One of my LJ friends has commented on Senator Foot Tapper’s troubles; I replied, and he has replied to me. I won’t identify him (although you could probably find out who it is) but the exchange is screened so what I would say is this:
Most gay Democrats do not nowadays have to resort to cottaging in order to have gay sex. There have been instances in the past (a black staff assistant to President Lyndon Johnson was outed many years ago, I believe) but none recently.
Entrapment is not a happy thing. However, all that being said, a goodly number of those who cottage are doing so because they are married heterosexually and think they have no other outlet. The solution to that is not to cottage, it’s to be honest with your spouse and come out of the closet. For a Democrat, that might not be too difficult. For a conservative Republican who has a record of voting for such things as the Defense of Marriage Act, coming out of the closet will be difficult if not impossible.
Schadenfreude is not a pleasant thing to have, or to have to have. I suppose that someday someone might have some on my behalf. But Republicans are nearly all vile and evil on the subject of sexual morality, something like John Major proclaiming his “Back to Basics” campaign while he, his Cabinet, and his MPs were busily shagging each other (in John Major’s case, for Americans reading this, he was shagging a former minister Edwina Currie) or other people. This kind of campaign invariably turns on its creator when the sexual antics going on behind the scenes become public knowledge, as they often do.
There are Democrats who voted for the Defense of Marriage Act. If any of them were entrapped in this way, I would expect them to do the right thing and resign.
Oh, and if this were the only time that Senator Foot Tapper had been identified as homosexual, I might be more lenient. He has consistently been identified with casual public sex, especially with an incident in Union Station in Washington DC a while back. You’d think that those stories might have given him pause; they didn’t. He could have gotten rent boys who would be professionally silent. My conclusion is that he’s continued this because he enjoys the frisson of danger and has no consideration for his family, his reputation, or his constituents.
Oh, and if Sen. Foot Tapper voted to convict Bill Clinton for lying about his sexual activities with Monica Lewinsky, he’s even a bigger hypocrite than I thought he was (I’m sure he did).
All in all, a very sad case indeed. Pressure is mounting on him to resign, and if he were a British MP or minister, he’d already have been told to consider his position.
It’s not the joy of danger, it’s because renting a boy would be a very implicit acknowledgment of what he is and is doing. Furtive ‘spontaneous’ looking, jerking, some action right there right then is far easier to mentally compartmentalize.
is it entrapment if the senator was the one who approached the guy? also, the senator aside, i don’t see how this was lewd conduct. there was no sex or sex organs exposed. is flirting now a crime?
however, this is a case where i am glad that sen craig got caught because he was a hypocrite and a danger to our community. good riddance.
I agree 110%. The man is a menace and the faster he quits the better.