There is a dynamic here which is prevalent throughout the current Republican Party. When one is so publicly opposed to something that is such an integral part of one's personal life, it necessitates an unhealthy dissociation which colors one's relation to the world. This sociopathology is just what allows men who claim to support the Constitution to allow an administration to have kidnapping and torture as part of its core values. After all, the "good" Senator was trying to anhilate something "bad" inside him, and publicly proclaimed that being gay is bad and wrong even though he himself is gay. It must be personally painful, so using pain to anhilate "evil" must seem to be okay. The relationship between hidden homosexuality and public macho displays is the dynamo in the Republican Party that has fueled the pyschosexual excesses of our CIA, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and the activities in public men's rooms throughout our nation.

But the darkest, cruelest closet is in the White House. The strutting flyboy, the Jeff Gannons, the Drudges, the harpy Ann Coulters. It's all play-acting to hide the reality.

To paraphrase James Wolcott, every time a Republican lawmaker goes into a public restroom a Joe Orton play breaks out.

Criminal issues that negate consent exist well outside a reasonable definition of what constitutes in/out same sex partners engaging in consensual sex -- unless you consider harassment and possibly rape a part of gay sex. No means no everywhere.

There's nothing about the Craig investigation that remotely resembles the unjustified, hysterical right wing witch hunt that spent millions and years persecuting brief extramarital relations between consenting adults. (If that standard were applied to Republicans the government would screech to halt, perhaps for all time.)

Pretending that Craig's investigation and exposure was because of gay sex is idiotic.

It's as boneheaded as frankly deluded right wing wagon circling and pretention about Jeff Gannon being "persecuted" for being a Christian because he was exposed as a self-advertising prostitute. Here's a web escort masquerading as a reporter who got inexplicable security clearance -- during a time of WAR -- by a corrupt Executive who may also have used him to extort silence or complicity from media and political figures.

Gannon illegally offered to sodomize men at a going rate of $200/hr. -- even provided pictures of his equipment and testimonials from satisfied clientele. This solid model of right wing Christian values was a propaganda plant by the President's communications team, came and went from the White House without setting off red flags, and was on a first name basis with the President. Where were the right wing cries for an explanation of this, or the stock theater fainting spells before Congress about a disgrace occuring in the Oval Office?

And it spells, yes.

While on the subject, what appeals court would give a hoot about a defendant who knowingly and intelligently waives counsel and pleads guilty? That argument wouldn't survive the plain error test, another gift from the right.