Craig’s Hypocrisy on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Sunday's Washington Post featured a guest commentary by William Saletan about former Senator Larry Craig (pictured), hypocrisy and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
From Saletan's column:
Poor Larry Craig. He's being held to the same standard of sexual conduct he imposed on the U.S. armed forces.
Fourteen years ago, in his first term as a Republican senator from Idaho, Craig helped enact the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. The Air Force, for instance, now says that any airman will be discharged if he "has engaged in, attempted to engage in, or solicited another to engage in a homosexual act."
According to the report filed by the police officer who arrested Craig at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in June, Craig stood outside the officer's bathroom stall for two minutes, repeatedly looked at the officer "through the crack in the door," sat in the stall next to the officer, tapped his foot and gradually "moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot . . . within my stall area." Craig proceeded to "swipe his hand under the stall divider for a few seconds" three times, palm up, using the hand farthest from that side of Craig's stall. Most of these gestures, the officer said, are known pickup signals.
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Indeed, as SLDN pointed out here at Frontlines last week, Craig was an ardent supporter of the military's ban on gay service members even in the days following his arrest in Minnesota. His letter to an active duty constituent made it seem as if he even thought openly gay troops would be a danger to straight service members.
Craig wrote that, "The armed forces exist to wage war. It is unacceptable to risk the lives of American soldiers and sailors merely to accommodate the sexual lifestyles of certain individuals." He also noted that, "I don’t believe the military should be a place for social experimentation."
Yet, as Saletan points out, "I'd rather live, let live and tell the guy waving his hand under the stall to buzz off. But that's not the standard Craig has applied to others. Any gay soldier, sailor, airman or Marine who admitted to doing what Craig has admitted would, at a minimum, lose his job for violating 'don't ask, don't tell.' In fact, many have been kicked out for less."
Indeed. Bleu Copas, Margaret Witt, Randy Miller and Alex Nicholson are just a few of the thousands of service members dismissed under the law Craig so ardently championed.
If former Senator Craig has had a change of heart about the matter in the past few days, it can be best described as "too little, too late." For, during his time in Congress, Craig was a leading proponent of a policy that he, himself, was ultimately subject to, in some small way.
Now, perhaps, he understands the pain of losing a job you love simply because of who you are, or who others think you might be.
- Steve RallsLabels: Congress, in the news
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