The Crossed Pond

If you caught the Larry Craig interview with Matt Lauer last night, it was sort of hard to watch. Look, I’m certainly not above shadenfreude when it comes to very public and influential people working against the side of right (according to me, of course), getting outed very embarrassingly as hypocrites. Larry Craig has been a key member of the key party that has committed itself, in varying ways, to the continued exclusion of homosexuals from mainstream society. He’s supported the atmosphere that desires to keep shame and fear as the public mode of homosexuality. He’s supported the ridiculous laws that see all kinds of bathroom signaling (and whatnot) become a snare for humiliating and mostly useless arrests (not to say that having sex in a public bathroom shouldn’t be illegal, but certainly tapping your foot to signal a desire for consensual sex should be, and would be, if it were an issue of heterosexual sex). He’s been an active proponent and legislator of the kinds of things he’s now found himself on the other side of. He’s made his own bed.

But, watching him with his family, it was hard to not be more than a little pained on his behalf. He is, after all, a human being, and I can’t even fathom the kind of psychic maelstrom that is his life and his self-conception. It must be beyond painful. It must be shattering, on an hour-to-hour basis.

Andrew Sullivan reminds us why Andrew Sullivan is such an important voice in the conservative movement. He takes a minute to walk us down the rabbit hole, and to look around. It’s not pretty, but it’s worth reflecting on just how horrible it must be to live in, and why it is that way.

But he is also a victim. And to see such a victim’s pain exposed brutally in a public restroom pains me. He needs help. So do millions of others. It is just a tragedy that the party that Craig belongs to is committed to prolonging the pain and the denial of so many people – in order to appease the casual fears of the insecure, and to use those fears to sustain political power. In that sense, Craig has long been a hapless tool of those who have made him so miserable and so alone for so long. One day, if we keep working, that misery will recede for some. If it recedes for one person, it will be worth it.