I have more than one reaction to the now famous audiotape of the interview between Senator Larry Craig and arresting officer Sgt. Dave Karsnia. The first is that Sen. Craig just MIGHT be telling the truth largely because Sgt. Dave Karsnia had such a tedious assignment. He had to hang around that airport restroom until someone makes signals indicating they want sex. That would take a lot of time and might leave him trigger happy to see what he wants to see in order to make a bust. A fellow sitting on the toilet and idly tapping his foot as he eliminates a bowel movement or a hand happening here or there could seem signals to someone who very much wants to see such signals.
My other reaction is that Sen. Craig’s explanations for his alleged behavior are downright comical and that Craig sounds on the audiotape like a little kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Craig actually did not use the term that may be on its way to becoming a catch phrase, “wide stance.” Rather, what he said was “I’m a rather wide guy,” indicating that when he uses the toilet it would be natural for his feet to be spread so widely apart that they might go into the next stalls. The other thing that sounds funny is the idea that he reached down “to pick up a piece of toilet paper.” Isn’t that the janitor or maid’s job? It doesn’t seem to me that many people who were just in the stall to eliminate their bodily waste would bother with a piece of toilet paper on the floor. However, as someone I spoke to about it pointed out, “You might pick it up if you had dropped it.”
Craig strongly says on the audiotape, “I’m not gay.†He has made this statement many times before and since as rumors have swirled around him.
It seems to me that Craig, and other men similarly “caught,” could be telling the truth when they say, “I’m not gay” – even if they regularly engage in sexual activities with other men. I believe that sexuality is a continuum and bisexuality is a reality. A bisexual man is not a gay man any more than a heterosexual man is a bisexual man.
What’s more, some bisexual men are primarily heterosexual in their preferences and may experience only occasional — but very strong — cravings for same-sex sexual contact. Additionally, sexuality is emotional as well as mechanical. A man who does not feel a yearning for an emotional, tender, or romantic connection with other men but only for a sometime physical connection may think of himself – wrongly – as heterosexual despite the truth of his bisexuality. Such a man may also be especially prone to seek the sort of quick, anonymous sexual contacts in public places such as restrooms that Sen. Craig supposedly sought.
However, a man who primarily prefers other men sexually and who is primarily emotionally oriented toward other men may also strongly insist, “I’m not gay.” Most people automatically see such men as simply lying or hypocritical. It seems to me that there may be more to it than that. Male homosexuality is heavily associated in the popular mind with effeminacy, with being “like a woman” in manner or presentation, and with having what may be perceived as feminine weaknesses of cowardice or timidity. I think it’s at least possible that “I’m not gay” really translates for many men as “I’m not effeminate.” For example, the late Roy Cohn, who died of AIDS, was probably close to exclusively homosexual in his sexual make-up but there was nothing at all effeminate about him. He always insisted he was not gay. I believe he could have been defending a particular self-concept of himself as a traditionally masculine man.
Larry Craig was a rancher before he went into politics. That’s certainly an occupation people think of as masculine. Even talking of himself as “wide guy” might be a way of emphasizing that he’s a “real man.”
What I think it boils down to is that there is such a strong cultural association between male homosexuality and being somehow “like a woman” that it may be psychologically impossible for some men to see themselves as homosexuals if they think of themselves as masculine no matter how strongly they may be attracted both physically and emotionally toward other men. There is just too much cognitive dissonance between the perception of effeminacy as characteristic of gay men and what some homosexuals are really like to allow some gay men to acknowledge themselves as gay – even to themselves.
