Sorry I Quit, Says Anti-gay Senator Arrested in Airport Toilet

There are few good places for a political crisis to begin, but surely none could be worse than an airport lavatory cubicle in Minnesota.

Now, Senator Larry Craig - an apparently happily married Republican, moralist and anti-gay campaigner - seems to have finally accepted that his illustrious political career is over. He announced his resignation and apologized at a press conference late yesterday - the final act in an extraordinary week that has seen American politics and media convulsed by furious debate over hypocrisy and homosexuality - and also, of course, by risque chat-show-host jokes.

The senator's ignominious demise began at Minneapolis-St Paul international airport on 11 June, after he was caught apparently attempting to solicit gay sex from an undercover police officer in the public lavatories.

For a politician with a strong record of voting against gay rights it was wholly unexpected, and brought a sudden end to one of the longest political careers in Craig's home state of Idaho, one of the most conservative parts of America. It was also one of the strangest and most surreal sex scandals to hit the Republican party in recent months - and there has been considerable competition.

Craig's name came can now be added to a lengthy list of Republicans who have fallen from grace and tarnished the party's self-proclaimed image as the guardian of America's public morality. They include Florida congressman Mark Foley, who stalked congressional page boys on the internet, and Louisiana senator David Vitter, who was caught using prostitutes.

But the past few days in Washington, as Craig's public - and personal - agony has played out, have been odd, to say the least. They have seen the airwaves dominated by public debate on the whys and wherefores of men seeking sexual encounters in public bathrooms. Words such as 'cottaging', 'cruising' and 'tearoom trade' have suddenly entered America's political lexicon. Much attention has been focused on exactly what Craig was doing in the airport lavatory and if he really was seeking to procure casual sex when he sat on the toilet.

The police version of events is simple enough. The lavatory was known as a site where men came for sex. They would sit down in the stalls and use a recognizable series of foot movements and hand gestures to signal their intentions. That is, according to the police report, exactly what Craig did. He settled himself into the lavatory after having first peeked round the side of the door at the undercover officer in the stall next door so that he could 'see his blue eyes'. He then tapped his foot, moving it over to touch that of the policeman's, and then also slid his hand under the divide. The policeman responded by sliding his badge under the divide and Craig was busted. Or, as one headline had it, he was 'flushed'.

Craig has steadfastly denied either that he is gay or that he was seeking sex. He said that the whole thing was a misunderstanding, claiming he had a 'wide stance' that had led to him touching the officer's foot. His hand movements, he said, had merely been reaching down to retrieve some paper.

The police were unimpressed. In an excruciating recording of Craig's police interview, the interrogating officer eventually gets annoyed at Craig's flat denials. 'I'm just disappointed in you, sir. I mean, people vote for you,' the officer says. Craig eventually pleaded guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct and - for a few months - thought he had got away without any publicity.

Until it became public earlier this week. Then nasty. And funny. And strange.

The media turned its full investigative talents to the issue, with more than one news program staging a re-enactment of the lavatory drama by its news anchors to test Craig's version of events.

At the same time, the issue has become fodder for tabloids and late-night comedians. The New York Post has dubbed Craig 'the potty pol'. Chat show host David Letterman quipped: 'Several prominent Republicans are calling on Senator Larry Craig to resign. And a couple are asking for his phone number.' Meanwhile, Letterman's rival Jay Leno said: 'His wife said she first became suspicious because every time he had to use the bathroom he would fly to Minneapolis.'

Usually, such scandals drag on. Denials are issued. Families rally round. The target tries to ride out the storm. Sometimes it works; often it does not. But in the Craig case there was an unseemly race to disown the damaged politician. His career was not so much shot down in flames as vaporised. Senior Republicans pulled no punches, including presidential hopefuls John McCain and Mitt Romney, whose White House ambitions Craig had supported. 'Frankly, it's disgusting,' Romney said of a man who had been his friend at the start of the week. Democrats did little but snigger: the Republicans were devouring their own.

The sheer ugliness of the Republican reaction led to expressions of sympathy from some unusual sources. Religious conservative Pat Buchanan - hardly a friend of closeted gay men - spoke out in shock (while also jabbing at gay rights). 'Rarely has a United States senator fallen so fast from grace or been so completely abandoned,' he said. Former top Republican Tom DeLay also backed Craig and said he was being unfairly hounded. Of course, such sentiments would have been listened to more attentively, perhaps, if DeLay had not himself been forced to resign in 2005 amid charges of violating campaign financing laws.

But it is certainly true that the Craig case has thrown a spotlight on some serious issues. The first is the idea of entrapment in law enforcement. Craig himself complained during his police interview that the officer had entrapped him. Certainly, if he was seeking sex, the encounter was going to be entirely consenting.

Some civil rights experts point out that police do not seek to entice heterosexual people into sex in the lavatories, say, of a nightclub or a bar. As it was, Craig had been arrested for merely touching the foot of an undercover police officer who was seeking to have his foot tapped.

The incident has also shown how anti-gay the Republican party can instinctively be, especially with a presidential nomination process under way in which religious conservatives are playing a prominent role.

The Republican party has plenty of other disgraced politicians who have kept their jobs. Just look at Vitter: his phone number appeared in the 'DC Madam' call-girl scandal and he confessed to using prostitutes. For several surreal weeks Vitter - who is married and makes 'family values' one of his main campaign planks - trailed around Congress being pursued by television cameras. But he kept his job.

Or look at Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican whose home has been raided by the FBI and who is the subject of a criminal investigation into bribery. He remains head of a top Senate finance committee. By contrast, Craig's hamfisted attempt at lavatory sex instantly ended his political life.

'Apparently in the view of the Republican party,' said Melanie Sloan of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, 'there is nothing more serious than a member attempting to engage in gay sex.'

The interview

Excerpts from the interview by Sergeant Dave Karsnia (DK) of Larry Craig (LC):

DK: Did you do anything with your feet?

LC: Positioned them. I don't know. I know at the time. I'm a fairly wide guy.

...

DK: I understand

LC: I had to spread my legs

...

LC: Did we bump? Ah you said so. I don't recall that.

DK: Yeah, well your foot did touch mine, on my side of the stall

LC: All right

...

DK: And then with the hand. How many times did you put your hand under the stall?

LC: I don't recall. I remember reaching down once. There was a piece of toilet paper back behind me and picking it up.

...

DK: I guess I'm gonna say I'm just disappointed in you, sir. I'm just really am. I expect this from the guy we get out of the hood, I mean people vote for you.

LC: Yes they do.

...

DK: Unbelievable, unbelievable.

LC: I'm a respectable sort of person and I don't do those kinds of....

...

DK: Have you been successful in these bathrooms here before?

LC: I go to that bathroom regularly

...

DK: I mean for any type of other activities.

LC: No. Absolutely not. I don't seek activity in bathrooms.