The Crime of Monsieur Craig

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

I suppose it’s fun to see one Republican exemplar of family values after another elbow his or her way to the front to decry the sins of Senator Larry Craig, and urge him to go home to his private Brokeback Mountain. And sins he has aplenty. He once tried to destroy a better legislator, and a better man, Barney Frank, for openly loving another man, where Craig preferred the loving attentions of strangers he met in bathroom stalls and somehow never got around to introducing to his wife. He’s opposed the right of homosexuals to defend the country they love. He’s opposed their right to commit their hearts and souls to the men and women they love.

But none of the exemplars of family values decry these sins, nor the hypocrisy that rots the Senator’s moral gut. They want him to resign because — oh my God — he’s a homosexual. That’s going to hurt the party for sure.

I want him to resign, too. But not because he’s a homosexual. I. Don’t. Care. I want him to resign because he’s a liar and a cheat, and while I realize those are common, and perhaps requisite, qualities on Capitol Hill, I don’t really like it.

I’d also like the resignations of every man and woman who think it’s a crime for a man to ask another man, or woman, or dolphin capable of making an informed choice, if he or she would like to have sex. I don’t know about you, but I don’t really want my police officers serving and protecting the community by sitting in a toilet stall and playing footsie with the neighbors.