This is so strange. So, we've heard all over the
place about the arrest of Conservative Republican Senator Larry Craig,
and how he was involved in a homosexual bathroom scandal, and is now set
to resign. But after reading dozens of articles, we still didn't
find the scoop on how it went down - what really happened? Well,
apparently, the entire sting/arrest was over a foot
tap.
Craig entered a Minneapolis airport restroom on June
11th, a bathroom that is known on gay websites as being one of the best
spots for anonymous homosexual encounters. Sgt. Dave Karsnia was
sitting in a bathroom stall, as part of a police sting set up to catch
"cruisers" that were in the restroom for that purpose. According
to Sgt. Karsnia, when Craig walked into the bathroom, he stared into
Karsnia's stall through the crack in the door, so hard that Karsnia
could see his blue eyes. Craig got into the adjoining stall,
tapped his foot, brushed it against the officer's foot underneath the
stall, and waved his hand under the stall divider three times, the
police report says. In return, Karsnia waved his badge under the
stall divider. Craig then exclaimed, "No!"
Craig tells a
different story. "Well, I go into the bathroom as I normally
do - I sit down to go to the bathroom," he says to Karsnia in a
post-arrest interview. "You said our feet bumped; I believe they
did. Because I reached down and scooted over. And, um, the
next thing I knew, under the bathroom divider comes a card that says
'Police.' Now, um, that's about as far as I can take it. I
don't know of anything else, your foot came toward mine, mine came
toward yours, was that natural? I don't know. Did we
bump? Yes, I think we did. You said so - I don't disagree
with that."
"I am not gay," he continued. "I do not do
these kinds of things...You're out to enforce the law. But you
shouldn't be out to entrap people, either."
"What about your
hand?" Karsnia asks.
"What about it? I reached down to
my foot like this - there was a piece of paper on the floor, I picked it
up. What about my hand?"
"Well, you're not being truthful
with me, I'm kind of disappointed, Senator."
The officer then
tells Senator Craig that he will not call the media, or that "type of
crap," but that he needs Craig to be truthful with him. Start
over, he asks him, and tell me what happened in the bathroom.
"I
stood beside the wall waiting for a stall to open," Craig says. "I
got in the stall, sat down, I started to go to the bathroom. Did
our feet come together? Apparently, they did bump. I don't
dispute that...I'm a fairly wide guy. I had to spread my legs when
I lower my pants so they won't slide. Did I slide them to close to
yours? I looked down, your foot was close to
mine." Karsnia asks him how many times his hand went
under the divider. Craig says he doesn't recall - he reached down
to pick up a piece of toilet paper that was on the ground. They
then go on to dispute which hand the Senator used, his left or his
right; they disagree on that fact.
"I don't seek activity in
bathrooms," Craig insists. "You saw something that didn't
happen."
This is direct from the transcript of the interview
between Craig and Karsnia. In other words - when all of these
articles are talking about the "gay sex scandal," all it really
was? A tap of the foot, and a flash of the hand, that the Senator
denies meant anything. How can someone be arrested for
solicitation for tapping their foot and picking up a piece of toilet
paper? To the average person, this seems ridiculous.
However, the average person isn't necessarily educated in the goings-on
of anonymous bathroom sexual encounters, and the foot-tap morse code to
initiate contact. And it is evident that Senator Craig
did know about this, because in the same interview, he said to
the police officer: "You solicited
me."
And then, Craig pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor
charge of disorderly conduct. He now says that he regrest only
that he pleaded guilty, and implies that he might try to withdraw his
plea. He vehemently insists he is not gay. There have been
rumors circulating for about 25 years, though, that Craig is both gay
and that he has sex with men in restrooms.
I personally don't care whether or not he is guilty,
and he probably is, but doesn't it make you wonder how many people out
there are innocently tapping their foot and get busted?
Senator
Larry Craig announced today that he will resign from the Senate by the
end of the month.
"What is best for Idaho has always been the
focus of my efforts, and it is no different today," he said, and added
that his decision was made "with sadness and deep regret."
"To
pursue my legal options, as I continue to serve Idaho, would be an
unwanted and unfair distraction of my job and for my Senate colleauges,"
he announced, with his wife Suzanne and his two children by his
side. "The people of Idaho deserve a Senator who can devote 100%
of his time and effort to the critical issues of our state and our
nation." Craig is 62 and
has been a legislator for 33 years. Ironically, he has been an opponent of
expanding the rights of gay Americans, and has supported a Constitutional amendment
to ban same-sex marriage.
