Dear Senator Larry Craig:
You disgust me.
I really don’t care that you were picked up for trying to cruise an undercover cop for sex at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. It was sordid and tawdry and just plain damn sloppy, but hey, each to their own. Nor do I care that it appears you’ve been having sex on the sly behind your wife’s back, and most likely your wife is simply a “beard” to cover up for your man to man sexual preference. I just don’t give a damn. The fact that you have viciously attacked the civil rights of, and balked equality for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender persons while at the same time engaging in duplicitous same sex activity does kind of piss me off. But that kind of hypocrisy is par for the course with Republicans. However, the thing that really makes me want to kick your ass from here to Idaho – what really turns my stomach – is hearing your little speech about how you “are not gay.” No shit.
You aren’t gay. You don’t want to be identified with “those people.” You are not “one of them.” You may be a cock-sucking, fudge-packing pillow-biter, but you aren’t gay. Well good for you. No one can force the title on you if you don’t want it. You can call yourself whatever you want. It won’t change the fact that liberals and conservatives alike will think you are just a closeted basket case.
Since the gay community is so diverse, and encompasses people from all walks of life, religions, genders, economic strata, and races (among everything else), I can’t presume to speak for all gay people. However, speaking for this gay man, I am more than happy that you have chosen to disassociate yourself from the rest of us. Quite frankly, we don’t want you. While it would have been fantastic to have another highly visible advocate for equality for glbt folks in congress, we can do without the likes of you. You are a closeted, small-minded, hypocritical, bigot. We are better off as a community without you.
Being in the closet is tough. Coming out is tougher. It takes a great amount of personal courage and honesty to come out to oneself and others. You don’t have that courage. You are a weasel and a coward. Your fear and shame and self-loathing only adds to the general burden of individual and collective homophobia that gay people deal with every day.
You have, through your actions, personally sought to deny civil and human rights to myself and millions of other American citizens. Yes, I do take that personally. In a case of high irony, the type of society you have sought to perpetuate – one in which gay people are marginalized and maligned – is the type of society in which you are not allowed to exist politically. Your career is over. Too bad you don’t have family and friends who know you and accept you for who you are to comfort you in this time of personal hardship. In short, too bad you’re not gay.
