The resignation of Sen. Larry Craig achieves Republican leadership objectives of putting a cap on the scandal involving his men's room arrest in the Minneapolis airport and his increasingly well-documented gay sexual encounters over the years, but the harsh and uncompassionate Republican reaction leaves the Republican Party even more open to similar future "gotcha" scandals.
The Republican Party is the party of closeted Americans. The Jim Kolbes, Jon Hinsons, Robert Baumans, Terry Dolans, Mark Foleys, and Larry Craigs of the world all sought to align themselves with the power of the religious right while living a lifestyle of their own choosing or their own physiological necessity. The Democrats are the party of gays who are willing to admit their own identity, while the Republicans are the party of gays who are in denial or in hope that they will never be found out.
The differing reactions of Democrats and Republicans to the Larry Craig scandal mirrors the differing reactions of Senators George Allen and John Kerry to the revelations that they had a relative--Allen's mother and Kerry's grandfather--who was Jewish. Allen, it turned out, had long acted to hide this information, while Kerry had never known it until the Washington Post uncovered it.
Until it was all over the media and extremely well-sourced, Allen acted as though he felt the information was defamatory and sought to deny it or otherwise keep it out of sight. Kerry joked about it--"I have the matzoh balls to be here today," he told a St. Patrick's Day audience--and used it as an additional positive in his outreach to Jewish groups and to Jews and other Americans interested in genealogical research.
All over America, metropolitan areas have Democratic strongholds with heavily ethnic names and Republican areas with Anglicized names. It is not a particulary secret fact that many of the people with Anglicized names are descended from Americans of Irish, Italian, Polish, Russian, Greek, and other ethnic pasts. What is secret is the facts of many personal stories. Those who carry names that give information as to family ethnicity are clearly far more likely to be Democrats than those who do not.
The Democrats are the Party that embraces the people of America as well as the country itself. It is hardly a scndal in Democratic circles for someone to be gay or Jewish or of Jewish or Italian descent. In all too many Republican circles, these facts could easily become the stuff of scandal.
As the Republicans ponder their victory in forcing Senator Craig to resign, they should ask themselves whether they would have supported him if they knew he was gay and he engaged in no illegal activities. Those Republicans--I suspect the vast majority--who would not have supported him under those circumstances should do a lot of soul searching about their beliefs and what their beliefs indicate about the future of their party.
A healthy respect for privacy allows people to present themselves to others as they see fit. But a healthy respect for the individual dignity of all Americans should discourage the idea that people are respectable only if they conform to some sort of homogenized ideal.