Homophobia And The Republican Party Created Larry Craig

[ruggerson]

Men and women of his generation were not allowed to be true to themselves in the most basic aspect of who they were as human beings: whom they loved and with whom they created a family.

Society kept tens of millions of people suffering, some alone, some in sad, faux heterosexual relationships, because society had such a huge, unresolved issue with homosexuality.

Times have changed a bit since Larry Craig was a child in Idaho, but the political movement of the religious rightwing, institutionalized through the modern day Republican party, has kept homophobia alive and well and flourishing in American culture.

Yes, the Larry Craigs and Mark Foleys and Ted Haggards of this world are hypocrites. And everytime one of them is exposed, it opens yet more American eyes.

But hypocrisy is not the salient issue here, even though it might be the most politically expedient one.

The far more important lesson, the one the MSM rarely addresses since hypocrisy sells so well, is the fact that Larry Craig and his ilk are pathetic victims of the homophobic society that created them.

Institutionalized homophobia, and the Republican party that keeps empowering it, are directly responsible for the Larry Craigs of this world.

And it's long past time to hold them accountable.

[valerief]

1. That's what Mark Green was saying on Hardball when he was pitted

against that uber-Christian Tony Perkins.

[ruggerson]

2. And what was Tweety's reaction?

knowing Tweety he totally discounted it. Tweety is a cultural rightwinger from a Republican home in Pennsylvania. He's doesn't get cultural issues at all, and has zero understanding of issues pertaining to gays.

[valerief]

3. Surprisingly he said "hypocrisy" a gazillion times and stressed

Craig's anti-gay "stance" (pardon the choice of words).

[ruggerson]

4. Well if he stressed the hypocrisy

then he wasn't getting Green's point. Which doesn't surprise me.

[valerief]

5. No, I meant Tweety was talking about Craig's hypocrisy thoughout

the whole show.

He didn't react to Mark Green's point, which was excellent. Craig is bad for supporting anti-gay laws but he's also a victim of the powerful anti-gay machines in place, especially in the Christian Right.

[mondo joe]

6. Larry Craig created Larry Craig too. A lot of us grew up in similar conditions but

didn't go Craig's route.

[ruggerson]

9. True

some people are far stronger than others. But bucking societal norms has never been easy. There are far less Larry Craigs now than there were thirty years ago and hopefully, in some future time, they will be extinct.

[mondo joe]

10. That's true. And I can hardly hold against anyone a simple desire to be safe. But Craig went FAR

beyond that and became an enemy of gay people. Nothing excuses that, for me.

[Toasterlad]

18. THANK You.

At some point, you have to take responsibility for your life. Nobody forced Craig to become a good little repub homophobe; he accepted the role all on his own.

I get what the OP is saying, but hypocrites like Craig who vote against gay people and then try and negotiate gay sex in public restrooms get not one iota of sympathy from me.

[ruggerson]

20. I agree

and I'm not sympathetic towards him. I do think the root issue here needs to have a national discussion, though, instead of the spin the media puts on it.

[KingFlorez]

7. Elements of society created a bad environment

But people like Larry Craig need to stand up and be honest about who they are, instead of pretending they are something they aren't and harshly judging others like them. He chose his own path, regardless of the attitudes of some people.

[Horseradish]

8. Larry Craig's problem is simple

and it's not uncommon.

He's gay. When conservatives/traditionalists/authoritarians can't accept the genetic dispositions that conflict with their traditional social ideals, they simply overcompensate by becoming more conservative, more traditional, and more authorative in their public life ... and most of them run for office on a republican ticket.

We have a huge problem with that in our country because it drives a normal conservative into the realm of turbo-charged extremist.

It's really not about being gay or straight at all ....... at all. And the older they are, the less likely they are willing to come out. Thankfully, that is slowly changing.

[smoogatz]

11. Larry Craig is no victim.

He's an ambitious and totally amoral con-man who sold the sturdy Republican bigots of Idaho a despicable line of bullshit about equal rights for gay people somehow being bad for straight people. Meanwhile, in secret, he performed the very acts and lived the very lifestyle he condemned in public—and he still denies doing any of it. He's not just a hypocrite, he's a liar and a fraud and I have no doubt that he'd sell out his own mother if it meant staying in a position of power, wealth and prominence. He's not a victim of the "system"—he's one of its creators and enablers, and has used the Republican party's homophobia to his considerable advantage. As such, he's as responsible for its perpetuation as anyone. You can feel all the empathy for Larry Craig you want, but that stuff about him being a victim is ridiculous. It's not 1950, and the worst thing that would have happened to Larry Craig if he'd been honest with the voters of Idaho is that they'd have sent him home and elected a straight Republican homophobe instead. My heart does not bleed for Larry Craig, in fact the only thing about this whole affair that makes me sad is the timing: too bad it didn't happen this time next year, when Craig was running for reelection against a Democrat. Now the homophobic Republican governor of Idaho will just appoint another Republican to replace him.

[ruggerson]

12. Larry Craig was the culmination

of an entire lifetime, sixty years, of human experience.

In the 1950's, when he was a little kid, homosexuality was considered a disease. A DISEASE. Try to imagine growing up thinking that you have some weird disease, because at night, under the covers, you get a hard on thinking about the camp counselor and his muscles instead of the pretty girl across the street, who you KNOW you're supposed to feel something for.

If you don't think childhood and teenage year experiences can guide you as an adult, both for good and for bad, you need to take a course in remedial psychology.

Craig is a hypocrite and a liar and deserves everything he gets.

But the LESSON we should take away from him, aside from his desire for power at the expense of decency, is what the OP references: hypocrites are made that way through life experience. And he grew up in a time when he was not permitted to be an authentic human being. Many gay people who grew up in that time survived and thrived - they were the strong ones. The weak ones grew up and married women they didn't love (or men they didn't love) and, in extreme cases, morphed into evil, manipulative, self hating closet cases like Larry Craig.

It's not as simple and cut as dried as saying he's a bad guy. He is a bad, damaged guy, but we learn nothing if we don't figure out how he got there.

And, friendly advice: don't use the phrase "lifestyle." It's a phrase invented by the religious rightwing to demonize and marginalize gay people. There is no such thing as a "gay lifestyle." What does the lesbian migrant farm worker in Cambodia have in common with the closeted Wall Street banker in Manhattan? They're both gay, but they certainly don't have similar "lifestyles."

We don't have "lifestyle's", we have lives.

[smoogatz]

14. It hasn't been the 1950s for fifty years.

Don't try to tell me Craig had no choice but to get himself elected and repeatedly re-elected as a wingnut Senator from a wingnut state running on the homophobia platform because he had a hard-on for the camp counselor when he was a kid. He had a whole array of other choices, not all of which necessarily involved marrying someone he didn't love. I doubt that he chose his sexual orientation (I certainly don't remember choosing mine), but I don't think anyone's born a god damned Republican, even in Idaho. He chose his politics, every word of every speech, every vote on the Senate floor, he chose to be a Republican and played at being a professional homophobe for the sake of wealth and position and power, and nobody made him do any of that, and it sure as hell wasn't genetically predetermined.

I used "lifestyle" because that's what homophobes preach against; the so-called "gay lifestyle" of anonyomous sex in public toilets. It was meant to be ironic.

[ruggerson]

15. I don't see anyone defending Larry Craig

so you must be having that argument with someone else.

What I am saying, again, is that part of what the MSM misses in all this is that the institutionalized homophobia in this country helps create the Larry Craigs of the world.

Sure it isn't the 1950's, but homosexuality wasn't even fully decriminalized nationwide until just a few years ago, when Lawrence V Texas finally got rid of the remaining sodomy laws.

The 1960's weren't that much better for gays than the 50's were. By then, people of Larry Craig's generation were already over twenty years old. Their adult path was pretty well set.

Craig, indeed, chose to be a self hating hypocrite rather than stand up and tell society to go fuck itself. Some people do not have the wherewithal or inner strength to do that - in Idaho, in the mid sixties, if you acted on your desires, you could quite easily get killed. Seems to me you're giving short shrift to what gays and lesbians, to this day, have to endure psychologically.

You do realize, that throughout the South, there are young teenage gay kids TODAY as you and I type this, who are in "pray the gay away" Jesus concentration camps. Do you honestly think those kids, who in my mind are suffering from parental abuse and should be removed from their parent's control, will not suffer permament damage from the "preachers" who are trying to change their basic nature?

None of that is an *excuse* for Craig. But, I'd rather see us have a national debate about the religious rightwing's and Republican party's ongoing institutionalized homophobia, and the devastation it continues to cause, than merely take partisan advantage of yet another evil Republican hypocrite. We can multitask as a country, it ain't that difficult.

[smoogatz]

16. Stop patronizing, for God's sake.

We're on the same side in this argument. I agree entirely that institutional homophobia in the Republican party and fundie churches has produced and is producing some fairly monstrous (but entirely predictable) unintended consequences; that seems obvious. And I think a broader discussion about the idiocy of that institutional homophobia is long overdue, though I doubt it would have any effect whatsoever on the institutions in question; as long as the Republican party continues to depend on fundie turnout to win elections, it will have no choice but to publicly revile gay people, and to pretend that gay people do not hold positions of power within its hierarchy. What I don't understand is why any gay person would join a political party or a church that hates them. I know self-loathing can do weird things to people, as can denial. Is that it? Or is the impulse toward authoritarianism and repression really that powerful?

[ruggerson]

17. Your guess is as good as mine

I don't fully understand the Log Cabin Club, much less Larry Craig. But I do think it's probably an admixture of your points. There is always a certain amount of self loathing in minority groups as they relate to the majority. Some blacks become Clarence Thomas and work diligently to ensure that young African Americans don't have the privileges of affirmative action that THEY had. Some Jews mysteriously become non-Jews and shed all their cultural and religious identity in order to fit in with the Wasp majority. The interesting thing about being a self loathing gay guy is that no one can find out unless you betray yourself. I'm sure a lot of these people were extremely damaged as kids, but you're right, you have to have an ingredient of an irrational affinity towards authoritarianism to complete the equation and end up with a Larry Craig or a Mark Foley.

[WillyT]

13. But Isn't That Like Saying That Water Is Wet ???

I mean... the same could be said for Ward Connerly, Alan Keyes, And Clarence Thomas in the Black Community. And probably has been.

But once you are past the age of 18, you have to own all the decisions you make. At least that's what I was told.

:shrug:

[IndianaJones]

19. wholeheartedly agree. nt.