having homosexual sex, but you aren't gay. So, Ted Haggard isn't gay. Larry Craig isn't gay. Someday they may be, but right now they are men suffering in a closet. And men who live in a closet always have the narrowest views, they are threatened by gay people. Which is why these men and for that matter people like Roy Cohn, always attacked gay rights.

Gay does indeed refer to a lifestyle. It is an expression of recognition that who and how we love when celebrated openly colors our view of the world. It is not at all assimilationist, rather it celebrates the ways in which we are different apart from the mere movement of body parts.

Of course, the word and it's use has evolved since the 60s. I write this to make a point, and to be clear that as a gay man, I want nothing to do with the Larry Craigs of the world. I may have compassion for his suffering - but when he projects his suffering by persecuting us he must be both vigorously opposed and exposed. And for the way he has made others suffer because of his own suffering, he should pay a price. In fact, he is paying a price — I believe the phrase we got from Shakespeare is that he is hoist on his own petard.

You can almost always be certain that those who oppose us so intensely are fighting an inner battle with their own shadow selves by projecting it out on the world. And it is why, as JMG noted in quoting a story on CNN where an airport cop is interviewed:   

"You would think that it would be a gay issue but overwhelmingly, more and more, we're seeing that these are people with families." The niggling implication that gay men don't have families aside, it's good to see him frame this as an issue of closeted "straight" men.

And here the distinction is made, even if it wasn't conscious. It's not a gay issue because gay men, by this old definition, don't do this. Obviously, there are gay men who do this — and some of them are there acting out old shame issues compulsively. We are a wounded tribe in many ways.

One serious (and very funny) exploration of the toilet sex phenomenon is a Canadian film called Urinal. in it, a number of deceased artists and writers, including Frida Kahlo, Sergei Eisenstein, Yukio Mishima and Langston Hughes materialize and live in a deserted church in Toronto, where they must report on the police sting actions in local public toilets. It's a wild film, both filled with laughs and serious questions. I saw this at the NewFest in NYC in 1989 I think.

Then there is the great Chinese film East Palace, West Palace, where a young Chinese man is arrested by an attractive policeman in a sting in a Beijing public toilet and interrogated all night. This film managed to make it past the censors in China who did not recognize it for what it was: a meditation on what it means to live in a totalitarian state, and the strange erotic attraction of power differences.

I suspect Larry Craig would do well to watch both of these films. He would learn more about himself than he clearly wants to admit.