Who did Larry Craig harm?

U.S. Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) is being forced to resign by his GOP peers. He became a major embarrassment as a result of his arrest, and guilty plea, for attempting to initiate sexual contact in a public restroom. That scandal has been major news all over the nation.

I probably hold elected officials in lower esteem than most citizens do, and I certainly disrespect those officials who try to push their particular morality onto the rest of us. Craig had taken anti-gay positions, so it's especially easy to say that his attempt to initiate same-sex contact labels him as a terrible hypocrite, and he, more than most, would deserve to be punished by his own stated moralistic standards..

But hold on just a minute... there is a lot more to this than most writers have focused on.

Who did Craig harm? In the first place, sexual contact was not made. Evidently, the attempt was made, although in a pretty non-invasive way. By now we all know the routine Craig used... foot tapping as a signal that he wants to make contact. If the other man wants contact too, he will tap his foot in response, or move his foot closer. The routine is obviously designed to produce sexual contact between consenting individuals.

Let's point out here that if the "other" man had not responded to Craig's actions, that would have presumably been an end to the incident. Contact initiated and not returned. Is that so different from a man making a non-agressive overture toward a woman, then waiting to see her response? In that situation, the overture is not criminal, repeating it in the obvious absence of encouragement from the woman is what makes it criminal.

In this case, Craig's action was returned by the other man, indicating that the other man wanted sexual contact too. If the act is illegal at this point, there are two equally-guilty parties. Of course, the "other" man was a mall cop, playing a sting operation to entrap men doing what Craig did, and Craig soon found that out.

We have the fascinating setup situation involving a mall cop, sitting on the toilet, pants down, and doing nothing but sitting there, waiting to entrap someone. It's safe to assume all that because Craig surely would have known something was amiss if the other man hadn't had dropped drawers. The cop wouldn't have been there for normal toilet activities or he would have been in no position to quickly apprehend a violator. I can't help but wonder how long the cop had been sitting there waiting. If Craig hadn't begun the toe-tapping, would the cop have initiated it?

Again, it is significant that no sexual contact occurred between Craig and the cop... only the signaling routine. Does that constitute lewd behavior? Who is the victim in this case? To my way of thinking, in the absence of a victim of some kind, there can be no crime. Even if the other man hadn't been a cop, there would be no victim. As it was, the cop pretended to be willing to accept sexual contact. If Craig is guilty, so is the cop.

The "crime" is so minor that most of Craig's critics have resorted to the ridiculous conjecture of "suppose the other person had been a kid?" Well, it wasn't a kid. We could speculate about what would have happened if there had been a kid in the other stall? It's possible that Craig wouldn't have been interested at all, but even if his desires did happen to include sexual contact with a boy, is it likely the boy would have tapped his foot in response? If he didn't, isn't it likely that the incident would have ended right then?

Nobody (except Larry Craig) was harmed by what occurred in the men's room, and it's hard to imagine how anyone could have been harmed by Craig's actions. The idea may disgust you, but we often see people doing disgusting things. We cannot make harmless but disgusting activity into crimes. More importantly, we should condemn law enforcement people who use entrapment as a means of producing results. The idea of law enforcement people breaking laws in order to prompt law-breaking by others is ludicrous.

The illegal act by the cop was the act with a victim... that's the real crime in this case.