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Loading ...Craig nixes further appeals
(Minneapolis, Minnesota) Former Idaho Sen. Larry Craig has reached the end of the road in his effort to reverse his conviction in an airport bathroom sex sting, one of his lawyers said Thursday.
Attorney Tom Kelly said Craig had decided against asking the Minnesota Supreme Court to void the conviction. The decision means the legal wrangling in the case is over.“We’ve concluded that the Supreme Court would not accept this for review,” Kelly said. “It would be a futile exercise.”
Thursday was the 30-day deadline for Craig to ask the high court to review a Minnesota Court of Appeals decision that went against him. The Supreme Court typically grants only about 25 percent to 30 percent of those requests, according to court figures.
The Idaho Republican was arrested June 11, 2007, by an undercover police officer conducting a sting operation against men cruising for sex at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. The senator quietly pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and paid a fine, but changed his mind after word of his arrest later became public.
As his political career disintegrated, Craig insisted he was innocent and that he was not gay. He said the officer had misconstrued his foot-tapping actions in the airport bathroom.
Last month, the Minnesota Court of Appeals rejected Craig’s bid to withdraw his guilty plea. It affirmed a lower court decision that his plea was “accurate, voluntary and intelligent” and that it was supported by the evidence.
Craig did not seek re-election in November for the seat he had held for 18 years. He was succeeded Tuesday by political veteran Jim Risch, a Republican former lieutenant governor, governor and state senator.
Let this be a lesson to all future Larry Craigs, you will be found out, and your name will be on the front page.
Fortunately, we are arriving at a point where one can be openly gay and still become a member of Congress.
With Jared Polis of Colorado, we now have 3 openly gay members of Congress up from just 2, quite puny compared to the number of openly gay members of the United Kingdom’s parliament, (check out Victory Fund’s map showing numbers of openly gay officials on each continent. Europe has about 116, most of them in just the UK alone!)
But I predict that number in Congress will increase in next few years. We have now several hundred openly gay public office holders in many of the states now except for a handful of states. Now even red state Oklahoma has an openly gay office holder.
This is a changing country where we have the first non-white president in the history of the US, where we’ve had women run as vice president (Geraldine Ferraro as VP on the Walter Mondale ticket some years ago)and now Hillary Clinton. I predict a woman as our actual president in a few more years. A gay president is very unlikely for some time.
But…
The good news is this, the number of successfully elected openly gay public office holders will increase over the next few years, and the as the shame of being openly gay diminishes over the years with the dying away of the old and coming of age of the new generation so will the number of future Larry Craigs hiding behind straight marriages and deceived wives.
Gay is seen in 2009 as more normal and as more “so what who cares” than is was just 15 years ago. These days being openly gay is easier than it was a short time ago.
We are having more and more openly gay mayors of US cities actually in office right now, soon we will have more and more gay governors of states who will be elected there as openly gay before day one on the job (and not showing up as gay Jim McGreevey style later announcing his gayness during a fall from grace) more and more gay US ambassadors to foreign countries. Just see what the next 4 years will bring for gay Americans with several more Northeast states perched on or close to the edge of gay marriage most likely first New Jersey and then other New England states whether or not California returns to gay marriage.
Maryland where I live may well see gay marriage or civil unions in a few years.
So the point is: Larry Craig, you are on the way to becoming a thing of the past.
I agree with the hypocrisy he espouses and how badly he needs some medical help, but we keep focusing on that part of this story and never discuss the most important part: He did nothing illegal!
Did he expose himself, engage in sex in public, say or do anything “lewd”? No. He was charged with disorderly conduct, which by my reading is what the undercover officer was doing by entrapping these men.
I’m no apologist for closet cases, but think about the next time you see a hot guy in public. This case gives precedent to the notion that it is illegal to make an advance at someone, which it is not!
Larry has unintentionally done us a great big favor. By keeping his name in the news for so very much longer than necessary, he’s made sure we’ll all remember his name for a very long time. He will be quite useful as a handy shorthand symbol for hypocritical homophobic conservative bloviators. Right up there with Mark Foley!
Yeah, I’ve been thinking about this and it seems we should start working to make internalised and externalised homophobia an official illness. That way severe closet-cases like Craig and Phelps could be given some help. Possibly with electrodes.
What a waste of taxpayer money to keep dragging this thru the courts just because some self-loathing closet case can’t deal with reality.
Awww, come on Larry. Being gay isn’t so bad!