Hypocrisy, Thy Name Is Larry

I firmly believe that people's private lives are their own business, and as a rule I have less than no interest in the sex lives of politicians. They are, after all, only human, with the same drives as everyone else. That rule, however, goes by the wayside when a holier-than-thou person gets caught in matters of the zipper.

The latest example of this? Senator Larry Craig (R-IH), who we now know was arrested back in June for "cruising" an undercover cop in a Minneapolis airport bathroom. He tried to talk his way out of it with some "do you know who I am?" bluster, but pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and paid a $500 fine. Now that this minor awkwardness has become public, he claims he wasn't cruising anyone, pleaded guilty only to avoid further embarrassment, and calls the whole flap a "he said/he said misunderstanding," to the derisive hoots of many.

Now, it just so happens that Craig has made a name for himself being one of the more vociferously anti-gay voices in the Senate, opposing such items as gay marriage, civil unions, gays serving in the military, and the expansion of federal hate-crime laws to cover gays and lesbians. And yet he has been rumored to be gay himself (or, at the very least, bisexual) for many years.

And so Craig joins a long, long list of Republicans and conservatives who loudly proclaim their moral uprightness in public while behaving very differently in private, including:

• Representative Mark Foley, who was forced to resign from Congress when it was revealed that he had hit on underage male pages for years and was protected by the House leadership
• Über-pastor Ted Haggard, who resigned from his church leadership position after being caught patronizing a male escort and buying drugs from said escort
• Representative Bob Allen, who was arrested after offering $20 to an undercover police officer to let him perform oral sex on said officer
• Senator David Vitter, who proclaimed that "remaining faithful after [marriage] is the best choice for health and happiness" but admitted consorting with prostitutes from the infamous "DC Madam" escort agency
• Jack Ryan, who dropped out of his Senate campaign against Barack Obama once it was revealed that he had tried to talk his then-wife into group sex
  
• Former NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who told his second wife he was dumping her by holding a press conference at which he introduced the woman who would become his third wife
• Former Representative (and House Speaker) Newt Gingrich, who not only served his first wife with divorce papers while she was recovering from cancer surgery, but led the impeachment jihad against Bill Clinton while cheating on his second wife with the woman who would become his third wife
  

And so on and so forth. While progressives are generally leaning back to enjoy the spectacle, conservatives have gone berserk and are turning on Craig with a vengeance, demanding that he resign from his Senate seat.

Hypocrisy is a very bad thing. You'd think this would be pretty obvious, but all these politicians, preachers, pundits, and everyone else who makes a career out of being more righteous than the rest of us still haven't figured it out. If you talk the talk, you'd better make real sure you can walk the walk.

UPDATE: Craig just gave a statement in which he strenuously denied doing anything wrong, insisted he is not gay, blamed the Idaho Statesman for investigating his hypocrisy, and said he only pleaded guilty "in the hope of making it go away." Interestingly, he also admitted keeping his family in the dark about his arrest, implying he would never have told them at all had it not become public. This story isn't going anywhere.