Tea Room Etiquette

Don't get me wrong. I am as happy as anyone to see Larry Craig unveiled as the hypocrite jerk that he is. I'll be thrilled to see him lose his place in Congress. I only wish he'd been voted out of office for his twisted ideology. Or been hit by a bus.

Am I the only one bothered by the fact that a lone punk cop, sitting in a bathroom stall, can take down Larry Craig? Or any man? No witnesses. No evidence. Just some gay-hating cop sitting in a stall watching him tap his feet and peer through a crack in the door. Such horrors! The officer's dead-on description of cruising behavior seems to be evidence of Craig's guilt. Am I alone in thinking that it smacks of police training? And since when has a subtle sexual overture, if that is in fact what Larry Craig made, been a crime? If you listen to the interrogation, Craig says that the cop made an overture to him as well, which the officer now denies. So it is a case of he said/he said. Since when has the burden of proof not been on the shoulders of the accuser? No proof, no case.

If Larry Craig stuck his penis under the divider, that would be considered indecent exposure. If he pinned the officer against the wall and groped him, that would be assault. What exactly was his crime? Our glee that it was a bigoted ass like Craig who was caught in this sting allows us to ignore the amazing erosion of civil liberties at the hands of the state underlying the case. Who cares about the rights of bathroom-lurking gays? They aren't us. We're still safe.

If I were you men, I would start to go to the bathroom in pairs like we women have always done. We do it for social reasons. You should do it to protect yourself from your, uh, protectors.