Yeah, yeah, I know -- you're thinking, "are people actually still talking about Larry Craig?" Yes, they are, and Frank Rich has an interesting op-ed up at the Times about why Senator Craig should be let off the hook.
The part that got me thinking:
The Minnesota sting operation may well be unconstitutional, as the A.C.L.U. says. Yet gay civil rights organizations, eager to see a family-values phony like Mr. Craig brought down, have been often muted or silent on this point. They stood idly by while Republicans gathered their lynching party, thereby short-circuiting public debate about the legitimacy of the brand of police entrapment that took place in Minnesota. Surely that airport could have hired a uniformed guard to police a public restroom rather than train a cop to enact a punitive "Cage aux Folles" pantomime.
So perhaps Craig didn't do anything wrong and that both the Democrats and the Republicans are showing their true hypocrite colors through this case. But the question that remains is should he resign? Should we look the other way while a man may be a closeted homosexual lobbies for limitations to gay rights? While a man whose marriage may be a beard only works to legislate family values?
I don't know.
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As interesting as this is, I am not allowed to engage because I'm supposed to be writing other stuff which I'm not writing because. . . well. I'm just not writing it. But I'm suffering over not writing it. . . .
So let me just say here that this is a VERY INTERESTING POINT and I'd like also to know how we have justify any restrictions on sexual expression the further away we move from [quote/unquote] "natural" law. . . . And I ask this from a logical perspective, not an ideological one.
Once 'anything goes', doesn't anything go? On what basis do we distinguish, then, between Senator Craig and President Clinton? And - dare I say it - "Brother" Jeffs, out in Utah? Not to mention Jack McClellan out in California? [the pedophelia advocate]
OK - so granted, we have the question of more 'vulnerable' parties implicated, which (these days) the feminists might deplore. And given our predisposition towards granting children the same rights as adults, we might also come to deplore the vision of children requiring special "protection". . . .
Ultimately, I think there is a real danger in upholding every - and any - preference. Any choice. There are people out there who - given a choice - would chose dead bodies and other such horrors. . . . (making them, AND having sex with them). But is preventing murder and necrophilia really a question of drawing - and defending - an arbitrary line? Or is it just that we find that the line becomes more arbitrary-looking the further we get away from sex as procreative - i.e., one man; one woman; of vaguely fertile age? (and here, inexplicably, the Cary Grant line from Operation Petticoat comes to mind: Under 16, the law protects women; over 60, nature does. . . .")
No. . . . no answers. SORRY! We return you now to your original questions. Back now to my own conundrum. . . .
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