Frankly, I was a little surprised when I learned that this old troll got busted in Minneapolis. For a couple of years in the '90s I worked for a company based in Minnehoopalis and found it to be one of the most gay-welcoming cities I've ever spent time in. Still, under the surface of "Minnesota Nice" is the same tired old bigoted crap which happens everywhere. It's the same crap which leads to the deployment of scarce airport police resources to the investigation and arrest of tired old trolls in (admittedly very clean) bathrooms.
But I digress. Senator Craig's recent conversion from reliable Republican stooge to champion of defendants' rights is predictable and disheartening. It's predictable because his lawyer is also Michael Vick's lawyer (!), and it's disheartening because few will get the real message from this case.
The fact is that whatever you believe about the propriety of restroom sex - and I suspect few publicly support it - this offense is the last bastion of criminal enforcement of largely unconstitutional anti-gay criminal laws.
Just last year, after a long fight, I lost a case in the Virginia Supreme Court challenging the continued enforcement of Virginia's sodomy law - as it's written - in the context of a restroom bust. It's not a question of whether public sex should be illegal. It's a question of whether public gay sex should be a felony while public heterosexual conduct is a misdemeanor.
Police in conservative states like Virginia and liberal states like Minnesota continue to target enforcement activities against the gay community. In Minnesota, the good news is that there's no disparity of punishment, just a disparity of enforcement. In Virginia, my clients can attest that there's both.
Still, I'm hopeful. Senator Craig, after all, will have much to say at his retrial concerning the method by which the police officer - yeah the one who wasn't who wasn't making certain the planes were secure - entrapped him. I'll be sure to get a transcript.