quote:Originally posted by erosomniac: It could also be interpretted as equating adulterers with slaveowners, but yes.
I wish, but no -- it's about being gay.
quote:IVA REGRETFULLY CALLS FOR SENATOR CRAIG’S RESIGNATION IF ACCUSATIONS ARE TRUE
By now virtually all of America is aware that Idaho’s Sen. Larry Craig pled guilty on August 8 in Minnesota to a charge that he engaged in lewd behavior in an airport restroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. (The charge was technically reduced to disorderly conduct.)
There are disturbing questions raised by the police report (which you can read here) that the senator needs to address in full, so that Idahoans will have all the information they need to make an informed judgment about what happened and how it reflects on Sen. Craig’s fitness to continue in public office.
The report suggests that the senator was familiar with the protocol used by homosexuals to arrange anonymous sexual encounters, which, if true, indicates that this is not the first time the senator has practiced this behavior.
According to the Minnesota Monitor, the restroom where the senator was arrested is “well known among men who seek sex in public places.” Directions to this particular restroom are posted on a gay website bulletin board, and one visitor to the website said, “This is the best spot for anonymous action I’ve ever seen.”
The police officer had no motive to lie, particularly since he did not know who was in the adjacent stall at the time, whereas the senator, out of simple self-protection, had reason, when the events came to light, to shape them in a way that put his conduct in the best possible light.
It strains credulity to think that the senator can provide an explanation for his guilty plea if he did nothing more than accidentally brush someone’s foot with his shoe and pick up a piece of paper off the floor.
The Judeo-Christian tradition says that the standard for identifying the truth is that “by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact is confirmed.” The senator’s guilty plea, when added to the officer’s testimony, satisfies the biblical standard for confirming the essential truth of what happened, and unless the senator can provide a compelling and convincing explanation for his plea, we will need to regretfully accept that the fact of his behavior has been established. It seems unlikely that he can “unring the bell” his guilty plea has sounded.
If the senator did indeed engage in the behavior to which he pled guilty, then the appropriate thing for him to do is to resign from office. Character is an essential qualification for public service, and the essence of character is what you do when you do not think anyone is looking.
Additionally, the senator will need time to focus on his own rehabilitation and the needs of his family, and it will be virtually impossible for him to do that given the enormous demands placed on a senator’s time and energy.
Respect for the senator and courtesy for him and his family does suggest that he be given an opportunity to provide a satisfactory explanation for his conduct and his guilty plea, and answer tough and direct questions about the episode. If his answers prove unsatisfactory, the right thing for him to do will be to step down from public office.
Regardless of how this circumstance turns out, the families of Idaho will always owe Sen. Craig a debt of gratitude for his faithful advocacy for public policies that protected the sanctity of human life and the American family.
As the Executive Director of the Idaho Values Alliance, I received approximately five dozen emails and phone calls from homosexuals and gay sympathizers from all over the country yesterday afternoon and evening. The one thing they all shared in common was an unseemly glee over the senator’s apparent fall from grace.
Not one expressed compassion for the senator, or for the toll this incident must be taking on his family. To have such utter disregard for the anguish involved in this circumstance, from the very people who pride themselves on their compassion, is both revealing and disappointing. Perhaps they are not the paragons of tolerance they imagine themselves to be.
It is certainly time for people of faith to pray for Senator Craig and for his family, and my wife and I will be among those who lift him up before the God of grace and mercy.
One larger issue must be addressed. The Republican Party platform clearly rejects the agenda of homosexual activists. The Party, in the wake of the Mark Foley incident in particular, can no longer straddle the fence on the issue of homosexual behavior. Even setting Senator Craig’s situation aside, the Party should regard participation in the self-destructive homosexual lifestyle as incompatible with public service on behalf of the GOP.
No member of the Republican Party in the 1860s could represent his party and be a slaveholder at the same time. Nor can the Republican Party of today speak with authority and clarity to the moral issues that confront our society and at the same time send ambivalent messages about sexual behavior. It is time for the Republican Party to be the party that defends the American family in word, deed, and by personal example.
To note: It's a satellite group for the American Family Association.
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Dag and Mr S: I had also seen a story on it (cnn.com) that made it sound like the plea included a future tense along the lines of "will not claim to be innocent" but looking for it now I can't find that part. It's possible they were corrected on the details and took out that part of the story.
quote:Originally posted by ClaudiaTherese: Ah, let's be careful to distinguish between "being openly gay" and "showing intent to engage in lewd or indecent public behavior."
I agree that we should keep that defined. I have absolutely no problem with Craig being gay, if he is. I find it a bit sad and amusing that he happens to be politically against homosexuality, but if he is gay I'm fine with it.
I think soliciting anonymous sex in a public bathroom was an incredibly stupid thing to do, not to mention dangerous. And that is what we should be judging him on.
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"Not one expressed compassion for the senator, or for the toll this incident must be taking on his family. To have such utter disregard for the anguish involved in this circumstance, from the very people who pride themselves on their compassion, is both revealing and disappointing. Perhaps they are not the paragons of tolerance they imagine themselves to be."
Wow. While I agree that glee is the wrong attitude, it looks like the anguish homosexuals feel when they are marginalized and ostracized, an anguish reinforced by this very senator at every opportunity, is besides the point.
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Or heck, the anguish that the worldview that they are pushing caused the Senator, which likely strongly contributed to his furtive self-destructive actions.
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I realize what you mean. I still don't understand how you can make that judgement when you won't read the evidence.
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quote:The gender of the partner is not the crucial bit here, as far as I'm concerned. I'd be just as disgusted with someone soliciting anonymous heterosexual sex in a public space. Once you pile up infidelity to his spouse, harrassment of the person(s) he propositioned, sex in a public place, and the stupidity of risking STD by soliciting anonymous partners plus putting his wife at risk for the same without her knowledge, homo- or hetero- doesn't really make all that much difference, IMO.
I just wanted to add my agreement to what dkw said. I've been more than a bit annoyed that the coverage of this situation seems to leave this aspect of it out entirely.
edit - though the fact that he's a republican who has fought against gay rights, and the hypocrisy involved in his actions, is newsworthy as well.
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quote:.Did they just equate being gay with being a slave-holder? I think so.
Insofar as both were supported by Democrats, maybe. The underlying principle is that some things are wrong no matter how many people vote for them. (EDIT: Always look after hitting ctrl v)
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Well, that was gay sex does seem to be the defining characteristic of this story for many people. Consider the different reactions Senator David Vitter's daliance with prostitutes received earlier this year.
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And I'll agree with the general feeling that the paranoia about homosexuality as opposed to extramarital or non-consenting heterosexuality is... what's the word for something stupid that distacts people from the actual problem?
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: Considering some of the Republican primary front-runners, adultery doesn't seem to be that huge a deal with many Republicans.
Who else other than Giuliani? I wasn't aware of any adultery from Romney. McCain I don't even consider a frontrunner anymore, maybe Gov. Huckabee.
Anyway, the gay part of this doesn't even need to be an issue (although it's been seized upon as the defining charateristic), but the question of how Republicans can claim to be the party of moral family values when their senators and reps keep getting caught in these sex scandals is certainly alarming, and what's alarming is how many voters seem willing to look the other way when it comes to that behavior. And this coming from the party that STILL on a routine basis roasts President Clinton, out of office for seven years now, about his infidelities.
It gets harder every month to discern just what the Republican party stands for anymore.
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What I found upsetting is Senator Craig's response. He is all over the radio and TV saying the following:
"I am not Gay. I love my wife. I love my kids."
The assumptions there, that homosexuals can not love family is insulting. That bisexual men who have wives and kids do not love them misses the point. The lack of love is demonstrated not by who you cheat with, but in the act of cheating itself.
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Strangely enough, the Fox News article never once mentions Craig's party affiliation. I wonder why that is?
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quote:What I found upsetting is Senator Craig's response. He is all over the radio and TV saying the following:
"I am not Gay. I love my wife. I love my kids."
I could be wrong, but I can see this comment coming out of more, "I'm not gay, I really do love my wife, she isn't just some token wife to make me appear hetero." Wives are often grouped with children, especially for rhetorical effect, as sort of an appeal to the idea of a family.
Hence, "I am not Gay. I love my wife. I love my kids."
But I agree with you, he SHOULD be saying, "I cheated on my wife, and for that I am ashamed. I am an embarassment to my children, and I have not represented the ideals my state holds important."
Instead of talking about what he did and did not do, he should be talking about what he is going to do now.
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: I don't know. Maybe he just really likes anonymous bathroom sex.
I have to confess I'm snickering a bit at the image of a campagin ad:
NARRATOR: Larry Craig. (shot of Craig standing in front of flag) He's not gay. He just really likes anonymous bathroom sex.
All other parts aside, who spends two minutes looking through a bathroom stall trying to figure out if it's occupied? I mean, wouldn't you knock or something?
I do feel sorry for his wife, though. I'm sure like most political wives she's gone through a lot in the name of supporting her husband's career; to have it end with this kind of stupidity has got to be a huge slap in the face.
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I'd just like to point out that when someone is acting really really homophobic or is staunchly against equal rights for gay people... and someone suggests that the person must be gay and can't handle it....
It's because of stories like this. The people who hate homosexuality the most and who do the most to stand in the way of gay rights are FREQUENTLY gay or bisexual themselves and hate themselves for it.
posted
Except the guilty plea is corroboration, Qaz. Unless you believe Craig when he says he pled guilty "to make it go away", without seeing a lawyer.
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Pleading guilty just to make it go away is senseless. If he really didn't do anything wrong, and the evidence was that thin, I'm sure he could have made it go away a lot better by fighting it. Otherwise what is he saying about crime and punishment?
There's just no way I can see anyone spinning this that will have it come out in anything other than a negative light.
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The cop seems pretty damned sure that he knows what happened, very sure. And he sounds pretty pissed towards the end when he says Craig is lying to him.
quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: Craig may not be gay, and he may not have propositioned an officer for bathroom sex, but he is pretty stupid for an elected official.
Exercise your right to remain silent! He didn't have jack or sh** on you, moron!
I like how you say that as if elected officials are supposed to be of superior or even adequate intelligence. Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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"I'm just disappointed in you, sir," the officer said. "I mean, people vote for you."
Craig complaining that officers shouldn't try to trick people into committing crimes is ridiculous. It sounds like when you catch somebody in a lie and they say, "Well its wrong that you are trying to make me look bad! Don't you have better things to do?"
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That officer had to put up with a good half hour of an indignant old man posturing, pitching a fit, and getting slapped in the face with the irrelevancy of his stuffed-shirt sense of invulnerability.
What's he get out of it? Well, the satisfaction of bringing the guy down.
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This whole saga is ridiculous, and no way you can possibly spin it does it sound right. If he plead guilty and he wasn't really guilty, as he now claims with his "fight like hell" comments, that means he lied, and plead guilty to a crime he didn't commit so he could avoid embaressment and punishment. If he really did it, well then he's guilty. No matter which way you spin it he is in the wrong.
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You know, what's weird for me is that I know several gay men, but only one of them is not in a long term relationship. Two of them have been together as long as my husband and I have been married, and the one fellow who is single has a very complicated and unstable long term relationship that he seems very unhappy about (i.e. he'd like to settle down).
Being gay does not equal being promiscuous. It seems to me that the nature of anonymous sex in bathrooms or wherever is essentially destructive no matter what the gender of people involved.
In this type of case it either represents an inability to keep his promises (to be faithful to his wife) or a failure to adequately assess his ability to keep those promises before making them.
Sadly, neither is very shocking as a shortcoming of someone in politics.
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quote:If he plead guilty and he wasn't really guilty, as he now claims with his "fight like hell" comments, that means he lied
I'd actually like to see a national conversation on the pressures placed on people to plead to crimes they didn't commit.
This incident isn't the right one to spawn such a conversation. It's too laden with politics for that.
I would like to see some discussion in a less loaded context of the fact that people do plead guilty to crimes they don't believe they committed on a regular basis, although still as a very small percentage of guilty pleas and examine the system to see if the frequency of such pleas can be lessened without harming other aspects of the system.
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quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: I'd just like to point out that when someone is acting really really homophobic or is staunchly against equal rights for gay people... and someone suggests that the person must be gay and can't handle it....
On that note, I wonder how many of the more openly evangelical politicians are self-hating atheists/agnostics? Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: I'd just like to point out that when someone is acting really really homophobic or is staunchly against equal rights for gay people... and someone suggests that the person must be gay and can't handle it....
On that note, I wonder how many of the more openly evangelical politicians are self-hating atheists/agnostics?
Or if perhaps folks like Richard Dawkins are actually frauds who know of God's existance but have chosen to wage war on Him anyway? Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Or if perhaps folks like Richard Dawkins are actually frauds who know of God's existance but have chosen to wage war on Him anyway?
I think the old Lunatic, Liar, or Lord theory would work here too. If Dawkins knows God exists and wants to wage war with Him, he would either be crazy to want to fight an omnipotent creator who he does not have the strength to defeat, he could be lying about the whole thing, and doesn't want to fight at all, or perhaps he is a deity himself. Perhaps he has the strength after all!
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I think that, often, when people are adamant about condemning other people's demons, it is because they are fighting their own demons without knowing it. People with inner doubts that they don't want to face can be pretty loud about how sure they are.
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quote:I think that, often, when people are adamant about condemning other people's demons, it is because they are fighting their own demons without knowing it. People with inner doubts that they don't want to face can be pretty loud about how sure they are.
Sure, but the people that actually are pretty sure can behave the same way. Think of all the terrible people that make you angry (con artists, child molesters, Carrot Top) - do you think any of those represent your own repressed desires?
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MC: Of course it would fail in the same way it failed for CS Lewis, in that there are many other choices. For example, perhaps God exists but he's actually an Ori (as in Stargate)
kmbboots: Alternatively, politicians are really just a representative sample of the population. Despite the fact that they need to appear religious or anti-gay to get elected, maybe they have exactly the same rates of atheism or homosexual tendencies as in the population at large.
At the very least, I do not really see why politics as a career path would attract a disproportionate number of religious or homophobic candidates. Certainly not in the same way that science would tend to attract a disproportionate number of agnostics or atheists.
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I don't think it is sure that science would attract a disporportionate number of agnostics or atheists. That's a myth. Certainly the vast majority of scientists' work has nothing to do with religious beliefs.
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That's EXACTLY what I mean - what, exactly, about being a doctor would attract a disproportionate amount of atheists?
What is it about studying vaccines? Looking at genetic code? Synthesizing compounds? Conducting studies about the safety and efficacy of medicines?
Maybe, maybe, maybe theoretical physics, maybe - but that's it. The rest? Scientists work in labs and go home if they are tenured or work on articles to get published if they are not. What, exactly, about that life or study makes religious beliefs difficult?
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quote:Originally posted by Javert Hugo: I don't think it is sure that science would attract a disporportionate number of agnostics or atheists. That's a myth. Certainly the vast majority of scientists' work has nothing to do with religious beliefs.
There have been a number of studies that indicate that atheists and agnostics are disproportionately represented within the sciences.
quote: The follow-up study reported in "Nature" reveals that the rate of belief is lower than eight decades ago. The latest survey involved 517 members of the National Academy of Sciences; half replied. When queried about belief in "personal god," only 7% responded in the affirmative, while 72.2% expressed "personal disbelief," and 20.8% expressed "doubt or agnosticism." Belief in the concept of human immortality, i.e. life after death declined from the 35.2% measured in 1914 to just 7.9%. 76.7% reject the "human immortality" tenet, compared with 25.4% in 1914, and 23.2% claimed "doubt or agnosticism" on the question, compared with 43.7% in Leuba's original measurement. Again, though, the highest rate of belief in a god was found among mathematicians (14.3%), while the lowest was found among those in the life sciences fields -- only 5.5%.
quote:I don't think it is sure that science would attract a disporportionate number of agnostics or atheists. That's a myth. Certainly the vast majority of scientists' work has nothing to do with religious beliefs.
kat, do you have any data to back up the rather strong assertion that this is a myth? There have been many polls and studies showing that scientists profess atheism/agnosticism at a rate much higher than the general population.
For example, in a survey of the members of the National Academy of Sciences done in 1998, they found that a full 93% were either atheists or agnostics.
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How does it compare to the rest of the population?
Does that hold true for just scientists, or is it also true for PhDs in general? Even PhDs in economics or literature or history? Is it education level? Or economic level? Or did that not get studied?
517 invited, and only 250 responded. Hmm...I wonder if there was some self-selection in the pool that responded? It's a poor, poor study. Ironically, that study has all the scientific accuracy of a web poll on IMDB.
Surely your faith in the atheism of scientists has a better basis in logic than that.
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kat, Do you have any actual knowledge of the survey discussed? It seems to me that you are making an awful lot of definitive statements without having any actual knowledge as to the accuracy of these statements.
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