 The Apparent Trap: Were Craig's civil rights violated?
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Aug. 31st, 2007 @ 07:54 am 
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The Apparent Trap: Were Craig's civil rights violated?
Let me be clear from the start: I'm not advocating or condoning sexual behavior in public. But setting up a sting operation in a public men's restroom and pressuring the suspect/victim to confess when no overt sexual behavior was committed would appear to be a violation of Larry Craig's civil rights.
It surprises me that the Wikipedia entry for "Violence against LGBT people" has no mention of police entrapment. It does say this:
Violence against LGBT people, queer identifying and the same-sex attracted are hate crimes which may occur either at the hands of individuals or groups, or as part of governmental enforcement of laws targeting people who are perceived to violate heteronormative rules and who contravene protocols of gender roles. People who are merely perceived to be LGB (but who are actually not) may also be targeted.... Violence targeted at people because of their perceived sexuality may include threats, physical assault, battery, sexual assault, rape, torture, attempted murder and murder. [emph mine]
Now let's take a look at the Wikipedia history of vice squads and their aggressive tactics against homosexual behavior between/among men. What – there is none!?
A vice unit or vice squad is a department in many police forces that investigates morality crimes. This generally includes narcotics, alcohol (including sales to minors), prostitution, pornography and gambling. Vice units in many places have targeted sexual minorities as aggressively as prostitution.
Similar to other "vices," homosexuality has been considered a morality crime, and public cruising for sex by men for men was thus prohibited by law under the vaguest of terms, such as loitering, public nuisance, lewd and lascivious behavior, and disorderly conduct.
By defining any sort of homosexual activity as immoral behavior, homosexuals were presumed guilty before being proven innocent just by being homosexual, whether or not anyone could prove any sort of same-sex contact had taken place.
Such presumption is reflected in the airport officer's (mis)leading interrogation while attempting to obtain a "confession" from Larry Craig.
Here's former attorney and Air America host Lionel's intelligent take on the Craig "entrapment":
Well, it’s official: Larry Craig committed an act of stupidity and not one of lewdness or disorderly conduct for that matter. I know, I know. Then why did he plead guilty? Oh, I don’t know, maybe because he’s a schmuck, but most probably because he thought it would be silently swept under the proverbial rug and it would “go away.” Or he’s just a schmuck.
What struck me about his “confession” is that Craig was browbeaten by the cop post-Miranda and maybe cajoled into pleading by minimizing the effects of such a plea. Cops have been instructed to stay away from giving legal advice.
... And while we’re at it some folks have opined that because Craig mentioned entrapment that this was tantamount to an admission. Sorry, Charlie; in our collective lexicon, entrapment is the confusion of many people between being entrapped versus just caught.
Whether Craig’s gay and whether he may have solicited someone before are irrelevant considerations. This “prior bad acts” evidence would most probably be excluded via a pretrial motion in limine. As far as this case goes, Craig was guilty of nothing. Nada. This cop should be reprimanded for, er, blowing the case. His hastiness in, er, pinching Craig in this ex-prosecutor’s opinion was an indicium of shoddy police work. No jury or trier of fact could or would have found Craig guilty of anything. Again, why he pleaded guilty is a mystery. As far as I’m concerned, the last time I checked, an acquittal was a good thing and rather dispositive of the matter. So go figure.
As ol’ Elliot Ness, the men’s room stall centurion, quipped (I swear): He didn’t want to turn this into a, er, pissing match. Well, too late.
If you weren't already aware, all airport areas, including restrooms, now have 24/7 camera surveillance. If Craig indeed committed some sort of sexual misconduct, why didn't Karsnia tell him, "We have you on camera"? And why not produce the actual video of the purported activity, instead of the audio of the arresting officer's leading interrogation? Because there was no crime committed.
If you just want to prevent cruising in men's rooms, put up a prominent sign saying THIS AREA UNDER VIDEO SURVEILLANCE. That's enough to make any man's woody go south – well, except the most severe voyeurs, perhaps. On the other hand (the one not waving under the stall divider), if you want to trap closeted queers, put undercover cops in toilet stalls when they should be attending to more important security matters in an international airport.
So, while Larry Craig's case may not then construed as entrapment, he would appear to have been trapped. The difference is in the intention of the law officer. But in either case, it appears that Craig's civil rights were violated.
Whether or not Larry Craig is heterosexual, he has the opportunity for a whopper of a lawsuit against Officer Karsnia. If he pursues that, GLBTQ activists might find themselves in the very queer position of having to defend Senator Craig's civil liberties to be (and behave like) a homosexual, whether or not he actually is homosexual.
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I think you've hit the nail on the head here. This Craig thing has been bugging me all week: there are just too many levels of homophobia here that are going unexamined. Pro-LGBTQ figures don't want to be seen as defending trolling t-rooms (especially not for this dude, and in fact, one does have the right to use a public toilet without being haunched on or seeing/hearing others have at it), but this mildly inappropriate act is being used as a smokescreen to keep enforcing these "vice" laws that were designed to persecute homosexuals, laws that have been invalid ever since Lawrence v. Texas. Karsnia is the one who needs to be investigated (he's getting a little too much job satisfaction IMO), as do his supervisors and their whole operation. But who's going to say that? Not the whole HRC assimilationist marriage crowd. If Craig had any balls (figurative ones I mean), he'd resign from the Republican party and serve out his term in the Senate.
![[User Picture Icon]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/33359184/204225) |
| From: | ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) wolfbear |
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September 1st, 2007 06:57 pm (UTC) |
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That idea is wonderful - jumping ship to the Dems would be the ultimate bitchslap to the GayOldParty.
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| From: | wolfbear |
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September 2nd, 2007 12:16 pm (UTC) |
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All week long, I've been hearing on Air America Radio gay men and lesbians calling up and saying, "We don't want Craig; he's not one of us." This is such a moronic attitude I hardly know where to begin.
First, it's no one's business either to define or to accept him as a queer. Truth is, nobody knows for sure what side(s) of the toast Craig likes buttered. Second, rejecting Craig as a queer is a kind of internalized homophobia that says, "I'm not as bad a queer as that person." This kind of attitude has to end if queers ever hope of building an effective grassroots political base. In a certain way, it's like the old "hate the sin, love the sinner" Xian dictum - but we need to learn that any First Amendment right to be homo- or bisexual or transgender necessarily includes a right to behave that way (within limits).
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| From: | beardoc |
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September 2nd, 2007 01:16 am (UTC) |
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I think the issue with Craig isn't whether he was entrapped, and really the details don't matter - it's that the guy has been supporting anti-gay propositions, etc. for a long time, which are things that actually hurt gay people and their ability to live their lives freely, whilst actually engaging in MSM activity. Isn't that the point?
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| From: | wolfbear |
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September 2nd, 2007 11:44 am (UTC) |
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I'm not sure Larry Craig's homophobic politics are the whole, or even the main point, Seamus. Craig absolutely deserves to be taken down. But the big picture is that we live in a society wherein entrapment and persecution of men for homosexual behavior (notice that I didn't say "of homosexual men") still is considered a perfectly acceptable means of law enforcement, regardless of the lack of precision by which such behavior is defined, and that relatively innocent (nonsexual) gestures are considered enough to construe someone's sexuality as perverse and prosecutable by law.
The problem is not that Craig is a closet case who sold queers down the river to advance his political career. The real issue is how homosexual behavior is so broadly defined that waving one's hand in a toilet is considered "disorderly conduct" and is prosecuted by law.
Clearly we have to separate homosexual behavior from homosexual identity, and understand the difference. If we don't address the underlying discrimination that allow stings, witch hunts like that of Larry Craig will continue - even if GLBTQs can marry in every state.
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